For many of us, our uncertainty around the future, our recovery, and our lives in general tends to fill us with fear, worry and trepidation. We feel unsure of ourselves and lacking in confidence and self-assuredness. We feel dread about the future and all its unknowns. We’re consumed by questions and feel angst and anxiety […]
Category: Resource Center
How Compassion Can Help Us Heal
We might not usually think of compassion in terms of addiction and mental illness, but the more we learn to have compassion for ourselves and others, the more we can help ourselves during the very challenging recovery process. Our addictions are often coping mechanisms for our pain, the pain of our mental health issues, and […]
When a Loved One Disappoints Us
As the loved ones of addicts, we know all too well the disappointment of seeing them relapse after promising us they would get clean, after making the commitment to us and to themselves to be sober. We feel they’ve let us down. We had expectations that they would be true to their word, and we’re […]
Can I Heal Myself?
One of our greatest misconceptions around recovery is that we need something outside of ourselves in order to heal. We think we are dependent upon doctors, therapists, sponsors and treatment centers to get well, and although these are all extremely helpful along our journey, they aren’t the ones responsible for our healing, we are. They […]
Transforming How We Self-Identify
As recovering addicts, there are different ways in which we self-identify that hurt us, that hold us back, and that are defined by the limiting beliefs we believe about ourselves. We feel as though we’re not good enough. We feel unworthy and unlovable. We feel ashamed of all the things we’ve done wrong and the […]
Letting Our Recovery Be an Example for Others
Sometimes as we’re recovering, we feel ashamed and embarrassed about where we are in our journey. We feel down on ourselves. We feel disappointed that we haven’t made as much progress in our recovery as we would have liked. We feel like we’re so far from our goal of sobriety that we might as well […]
How Do Our Mental Illnesses Affect Us Physically?
We tend to think of our mental illnesses as affecting our minds and our emotions, our thought processes, behaviors and emotional responses, but what about our bodies? Are our bodies affected as well? Are we impacted physically by our mental illnesses? For many of us, our mental illnesses do manifest physically, and we are impacted […]
Finding the Lessons in Our Pain
One of the best things we can do for ourselves as we’re working to recover is transform the relationship we have with our pain, our difficult emotions, our addictions and mental health issues, and our tough life experiences. Our instinctive response to pain is to resist it. It hurts, so we try to avoid feeling […]
Can Having Goals Help with Sobriety?
Sometimes to help ourselves stay on track with our sobriety, it can be extremely helpful to focus on reaching for our goals. Feeling successful and fulfilled can be a powerful deterrent to our drug use, because we feel happier, more confident, and more at peace within ourselves. We’re not giving our energy to beating ourselves […]
The Different Stages of Relapse
When we think of relapse, we usually associate it with the act of returning to our drug use after a period of abstinence. We think of all the painful emotions associated with it, the disappointment, shame and regret. We think of falling off the wagon and picking up our drug of choice after being so […]