addiction Archives - Page 7 of 27 - Enlightened Solutions

Self-Love – Not Sold in Stores

Written by enlightened solutions on October 17, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

Our addictions and mental health challenges are often a result of a deep self-hatred and painful feelings of inadequacy, shame and unworthiness. When we are working to recover from our issues, our focus is often on abstaining from our addictive behaviors and drugs of choice, but we’re missing a hugely important element of recovery if we don’t address our damaged self-esteem and chronic self-loathing.

When we’re trying to heal, one of the first things many of us try are pharmaceutical medications. While these can help balance the chemicals in our minds and get us out of crisis mode, they don’t heal the wounds that make us hate ourselves, wounds that are often contributing factors in our addictions and mental health problems in the first place. No pill can make us address the reasons why we feel so inadequate and unworthy. We have to do that for ourselves.

Therapy, writing and having a spiritual practice are all tools that can help us along our self-love journey. They allow us to connect with our real selves, our inner strength, the dreams and goals we had for ourselves before our problems made us forget them.

Medication is one of the many things we buy when we’re struggling to recover. We also spend money and energy accumulating beauty products, clothing, shoes, gadgets, even extra homes and cars, with the hope that the rush we get from them will help assuage our recurring feelings of self-doubt and self-hate. We hide behind makeup and status symbols. We go out partying too much. We spend frivolously. We use “retail therapy” to try to feel better when we are in pain.

Nothing we buy will make us love ourselves. No material object can make us feel good about ourselves. That work has to come from us. We have to be willing to really look at ourselves and our issues, with honesty and openness. We have to become more conscious of our thought patterns and life cycles. We have to address all of the factors that made us hate ourselves in the first place.

When it comes to our issues, whether it’s old stuff or new- lingering fears from childhood trauma, or a recent breakup- all of it impacts our feelings of self-worth. We might be tempted to try to skip the difficult part of recovery, because it can be painful and scary to look at ourselves and our lives honestly, and we might find ourselves using material goods as a crutch or distraction. As we learn more about recovery and what that means for our lives, we realize our self-worth has to come from within. When we’re ready to do the work, we experience healing that is far more liberating than anything we can buy.

We’re never totally alone in our recovery. Enlightened Solutions is here to help. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Finding Our Passions – Illuminating Our Recovery

Written by enlightened solutions on October 15, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction Recovery. Leave a Comment

Sometimes when we’re struggling with addictions and mental health issues we understandably are super focused on the addictions and issues themselves- our drugs of choice, our depression and anxiety, our relapses and failed attempts to quit. What we focus our attention on, however, we tend to amplify with our energy. If we are consumed with thoughts of using, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop thinking about using. If we are obsessed with relapsing, we become more likely to relapse.

One approach we can include in our recovery is switching focus from the behaviors we don’t want to continue to new behaviors that serve us better. We are more apt to stay away from things that are unhealthy and self-destructive when we have other things to replace them.

When we have spent years of our lives embroiled in our addictive cycles and mental illnesses, we can feel totally lost and confused. We don’t know what our future holds, and that can be scary and overwhelming. We have a hard time remembering who we used to be before our difficulties took hold of our lives. How do we find new replacement behaviors that make us happy? How do we figure out what our passions are?

What makes your soul sing and your heart smile? What makes you feel like you’ve come alive, like you’re glad to be alive, like you’re excited to live? It can be hard to figure out when we’re inundated with painful, fearful thoughts and feelings, but we owe it to ourselves to try. Dig deep.

What do you love about yourself? What did you love to do before the issues took over? We all have unique gifts and talents. They don’t disappear just because we are struggling. In fact, our pain can help lead us back to our gifts because they very often are therapeutic and help us to cope. What kinds of things could you do that make you feel empowered, that make you happy, that bring light and peace to your heart?

Start reintroducing these things into your life. Allow yourself to give yourself that gift. Maybe you love being around animals or spending time in nature. Maybe you love music, art or dance. Maybe you love being of service to other people. Whatever it is, you can find a class, group, online resource or volunteer opportunity that helps you to explore it further.

The more we feed our passions and prioritize things that make us genuinely feel good, the easier it is to replace our addictive and self-destructive behaviors with these healthier things. This can be powerfully transformative for our healing and recovery.

