If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). At the root of our addictions, for many of us, lies an emotional foundation we’ve created for ourselves of self-hate and self-rejection. We don’t feel unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves. We don’t nurture, support or protect ourselves. We […]
Category: Resource Center
Finding the Valuable Lessons Within Our Emotions
Many of us living with addiction and mental illness have developed patterns of avoiding, suppressing and resisting our emotions, in particular the ones we find most difficult to handle. When we feel stressed out and overwhelmed, depressed and afraid, confused and ashamed, our instinct is often to shut down and try to stop feeling our […]
How Our Addictions Have Held Us Back
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). When we’re in recovery, many of us are finally starting to gain clarity and insight on our addictions. We’re starting to see things clearly for the first time. We have a much deeper understanding of who we are and […]
What Can Our Codependent Relationships Teach Us About Ourselves?
Our relationships have a great deal to teach us, particularly the ones that are unhealthy, because within them, we’re confronted with unresolved issues and unhealed pain in direct and irrefutable ways. Our conflicts, misunderstandings and relationship problems all stand to teach us a tremendous amount about ourselves, about who we are as people, who we […]
Learning to Take Responsibility for Our Emotions
Our addictions and mental health issues have a lot to do with our mental and emotional patterns, and one of the most destructive ones many of us tend to develop is failing to take responsibility for our emotions. We can find our feelings so hard to cope with that we want to place them on […]
How Can I Separate From My Abuser?
Those of us living with addiction and mental health issues often find ourselves in toxic relationships in part because the unhealthiness within us attracts people who reflect that back to us and who compound our issues, pushing us to learn even more about ourselves and gain a deeper understanding of who we are. Unfortunately, many […]
Understanding Behavioral Addictions
We most commonly associate addiction with a dependence on drugs or alcohol, but addictions can also be behavioral in nature. We can find ourselves forming dependent attachments on certain behaviors such as sex, eating, gaming and gambling, attachments that can be just as intense and detrimental as our attachments to substances. We can become mentally, […]
Choosing Forgiveness in Recovery
As we’re working to heal ourselves and stay committed to our sobriety, there are certain emotions that can linger well into our recovery and bring us so much turmoil and conflict that we feel tempted to use our drugs of choice just to escape them. One of these painful and destructive emotions is the anger […]
Can We Enjoy the Healing Process?
When we’re working to recover, we tend to have our focus set on the end goal, the finish line, the goal of sobriety. Everything we’re working for is for our sobriety. Every change we make, every intention we set, every goal we have, is for our sobriety. We sometimes get so caught up on reaching […]
How Judgment Hurts Us
Whether because of our family patterns, our own insecurities, or our cultural obsession with critiquing people, many of us have a tendency to judge other people harshly, whether we know them well or not at all. We criticize people for their personal choices, for their ways of life, for their addictions and mental illnesses, even […]