Treatment and therapy for substance abuse frequently focus on educating patients and families about the disease of addiction. We know it’s essential to show people who are affected by addiction that it is not a choice, it is an illness. It is no one’s fault that substance abuse happens. Blaming ourselves or one another, holding […]
Category: Resource Center
The Practice of Building Self-Love
Growing in unconditional self-love is a practice that requires energy and commitment. We can’t expect affirmations to magically cure us of our self-hatred, or abstaining from our addictions to fix our relationship with self. The practice of building self-love is one we’ll have to dedicate ourselves to if we want to recover. Addictions and mental […]
How Are We Affected by Self-Medicating?
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). When we use the term self-medicating, we’re referring to our dependence on behaviors and substances other than medication to manage our mental, emotional or physical pain. We might use alcohol or marijuana to self-medicate our depression and anxiety, […]
Withstanding Temptation in Recovery
When we’re working to recover, one of the most important things we learn is how to withstand the very real temptation we face to fall back into our addictive patterns and start using again. We may have already relapsed, and many of us live with the constant fear that we’ll fail in our sobriety goals. […]
Shedding Our Self-Hatred
Self-hatred is perhaps the most debilitating thing we adopt in our struggles with addiction and mental health issues. For many of us, our self-hatred was the catalyst behind the development of our challenges in the first place. When we’re ready to heal ourselves, self-love is one of the most important lessons we’ll need to learn. […]
What is the Grieving Process of Recovery?
When we are approaching recovery, we have many things to look forward to, and although we may have anxiety about what the future holds, we also can have very positive, hopeful expectations of what’s to come. We’ll be sober, freeing up our energy which will allow us to create the space we need to find […]
The Healing Process of Inner Integration
An important part of the healing process when recovering from any addiction or mental health issue is learning how to integrate all the different parts of ourselves so that we can heal holistically. We want to reestablish our wholeness and feel complete. We can’t do this when we’re rejecting entire parts of ourselves and refusing […]
How Are Eating Disorders and Addiction Connected?
When we are struggling with addiction, we have formed a dependent attachment to a substance, behavior or relationship. We feel compulsiveness, chemical dependence, neediness and obsessiveness around our drug of choice. Our addictions are evidence of our lack of wholeness, as well as our means of trying to fill our emotional voids. Eating disorders are […]
What We Leave Behind When We Choose Recovery
When we commit to sobriety, we’re taking on new challenges that bring all kinds of new things into our lives. We receive hope and optimism. We are gifted new knowledge about ourselves and our lives. We make discoveries about who we are that propel us forward. In addition to all the new things we receive, […]
Why Do We Isolate Out of Shame?
Those of us living with addiction can find ourselves isolating ourselves from our loved ones, from our friends and family members, from our communities and from the world around us. We isolate for many reasons, one of which can be our deep sense of shame. Why are we so unforgiving of ourselves, especially when we […]