The Pain of Loss For many of us, a major part of our recovery is repairing and rebuilding the relationships that have suffered throughout our struggles with addiction. We’ve experienced our friendships, romantic partnerships and family relationships become broken, damaged and estranged. We’ve isolated ourselves and separated ourselves from people, especially if they judged usRead More
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). When we have loved ones struggling with addiction, mental illness or any other kind of crisis, we often don’t know how to be of help. We want to support them and show them we love them, but we’re afraidRead More
Sometimes our greatest emotional challenges come from how worried and saddened we are that our addictions and mental health issues are negatively impacting our loved ones. We’re afraid that we’ve become a burden to them, in terms of their time, energy and finances. We’re concerned about the emotional toll our issues have taken on them.Read More
Many of us who struggle with addiction and mental health issues also find ourselves in toxic, unhealthy relationships we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from. For years we perpetuate the same relationship patterns, finding ourselves in similar tumultuous relationships and dealing with the same recurring issues and dynamics within those relationships. We often don’t knowRead More
Our work in recovery involves having to do some of the hardest things we’ll ever have to do, challenges we never thought we could rise to because they seemed too painful and too difficult. One of these challenges is saying goodbye to loved ones who, for whatever reason, are contributing to our unhealthiness and infringingRead More
Healthy relationships are an important part of recovery. Here are some common unhealthy relationship patterns and how to spot them. The more we work to heal ourselves from the toxic patterns of our addictions and mental health issues, the more we realize that our recovery involves more than just us as individuals. We’re not operatingRead More
As the loved ones of recovering addicts, and many of us being recovering addicts ourselves, we are all too familiar with the long, exhausting process of waiting to see if our loved ones will change, if they’ll get the help they need, if they’ll finally do what’s best for themselves and for our families. ManyRead More
The relationships we build over the course of our lives have the capacity to help strengthen and support us or to weaken and destroy us. They can contribute either to our healing or to exacerbated suffering. As addicts, we often struggle with relationship-building, partly because we’re in a relationship with others also coping with addictionRead More
Over the years we’ve grown dependent on our drugs of choice to help us cope with the relationship issues in our lives. We’ve turned to addictive substances and behaviors to numb the most difficult thoughts and feelings associated with the painful relationship problems we’re experiencing. As we’re working to recover, we realize that not onlyRead More
When we’re in recovery, we often find we have to be extra mindful of things that might cause us to relapse. Certain situations, events, thoughts, feelings, and memories can be particularly troublesome, worrisome, burdensome and bothersome for us. They might be things we’re especially sensitive to, things that bring up additional stress, and things thatRead More