Our subconscious minds store our emotional information and memory, including our fears, the pain we’ve held onto from trauma, the grief we carry from loss. Even when we consciously want to be free of these things in order to be happy, our subconscious mind, which directs the majority of our thoughts, is holding onto them […]
Category: Resource Center
Gently Pushing Ourselves Instead of Beating Ourselves Up
When we are working towards recovery, how we treat ourselves can make all the difference in how we feel, how we take care of ourselves, and how likely we are to reach our goals. Many of us who have been living with addictions and mental health issues for a long time have a way of […]
How is my Thinking Fueling my Addiction?
Our addictions and mental health issues are often fueled by the destructive, limiting beliefs that we’ve adopted over time and allowed to become our truth. When we experience trauma or loss, we develop fears that inform how we feel about ourselves and how we operate in the world. We are afraid that we are inadequate […]
Our Recurring Life Patterns and What We Can Learn from Them
When we experience the same patterns recurring in our lives year after year, it is often because we have unhealed wounds and unresolved issues within us trying to get our attention. We are being sent the same lessons over and over until we learn them, and often they come back bigger and heavier each time, […]
Am I in Denial?
Many of us have a very hard time facing the reality of our addictions. It can be much easier to turn a blind eye to them. Sometimes we are conscious of our addictions and don’t want to admit them to ourselves or to other people. Sometimes we’re not yet conscious of them. We ignore the […]
Strengthening Our Intuition
We very often ignore and neglect our intuition when we are struggling with addictions and mental health issues. The drugs and relationships have a way of drowning out our inner voice, along with all of the other ways in which we distract ourselves. We are too busy dealing with the conflicts in our tumultuous relationships, […]
Am I Enabling My Loved One’s Addiction?
It is very easy for us to be in denial about our loved one’s addiction, to be unconscious of it, or even to enable it. The difficulty of addiction can be so overwhelming and so stressful that we want to pretend it isn’t there, sweep it under the rug, or hope the problem will go […]
Using Fear as a Motivator
Living with addictions and mental health issues can mean we live with fear on a regular basis. Many of us struggle with chronic anxiety, debilitating panic attacks, fear-based obsessions and compulsions, neuroses and phobias. When struggling with addictions, fear can be one of the things that we allow to hold us back the most. We […]
How are Codependence and Addiction Related?
Codependence and addiction can be related to one another and can fuel each other. The same patterns we learn that develop into codependence can also lead to addiction, and vice versa. When we are in codependent relationships, we are emotionally dependent upon another person. We look to them for direction on how to feel, what […]
Developing Self-Respect
At the root of many of our emotional problems, including our addictions and mental health issues, is a lack of self-respect. We don’t feel we deserve respect from ourselves or from other people. This lack of self-respect manifests as toxic relationships, self-harming behaviors, and self-destructive patterns of addiction and depression. Developing a sense of self-respect […]