For over 30 years, the month of September has been observed as National Recovery Month by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Their message is meant to bring awareness to show that “behavioral health is essential to overall health, that prevention works, treatment is effective and people can and do recover.” TreatmentRead More
Trauma occurs when an event happens that is life-altering and causes significant stress that leaves you in crisis-mode. The current global pandemic and the domino effect of its consequences can constitute a circumstance that might have already created trauma in you. Other examples of trauma include surviving a natural disaster or being the victim ofRead More
Drugs and alcohol wreak havoc on the body, especially when chronically consumed. Once a person makes their way into recovery, the whole goal is to heal the mind, the soul, and the body. While therapy and the 12-Steps can improve the mind and the soul, the body may need some additional attention. Nutrition forms anRead More
With the ever-growing progress of different therapeutic modalities, art therapy can be a wonderful addition to your healing journey. Art therapy is how we incorporate creativity into our recovery to learn new things about ourselves in an emotional and psychological manner. There are many different ways we can utilize art in therapy. Some people createRead More
For some of us, the longer we’re in recovery, the harder it is to hold ourselves accountable to the sobriety we’ve committed ourselves to. We can feel ourselves slipping on the intentions we’ve set for ourselves. We can feel as though we’re losing faith in the goals we’ve implemented for our recovery. This can happenRead More
Recovering from addiction is an experience that often includes intense emotion. We all know the highs and lows of drug use, the inner turmoil, the moments of anxiety, and panic. In these moments, we can find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. We don’t know how to cope with our intense emotional responses and thought patterns during theseRead More
Many of us struggling with addiction and mental illness are also empathic, meaning we feel other people’s feelings alongside them and have a tendency to absorb their energy, whether that energy is negative or positive. For many of us, this can mean we’re impacted strongly by other people’s depression, anxiety and other mental health issues,Read More
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
As we’re working to heal from our mental health issues, we learn more about how to control our thought patterns so that we’re not causing ourselves mental and emotional pain, sabotaging our recovery and keeping ourselves sick. One powerful way to control our thoughts is by using the practice of detaching from and observing ourRead More
For those of us struggling with mental health problems and addictions, one of our greatest challenges lies in figuring out how to manage our difficult emotions. We don’t have a healthy relationship to our feelings, and we haven’t learned healthy tools to help ourselves cope with them and navigate the many challenges they can createRead More