Treatment Archives - Page 7 of 31 - Enlightened Solutions

One Day at a Time

Written by enlightened solutions on October 24, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

Our addictions, emotional challenges and mental health issues can be so damaging and destructive that we become consumed with fear, especially fear of the future. We experience anxiety and panic about the unknown. Being unable to live with uncertainty can be paralyzing. We dread what’s to come and often think in terms of worst-case scenarios. “Will I ever recover? Will I always hurt the people I love? Will I ever get out of this?”

When our mindset is based in negativity and fear, it can feel impossible to be hopeful and optimistic. People use all kinds of sayings to help themselves get through life’s challenges, and one we commonly hear is “One day at a time.” When we are filled with anxiety, how do we implement this idea, and how can it help us?

It starts with a conscious choice to choose to take things day by day, and to bring our focus back to that concept over and over again. Every time our minds leap to fears about the future, we can repeat “one day at a time” as an affirmation to help calm and soothe ourselves. We can remember that as much as we might try to plan, life will always throw us unexpected curveballs. It is up to us to take each challenge in stride with as much grace, patience and flexibility as possible, one day at a time.

This new mentality helps us to live in the moment and appreciate the small, beautiful everyday things in life that we often take for granted. Taking the time to watch the sunset, choosing to be present and attentive with a loved one rather than rushing through a conversation, giving energy to gratitude throughout our day- all of these can help us to stay grounded and centered in the present moment. This can drastically reduce our anxiety, panic and overwhelm. It helps us to focus on individual moments of happiness, which helps us manifest more happiness and grow our sense of wellbeing.

Taking things one day at a time requires that we practice consciously choosing faith. Can we choose to have faith in the unfolding of our lives? Can we choose to trust in divine timing? Can we choose to believe that our higher power is working with us for our highest good? This can be a challenge for many of us who are accustomed to letting our fearful anxiety dictate our thoughts, choices and actions. When we relax into our faith, we allow the flow of healing to come to us. When we act out of fear, we block that healing.

Learning new coping strategies is an important part of recovery. Enlightened Solutions can help you find techniques that work for you. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

How Do We Forgive?

Written by enlightened solutions on October 23, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

Choosing to forgive people who have hurt us may seem like a monumental task that is easier said than done. We might know it’s important to forgive because we don’t want to hold onto the anger that is poisoning us and making us sick, but how do we go about forgiving? Choosing to forgive others can be especially hard when they are still hurting us, when they are no longer in our lives, or when we have a hard time connecting with them because the conflict feels insurmountable. Here are a few suggestions you can implement in your efforts to forgive.

Compassion

When we hurt others, it is usually because we are in pain ourselves. Can we choose to see the suffering inside the person who hurt us? Pain is something we all share. The people who have hurt us are no exception. Try to remind yourself that their pain is likely what caused them to act in hurtful ways in the first place. When we believe in the interconnectedness of humanity, we know that having compassion for other people’s pain goes a long way in healing the division between us.

Understanding

Along with compassion comes understanding. We can try to understand what caused people to behave in the ways they did. We can try to put ourselves in their shoes. Even if we are convinced we would never do what they did, we can remember that we all have made mistakes and hurt the people we care about. This is a universal truth, and no one is exempt from it. Instead of focusing intently on how they hurt us, we can choose to look at their pain and understand that their pain drove them to do things they might not have done otherwise.

Love

The people we are most hurt by are often the people we love the most. We’re not nearly as affected by the hurtful actions of people with whom we have no connection. While we are working to forgive, can we focus on the love we share rather than the conflict in question? Try to recall happy memories you shared. Conjure up the love you felt. Hold onto that feeling and meditate on it. Yes this person hurt you, and it might still hurt just thinking about it, but can you allow your love to be your primary focus instead?

Directing our energy towards compassion, understanding and love can transform us from the inside out, make it easier to forgive those who’ve wronged us, and bring us a sense of peace.

Forgiveness is an important part of our healing. The staff at Enlightened Solutions has years of experience helping people work through the various issues that come up in recovery. Call (833) 801-LIVE for more information on how we can support you.

