Many of us living with addictions and depression have been living under the weight of our emotional challenges for most of our lives. We feel sadness and fear on a regular basis. We feel ashamed, and we often hate ourselves. When we think of recovery, we might think of it as this impossible, insurmountable ordeal that we’re not strong enough to conquer. It can feel so painful and difficult we run from it, trying to avoid it at all costs. Deep down we are often afraid of recovery. What if we can start to think of recovery not as something to dread that will add to our pain, but as something we can look forward to that will ease our pain and allow us to feel free?
What would emotional freedom feel like? It might feel like clarity rather than confusion, like peace rather than conflict. When working to heal, we can try to visualize ourselves feeling those things, feeling clarity and peace within ourselves. It might feel light rather than heavy, calm rather than turbulent. We can visualize ourselves feeling light and calm. We can visualize our inner strength as a healing light that fills us up from within. We can try to invoke these feelings of clarity, peace, light and calm by taking deep breaths and creating an energy of stillness, silence and space within us and visualizing that light growing within us as our energy becomes more still, silent and spacious. We can repeat affirmations such as “I am at peace within myself. I am calm. I am light. I am clear. I am free.” All of these are meditative practices that we can use to feel emotionally free, to rise above our emotional challenges and create inner peace for ourselves.
If we can energetically create these feelings inside of us, we can return to them whenever we feel scared and overwhelmed in our recovery. We can remind ourselves that our recovery is a healing journey. It is a process that takes time and that offers emotional freedom on the other side, waiting for us to claim it. We can start to associate healing and recovery not with depriving ourselves of our fix but with giving ourselves the powerful gift of freedom. We can link recovery with emotional freedom rather than the pain of withdrawal, with inner peace rather than suffering. This new conceptualization of recovery as emotional freedom can help us to approach our recovery with more optimism and openness, helping us to heal every time we choose to access it.
Facing our fears of recovery is part of the healing process. We’re here to help. Call (800) 871-5440.