One of the beliefs we cling to when living with addiction and mental illness is the belief that we deserve to suffer, that we don’t deserve happiness and peace, that we deserve to lives of pain and struggle. We develop emotional patterns, thought patterns and behavioral patterns around these very toxic, very destructive limiting beliefs. We become self-hating and dwell on our insecurities. We obsess about our limitations and mistakes. We make choices and behave in that reflect our self-rejection and our lack of faith in ourselves. We’re self-destructive and self-sabotaging in our everyday lives, in the unconscious ways in which we operate. Why do we believe we deserve to suffer?
Our subconscious beliefs are often formed as a result of our traumatic experiences and the ways in which we’ve responded to them over the years. Rather than seeing them as spiritual tests and challenges that push us and help us grow, we see them as the reasons behind why we’re inadequate, why we’re unworthy, why we’re bad, immoral, shameful people. We come to believe that we’re not meant to experience anything other than the pain we’ve been dealing with for so long. We believe happiness is out of our reach. We believe only certain people, people who are better than we are, deserve to live happy lives. We see inner peace and joy as impossible for us to attain. We consider ourselves to be unworthy of the things we desire. We use our drugs of choice to soothe the pain of our self-hatred. We distract ourselves with addictive substances and behaviors to cope with our limiting beliefs about ourselves. It’s a scary and painful thought that we’ll never be able to be happy and make our dreams come true. Our addictions are our form of escapism from this painful thought process.
Recovering from our addictions means finally believing that we deserve our own love, forgiveness and acceptance. It means believing we deserve happiness and healing. It means seeing that we are deserving of all our desires, and that our pasts, our mistakes and our wrongdoings don’t make us any less deserving of them. They don’t define who we are or what kind of life we can have. They are the lessons we’re meant to learn from, to empower us to heal ourselves and to move forward to live the lives we dream for ourselves.
At The Guest House Ocala, our recovery programs include many experiential modalities including traditional therapy, conscious connected breathwork, equine therapy, somatic experiencing, art in healing, grief therapy, mindfulness and other forms of therapy. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.