How Denial Holds Us Back from Healing

Written by enlightened solutions on October 22, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction Recovery. Leave a Comment

When we deny any part of ourselves, we hold ourselves back from experiencing the fullness of our life experience. The same is true for our pain. Being in denial about our fears, traumas and pain means we cut off entire parts of ourselves. Our difficulties help inform our life paths and are part of what makes us who we are. When we deny them, we essentially deny ourselves.

We can’t experience real healing and transformation when we’re denying who we are. In order to move out of our pain, we have to be able to accept it. Accepting something allows us to surrender to it, and both acceptance and surrender are alchemical processes that can transform our pain into peace. Coming to terms with our most painful thoughts and emotions brings us a sense of peace that we cannot find if we are fighting them. Resisting our pain amplifies it, gives it strength and adds more momentum for it to continue to hurt us. Denial is a form of resistance. If we can accept our challenges as part of who we are, we can incorporate them into the light of our inner strength. If we can’t accept them and continue to deny them, they are essentially excluded from that light and never have the opportunity to heal.

Accepting our addictions and mental health issues might be one of the hardest things we’ll ever do, but it’s a crucial step in our recovery process. How can we heal ourselves when we don’t accept entire parts of who we are? The answer is, we can’t. We have to find a way to embrace self-acceptance if we want to move forward, otherwise we remain stuck. We continue our self-destructive patterns. We stay in our unhealthy relationships. We perpetuate our toxic cycles.

Denial might feel easier at first. “Ignorance is bliss.” When it comes to our thoughts and emotions, however, we come to learn that we can’t run from them forever, and trying to hide from them only tightens their grip on us. Our addictive behaviors, thought patterns and limiting beliefs are a manifestation of our fears and also feed off of our fears for as long as we allow them to. When we face our fears, we starve them of the oxygen they use to breathe (our denial), and eventually the light of our courage extinguishes them.

Choosing recovery is one of the hardest, best things you’ll ever do for yourself. The community at Enlightened Solutions is here to help. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Choosing Forgiveness for Our Own Peace of Mind

Written by enlightened solutions on October 19, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction Recovery. Leave a Comment

Addiction and mental health issues bring along with them all kinds of other challenges that are connected and related- conflicts, toxic relationships, unhealthy interpersonal dynamics. Because we experience a great deal of inner turmoil, we manifest relationships and experiences that reflect that turmoil back to us and that create even more turmoil. We have all kinds of problems with the people in our lives, and we can find ourselves feeling anger on a regular basis. We hold onto resentment and bitterness. We hold grudges. We have a very hard time letting go of the ways in which people have hurt or offended us. We obsess, fixate, and replay the difficult memories even when we know that causes us more distress. We are consumed with anger.

Forgiving something doesn’t mean we condone it, and forgiving other people doesn’t mean we excuse their behavior. It means we make the choice to be at peace with what happened, rather than continuing to carry it. We often let the painful energy of anger fester within us, sometimes because it feels better to be angry than to be sad, sometimes because anger is our go-to emotional response. We might never have learned how to resolve conflict and instinctively choose anger over reconciliation. Sometimes we hold onto anger for years rather than deal with the anxiety that can come with confrontation. We choose silence, we choose to cut people off, we choose to hate them.

How much lighter and more liberated would we feel if we chose to forgive instead? Choosing forgiveness means we take the bitterness and anger that were festering inside us and replace them with peace. This process brings space to the issues at hand, and in that space we are able to find healthy detachment and release. We’re able to finally let go. We are no longer consumed and tormented by the painful weight of our anger. The constant mental replay of the conflict starts to subside.

All that energy that once went to resentment is freed up to focus on joy and healing. Whether or not we ever reconcile the situation or resolve the conflict, we are giving ourselves love and care when we choose forgiveness. We are prioritizing our inner peace. We are choosing to be happy. As our energy shifts, we manifest more of the same- more relationships and experiences that make us happy. Making the choice to forgive is one of the best things we can do for our mental and emotional wellbeing.