A main focus in recovery at Enlightened Solutions is the idea of holistic healing. Call (833) 801-LIVE for more information.

Listening to Our Inner Voice

Written by enlightened solutions on October 12, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. Leave a Comment

When we are ready to stop our self-destructive cycles, we choose to prioritize our wellbeing and finally listen to the voice inside of us that has been trying to guide us in that direction all along. This means strengthening our intuition and strengthening our connection to our higher power and its power within us. Listening to our inner voice is so important for our healing.

One way to listen for it and recognize it is to feel a connection to our hearts and spirits. Our inner voice is our higher power speaking through us. We will feel instinctively when it’s speaking to us because it will feel like a higher truth, a reflection of our best self. It will carry with it love, compassion and understanding. It will feel separate and different from the fearful thoughts of the limiting beliefs stored in our subconscious minds. It will feel like a strong, resonant energy directing us in a positive, self-loving direction. Sometimes we can differentiate our intuition from our fears because the latter tend to deplete our energy while our inner voice often energizes us. It provides clarity, guidance and strength, while our fears make us feel confused, overwhelmed, sad and afraid. It is filled with the light of our higher power, and that light is within us no matter how much we might diminish it with our addictive thoughts and behaviors.

Our intuition is strengthened every time we practice listening for it. Meditation helps with this process immensely. It allows us to quiet all the conflicting, overwhelming, distracting noise of our ego minds so that we can more easily listen for the truth of our hearts and spirits. Our inner voice is associated with our third eye chakra, located between and slightly above our two eyes. Try imagining there is an actual eye located in this spot, and visualize it opening. You can also try visualizing healing light emanating from your third eye and extending to the rest of your being, as well as entering your third eye from your higher power. These visualization exercises can help us to open our third eye which is often closed due to all the emotional and psychological blockages we experience. The more we meditate and learn to quiet our minds, the stronger our inner voice becomes.

We also strengthen our intuition when we choose to follow the messages it is sending us. All too often we ignore this important guidance, but every time we choose to follow it instead, it grows stronger and clearer. With time, hearing our intuition with clarity and following it decisively becomes second nature.

There is so much holistic wisdom we can learn to help us along in our recovery. At Enlightened Solutions we have years of experience supporting people, and we want to help you. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Ignoring Our Inner Voice

Written by enlightened solutions on October 11, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. Leave a Comment

As people struggling with addictions and mental health issues, so much of what we do on a regular basis drowns out our connection to our intuition or inner voice. Oftentimes we are covering it up with our drugs of choice and addictive behaviors. Our addictive thought patterns and limiting beliefs can be so loud and disturbing that they essentially overpower our inner voice. Oftentimes it is really difficult to hear our inner voice, other times we choose to ignore it. Sometimes we’re in denial or prideful. Sometimes we’re naïve and haven’t yet learned how vital it is not to ignore our instincts. Sometimes we’re so embarrassed and ashamed of our addictions and mental health issues that we don’t want to hear what our inner voice has to say. Sometimes we’re simply afraid to face our truth.

It can be hard to recognize our inner voice amongst all the competing thoughts in our minds, most of which can be negative and self-destructive. We find ourselves totally preoccupied with criticizing ourselves and others, passing judgments and beating ourselves up. Our minds have a tendency to be dominated by thoughts of our worst fears. We develop limiting beliefs that reinforce these fears and convince us that they are true.

When we are caught in cycles of addiction, depression, anxiety and/or abuse, our intuition will sometimes feel like a persistent, nagging voice constantly reminding us of the harsh realities of what we’re going through, and imploring us to do what is best for ourselves. We might hear it telling us to get help, to leave that person who is abusing us, to prioritize our safety, to quit using. We tend to ignore it because it contradicts what we think we want in that moment- the drug or relationship or compulsion that we have become dependent upon.

Over time that voice gets louder and more forcefully persistent. The more we ignore it, the more depressed we become. We know we’re avoiding the truth, and we often feel a growing sense of fear and dread anticipating the moment when the truth finally catches up with us. We might feel frustrated with ourselves for being in this situation. We often feel a combination of all kinds of difficult emotions, including but not limited to sadness, shame, overwhelm and confusion, all of which can make us to want to ignore our inner voice even more because we’re not yet willing to face the painful truth.

