Not knowing our purpose in life can be so overwhelming, stressful and painful that it can contribute to our addictions and mental health issues. We feel pressure to succeed and to make a name for ourselves. We want desperately to be perceived as good enough. We’re battling insecurity, feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. We […]
Category: QA
How Can I Take Responsibility for my Recovery?
Living with addiction and mental health issues, we very commonly lose faith in ourselves and in our ability to recover. We don’t see all of the possibilities for the future. We don’t feel positive anticipation, hopefulness, eagerness or optimism. When we’ve given up on ourselves, we can feel so hopeless and desperate that we don’t […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
What is the Grieving Process of Recovery?
When we are approaching recovery, we have many things to look forward to, and although we may have anxiety about what the future holds, we also can have very positive, hopeful expectations of what’s to come. We’ll be sober, freeing up our energy which will allow us to create the space we need to find […]
How Are Eating Disorders and Addiction Connected?
When we are struggling with addiction, we have formed a dependent attachment to a substance, behavior or relationship. We feel compulsiveness, chemical dependence, neediness and obsessiveness around our drug of choice. Our addictions are evidence of our lack of wholeness, as well as our means of trying to fill our emotional voids. Eating disorders are […]
Why Do We Isolate Out of Shame?
Those of us living with addiction can find ourselves isolating ourselves from our loved ones, from our friends and family members, from our communities and from the world around us. We isolate for many reasons, one of which can be our deep sense of shame. Why are we so unforgiving of ourselves, especially when we […]
How Do I Stop Hating Myself?
Learning to love ourselves might sound like an impossible feat, especially when we’ve been inundating ourselves with self-hatred for so many years. Self-love is something we can’t just wish for, we have to actively work at it. We have to give it our time and energy. We have to view it as a practice and […]