When recovering from addiction and mental illness, one of the things we discover is that the health of our relationships plays a huge part in our overall well-being. We realize that we were so filled with self-destructive ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves that we naturally attracted partnerships and friendships that made us feel […]
Category: Resource Center
Giving Our Children the Freedom to Live Their Lives
When addiction runs in our families, or when we fear addiction might develop in our children, we instinctively want to protect them and safeguard them from harm. We want to do everything in our power to keep the addiction from developing, or if it has already appeared, worsening and further overtaking their lives. When we’re […]
Why Are Boundaries Important?
Learning to set and maintain boundaries in our daily lives and in our relationships is one of the best things we can do for our recovery. When living with addiction and mental health issues, we often don’t know what healthy boundaries look and feel like for us. We’re confused about our needs. Many of us […]
Unconditional Love vs. Enabling
Confronting our children’s addiction is one of the hardest things we’ll ever have to do. We want what’s best for them. We want them to be happy, healthy and whole. Learning they are struggling with addiction can be shocking, troubling and heartbreaking. Our instinct is to want to protect them and to lessen their burdens. […]
How Can We Develop Self-Awareness?
Self-awareness is one of the most important tools we can develop when recovering from addiction and mental illness. Self-awareness is the ability to be conscious of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. When we are self-aware, we are able to monitor our self-talk, our choices, and how we interact with other people. When we are not […]
Supporting Our Children’s Healing Without Enabling Them
When our loved ones are suffering, our instinct is to protect them and shield them from harm. We want to take away their pain and prevent them from experiencing yet more suffering. Our intentions are to support our children, but we can fall into patterns of enabling them instead. We enable other people’s addictions in […]
What are Defense Mechanisms?
When we are living with mental and emotional health issues such as depression and addiction, we tend to be living with lots of fear that manifest in the forms of anxiety, worry, pessimism and self-doubt. When we are living in fear, we tend to engage in mostly negative thinking. We become suspicious of other people […]
Mindful Listening to Support Our Children
Confronting addiction in our families can be a grueling and painful process, full of unforeseen mental and emotional challenges. We can feel as though we’ve let our children down and can therefore be filled with shame and regret. We can find ourselves analyzing all of the mistakes we might have made, all of the ways […]
What Does Self-Worth Have to Do with Addiction and Mental Illness?
We often associate addiction and mental illness with having an issue or problem with a particular substance or behavior. We think of depression and anxiety as being related to our current circumstances, losing our jobs, losing a loved one, or being overly stressed. We don’t always realize that our addiction and mental health issues stem […]
How Can We Recognize Addiction in Our Children?
Addiction has a way of sneaking up on us and overpowering us, overtaking our lives and robbing us of our happiness and purpose. While it can be hard to detect, there are some key signs we can be mindful of, that can alert us when there might be a problem. We can learn these signs […]