Making Difficult Emotions Even Harder to Cope With Many of our emotional challenges are made more difficult by our unhealthy coping mechanisms. We can be very self-hating when it comes to how we handle our thoughts and feelings. We beat ourselves up for feeling sad or anxious. Instead of practicing forgiveness and compassion, we judgeRead More
Choosing Conscious Reprogramming A major component of our recovery is shifting how we think and speak about ourselves. When we are self-hating, we’re much more likely to want to escape our emotions using addictive substances and behaviors. We turn to our drugs of choice for solace from all of our self-inflicted pain. We become dependentRead More
The Self-Hate at the Root of Our Problems When we develop certain addictive patterns, it is because we are trying to escape parts of ourselves. Our self-rejection can manifest in all kinds of destructive ways, including our addictions, but frequently going much further. Consider the ways we self-sabotage in our daily lives, how we holdRead More
Some of the most important recovery work involves figuring out the reasons for the intense emotional challenges we’re facing. A lot of times, we’re suffering without knowing why. We feel a great deal of fear, but we’re often unaware that it’s fear we’re experiencing. Fear can masquerade as anger, defensive, and a host of otherRead More
We Aren’t Thinking Straight Our addictions are detrimental and destructive forces in our lives for so many different reasons. One of the biggest reasons is the loss of self-control we experience when we’re under the influence of our drugs of choice. Substances cloud our judgment, alter our perception, and destroy our common sense. We feelRead More
A common driving force behind addiction is a feeling of desperation to escape grief. When we’ve had a meaningful, impactful loss, we can be filled with deep sadness as we continue to mourn that loss. Our grief can stay with us for a long time. People can easily lose years of their life to unprocessedRead More
Compartmentalizing is an emotional pattern often found in people struggling with addiction. We separate the emotions we find hardest to handle, such as grief or fear, and we distance ourselves from them. We categorize the emotions we don’t want to feel and divide them off. The unwanted emotions are shoved into mental compartments where weRead More
Our Inner Conflict Sometimes our addictions are fueled by the difficulties we’re having with our thoughts. Addicted people battle with recurring thought patterns and the bothersome ways in which we think. When we’re struggling with unresolved issues in our lives, our default thought patterns exacerbate them and contribute to our ongoing problems. For example, weRead More
As we’re embarking upon the journey of recovery, we can find ourselves consumed by intense anxiety that blocks our recovery and hinders our progress. We feel anxious about all the unknowns and uncertainties of the future. An uncertain future forces us to dwell on the mistakes and regrets of our pasts. We’re anxious about whetherRead More
For those of us struggling with addiction, figuring out who we are can feel like an impossible challenge. We feel like there’s no way we can love or be comfortable with ourselves when we’re dealing with the pain of addiction. Addiction teaches us that we’ll never be happy, confident, or secure with ourselves. Instead, weRead More