Our struggles with mental health issues and addiction can cause us to totally lose faith in ourselves. We have a very hard time believing in ourselves. We don’t have faith that we can get better. We’ve been so self-destructive all these years that we no longer have faith in the choices we make. We worry […]
Category: Resource Center
How Drugs Worsen Our Depression
Many of us who struggle with substance abuse also struggle with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. When the two different illnesses affect us simultaneously, they are often referred to as co-occurring disorders or dual diagnoses. Those of us suffering from these particular issues are aware of the dualistic nature of our illnesses […]
How Our Addictions Limit Us
Of the many reasons why we want to quit our addictions and focus on recovery are all the ways in which we’re restricted and limited by our addictions over the years. When we’re working to heal ourselves from our addictions and mental health issues, we want to be able to feel at peace within ourselves. […]
What Do Our Relationships Have to Do with Our Addictions?
Our close personal relationships can play multiple different roles in the development of our addictions. While we can’t blame anyone else or any particular relationship for the fact that we struggle with addiction, many of us do have relationships that trigger us, that fuel our addictive patterns and enable them, and that contribute to the […]
Our Altered Brain Chemistry on Drugs
One of the hardest parts of living with addiction is trying to wrap our brains around why we would continue to self-destruct, essentially ruining our lives, even after we’ve experienced such painful consequences. We’ve already hurt ourselves many times over. Why would we continuously return to drugs, knowing how harmful they are? Aside from our […]
How Can I Learn to Speak My Truth?
Learning to speak our truth and empowering ourselves to speak up for ourselves is one of our greatest challenges, especially when we’re still struggling with addiction and mental health issues. We don’t feel confident and self-assured when we’re grappling with such intense emotional difficulties. We don’t feel secure, grounded, centered or at peace within ourselves, […]
Using Drugs: A False Sense of Happiness
For those of us struggling with addiction, we aren’t usually aware of how our brains are impacted by the drugs we’re using. Our addictions can create a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding for our loved ones who are forced to watch us grapple with substance abuse problems. They don’t understand why we would ever […]
Celebrating Ourselves in Recovery
One of the things many of us share in common as addicts is our tendency to be super hard on ourselves, even in our recovery. We beat ourselves up for how long it took us to get here. We’re disappointed in ourselves for taking longer than we would have liked to get well. We continue […]
Examining Our Childhoods
As much as we might want to leave our pasts behind us so that we can move forward and look to a happier future, we can only truly move forward once we’ve come to terms with our past. We are often still grappling with unresolved issues, unanswered questions and unhealed fears and emotions. We still […]
How Can We Learn to Detach from Our Pain?
When living with addiction and mental illness, we develop many emotional patterns that exacerbate our pain and contribute to our unwellness. One of those patterns is our tendency to form strong attachments to our painful thoughts, feelings, memories and fears. We cling to them because they are what we are most familiar with. We develop […]