Focusing on Replacement Habits As we’re working to recover, we discover that many of our habits are harmful to our health and detrimental to our sobriety. We want to break these habits, and we often work on doing this by focusing on them because now that we’re practicing mindfulness, we’re observing ourselves do these badRead More
You’ve managed to get sober successfully – congratulations! That is a huge milestone and something to really be proud of. You’ve worked extremely hard, and now you might be wondering if you’ll be able to stay sober for the long haul. The truth is, recovery is a lifelong journey and in order to stay sober,Read More
Too Broken to Be Fixed As we’re working to recover, one of the things we want to shift is the attitude we have towards ourselves and our recovery work. Are we thinking of our personal development as working to heal ourselves, or as trying to fix our brokenness? Do we feel whole within ourselves withRead More
When we experience loss in our lives, the trauma of it can devastate us in so many different profound ways. We can suffer from worsened depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. We can find that our loss exacerbates our problems with addiction because we feel driven to use our drug of choice to copeRead More
When we’re working towards sobriety, everything changes in our lives in order to support our recovery. We’re transforming our habits and routines. We’re developing completely new lifestyles for ourselves that support our efforts. We’re learning to replace our self-destructive patterns with healthy ones. We’re transforming our ways of thinking. We’re shedding things that don’t serveRead More
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). As we’re working to recover from our addictions, we need a certain level of inner peace, emotional stability, and overall balance if we’re going to be able to defeat the many challenges that come with recovery, from the addictiveRead More
How we think and feel about ourselves is one of the most important elements of our recovery and is a crucial part of the inner work we need to do in order to heal ourselves. How we self-identify can literally make or break our recovery. If our self-identification is based on self-hatred and self-rejection, ourRead More
One of the elements of our recovery programs that we find most challenging is the act of making amends to the people we’ve hurt throughout our struggles with addiction. We have a very hard time forgiving ourselves and also seeking forgiveness. We find apologizing to be extremely difficult. Some of us never move past ourRead More
Unconscious Thinking When we aren’t conscious of how we’re thinking, many of us tend to allow our thoughts to control and overpower us. We’re not being mindful or vigilant about the health of our thought patterns, and we’re defaulting to the self-destructive, self-hating beliefs stored in our subconscious minds. Very often the health of ourRead More
The losses we’ve sustained in our lives are some of the most difficult experiences we go through. They cause us tremendous sadness and grief. We live in fear that we’ll undergo the same huge loss we’ve experienced in the past. We fear getting close to people lest we lose them too. We isolate ourselves. WeRead More