Many of us working to recover from addiction have not only personal healing work to do but also work to heal our relationships. Our mental and emotional health, including our struggles with addiction, are greatly impacted by the health of our relationships. When our relationships are fractured and estranged, they can play a major role in the decline of our overall health. We use our addictions as a means of escape from thinking about our relationships. Our drugs of choice can provide the companionship and comfort we’re not getting from our relationships. We use them to make ourselves feel better when our relationships are stressful and difficult to deal with. How are our relationships related to our recovery?
When Relationships Impede Our Recovery
The strain and tension we feel in our relationships, all of the difficult interpersonal dynamics we experience, the relationship conflicts we’re dealing with, can all contribute to our struggles with addiction, and as we’re working to recover, they can make our work that much harder to do. We can have a hard time focusing on our recovery when we have so many stressful things going on in our relationships. We can have a hard time staying sober when we feel we’re constantly being triggered or hurt by loved ones. We might even have relationships with other addicts not yet in recovery who try to pressure us to use with them. There are countless ways in which our relationships can impede our recovery, and we’re often not aware when they’re happening.
Creating Healthy Boundaries
An important part of our healing process entails figuring out what our needs are when it comes to our relationships, and examining whether or not our relationships are respecting those needs. What do we need from our friends, family and other loved ones in order to feel safe, respected and cared for? How are our relationships detracting from our health and impeding our needs? We want to ask ourselves these questions to help ourselves establish healthy boundaries as we’re working to recover. There are some relationships we might need to distance ourselves from in order to create space to focus on ourselves and our well-being. There are some relationships we may need to end altogether if we don’t feel they respect us enough to support our recovery. We may want to consider family therapy, couples counseling and other healing methods to help heal our relationships as we’re healing from our addictions. We’ll want to remember that everyone in our lives is affected by our addictions, since we’re all interconnected, and we all need our own form of recovery as we’re working to heal from them.
Are you ready to take the first step on your journey to recovery?
Call The Guest House today! 855-483-7800.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488