Many of us living with addiction have developed mental and emotional patterns of criticizing and judging ourselves, beating ourselves up, and inundating ourselves with feelings of guilt and shame. We hold onto our mistakes and regrets rather than forgiving ourselves. We are unkind to ourselves rather than being patient and understanding with ourselves during the […]
Category: Resource Center
Signs that Troops and Veterans are Struggling
Troops and veterans are often accustomed to hiding their pain from the rest of the world, from their peers and loved ones, even from themselves. They’re conditioned to put on a brave face amidst the most difficult of experiences. They’re taught to pretend that everything is fine, even when they’re in pain. Their work requires […]
How Can I Stop Being So Triggered?
When we have unhealed wounds within us, we can find ourselves being easily triggered by events, by things people say and do, by memories or associations, or by anything that reminds us of our pain. Often we don’t know why we’re being triggered by something or someone. We can find ourselves being highly reactive, volatile, […]
Challenges Troops and Veterans Face
Each of us has unique challenges to face in coping with our addictions and mental health issues, and the same is true for troops and veterans. What are some of the challenges that troops and veterans must contend with when returning home and working to recover? Displacement A major challenge is how displaced troops and […]
What Can I Do When I Feel Lost?
Those of us living with addiction and mental illness are no strangers to feeling lost every now and then. We’re coping with tremendous difficulties. Our dependence issues, along with our mental and emotional challenges, can make us feel as though we’ve totally lost our sense of purpose and direction. We can feel unfulfilled, discouraged and […]
Supporting Troops’ and Veterans’ Recovery
Addiction and mental health issues are debilitating for all of us, and we each face unique challenges in our struggles with them. For troops and veterans who have been in active duty, there are specific difficulties pertaining to their experience. How can we support them in their recovery? Patience One way we can support troops […]
Service as Part of Recovery
As alumnae in recovery, we often are looking for ways to give back to our communities after how much we feel we’ve been helped, by our family and friends, by the staff of our treatment centers, by our sponsors, therapists, recovery coaches, doctors and mentors. Many of us feel we wouldn’t have been as successful […]
How Are We Strengthened by our Experience with Addiction?
Living with addiction, many of us come to identify ourselves as being weak people, because we see our addictions as a reflection of our shame and immorality. We see ourselves as being too weak to withstand the temptation of our addictive urges and compulsions. When we’re working to recover, we start to see our addictions […]
Myths About Addiction
As prevalent as addiction is in our communities, there is still a lot of misunderstanding surrounding it. This can be attributed in part to the myths that circulate about addiction. There is a great deal of misinformation in these myths, in the stereotypes and in the stigmatization of addiction. Let’s take a look at some […]
The Pain of Relapse
For those of us who have been struggling with addiction for any length of time, chances are we’ve experienced relapse and all of the pain that comes along with it. We give so much energy to wanting to be clean, sober or abstinent that we create expectations for ourselves, some of which can be unrealistic […]