Category: Recovery

At the root of many of our emotional problems, including our addictions and mental health issues, is a lack of self-respect. We don’t feel we deserve respect from ourselves or from other people. This lack of self-respect manifests as toxic relationships, self-harming behaviors, and self-destructive patterns of addiction and depression. Developing a sense of self-respect […]

A common theme many of us share is our tendency to prioritize other addicts in our lives over ourselves. Their struggles become our main concern. We’re more worried about their wellbeing, or lack thereof, than our own. We give them the majority of our time, attention and energy and sacrifice our own needs. We do […]

Drug and alcohol use in teenagers is on the increase, and there are some key factors in this disturbing trend. Part of the problem is that young people’s brains are still developing, so when they start using drugs and alcohol at an early age they are putting themselves at greater risk for both brain damage […]

Many of us living with addictions and mental health issues also have a problem with self-harm – self-destructive behaviors which are linked to our deeper emotional problems and which compound and perpetuate them. We might hit, cut or burn ourselves or otherwise cause ourselves physical harm. We might be emotional cutters, where we are masochistic […]

Bingeing is commonly misunderstood as being simply an inability to control one’s self or a problem with greed and gluttony. Just like with any addictive or compulsive behavior, there are often deeper meanings behind people’s bingeing. Using food bingeing as an example, bingers will eat long past when they are full, until they are uncomfortable, […]

Many of us living with addictions and mental illnesses can find ourselves so consumed with our afflictions that we end up centering our identities around them and creating our lives based upon them. As we recover, we come to see that our illnesses are just one part of us. They don’t have to define all […]

Energetically we are very connected to the families we live with and grew up with. Even if we’ve separated ourselves by space, time and emotional distance, we still share an energetic bond with our family. Their thoughts, emotions and behaviors affect us, and vice versa. Our family dynamics and how we relate to our families […]

When we are in the midst of our struggles with addiction, it can be really hard to see our way out to the other side. We can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve given up hope that we will be able to recover, and we’ve lost faith in ourselves. If you’re […]

In our quest to heal from our addictions and mental and emotional health issues, perhaps our greatest goal is to find emotional freedom. What is emotional freedom, and how can we achieve it? A common misconception about emotional healing is that we are trying to replace any negative emotions we feel with positive thinking and […]

In times of difficulty when we feel a great sense of confusion, sometimes our instinct is to see our confusion as a negative thing. We feel afraid of it. We think it is working against us. We reject it and want to run from it. Confusion can be very difficult. We can choose to see […]