When living with addiction and mental health issues, one of our biggest challenges can be how we relate to other people and coexist with them. We can find ourselves surrounded by negativity, criticism and judgment. When we’re coming from a place of inner turmoil, we’re more likely to attract people into our lives that reflect […]
Category: Resource Center
Solidarity and Healing
When struggling with addiction, one of the things that can keep us caught in its grips is how alone we feel. We are often shunned by our loved ones, and by society as a whole, who share in the stigmatization of addicts and addiction. We isolate to protect ourselves, in what is often an attempt […]
How Can I Take Responsibility for my Recovery?
Living with addiction and mental health issues, we very commonly lose faith in ourselves and in our ability to recover. We don’t see all of the possibilities for the future. We don’t feel positive anticipation, hopefulness, eagerness or optimism. When we’ve given up on ourselves, we can feel so hopeless and desperate that we don’t […]
Rebuilding Relationships in Recovery
As recovering addicts, one of the most important elements of the work we do to recover is rebuilding the relationships that may have sustained damage during the course of our addictions. We may have separated ourselves from the people in our lives who were trying to intervene and convince us to get help for our […]
The Visible and Invisible Effects of Addiction
Addiction is a destructive and debilitating illness with effects that are far-reaching and all-consuming. It can take over our entire lives and affect everything from our daily circumstances to our inner perception of self. What are some of the effects of addiction, both ones we can see and those that are invisible? Some obvious visible […]
What is Fight, Flight or Freeze?
Living with addiction and mental illness, we are no strangers to emotional stress, trauma and anxiety. How we cope, what kinds of fear responses we have, has a lot to do with our body’s nervous system and how it responds to stressors. When we have been hurt or traumatized, the energy of that pain gets […]
Examining Our Life Patterns
When we look at our lives closely and examine our issues honestly, we start to see that we have life patterns that are repeating themselves almost as if on autopilot, by default, without our even being conscious of them. Our issues tend to be recurring and constitute repeating patterns that we often feel powerless to […]
Why Do We Mourn Our Old Lives?
Recovering from our addictions means recreating our lives and letting go of our former selves. We want to release all of the elements of our personalities and of our lives that were contributing to our unwellness. We want to shed the self-destructive patterns in our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. We often are open to embracing […]
Learning to Accept Ourselves
Self-rejection is a huge problem for those of us struggling with addiction and mental health issues. Deep down we hate ourselves, and this is often a contributing factor in our suffering. Our lack of self-acceptance can be debilitating. We don’t believe in ourselves. We lose hope. We can feel as though life is meaningless and […]
Why is Suicide so Common in Young People?
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Childhood and adolescence are especially challenging times for us, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. We are embarking on a process of self-discovery that will enable us to understand ourselves on a deeper level. We are forming our identity […]