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 “rock bottom,” we’re referring to that point we reach in our addiction where we simply can’t go any further. The pain of our addiction has become unbearable, life has become unmanageable, and we […]
Category: Resource Center
Healing from an Inadequacy Complex
Many of us living with addictions, depression and other mental health issues also suffer from deeply rooted fears that we are inadequate or not good enough. These fears can be so deeply ingrained within us that they become thought disorders. When we are struggling with an inadequacy complex, it can make recovering from our addictions […]
Accepting Ourselves and Our Addictions
One of the most significant moments in our addiction journey is when we are able to come to terms with our addictions for the first time. Accepting that we are addicts and all that that means for our lives can bring up a whole range of emotions. We often are in such denial about our […]
How is Grief Related to Addiction?
The more we learn about ourselves and our addictions, the more we come to see that our addictions are very often our attempts to escape the pain within us that overwhelms us and that we feel is unbearable. One of the sources of our pain that many of us share is that of grief. Our […]
Embracing the Idea of Emotional Freedom for Recovery
Many of us living with addictions and depression have been living under the weight of our emotional challenges for most of our lives. We feel sadness and fear on a regular basis. We feel ashamed, and we often hate ourselves. When we think of recovery, we might think of it as this impossible, insurmountable ordeal […]
Confronting Our Unhealthy Behaviors
As we are working to recover from our addictions and mental health issues, one of the things we will inevitably have to face are the unhealthy, self-destructive, harmful behaviors we have developed over the course of our lives. We are often in denial about our behaviors, have yet to become conscious of them, or are […]
Why is Friendship Important in Recovery?
Many of us living with addictions isolate ourselves from our loved ones, for various reasons. Sometimes we can’t invest in our friendships because we don’t have the emotional energy or strength to, from battling our addictions day in and day out. Sometimes we retreat from other people because we’re afraid of being judged by them. […]
Sit with the Pain in Order to Heal It
Our addictions, depression and other mental health issues are often manifestations of our resistance to our pain, the ways in which we try to run from it, hide from it, bury it, avoid it or escape it. Healing on a deep level means being able to face our pain, to sit with it and withstand […]
I Don’t Use Drugs or Alcohol, But Am I an Addict?
Addiction is most commonly associated with a dependence on drugs and alcohol, but any substance or behavior can become addictive. Any time our reliance on something becomes problematic for us and causes us distress, we can consider it to be an addiction. Do you find yourself worrying about your use or behavior? Does it cause […]
Developing Healthy Coping Mechanisms
As we do the work to figure out our unhealthy behaviors, patterns and coping mechanisms, we can also be creating new healthy ways to cope that are self-affirming rather than self-destructive. We’ve created coping strategies over the years to deal with our trauma, our woundedness and our fears, but these strategies not only don’t heal […]