We learn in recovery how important it is to monitor our thought processes and to be mindful of when we’re thinking negatively. We learn that our thought patterns can direct our emotions and that when we think negative thoughts, we feel worse – we feel more sadness, anxiety, insecurity, worry, and self-doubt. When we’re negative thinkers, we have a harder time feeling happy and at peace within ourselves. Over time, we learn the importance of positive thinking, not only to our state of mind but to our overall recovery. There are times, however, when positive thinking can actually be detrimental to our recovery.
Euphemizing Our Pain
Sometimes the ways in which we’re trying to think positively do us more harm than good. For example, we might be so intent on feeling happy that we euphemize our pain and try to gloss over it, ignoring how we really feel so that we can convince ourselves and others that we’re doing better than we actually are. We might be minimizing our tough emotions and belittling our difficult experiences. We might be swallowing and suppressing our sadness. We might be living in denial and avoiding the truth of how we feel. We might be engaging in patterns of toxic positivity, where our intention to be positive ends up creating emotional imbalance and unwellness for us.
Resisting Our “Negative” Emotions
When we cultivate habits of positive thinking in our recovery, we don’t want to pretend that we never have any “negative” emotions. We want to embrace these challenging emotions, be open to feeling them, and be receptive to everything they have to teach us. The practice of positive thinking is meant to help us train our minds to be more positive, more optimistic and hopeful, more grateful and appreciative. It’s not meant to make us resist the emotional challenges that are there to help us learn, grow, and evolve. The emotions that we consider to be negative are actually inextricable parts of our healing journeys.
Feeding Our Addictions
Being dishonest with ourselves about how we really feel, suppressing our emotions and trying to avoid any negativity whatsoever, can actually contribute to our addictive patterns. Our emotional challenges can become so overwhelming and create so much imbalance and instability within us that we’re feeding our addictions, often without realizing it. We’re using our drug of choice to mask our pain, to help ourselves bury it, to avoid feeling it, and to try to forget it. Our positive thinking, therefore, when it’s extreme and a part of our emotional denial, can be detrimental to our recovery.
The Guest House focuses on guiding you as you discover the underlying causes of your actions and behaviors, and the outcome of this mission is to reduce and reverse any harm that your self-defeating habits have caused.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488