Sometimes as we’re healing, we feel emotions that can overwhelm us so much and be so debilitating that they feel as though they are detracting from our recovery. When we feel helpless, when we feel powerless and out of control, when we’re consumed with fear, we can feel like we’re going backward in our recoveryRead More
Our triggers are actually powerful clues about where we need to heal. As we’re working towards recovery, and even once we’ve achieved sobriety, we will go to great lengths to avoid anything we consider triggering. Triggers are the things we’re most sensitive to, bothered by, and upset by. They are the things that destabilize us.Read More
For those of us struggling with addiction, one of the challenges we face is how to handle all of the cultural stereotyping, misinformation, hatred and apathy surrounding addiction and addicts. We see it on a regular basis, everywhere around us, and we’re sometimes on the receiving end of it. We might have lost friendships becauseRead More
One of the fundamental concepts in many addiction recovery programs is the idea of admitting our powerlessness over our addictions. The goal is to surrender our problems and our struggles, to stop fighting and resisting them, and to turn them over to our higher power to help us navigate them. The problem with this conceptRead More
Our stories with addiction are often riddled with denial, avoidance, emotional suppression, silence, and secrecy – the many coping mechanisms we develop to keep ourselves from having to face our addictions and do the work to get better. We refuse to see ourselves as addicts and our problems as being caused by addiction. We refuseRead More
The work we do in recovery is all about learning more about ourselves and developing the mindfulness and self-awareness to really be able to heal from our mental health issues and addictive patterns. For much of our lives, we’ve been compounding our own pain, exacerbating our own unwellness and hurting ourselves. We’ve been acting outRead More
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The work we do to recover involves learning how to abstain from our drug of choice, transforming our lifestyles and routines to support our sobriety, and looking at our life circumstances to see how we’ve been negatively impacting ourRead More
Many of us who struggle with addiction and mental health issues also find ourselves in toxic, unhealthy relationships we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from. For years we perpetuate the same relationship patterns, finding ourselves in similar tumultuous relationships and dealing with the same recurring issues and dynamics within those relationships. We often don’t knowRead More
Unpacking the connection between education, our recovery journeys, and the power of helping others through our experiences. Our recovery work is comprised of many different elements that support our sobriety and help us to maintain it. For many of us, continuing our education is a highly beneficial and therapeutic part of our recovery. When weRead More
As we learn more about ourselves and our addictions, we come to discover more about our motivations for using, the reasons why we’ve become dependent on our drugs of choice, and what purpose we’re trying to fulfill by using. For many of us, one of our greatest motivations is our lack of inner peace. WeRead More