Category: QA

We often think of addiction as something we face as adults, but when we look back at the development of our addictions over the course of our lives, many of us find that we were beginning our addictive behaviors early on, as children. We can see evidence of our addictions tracing back to when we […]

Living with addictions means dealing with some very intense, very difficult emotions, including the sadness, fear and anger we’ve been carrying for many years. When we don’t have healthy ways of processing our emotions, we often turn to substances and addictive behaviors. Writing can be a powerful way to handle our emotions and is a […]

When we are in the thick of our addictions, we often can’t see our way out. We’ve lost hope in ourselves and in the possibility of recovery. We feel despair and desperation, and recovery can feel like a distant, impossible ideal that we will never realistically be able to attain. Can we hope to recover? […]

This question is at the root of our healing and recovery. Without inner peace, we can’t really experience true wellness. How do we find inner peace? The process of finding inner peace involves going beyond our pain, beyond our fears, to access that deep part of ourselves that is connected to our spirit and our […]

When talking about our addictions, we often are dealing with some very difficult and painful emotions. Some of us, though, don’t feel like we understand our emotions or have access to them. We have become so emotionally blocked that we no longer feel anything at all. We have become numb. How does this happen? Many […]

The tendency towards self-judgment is something many of us share. Those of us struggling with addictions can judge ourselves so harshly and be so critical of ourselves that we feel like we’re our own worst enemies. We might think that we are judging ourselves because we don’t approve of our addictive behaviors, but another way […]

When we have been living with addictions for much of our lives, we can easily lose sight of who we are. Our attachments to substances, behaviors and relationships can cloud our vision, and we lose touch with our identities, our purpose, our connection to our higher power. We can feel like we’ve lost everything. It […]

Many of us living with addictions also identify as having addictive personalities. What does this mean, and how do you know if this applies to you? When we have healthy ways of coping with life’s challenges, we can handle our emotions in productive ways. We have emotional independence, and we feel strong in our ability […]

Each of us has a unique story, full of the lessons we’ve learned, challenges we’ve faced and experiences we’ve had. Sometimes when we’ve struggled with addictions, we have a very hard time looking back at our life story. We are overcome with embarrassment, shame and disappointment with ourselves. We carry so much remorse and regret […]

Those of us struggling with addictions have a tendency to want to ignore our emotions and avoid feeling them because they can be painful and difficult to cope with. Our addictive behaviors are very often what we use to try to escape our emotions, but when we can look at them closely and figure out […]