Addiction Recovery: How To Re-Establish a Healthy Relationship With Yourself 

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Addiction Recovery: How To Re-Establish a Healthy Relationship With Yourself  

When you’re battling with addiction, it becomes incredibly easy for you to be too hard on yourself. You come to realize the mistakes you’ve made and how they’ve hurt those around you. But there’s a difference between holding yourself accountable and beating yourself up for no reason. Instead of continuing down this dark path, here’s how you can learn to forgive yourself and rebuild that healthy relationship with your self-esteem again.  

Why Self-Compassion Is Important  

Whether it’s detox for yourself or detox for loved ones, it’s important that you exercise sympathy. Having self-compassion can bring you a place of self-understanding. You’ll come to understand a full picture of what you’ve done and how you can remedy the situation. Accept that you have an addiction so that you know what needs to be done. Without that goal in mind, then you’re only exercising analysis paralysis of your actions.  

What Self-Compassion Is Not  

Self-compassion is looking at your actions with a healthy attitude so that you can take the right approach to getting better. Self-compassion is not: 

• Excusing your actions because bad things have happened to you 
• Burying your head in the sand and acting like everything will be fine in the end 
• Telling yourself that you’ve had a hard time so you deserve the reward of a drink/drugs

Alternatively, self-compassion would involve telling yourself that you’ve had a hard time but drinking/taking drugs are not going to make the situation any better. Self-compassion does not involve playing the role of the victim.  

Learning From Your Mistakes  

It’s important that you recognize the consequences of your actions, for yourself as well as those who are closest to you. Addiction can often lead people to do things that they’re going to regret later. By exercising self-compassion, however, you can learn to navigate this emotional space in a healthy and helpful way that you will be the best for. By understanding the reasons behind your actions, you’re less likely to engage in them in the future. 

Build Boundaries For Yourself  

By exercising self-compassion, you start to comprehend what you’re capable of handling. Understanding what may trigger your cravings and what factors come into play will help you to realize that it’s not your fault. No one wants to develop an addiction, much less to let it control their lives. So knowing what those boundaries are will help you to stick within those means and provide support to yourself when it starts to feel like you’re going to cave in.  

Self-compassion is vastly important for those who are dealing with their addictions and in recovery. The hardest part is learning how it works and putting it into practice. Therapy can definitely help you to learn the right ways and start learning to forgive yourself. If you’re dealing with addiction and start to feel as if it’s becoming too difficult for you to break the bad habit, speak to a health professional or therapist to see how you can start on the road to recovery.