When living with addiction, many of us have a tendency to place more importance on our romantic relationships than on our own well-being, and we often will prioritize them over our own recovery. It can be nearly impossible to focus on ourselves and to do what we need to do in order to get betterRead 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
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
For those of us whose loved ones are addicts, our fears around their addictions can make us so desperate to help them, and to save them from their addictions, that we find ourselves trying to control situations, relationships and outcomes. We try to control how our loved ones go about getting better, what steps theyRead More
The recovery process is a massive undertaking in which we’re tested mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. We’re healing wounds that have been with us for much of our lives. We’re facing deeply rooted fears many of which have been with us since childhood. We’re learning how to retrain our minds and forming new thought patterns,Read More
For many of us who struggle with addiction, we are often challenged to think about things differently in order to heal ourselves, to develop a new mindset around both our illness and our recovery, and to approach our journey with a new perspective. We are often filled with so much fear and resistance around ourRead More
When we’re in recovery, even though we may have successfully gotten clean, we’re often still coping with mental and emotional health challenges, difficult life situations and complex issues that take time and work to resolve and to heal from. We can find ourselves dealing with very emotionally taxing crises that upend our lives and thatRead More
As we are working towards recovery, there are some emotions that can actually stand in our way and impede our forward progress and momentum. Anger is one of these emotions, and we can become paralyzed by the force and strength of it. Sometimes we’re carrying anger towards people who’ve hurt us, whom we can’t seemRead More
Many of us struggling with addiction find ourselves addicted to more than one substance or behavior over the course of our experience with addiction, and over time our drug of choice can sometimes transition from one thing to another, even in recovery. The underlying cause behind this change can be different for each of us,Read More
One of the reasons why our addictions and mental illnesses affect us so powerfully is that everything we go through, every issue, challenge, difficulty and crisis, affects us not only mentally and emotionally but also energetically. Our energy is comprised of everything we do, think and feel. It is our fears, our pain, our sensitivitiesRead More