Throughout our struggles with addiction and mental illness, we often find ourselves tackling unresolved issues in our pasts and feeling the lingering pain of old hurts. We feel haunted by the past and consumed by it. We try desperately to ignore the nagging reminders of our wounds. We try to avoid feeling our pain. We suppress memories and sometimes block them out altogether. We use addictive substances, behaviors and relationships to avoid having to confront the unhealed problems of the past. The high we feel is much more appealing and feels much better than doing the hard work of facing the truth of ourselves and everything we haven’t yet come to terms with. Unearthing the past feels so daunting and so painful that we would much rather leave it alone, in the past. We convince ourselves that dredging up old pain will only derail our healing progress and make us go backwards. We tell ourselves that we should let it go and move on. Eventually we get to the point where we realize that our forward momentum relies on our ability to make peace with our pasts. Our ability to create the future we want for ourselves, and our power to manifest it into reality, depends on whether we’re still conflicted by our past pain or able to be at peace with it.
Perhaps the most important step in this healing process is to stop being afraid of the past. We’re holding onto painful memories of trauma that we don’t want to revisit, but our avoidance and denial are only making them grow worse and allowing them to overpower and paralyze us. It’s time to muster our courage to face everything we’ve been resistant to confronting. Working with a therapist, recovery coach or spiritual guide can help us to feel supported as we do this important inner work. Confront your shadow self, the side of you that you usually banish and try to hide. Let it come into the light instead. Give it your conscious awareness and your energy. When we start to face ourselves and our pasts little by little, we start to see that we’ve been letting our fears overtake us. We learn that we’re in fact stronger than our fears and our pain, and that there’s nothing we can’t heal from.
The Guest House is a welcoming and supportive recovery home where you will be met with open arms, wherever where you are on your journey, without judgment or expectation. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.