Category: Recovery

Self-rejection is a huge problem for those of us struggling with addiction and mental health issues. Deep down we hate ourselves, and this is often a contributing factor in our suffering. Our lack of self-acceptance can be debilitating. We don’t believe in ourselves. We lose hope. We can feel as though life is meaningless and […]

Treatment and therapy for substance abuse frequently focus on educating patients and families about the disease of addiction. We know it’s essential to show people who are affected by addiction that it is not a choice, it is an illness. It is no one’s fault that substance abuse happens. Blaming ourselves or one another, holding […]

Self-hatred is perhaps the most debilitating thing we adopt in our struggles with addiction and mental health issues. For many of us, our self-hatred was the catalyst behind the development of our challenges in the first place. When we’re ready to heal ourselves, self-love is one of the most important lessons we’ll need to learn. […]

An important part of the healing process when recovering from any addiction or mental health issue is learning how to integrate all the different parts of ourselves so that we can heal holistically. We want to reestablish our wholeness and feel complete. We can’t do this when we’re rejecting entire parts of ourselves and refusing […]

When we commit to sobriety, we’re taking on new challenges that bring all kinds of new things into our lives. We receive hope and optimism. We are gifted new knowledge about ourselves and our lives. We make discoveries about who we are that propel us forward. In addition to all the new things we receive, […]

Those of us living with addiction know firsthand just how destructive it can be. Grappling with addiction can cause us to feel as though we’ve become different people, living entirely different lives, with dysfunctional ways of thinking and feeling, and tumultuous, conflicted relationships. We don’t feel like ourselves. We feel like strangers to ourselves. We […]

For many of us in recovery, we remember a time in the story of our addiction when we thought we’d be able to maintain our lifestyles the way they were and still continue to feed our addictions. We felt like we had figured out a way to manage our lives and still be able to […]

As we work to heal from our addictions and mental health issues, we learn that many of our emotional issues come from the thought patterns we’ve developed over the years. We perpetuate these thought patterns when we aren’t conscious of them, and for most of us, we haven’t become conscious of them yet so we’re […]

The Florida Health Care News website recently published a feature article on Riverside Recovery and our unique approach to addiction recovery treatment. The article, titled “Restoring Health and Hope,” was the product of a collaboration with longtime Florida Health Care News writer Patti DiPanfilo — it highlights our process and raises awareness about addiction treatment […]

Those of us struggling with addiction often find ourselves living with patterns that many of us share in common. There are certain life cycles many of us experience pertaining to our addiction. Addiction is all-encompassing and touches every area of our lives, from our mental and emotional health, to our relationships, to our work. Understanding […]