In between cleaning up your consequences, working your program, showing up for your job, taking care of your family, managing a place to live, paying your bills, and self-care, the list goes on to make you wonder how you will ever find the time to heal. Recovery is meant as a gateway to improve, rehabilitate, recover, and restore, which is how you can start to move on and stop staying stuck in your pain.
Recovery Comes First
All of the responsibilities you have are undoubtedly important, but keep in mind that whatever you put in front of your recovery, you are at risk of losing. By placing your recovery first, you will have a better chance of managing everything all together, including an allowance for healing. When you strive to stay in the solution of your recovery, you are doing things that you may not even realize will initiate the healing process.
Therapy, along with a 12-Step program, can get the ball rolling with healing through talking, inventories, and meditation. Recovery can keep you in line to do what is necessary to help you become a stronger person.
Walk the Walk
Your thoughts follow your actions. If you are doing the things that can improve your self-worth by walking the walk, you will find that your thoughts will become ones that can heal you. Rather than letting your shame and guilt recirculate and tell you that you are unworthy, you can start thinking with more positivity.
To change your negative thought patterns, you should hang out with encouraging recovery friends, journal, or start talking to yourself confidently so that your thoughts will follow suit.
Let Go of the Past
Resentments cause you to keep reliving the unpleasant memories of where you came from. You deserve a break from thinking about what you used to be like and focus on who you are now. Your past will always serve as a measure of where you could go if you went back to drinking and using, but you do not want to stay stuck in the past.
You want to live for today, and the only way you can move forward in healing is to accept what you did as a learning experience. Letting go of the past means that you are ready to move away from the anxiety as a way to be free.
Clean Your Side of the Street
If you genuinely want to heal, you will have to make reparations for your part by revealing your misgivings. This may be a painful ordeal for you, but the results will be significant. The intention is not to harm anyone, only to admit what you have done to relieve the humiliation and the remorse that is holding you back from fully healing.
Making amends, upholding any legal obligations, or repairing relationships are ways you can keep yourself accountable instead of blaming others. You will feel accomplished and worthy if you clean up your side of the street without expecting anything in return.
Break Down the Barriers
For healing to take place, you have to break down all the barriers holding you back. Your emotions, feelings, and any reservations can be a concern when you are trying to find a means to heal. You will probably have no idea how to take down the walls that have been guarding you.
Look towards the guidance of a therapist, a sponsor, or a spiritual advisor to help you along. Healing is a serious business that takes intentional guidance. Without your efforts in place, you will go back to staying stagnant in your pain and suffering. You need to move forward with vigor so that you have a better chance of staying sober.
Feel your Feelings
One of the reasons you drank and used was to suppress all your emotions before you had to feel them. The uncomfortable feelings of shame, unworthiness, insecurity, and personal defeat is brutal to have to face. You should know that the key to your recovery is being honest, open-minded, and willing to do whatever it takes to heal.
This means feeling your feelings when you do not want to and doing it anyways. There is so much information as to why you drank and used if you will do diligence in your recovery and identify the feelings and emotions that are yucky. Instead of feeling dilapidated, you can become happy, joyous, and free.
Healing is a must with any ailment, which can also include a spiritual malady such as addiction. If you broke your leg, you would surely go to the doctor and get a cast to give your leg the best treatment to heal. The same goes for your recovery. You have to heal from everything that your addiction puts you through, and it will not happen overnight, just like treating a broken leg. Recovery will give you the ability to work through all your issues and then some to have the tools to combat your addiction.
Although the healing process can be difficult to endure at times, trust the process. Patience will become a necessity to see how everything will fall into place. For you to be receptive to love yourself in healing, you must be grateful for the past experiences that have led you to right here, right now.
Valiant Living wants to give you the tools to heal from your drug and alcohol addiction. Offering a full range of recovery and mental health services, we offer “Expanded Recovery” to enrich our clients’ lives in mind, body, and spirit. With the power of recovery, clients are restored to full health and experience life-changing healing. Call us today for more information: (303) 536-5463
