It’s natural to feel fear around our recovery, especially when we’ve had an especially difficult time getting sober. It’s common for us to wonder if we’ll be able to succeed and to have self-doubt along the way. Like any other difficult emotion, self-doubt can hold us back if we allow it to overpower us. We can be paralyzed by the doubt we feel about ourselves, our ability to recover, our chances for success, and our deservingness of happiness. When we doubt ourselves so much that it becomes a fear of inadequacy and unworthiness, when we allow our doubt to dictate our choices and influence our path, it can absolutely hinder our growth and keep us from recovering.
Self-doubt can arise from a number of different sources
We might have been conditioned growing up to second guess ourselves and to question ourselves, rather than having faith in ourselves. We might have been emotionally belittled and told we weren’t good enough. Any form of abuse, neglect or mistreatment, or any kind of trauma for that matter, can cause us to doubt ourselves moving forward. We don’t feel good enough. We don’t feel whole or complete. We begin to question whether or not we even deserve to be happy in life. When it comes to our recovery, we doubt whether or not we have what it takes to succeed. We become deeply insecure and self-rejecting, and we can start to obsessively question everything about ourselves, even the things we once were sure of and held dear about ourselves. When we’re in this place of feeling as though we don’t know who we are or where we’re headed, many of us wind up finding solace in our drugs of choice. They can quiet the voices of our self-hating self-talk. They allow us to zone out and forget our self-doubt for awhile. They numb us to how painful it can be not to believe in ourselves.
Success in recovery, and in life, becomes possible when we believe it to be when we give energy and belief to our intentions and can follow through on them with conviction and self-assuredness. We’re bound to feel all kinds of fear as we’re working to recover, and self-doubt might be one of the more debilitating forms of fear we experience. Let’s work to believe in ourselves, by working with a therapist, trying energy healing, and practicing new ways of thinking and speaking about ourselves in order to love ourselves unconditionally and be our own greatest source of support.
At The Guest House Ocala, we are uniquely equipped to help our guests heal from trauma-induced substance abuse, process addiction, anxiety and depression in a safe, comfortable and confidential setting. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information on our treatment programs.