After accepting the reality of chemical dependency and learning to love an addicted loved one or friend without enabling, you may find yourself asking, “Will life ever be ‘normal’ again? How can I find happiness when things seem so hard?” It’s a great question—and one that doesn’t come with easy...
You’ve probably heard about the clutter-anxiety-depression link. Put simply, an excess amount of “stuff” leads to chronic stress. It can be a vicious cycle: Disorganization fuels anxiety, which leads to depression, which lends itself to more disorganization. While you may not have associated this cycle with your recovery from...
When we’re working to rejoin society and return to our former lives, there are some specific challenges we’re often confronted with. These can threaten to derail our progress and take us off course. Our goal in recovery is to stay clean and avoid relapse, and these challenges can test...
When we are in recovery, especially after we’ve finished a treatment program, returning to our former lives can be a huge challenge for us. We’re confronted with all kinds of things that threaten our sobriety. We’re faced with addictive urges and compulsions. We have to interact with people who...
When we are ready to do the work needed for our recovery, one of the most challenging but important elements of our work is the process of self-discovery. When we have been living with addiction and mental health issues, we can feel as though we’ve forgotten who we are....
Addiction recovery is about more than abstaining from our addictive substances and behaviors. It’s also about rediscovering ourselves, recreating our lives, and finding our purpose. Exploring our gifts and strengths can help us discover the unique things we have to offer the world. Focusing on these positive things can...
Watching our loved ones struggle with the pain of addiction can be one of the hardest things we’ll ever have to do. We often try different things in the hopes that we’ll be able to make them quit. We throw out their drugs and alcohol. We punish them in...
The work we do in recovery – completing a treatment program, attending therapy, working with a sponsor – are all even more beneficial when we combine them with regular support group meetings. It is a misconception that meetings are for people to sit around whining about their problems. For...
If you’ve been struggling with addiction, chances are you’ve tried to quit and haven’t been able to. It’s a reality for many of us. As much as we want to stop, we can’t seem to make ourselves. Some of us will try to convince ourselves that our problem isn’t...
Our addictions are often fueled by our inner feelings of self-worth – how we feel about and perceive ourselves, what we feel we deserve, how much we think we’re worth. Very often we feel unworthy and undeserving, of love, happiness and success, of having the lives we want. We...
Meditation has many benefits for dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, as well as for helping us in our addiction recovery. One of the greatest misconceptions about meditation is that its primary aim is to empty the mind of all thoughts, and while this is possible,...
Anxiety can be so distressing, uncomfortable and debilitating that we want to avoid feeling it as much as possible. As we work towards healing, we learn that the more we resist an emotion, the stronger it gets. When we shun and reject our anxiety because we’re avoiding trying to...
Many of us in recovery will unfortunately experience a relapse at some point. We might come to believe it is unavoidable, but there are some steps we can take to prevent ourselves from relapsing. Sometimes we think that our work is done once we’ve completed a treatment program. We...
When struggling with addictions and mental health issues, one of our common habits that actually contributes to our difficulties is being too hard on ourselves. We criticize ourselves overly harshly. We speak and think about ourselves in disparaging ways. We beat ourselves up, mentally, emotionally and physically. We can...
When we are struggling with addictions and mental health issues, it is extremely common for us to become consumed by our negative thought patterns. We tend to think in worst case scenarios, we tend to jump to negative conclusions, and we catastrophize. We focus on the bad elements of...
Journaling is powerful and effective tool that we can use in our healing and recovery. Writing about our difficult thoughts, emotions and experiences helps us to process, organize and manage them for ourselves. The writing process serves as a sort of release. When we write, everything we have buried...
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