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The Harm in Suppressing Our Emotions

Many of us have been conditioned to believe that expressing our emotions is a sign of weakness, and that we are lesser or weak if we are honest and forthcoming about how we feel. We’re taught to suppress our emotions. We’re conditioned to keep everything locked up and buried deep within ourselves. The problem with suppressing our emotions, however, is that their energy continues to hurt us when we haven’t faced them head on. Unresolved pain festers inside us, causing us all kinds of mental, emotional and physical health problems.

Suppressed emotions can cause our mental health to decline. We can experience worsened memory and cognitive thinking skills. We can have a hard time processing our thoughts. We can struggle to think clearly and logically. Our painful feelings can totally cloud our judgment. We might think we’ve buried them deep enough to forget about them, and we may forget about them temporarily, but they always return to remind us of the issues we need to address. Our feelings are like clues to the healing work we need to do. When we pay attention to the information they’re giving us, we can make important progress in our healing.

Emotionally, suppression is quite toxic for us. Our emotions grow stronger, fiercer and more ferocious when we don’t accept them and make space for them. Until we embrace them with acceptance and mindfulness, they will try to alert us and get our attention by causing us distress and pain. Our emotions accumulate and worsen the longer we try to deny or avoid them. Suppressing our feelings can lead to exacerbated depression, anxiety, panic attacks and other mental health issues. Since so many of us have been taught to suppress our emotions, we’re trying to cope with life while these feelings are wreaking havoc on our balance and peace. We feel increasingly stressed, worried, angry and destabilized. Our emotions provide us with important information to help us grow our awareness. When we don’t pay attention, we limit our capacity for development and stunt our growth. We derail our healing progress.

Suppressing our emotions can have harmful physical effects as well. We tend to think of our thoughts and feelings as being confined to our minds, separate from our physical bodies, but in reality, our systems are completely interconnected. Everything we think and feel affects us physically, and vice versa. Our minds, hearts and bodies are inextricably linked. Trapped emotions and stuck energy can cause us physical pain and discomfort. Physical health issues such as chronic pain, fibromyalgia and poor alignment, for example, are often attributed to our unhealed trauma.

A huge part of healing is learning to allow ourselves to feel, express and communicate our emotions in healthy ways.

At Enlightened Recovery, we are here to help you remember that life can be full of happiness and enjoyable moments, once we learn how to manage our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Identifying Our Self-Destructiveness

For those of us living with addictions and mental health issues, one of the common underlying issues many of us share is that of self-destructiveness. We can become so focused on our day-to-day issues that we fail to see that it is our penchant for self-destruction that is at the heart of our difficulties. It can drive everything from our addictive behaviors to our unhealthy relationships, and everything in between. At the root of our tendency to self-destruct is a self-hatred we’ve developed after years of rejecting and judging ourselves. We’ve lost our ability to feel compassion for ourselves. We no longer have self-love or self-acceptance. Our self-worth has plummeted.

When we are self-destructive, we stop taking care of ourselves. We stop showing concern for our safety, our health and our well-being. We associate with people that hurt us. We stay in relationships that are abusive. We engage in dangerous behaviors. We put ourselves at risk. We self-harm. Sometimes we feel we have nothing to lose. We’ve lost hope and feel we have nothing to live for. We feel a deep sense of inadequacy, that nothing we do is ever good enough and that we’ll never live up to our standards of perfection or measure up to other people. We don’t feel worthy or deserving of love.

Our self-destructiveness is reflected not only in our external actions but also in our internal dialogue. We speak and think about ourselves in self-hating and self-disparaging ways. Notice how the voice in your head sounds and the words it uses. Chances are it is critical and judgmental, belittling and unkind. Many of us would never speak about other people the way we speak about ourselves. It’s impossible to love ourselves when we are inundated with such overwhelming feelings of self-rejection.

For many of us, our self-destructiveness comes from unresolved shame we’ve been carrying for much of our lives. We blame ourselves for the traumatic experiences we endured. We feel we are at fault even when we’ve been wronged. We’re always searching for evidence that we’re inadequate, and we cling to anything that makes us feel bad about ourselves as proof of our unworthiness. We refuse to forgive ourselves for our mistakes. Subconsciously we seem to think we ought to be perfect, and we deny ourselves the understanding and compassion necessary for forgiveness.

