As we’re working to heal from addiction and mental illness, one thing we want to make sure we’re confronting is how self-critical we are. Many of us live with an inner critic that is constantly putting us down and making us feel as though we’re inadequate and unworthy. Our natural responses to our inner criticRead More
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, can have numerous mental, emotional and physical effects that can exacerbate our struggles with addiction. When suffering from PTSD, we often will relive our traumatic experiences, replaying them in our minds over and over again, having nightmares, visions or flashbacks, or feeling a constant sense of fear even thoughRead More
One of the emotional habits we fall into when struggling with addiction and mental illness is a tendency to give up responsibility for our feelings. We blame other people for how we feel. We blame our addictions, our depression, our anxiety and any other issue we might be dealing with for how we feel. WeRead More
The importance of accepting our complex inner worlds and listening to our emotions, even the painful ones. In recovery, we can often fall into the pitfall of over-emphasizing positive thinking. This overemphasis can cause us to judge our emotions and label them as either good or bad, positive or negative, correct or incorrect. We’re doingRead More
For those of us struggling with mental health issues like anxiety and depression, we tend to have a difficult and pained relationship with our thinking. Our thought patterns cause us considerable mental and emotional anguish. We obsess, we panic, and we give more weight to things than we should. One of the biggest problems inRead More
Nature-Deficit Disorder is the term used to describe certain mental, emotional and behavioral issues we can develop from not having enough access to nature. When we’re deprived of our connection to the natural world around us, we can experience heightened anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. We can develop behavioral problems that are especiallyRead More
When we have unresolved emotions that we don’t address, oftentimes they can manifest as negativity – negative thinking, negative self-talk, negativity towards others. When our negativity presents itself as negative self-talk, we not only feel bad about ourselves, we also tend to feel pessimistic about our recovery and about life in general. Our outlook becomesRead More
It’s natural to feel fear around our recovery, especially when we’ve had an especially difficult time getting sober. It’s common for us to wonder if we’ll be able to succeed and to have self-doubt along the way. Like any other difficult emotion, self-doubt can hold us back if we allow it to overpower us. WeRead More
One of the things we learn about addiction and mental health is that there are emotional patterns we experience and are exposed to that can contribute to the pain that eventually develops into our illnesses. One of these emotional patterns is that of neglect. Many of us were not given the love, care, guidance andRead More
There are countless different ways in which we use our addictions to try and help ourselves cope. Sometimes what we’re most seeking when we turn to our alcohol and/or other drugs of choice is a feeling of numbness, a sense of nothingness, an emptiness as a way of coping because our mental and emotional painRead More