We all need support during the recovery process. At Enlightened Solutions, we offer therapy, mentoring, trauma healing, recovery planning, and more. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Counting Our Blessings

Written by enlightened solutions on October 18, 2018. Posted in 12 Step Program, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

One of the major factors contributing to our mental health issues is our mindset. We often direct our energy towards thinking and feeling the things that cause us the most pain and fear. We can even become fixated on them. Examples include our tendency to dwell on the things we want but don’t have, the ways in which other people’s lives are better than ours, the situations in our lives we’re unhappy about. We engage in thought patterns that deplete us of our energy, bring us down and block our ability to think positively. We instinctively hold ourselves back and close ourselves off to happiness and healing.

Our subconscious minds are designed to keep us safe, but this sometimes translates into keeping us confined to the habitual thought patterns of lack and negativity, to keep us from expanding and pushing out of our comfort zones in search of something more. What would happen if instead of focusing on all that is wrong or difficult in our lives, we gave more energy to thinking about everything that is life-affirming, positive and beautiful?

We may have heard the advice to “count your blessings,” but we often pass this over or forget it altogether when we are struggling and caught up in our painful thoughts. Sometimes when we are depressed, we almost instinctively want to stay depressed, because it can be easier to stay in that place than to do the difficult work of tackling the mindsets that are keeping us stuck.

When we are ready to start pulling ourselves out of that place, we can implement changes that may seem small but which have hugely transformational effects. Counting our blessings is one of these tools that we can introduce to start changing our mentalities. You woke up today. That is a blessing. If your mind responds with thoughts like “well, I wish I hadn’t woken up at all, I wish I weren’t alive,” try to counter those thoughts with affirming reminders that you have the capability to heal. It takes time and practice, but it is so worth it. Did you have enough food to eat today? That is a blessing. Were you able to see the sky, the sun, trees, birds flying? Those are blessings.

We can choose to see anything in our lives as blessings, including our challenges. Depression is a blessing in that it forces us to heal our pain. Without depression, we might just ignore our pain and live an emotionless life. We could choose to see it as a catalyst for deeper healing.

Listing our blessings can ease our anxiety, help us to think more positively, and allow us to live in gratitude.

Changing our thought patterns is a powerful, effective tool for holistic healing. Call (833) 801-LIVE to get the support you need.

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.

Writing to Cope with Anxiety

Written by enlightened solutions on October 16, 2018. Posted in Alternative Therapy, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

An important part of our recovery process is learning how to handle our anxiety. Many of us with addictions and mental health issues experience anxiety on a regular basis. Our addictive behaviors are often an attempt to relieve our anxiety, and when we have go-to coping mechanisms, it is often anxiety we’re trying to cope with.

Writing is a very effective, therapeutic tool to help calm our anxiety. There is no right or wrong way to go about it. Use a journal, notebook, phone or computer to write everything that comes to mind- everything you’re worried about, all the pent-up fears you’re holding onto, all the anxious recurring thoughts you’re having a hard time letting go of.

As we write, we allow the energy to flow freely, energy that we have been storing in our minds, hearts and bodies for years. When this negative energy is stuck within us, it creates all kinds of blockages. Anxiety is one of the many symptoms of our energy blockages.

If you pay attention to how anxiety feels in your body, you might notice that the energy feels like restless tension, nervousness or panic fluttering through your body. Our normal coping mechanisms such as our drugs of choice and addictive behaviors don’t make these feelings actually go away, they just provide us with a temporary distraction from our anxiety. All the while it’s still within us, growing stronger the more we don’t face it head on. When we allow this energy to flow in healthy ways on the other hand, we loosen its grip on us, and we give ourselves a chance to let the painful symptoms recede naturally.

Writing is an actual coping mechanism in that it can actually help us to cope. We aren’t burying our anxiety, distracting ourselves from it, numbing it, or self-medicating to avoid it. We are consciously dealing with it, which allows us the opportunity to heal it.

Writing is a meditative process. It allows us to connect with our inner voice and higher power. As we write, we often feel a sense of calm come over us. When we are filled with anxiety, our minds can be filled with noise and clutter, limiting beliefs and painful thought patterns. Writing can help quiet all of that. It is in that quiet space that healing energy can come to us. When we allow ourselves to be open to that healing, it flows through us, and writing is a powerful tool to help in that process.

Enlightened Solutions can help you explore healing tools that will support you in your recovery. 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.

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