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 […]
Category: Resource Center
The Strength in Vulnerability
Many of us have been conditioned to think that in order to be strong and competent, we must be totally independent. We think that we should never ask anyone for anything, and that we should be able to do everything on our own. We assume we’re weak if we need help. These thought patterns are […]
How Do Our Lifestyles Contribute to Our Addictions?
Our addictions are so pervasive that they can totally overtake our entire lives, causing us to create lifestyles that are destructive and damaging to our health. Many of us are engaging in unhealthy and destructive habits, making poor lifestyle choices, and staying in toxic relationships. How do our lifestyles contribute to our addictions? Our home […]
Why Willpower Alone Isn’t Enough
There is a common misconception about addiction that if we just apply our willpower we’ll be able to stop our addictions in their tracks and keep them from overtaking our lives. People assume that addicts are weak, lazy, cowardly, and simply not trying hard enough to get better. The truth is, willpower alone isn’t enough […]
How Can We Create Lifestyles Conducive to Healing?
As we’re working to recover, one of the most important things we’ll need to address is the kind of lifestyles we’ve created for ourselves that have been contributing to our addictions and mental health issues. We make choices, both small daily choices and huge life decisions, that perpetuate our addictions and our overall lack of […]
How We Block Our Healing
When suffering from addiction and mental health issues, we often will get to the point where we know we can’t continue on the way we’re going if we want to be happy and healthy. We’ve dealt with harmful, even dangerous consequences. We’ve made choices we regret. We’ve hurt ourselves and the people we care about. […]
How Can I Empower Myself to Reach Out for Help?
We tend to think of our addictions and mental illnesses as being signs of weakness on our part, moral failings that we are ashamed of and embarrassed by. We beat ourselves up and judge ourselves harshly for our struggles. We constantly replay memories in our minds of when we first became dependent upon our drug […]
Preparing Ourselves for Recovery
Addiction recovery involves some of the most challenging work we’ll ever do in our lives. We’re taking on the tremendous task of confronting our deeply rooted pain, facing our fears, and transforming lifelong patterns. We’re facing ourselves, finally, without distracting ourselves or self-medicating. We’re allowing ourselves to feel our pain without filters, without anything to […]
Can We Find the Deeper Meaning Behind Our Addictions?
We usually associate our addictions with being painful and debilitating illnesses that we want to rid ourselves of and heal from as quickly as possible. What we often don’t realize is that our addictions hold a deeper meaning and carry a deeper purpose beyond the self-medicating, the escapism and distraction from our difficult thoughts and […]
Recidivism in Recovery
We think of recidivism as a bad thing when it comes to criminal offenses – it means we’ve reoffended and are facing even harsher punishment. When it comes to recovery, recidivism means we’ve relapsed and are returning to treatment again, sometimes after multiple attempts to get clean. In this case, recidivism is actually a good […]