If you’re living with addictions and mental health issues, it can be hard to know where to turn for support. Enlightened Solutions has years of experience helping people recover. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Growing in Self-Love

Written by enlightened solutions on October 10, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. Leave a Comment

Those of us struggling with addictions and mental health issues often have in common a belief that we are inadequate, shameful and unworthy. Oftentimes we are filled with self-hatred that compounds, perpetuates and exacerbates our difficulties. We hear about self-love and maybe we know we ought to love ourselves, but how do we go about finding self-love?

We are not just our addictions, our drugs of choice, our behaviors and thoughts. We are not just our mistakes and wrongdoings. Underneath all of that, and including all that, we are beautiful manifestations of our higher power in human form. Before and after we became addicts and/or mentally ill, we were unique, special, strong and powerful. We have unique gifts and talents to share with the world, whether or not we are conscious yet of what they are. One way to grow in self-love is to focus our energy on finding that beautiful soul within us. Our souls are the essence of who we are. Our fears and pain don’t destroy our souls, in fact they can be a source of strength and empowerment if we allow them to be.

How can we strengthen and empower ourselves? With self-love. Every day, as often as possible, tell yourself things like “I love you. I believe in you. You are strong. You are resilient. You are healing.” Look in the mirror and repeat these words. This can be hard to do. When we hate ourselves, sometimes we can’t stand to even look at our own reflection. Give these exercises as much of your energy as you can. Try to infuse your energy with hope, faith and optimism. Start to work to shed the limiting beliefs you have about yourself. Use positive, self-loving affirmations to reprogram your subconscious mind.

See your addictions and mental health issues as one part of yourself, not the entirety of your identity. Love yourself for all of it, the good, the bad, and everything in between. Love yourself for not giving up. Love yourself for still trying. Love yourself for seeking help. Love yourself for getting out of bed today. Love and forgive yourself for your shortcomings, mistakes and wrongs. All of it makes up the wholeness of who you are, and you deserve love because of it, not despite it. You survived to tell the stories, and every day is a chance to learn, do better and move forward.

See yourself the way your higher power sees you, a flawed human being who is perfectly imperfect but perfect nonetheless. Finding ways to love ourselves unconditionally, and to love all the parts of ourselves, is crucial to our healing and recovery.

We’re here to help you along your healing journey. Call Enlightened Solutions at (833) 801-LIVE.

Finding the Courage to be Honest with Ourselves

Written by enlightened solutions on October 8, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. Leave a Comment

When it comes to our addictions and mental health issues, many of the problems we experience are due to the fact that we are afraid to face the truth. We are in denial about how severe our problems are. We may not have come to terms yet with the challenges we are facing. Recovery from our deep-rooted issues means finding the courage to be honest with ourselves.

When we are struggling internally, we sometimes tend to focus outwardly because our pain can be too much to bear. We blame our issues on other people in our lives, our traumatic childhoods, or past experiences. We distract ourselves from our inner turmoil with our drugs of choice, addictive behaviors and thought patterns, and relationships. We transfer our hurt onto other situations and people in our lives. Healing requires that we be able to look inward and focus on healing our inner world. This can be terrifying. We’re up against fears and traumas that have been causing us pain for much of our lives. How do we muster the courage?

We can start by changing the limiting belief we have that our pain is unbearable. It might feel unbearable, but we are strong enough to get through it. We have to believe in our strength to overcome our challenges and in our power to heal. We are capable of transcending anything and everything that limits us. Oftentimes what holds us back most are our own thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. Let’s start affirming that we are stronger than our pain. To create new beliefs for ourselves that are self-affirming and self-empowering, we can repeat affirmations such as “I am strong. I am brave. I have the power to heal myself.”

We can also begin to question the beliefs we’ve carried about ourselves that we are weak and unable to cope. Just because we’ve struggled with addictions and mental health issues does not mean we are not strong. It means we have been given unique, difficult challenges that are ours to overcome when we find our strength. The default thought patterns of our thinking minds are often so negative, self-critical and self-hating that we have come to believe what they tell us. We can choose to focus our attention on the messages from our hearts and spirits instead. Our higher power, and its power manifested within us, knows we possess the strength and courage to heal ourselves.

