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Can Self-Doubt Lead to Relapse?

There are countless reasons why we might relapse, even when we’re committed to working our recovery program and are fully prioritizing our recovery. Sometimes we relapse not because we aren’t trying hard enough but because we simply are struggling to believe in ourselves. We can become so filled with trepidation and self-doubt that our anxiety around relapsing contributes to our manifestation of just that. We’re so afraid of relapsing that our fear essentially manifests the self-fulfilling prophecy of relapse.

It’s totally normal and natural to worry about our recovery. We’ve lived with our addictions for so long, we know just how painful and debilitating they can be. We may have already relapsed in the past. Our tendency to worry can be exacerbated by our past experiences with relapse and all of the disappointment that comes with it. Worrying about something as important as our sobriety is understandable. The more we worry about our potential to relapse, though, the more we weaken our faith in ourselves. Over time, we’re decreasing our ability to stay on track with our recovery goals. Our self-doubt chips away at the faith we held in ourselves and our recovery, and it permeates and worsens our self-esteem and our sense of self-worth. We start to believe that maybe we won’t be able to get clean after all. We become so consumed with fear that we look for something to help us escape our fear. We often will return to our drugs of choice to numb the pain of our fears. Many of us stop believing in ourselves altogether. As much as we don’t want to relapse, as much as we want to stay committed to our recovery, emotionally we are self-sabotaging with our toxic thought patterns and limiting beliefs. We don’t always realize it at the time, but we’re directly defeating our progress and sabotaging our recovery through our negativity, our pessimism, our self-doubt, our cynicism and our skepticism.

Once we’ve relapsed, we continue to use in order to try and escape all of the disappointment, shame and regret we feel. We can start to feel as though we were right to doubt ourselves. We tell ourselves we were never strong enough to get well in the first place. We tell ourselves that we’re a failure, that we’re hopeless, that we don’t have anything to offer the world. The more we judge ourselves and knock ourselves down, the more pain we create for ourselves to have to heal from, and for many of us, we become desperate to escape that pain, especially the pain of our self-doubt, through our drugs of choice.

At The Guest House Ocala, we have personal recovery experience and over 12 years in the recovery industry. We have helped countless people recover, and we’re here to help you too. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.