Category: QA

As many of us come to discover, our ailments tend to operate in tandem with one another. Rarely do we have only one affliction we’re struggling with. For us as addicts, we also tend to be struggling with mental health issues, and for many of us, we’re also coping with physical health issues as well. […]

One of the things we rely on drugs and addictive behaviors to help us avoid are the conflicts in our relationships, many of which are a result of unclear or nonexistent boundaries. We tend to choose unhealthy relationships full of control, manipulation and toxicity. We allow ourselves to be abused, and we’re abusive towards others. […]

Many of us struggling with addiction are also grappling with unhealthy relationships, complex life circumstances and difficult issues we’re trying to resolve. We experience a great deal of conflict, misunderstanding and tension in our interpersonal relationships. When we’re living with addiction, we’re also often living with mental illness, which can greatly exacerbate the difficulties we […]

Of all the things we use our drugs of choice to cope with, our regret might be one of the most painful. We live with intense regret for the harmful things we’ve done and the ways in which we’ve hurt people. We regret all the things we wish we had done and said but weren’t […]

When we use drugs and addictive behaviors to cope with our grief, many of us find that not only are we not helping ourselves heal from the pain and sadness of our loss, but we’re making that pain worse by adding on all of the self-destructiveness and pain of addiction. We find that our addictions […]

When we make mistakes or feel we’ve let ourselves or others down, our instinct is usually to react with harshness – judgment, criticism, self-blame, self-deprecation. We berate and belittle ourselves. We put ourselves down. We call ourselves a failure. We tell ourselves we’re stupid, weak, not in control. We guilt trip ourselves, exacerbating our already […]

Many of us have a tendency to form unhealthy attachments to our emotions, and among the feelings we commonly become unhealthily attached to are our guilt, shame and self-blame. We instinctively blame ourselves for things that aren’t our fault. We hold onto our mistakes and wrongdoings long after they’ve stopped hurting anyone else, but for […]

We tend to associate addiction with a dependence on a substance or behavior, drugs and alcohol, gambling, sex or eating, to name a few. Some of us become addicted not to something external but to our own emotions, feeling compulsively attached and dependent upon feeling these emotions in order to cope, to be happy, or […]

Many addiction self-help programs advocate admitting we’re powerless over our addictions, our emotions and our mental illnesses as part of our recovery. The idea is to admit we need help and support, to lean on our higher power for strength, and to stop feeling as though we’re invincible, which can actually hold us back in […]

One of the first things professionals recommend when treating depression and anxiety is to stop watching the news. We’re hesitant to stop watching altogether because we feel it’s our civic duty to stay informed, to know what’s going on in the world so that we can somehow make a positive impact in our own way. […]