Give yourself the gift of support during your recovery. Let Enlightened Solutions be part of your support team. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Ways to Help Our Loved Ones Who Are Struggling

Written by enlightened solutions on October 3, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Family Recovery. Leave a Comment

Seeing our loved ones suffering with addictions and mental health issues can be difficult and painful. One of the hardest parts is not knowing how to help them. Here are a few suggestions.

Listen

Sometimes what people need most is simply to feel heard. They don’t necessarily need advice, just a listening ear. It can be therapeutic to get things off our chest. Keeping things bottled up inside of us can contribute to our depression and anxiety. Providing the safe space for your loved ones to process their emotions is a real gift. Allowing our emotions to flow and expressing ourselves is important for our mental health.

Check on Them

Call, text, email, stop by. However you can get them to respond to you so you know they’re ok, do it. They might not be able to express their appreciation if they’re in a very depressed place, but know that you are helping them by checking on them. You might be helping them through a panic attack. You might be giving them much needed relief from their anxiety or diverting them from their suicidal thoughts. Just knowing someone cares means a lot to us when we are struggling.

Understand

Release judgment. We might not be able to understand why our friend can’t get out of bed, or go to work, or why they’ve given up on their passions- but we can try. We may not have experienced addiction in the ways our friend does, but we can try to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what kind of sadness and fear they might be feeling. Have compassion and empathy. Be patient with their struggles.

Commit to Boundaries

Addiction and mental health issues can contribute to our having codependent and/or toxic relationships. Sometimes when a loved one is actively using or struggling emotionally, there can be extra conflict and turmoil. You may feel disrespected, controlled or manipulated. You might feel hurt or uncomfortable. Create boundaries for yourself and commit to them. Don’t allow yourself to sacrifice your own peace of mind.

Learn About Enabling

Think about whether anything you’re doing might be enabling your friend’s addictive or toxic behaviors. Are you making excuses for their behavior? Are you allowing yourself to be manipulated in any way? Are they taking advantage of your kindness and help, being dishonest, or using you? When we allow our loved ones to involve us in these patterns, we are enabling them, even when that is not our intention.

At Enlightened Solutions we offer intervention services and recovery planning. Call (833) 801-LIVE for more information.

Inner Demons

Written by enlightened solutions on October 2, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. Leave a Comment

We often hear the expression “inner demons,” but what do we mean by that? Our inner demons are the thoughts and beliefs we have that we find most troubling, that are often recurring or obsessive, and that can cause us a lot of distress. They are our complexes, or thought addictions, that are essentially a manifestation of our subconscious fears.

Those of us with addictions and mental health challenges can find ourselves feeling tormented by our inner demons. Sometimes we feel haunted or tortured by them, and they can be relentless. They tell us lies and feed off of the illusions of the ego mind. They tell us that we are inadequate or inferior to other people, that we don’t deserve love, that we are destined to fail. We believe their lies, and as a result, they can do a number on our self-esteem and sense of self.

For some of us, our inner demons are not just thought addictions but also compulsions, and we suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Some of us may experience our inner demons as other difficult anxiety disorders, such as Social Anxiety, and we may have a very hard time interacting with other people. We may have an inadequacy or inferiority complex, where we are constantly consumed with fear that we’re not good enough or that others are superior to us. We may struggle with certain phobias.

Like many of our emotional issues, our inner demons come from the stored emotional memory of our subconscious minds. Years of repetition make these troubling thoughts our default thought patterns, and sometimes our inner demons drown out any other lines of thinking. We might find it especially difficult to think positively, or to focus elsewhere. Our inner demons can be all-consuming.

One way we can reprogram our subconscious minds to drown out the inner demons is to write and repeat affirmations that teach our minds a new truth. “My subconscious mind is on my side. It wants what is best for me. It is my friend and ally. I believe in myself. I love myself.” Over time, our minds absorb this new perspective of cooperating with us rather than attacking us. You might find that with practice, your inner voice becomes less critical of you and more supportive and encouraging instead. The goal is to feel liberated, and mentally and emotionally free, no longer haunted by your inner demons.

