One of the biggest misconceptions about addiction is that people struggling with them simply lack the willpower needed to kick their habits, that they are lazy and just haven’t tried hard enough to quit. The truth is there are multiple factors contributing to our addictions, and willpower alone often isn’t enough to work through them. […]
Category: Resource Center
Every Day is a New Day
Living with addictions and mental health issues can feel like an uphill battle, like a fight we aren’t meant to win. Much of our energy goes to fighting our issues, to the relentless struggle of trying to change, and we find ourselves drained and depleted. We have a tendency to dwell on the mistakes of […]
What is Withdrawal and How Can I Get Through it?
Withdrawal is the term given to the wide range of symptoms we can experience when stopping our drug of choice. Many of the symptoms are physical and have to do with our bodies’ intense reactions to withdrawing from the drugs they have become dependent upon. Some of the symptoms are mental and emotional, such as […]
Why is Balance Important for Recovery?
Balance is one of the hardest things to achieve when we are struggling with addictions and mental health issues. We often are excessive in our habits. We go from one extreme to another. We might go from indulging in our addictive behaviors in reckless ways to isolating ourselves and separating ourselves entirely from the rest […]
The Ways in Which We Use Our Relationships
Many of us struggling with addictions and mental health issues use our relationships in unhealthy ways. This can have a lot to do with our deeper issues, and our relationships and other challenges often mirror each other. What are some of the ways we use our relationships that are similar to how our addictions function? […]
Why Do We Hide Our Addictions?
When we are living with addictions, even when we are suffering the most, we often try to hide our addictions from other people. We try to keep them a secret from our loved ones and communities. We keep parts of ourselves, whole parts of our lives, hidden from other people. We live in secrecy. Sometimes […]
Recognizing When a Depression is Coming and Learning Ways to Offset it
Depression can be one of the hardest things we have to live with when it comes to addiction and mental health issues. Our depression and addictions can be linked and can feed off of each other, compounding and exacerbating each other. Are there ways to recognize when a depression is coming, and are there ways […]
What are Some Signs a Child Has a Dependence Problem?
Sometimes children develop addictive, compulsive and dependent behaviors long before adulthood, long before the behaviors would be considered to be related to addiction. We associate addiction with adulthood but it can also develop in childhood. What are some signs that children might exhibit indicating they have a dependence problem? One sign is a child asking […]
Practicing Patience
Those of us living with addictions and mental health issues have often been struggling with these things for many years, if not most of our lives. We can feel depressed about our situations and frustrated with our lack of progress. This can cause us to be impatient with ourselves as we’re trying to recover. Impatience […]
How Do I Hold onto Hope?
When we are struggling with addictions, depression and other mental health issues, one of our greatest challenges can be trying not to give up hope. We feel desperate and hopeless. Our trials feel insurmountable. We feel we’ve damaged our lives, relationships and reputations beyond repair. We feel like we’ll never be able to fix the […]