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 happen because once we’ve been successful with our sobriety, we can become complacent, thinking that we no longer have to keep up with the hard work of recovery. We tell ourselves that if we’ve managed to get sober before, we can always get sober again if we fall off the wagon. We stop checking in with our sponsors and recovery coaches. We stop going to therapy. We stop taking advantage of the aftercare services provided by our treatment programs. We’ve stopped holding ourselves accountable, to our loved ones, to the people we’ve made our accountability partners, and most importantly to ourselves.
Remembering Our Lives Pre-Sobriety
We can continue to hold ourselves accountable long-term by reminding ourselves of not only how far we’ve progressed and the profound changes we’ve made, but also of how debilitating our addictions once were. Sometimes we stop thinking about just how painful our addictive patterns were, how ashamed we felt of ourselves, how far we fell when we hit rock bottom. We don’t want to beat ourselves up with this information, and we don’t want to dwell on it, but we do want to remind ourselves of it. Our intention shouldn’t be to be unkind to ourselves or to create more fear within ourselves that we’ll return to that place, but instead to keep active in our consciousness the fact that our addictions were incredibly painful and that we don’t ever want to get back to the state we once were in. It can be much easier to hold ourselves accountable to our sobriety when we choose to remember what our lives before sobriety were actually like.
Connecting To a Higher Purpose
Holding ourselves accountable to our sobriety is also easier when we connect a sense of purpose to our recovery. Many of us are getting sober for reasons that are even bigger than our own individual lives and sobriety. We feel a commitment to our loved ones. We feel a calling from our higher power to fulfill a special purpose. We feel driven to accomplish certain goals. We feel destined to create meaning in our lives and to change the world in our own special way. Remembering this purposefulness can help us stay accountable in our recovery over time.
Are you ready to take the first step on your journey to recovery? Call The Guest House today! 855-823-5463