Healing our self-destructiveness means developing our capacity for self-forgiveness, our ability to accept all of who we are, and the power of unconditional love. Until we heal from our instincts towards self-destruction, we’ll never be able to fully recover.

The staff at Enlightened Recovery has over four decades of combined personal and professional experience with addiction recovery. Let us support you. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Choosing Faith in Moments of Crisis

When we’ve been struggling with addiction, many of us have become all too familiar with experiencing serious crises in our lives. The ways in which we manage to handle our stress during a crisis and respond to the issues at hand can help determine whether we will make it through the crisis successfully or create more turmoil for ourselves. We experience conflicts in our relationships, spikes in our feelings of inner turmoil, and difficult situations with our health, stress levels and finances. We can feel particularly worried and even panicked when we see these issues as debilitating crises rather than as challenges to overcome.

Our default emotional response to difficulty is often one of fear. We react to our feelings of overwhelm and stress in ways that compound our fear rather than soothe it. To work with our crisis management, we can practice having faith, staying calm and being grounded.

To help calm ourselves down, we can practice deep breathing exercises. One exercise that is particularly beneficial for anxiety is 1:2 breathing where we make our exhale twice as long as our inhale. Try repeating affirmations such as, “This too shall pass. I believe in my ability to get through this. I have faith in myself. I can stay calm. I am at peace.” We can stop our anxiety from overwhelming us to the point where we feel as though we’re losing control over our thoughts and emotions. We can choose emotional responses that calm us down rather than creating extra stress for ourselves.

When we are operating out of fear, we make it harder for ourselves to think clearly and act rationally. We have harder time processing our thoughts and feelings. We can overreact, panic and become pessimistic and even paranoid. When we’re in this place, we don’t have the clarity we need in order to allow things to work out naturally for us. We’re pushing things forcefully, and this form of resistance just makes things harder for us. We’re manifesting with an energy of fear and negativity, which brings us more circumstances reflecting these things. We create more fear-inducing and negative situations to have to contend with.

The challenge for us in these moments is to focus on faith rather than fear, on hope rather than negativity. Practice visualizing the best possible outcome. Learn how to look for the silver lining in even the most challenging situations. Uncover the blessings and the lessons available to us in every moment of crisis.

We believe in treatments that connect mind, body and spirit. At Enlightened Recovery, you will benefit from the healing modalities we’ve seen be wonderfully effective in helping countless people recover. Call (833) 801-LIVE today for more information.

Learning to be Conscious of Our Stress Levels

Many of us living with addiction have managed to bury our deepest emotions for so long that we aren’t aware of how much stress we’re actually living with on a daily basis. We prioritize everything over our mental health – our responsibilities and obligations, our daily schedules, our relationships and the people we take care of. When we experience toxic levels of stress on a regular basis, our overall health can slowly decline. Our mental, emotional and physical health can all suffer. Our addictions become our default coping mechanism. When we’re working towards recovery, it’s so important to learn how to be conscious of our stress levels so that we can manage them and find healthy ways to cope.

There are some signs that can help us to pinpoint when our stress has reached toxic levels. We can experience excessive anxiety, worry and panic that distract us from being able to focus and interfere with our ability to cope with daily life. When stress accumulates to dangerous levels, we can feel increasingly depressed and despondent. We feel unable to keep up with the demands of our responsibilities. We feel easily overwhelmed and triggered.

When we’re experiencing acute stress, we might have more severe mood swings than we’re normally used to. We might find that our emotions fluctuate dramatically. We might be more reactive with other people and take things personally more often. We might feel like people are out to get us, or like we’re being victimized. We might feel powerless to stand up for ourselves, and we may feel uncomfortable in our environment.

Heightened stress can affect our thought patterns. We can feel our minds race and feel as though our thoughts are out of our control. We might obsess more about the things that are bothering us. We might have a harder time controlling our emotions and feel like we can’t calm ourselves down whenever we’re upset.

Healing our stress levels requires investigating the underlying issues causing our stress. We have to look beyond the daily stressors and surface problems to examine the deeper factors increasing our stress levels. Sometimes our stress can be attributed to unhealed trauma, unresolved conflict or unhealed internal issues. We might need to do some conflict resolution and deeper inner healing before we see a reduction in our stress. It’s so important that we learn to practice self-care and mindfulness to help ourselves heal from stress. Meditating, committing to a spiritual practice and having a regular exercise routine are all especially helpful in managing stress.

