If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Our traumatic experiences can be so overpowering, so destabilizing and so debilitating that we struggle to understand them. We can find it impossible to make sense of them and to wrap our brains around them. Similarly, our responses toRead More
When we’re struggling with addiction and mental illness, we often develop toxic mental and emotional patterns that hurt us, that limit us and that impede our growth. One of the most common is our tendency to compare ourselves to other people and to compare our recovery journeys to theirs. We feel competitive with other people.Read More
There are many traits, characteristics and afflictions we tend to inherit from our families, our addictions being chief among them. We can inherit thought patterns, emotional responses and behavioral patterns from our families, many of which we don’t understand because they weren’t originally ours to begin with. Very often these patterns are subconscious, and beneathRead More
Those of us struggling with addiction are no strangers to feeling defeated, disheartened, lost and confused. We feel disappointed in ourselves, ashamed, regretful and remorseful. We feel so down on ourselves we feel like giving up. We’ve lost hope. We find it impossible to be positive let alone have faith in ourselves or our recovery.Read More
When we have a loved one struggling with addiction, our instinct is to help them, to protect them from themselves, and to put an end to their suffering. We hate seeing them in pain. We’re filled with endless worry, and we panic that they’ll only continue to keep hurting themselves. We think that if weRead More
When we’re working to recover, we place the majority of our emphasis on abstaining from our drug of choice and figuring out how we can prevent ourselves from relapsing. We practice coping skills to help us manage our self-destructive impulses. We look for ways to handle the temptation of our addictive urges and compulsions. WeRead More
Sometimes what holds us back most in our healing journey is our perspective on recovery. Our mindset on recovery and how we view it are full of resistance and fear. We’re angry we have to give up our drugs of choice, the substances and behaviors we’ve grown dependent upon for our feelings of comfort, securityRead More
Sometimes when we’re in the middle of our struggles with addiction, we don’t realize exactly why we’ve been using our drugs of choice in the first place, what our reasons and motivations for our drug use even are. We might not have realized yet what specific issues are causing our addictions or what the fundamentalRead More
Our addictions and mental illnesses are very often a manifestation of the relationship we have with our fears, a relationship that is based on avoidance, resistance, denial and escapism. We suppress our fears hoping they will go away. We avoid confronting them at all costs because the weight of them and the pain they bringRead More
For many of us struggling with addiction, we can find it incredibly difficult to work up the motivation to get better. We feel down on ourselves, depressed, hopeless and fatigued. We feel totally depleted of our energy and inspiration. We struggle to feel like ourselves, and our lives become unrecognizable even to us. Feeling asRead More