Part of recovery is learning to work with the complexities of our minds. Enlightened Solutions offers therapy, mentoring, recovery planning and more, with a focus on holistic healing. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Our Subconscious Blocks to Healing and Recovery

Written by enlightened solutions on October 1, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction Recovery. Leave a Comment

Many of us who experience addiction and mental health issues have beliefs stored in our subconscious minds that are blocking us from healing. We have often been fueling and deepening these beliefs for many years. It takes a change in our consciousness to undo the subconscious programming holding us back from recovery and inner peace.

Here are some of the limiting beliefs we tend to perpetuate with the ways in which we think and speak about our challenges.

“Once an addict, always an addict.”

Many of us are in recovery and are living proof that it is possible to create a new life for yourself. This is not to say that recovery is easy, or that once in recovery you’ll never relapse, but when we believe recovery is impossible, we cut ourselves off from having the faith in ourselves we need in order to get better.

“I can do it alone. I don’t need help.”

Sometimes we are afraid to ask for support because we’re ashamed of ourselves. Sometimes we’re prideful and embarrassed and don’t want anyone to know how bad our issues have become. Sometimes we naïvely think we don’t need the support of other people. We come to learn that there is no shame in asking for help, and that getting support can mean the difference between drowning in our problems and saving ourselves.

“I don’t deserve to live. I want to die.”

Our addictions and depression are often accompanied by suicidal thoughts, Over time our thoughts form our beliefs, and many of us have come to believe that we are inadequate and unworthy of love, that our shame and regrets mean we don’t deserve to live. We don’t feel we deserve help. Sometimes we are in so much pain we see suicide as the only way to escape it.

It can help to remember that our thoughts are not the entirety of our consciousness. Our thinking minds are just one part of who we are. We also have our hearts, bodies, souls and spirits, all of which store valuable healing information for us if we are open to receiving it. When we believe in our inner power, we start to see through the illusions of our limiting beliefs. We start to transcend the human challenges we thought we would always struggle with.

Healing requires tackling the limiting beliefs we’ve allowed to hold us back. The community at Enlightened Solutions is here to help. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Any Behavior Can Become an Addiction

Written by enlightened solutions on September 28, 2018. Posted in Addiction, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Culturally we tend to associate addiction with dependencies on drugs and alcohol, and we often disregard and belittle other lesser known addictions as just people’s “issues.” Because there is still a lot of stigma surrounding addiction, people struggling with these other “issues” are sometimes afraid to consider their problems addictions for fear of being judged. This can cause them to avoid seeking the help they need. The stigmas we perpetuate cause more division in our societies and alienate people that need support.

Love/sex addicts are suspected of using addiction as an excuse for promiscuous behavior. Gaming and gambling addicts are stereotyped as being lazy and irresponsible. Food addicts are judged for being overweight and looked at with scorn, “why don’t they just stop eating so much?”

These judgments are missing an element of understanding about the deeper nature of addiction. Addiction consists of a person’s behavioral patterns that become addictive or compulsive in nature, that are used as coping mechanisms to deal with pain. These can include any behavior that a person might engage in, that then becomes compulsive for them. This can include behaviors that other people might consider harmless because they themselves are not addicted to them, but that can take over addicts’ lives and cause considerable suffering.

When we have become dependent upon these addictive behaviors, we feel powerless to stop, even when we have hurt ourselves and other people, even when we are experiencing severe breakdowns in our mental and physical health. Just like we can develop bio-chemical dependencies on drugs and alcohol, we can become dependent on the dopamine released during pleasurable activities. This becomes our escape from our pain- a way to forget, numb ourselves and self-medicate. As addicts familiar with the cycles of addiction, we know these things exacerbate rather than heal our pain.

As a culture, we could broaden our conceptualization of addiction to reflect an understanding that people can develop addictive relationships with just about any behavior. It doesn’t serve us to shun addicts, regardless of their drug of choice or addictive behavior.

Sometimes those who are quick to judge addicts and addiction also have their own behaviors, issues in their own lives, that are harmful or destructive. The more we can be inclusive as a culture, the more we can help people recover. We are stronger together when we can connect with understanding, compassion and empathy.

At Enlightened Solutions, we have years of firsthand experience with addiction and recovery. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Tag: addiction