At Enlightened Recovery, our unique treatment programs offer clients long-lasting results by focusing on all aspects of a natural recovery process. We believe in healing holistically – mind, body and spirit. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

The Spiritual Side of Addiction

Examining addiction, we’re used to looking at the mental, emotional and physical factors of addiction, the correlations between addiction and our mental health, our emotional wellbeing and the physical effects. What many of us fail to realize is that addiction is just as much a spiritual illness as anything else. Looking at the spiritual side of addiction can give us more insight on how to heal from addiction.

Addiction, like other mental and emotional health issues, can arise from the spiritual disconnection we feel from our higher power and our inner selves. When we feel disconnected, we can feel alone and isolated, lost and hopeless. We can feel empty and deeply lonely. We turn to our addictions to fill the void we feel within ourselves. Our addictions are our attempt to escape the deep pain we feel at not being spiritually connected and fulfilled. We’re avoiding confronting the spiritual emptiness we feel, that can make life feel pointless, hopeless and sad. It can really hurt to feel unfulfilled, to feel uncertain of our purpose in life, and to feel as though we’re not living up to our potential. When we don’t feel connected to our true selves and our greater purpose in life, we can be self-destructive and direct our energy in unhealthy ways. We can feel too afraid to do the work we need to do to explore ourselves and learn about ourselves on a deep level. We can grow to hate ourselves.

When we look at our addiction as a spiritual manifestation, we can address the spiritual causes – the trauma we’ve experienced, the losses we’ve sustained, the pain we have yet to heal from. Our spirit is at the core of our being, so everything we experience has a spiritual effect. To heal from our addiction, we can focus on our spiritual healing. How can we heal ourselves at this core level?

Since our disconnection is such a major factor in our unhappiness, we can remedy it by seeking connection – connection to our higher power, to our inner selves and to kindred spirits. We can try praying to our higher power, to our source of creation, to the greater power within our life force. We can explore different religions and spiritualities to find one that resonates with us, that brings us feelings of peace, comfort and security. To help us connect with ourselves, we can use meditation, journaling, and creative expression. To connect with kindred spirits, people who understand us on a soul level, we can seek out opportunities to create community and fellowship, through support groups, recreational activities, attending classes and volunteering.

Healing from addiction is as much about healing spiritually as it is achieving sobriety. The two are interconnected. When we are working on our spiritual health, we are more likely to be able to heal emotionally and to create lifestyle changes that will serve us in our recovery.

At Enlightened Recovery, we believe in treatment that connects the mind, body, and spirit. We employ holistic therapies, community building and reflection to support our recovery. Call us today: Call (833) 801-LIVE.

12 Ways to Safeguard Sobriety During the Holidays

If you’re in recovery from addiction, you might be approaching the holidays with apprehension instead of excitement. Although this time of year is normally full of joy and celebration, all the hustle and bustle can come with a host of possible triggers for cravings and relapse. But we’re here to reassure you that you can have a happy holiday season, even while managing your mental health and addiction — all it takes is a little planning, the right mindset and the willingness to put your wellness first. As we enter the holiday season, here are our top twelve tips for staying substance-free into the new year and beyond.

1. Make a strategy

Make a point to sit down — perhaps with your journal, your sponsor, your counselor or a loved one — and spend some dedicated time thinking about the upcoming weeks. Unpack the feelings that you’re having: what, specifically, are you worried, sad or anxious about? Make a list of everything that’s on your mind. Then, you can go through this list and come up with some ideas of how to address each of your holiday stressors as they arise. Having a plan can help you feel prepared and in control, instead of letting your worries compound on one another without a solution in place.

2. Take time to attend support group meetings

Regular meeting attendance is proven to help maintain long-term sobriety. If you already attend a support group in your area, you shouldn’t break that routine in favor of holiday events. If you don’t regularly go to meetings, you may want to consider starting. The extra support around this time of year could be very beneficial. Remember, too, that support group meetings exist nationwide — even if you are traveling for the holidays, you should be able to find a 12 Step or similar group wherever you are staying. 

