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 […]
Category: Resource Center
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 […]
The Role of Love and Compassion in Recovery
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 […]
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. […]