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 us for our addictions or challenged us and urged us to get help. People we were extremely close to are now no longer present in our lives. This can be troubling and deeply sad for us. We feel alone with our pain and removed from the people who used to care about us. The deterioration of our relationships can contribute to our depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. It can be a trigger for relapse, because we’re so used to using our drugs of choice to numb our sadness, grief and loneliness. When we’re ready to do the work to repair our relationships, what does this process entail? What does the process of rebuilding relationships look like?
Active Participation
Rebuilding relationships means taking an active stance to repair them rather than passively avoiding the issues or hoping everything will just magically work itself out. Many of us have tendencies toward avoidance, emotional suppression and resistance. We’re afraid to feel our pain, so we use our addictions to avoid feeling it. The same is true with our relationships. We’re afraid to confront the relationship issues, conflicts and turmoil we’ve been avoiding for so long. We’re afraid to feel the anxiety of confrontation. We’re afraid to unearth the buried feelings of shame, grief and anger. It’s so important that we become active participants in the healing process of our relationships. We have to give time, energy and focus to our relationships. We have to be present for them. We can’t keep using our avoidance and distraction tactics, especially because for many of us, these were our drugs of choice, and now that we’re sober, we no longer have them to rely on.
Conscious Self-Awareness
Healing our relationships means being intentional with our introspection and self-exploration, so that we can become more self-aware and learn what part we played in the demise of the relationship. Many of us have emotional patterns of blaming other people, projecting our own issues onto others, and transferring our pain from one issue or person to another. We want to become clearer and more grounded within ourselves so that we can genuinely look at our contributions, both positive and negative, to the relationship. We want to face these relationship issues head on and have the courage to examine ourselves and the humility to make amends when we’re wrong.
The Guest House is a welcoming and supportive recovery home where you will be met with open arms, wherever you are on your journey, without judgment or expectation.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488