Addiction can be attributed to many different contributing factors, with one of the greatest among them being our disconnection, our disconnection from other people, from our higher power, and from ourselves. Our battles with addiction cause us to sever our mental and emotional connectedness with our own intuition, our internal guidance system. We don’t listenRead More
When we’re in the middle of a panic attack, it can feel like the world is ending, like we’ll never get back to normal. A great practice for handling a panic attack is panic journaling. We journal to release all of our pent-up panic and distress. We let ourselves write freely, without worrying about makingRead More
Sometimes when we think about addiction recovery, we associate it with all of the hard work we’ll be undertaking. We see it as a serious journey of self-exploration, rebuilding our lives and healing from deeply rooted pain. We have some very complex issues to work through. An important element in the hard work we do,Read More
When we are struggling with addiction and mental illness, many of us tend to choose relationships that are toxic, unhealthy and destructive. We choose partners who are bad for us, who devalue and demean us, and who contribute to our feelings of worthlessness. We tend to attract and choose partners who themselves are struggling withRead More
Part of our addiction recovery work is learning to value ourselves again. Many of us lost our sense of self-worth during the course of our struggle with addiction. Our dependence issues, along with all the difficulties that came with them, made us stop valuing ourselves. We might have suffered from low self-esteem and a lackRead More
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Panic attacks are painful, debilitating, incapacitating waves of intense fear, often accompanied by feelings of sadness, shame and other forms of emotional pain. They can be so severe that they can feel like a heart attack, causing physicalRead More
Some of the most important work we do in recovery involves shedding the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves and instilling new, more empowering ones for ourselves. One of the most toxic beliefs we hold onto is that we are restricted by the limitations we’ve placed on ourselves, or that we feel have been placedRead More
Our ability to be resourceful is one of the things we struggle with most when living with addiction and mental illness. We find it increasingly hard to take care of ourselves, to think positively and to figure out solutions to our problems. We stay focused, even fixated, on our pain to the point where we’reRead More
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Depression is one of the most destructive, damaging and debilitating mental illnesses that many of us suffer from. It is often accompanied by anxiety, worry, self-doubt and insecurity. It makes us feel deeply sad, with a pervasive senseRead More
As we’re healing from our traumatic experiences, one of the things we want to examine is our trauma responses – how we respond to and deal with our trauma. Our trauma responses play a large part in the development of our addictions. How we cope with our pain, whether we cope in healthy ways, hasRead More