3. Don’t overextend

Feeling exhausted or stressed can lower your mental strength and make you more vulnerable to cravings and relapse. The holidays are always an unusually busy time of year, and it’s easy to fill your calendar to the brim. Our natural human tendency to say “yes” to please others can quickly lead to an overwhelming amount of social engagements — but in recovery, it’s more important to put your own mental health first. Make sure you’re aware of how full your schedule is getting, and don’t be afraid to turn down invitations or rearrange commitments if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

4. Say no to overindulgence

Keeping yourself physically healthy is a key piece of long-term recovery. Feeling good about your health and your body goes a long way toward maintaining your motivation to stay in good shape — which includes avoiding drinking and drugs. But the holidays are notorious for interfering with even the most dedicated nutrition plans. There are sweets and treats everywhere, and they can be difficult to resist. Sticking firmly to healthy choices is a great way to stay on track with your recovery as a whole, and to keep yourself feeling healthy and confident throughout the season.

5. Bring your own beverages

Alcoholic drinks can seem to be everywhere around the holidays. Not only are many customary holiday beverages frequently mixed with alcohol, but celebrations often include alcohol to begin with. You can, however, participate in these traditions without the alcohol. All of these drinks come in non-alcoholic forms or can be replaced with healthier choices — eggnog and cider are delicious without being spiked, and sparkling cider or seltzer water make great celebratory replacements for champagne. Consider bringing your own beverages with you to parties where you think there will be an expectation to partake.

6. Focus on others

The holidays can be difficult for other people, too, and it’s easy to find opportunities to give your time to help others at this time of year. From volunteering at a soup kitchen to helping wrap donated toys at community gift drives, charitable activities are a rewarding and sober way to spend your time while celebrating the true spirit of the season. Putting others first can help take your mind off of your own worries, and change your perspective to a more positive outlook. 

7. Don’t assume others are judging you

When you enter a group situation feeling worried about how others will perceive you, you set a negative tone right from the start. You will act more defensively and be less likely to enjoy yourself, and you will only end up stressing yourself out or feeling angry. It’s important to remember that, around the holidays, most of the people you’ll see are your loved ones. These people care deeply about you and your well-being, and they will be excited to see you looking healthy and happy.

8. Practice stressful conversations ahead of time

With all the people you’ll be interacting with over the next month, it’s likely that at some point, someone will bring up a topic that you’re not comfortable discussing. This person may not realize what they are doing, and their questions could be coming from a well-meaning place, but it might still make you feel panicked or defensive. If you know there are some conversations that you don’t want to have, think of responses ahead of time so you aren’t caught unprepared. A topic change or a short, final response will usually be more than enough. You can also always simply excuse yourself from the conversation if you are uncomfortable. 

9. Use mindfulness to evaluate your state of mind

Mindfulness is a tool taught by many modern recovery programs because it encourages healthy thought patterns and self-awareness. It’s particularly useful as you enter potentially stressful situations because you can teach yourself to react calmly instead of letting your impulses take over. Whenever you start to feel as though your emotions are becoming overwhelming, take a mental step back and examine why you feel that way. Thinking logically about your reactions can be helpful in making sure you don’t make decisions you’ll regret later.

10. Identify and avoid big holiday triggers

Sometimes in recovery, it’s better to avoid your fears rather than face them head-on. While it’s important to address them and work through them eventually, in times of heightened stress — like the holidays — we can only handle so many things at once. If you know there are situations that aren’t good for you and you’ve already got a full plate, it’s okay to stay away from certain people or places.

11. Use the buddy system

Enlisting the help of a trusted friend or family member can be a great idea to ensure you have built-in support at all of the events you’ll be attending. We are not suggesting a caretaker who hovers to make sure you don’t make poor decisions, but rather someone who is there to help distract you from other pressures or to help you get away from stressful situations. If you need to leave a conversation — or a party altogether — this person can be there to ease the tension and make sure you aren’t alone.

12. Be proud of your progress, not ashamed of your past

Most of all, you should feel able to enter the holiday season with your head held high. You have worked very hard to get to where you are, and simply having the ability to be with your loved ones over the holidays may be a huge step forward for you in your journey with addiction and recovery. No matter what anyone says or how they make you feel, you are stronger than your addiction.

If you or someone close to you is worried about getting through the holidays in recovery, you may want to consider professional assistance. Enlightened Recovery offers flexible outpatient programming and relapse prevention support in the New Jersey area that can help with the stresses that the holiday season might bring. We want you to feel able to fully enjoy the holidays without fear of relapse, and we are here to help. Call us at 833-801-LIVE to learn more.

Creating Space for Healing

When working towards recovery, one of the challenges we can find ourselves confronted with is feeling totally overwhelmed by the turmoil and chaos in our lives. Sometimes this tumult is internal, coming from deeply rooted fears, unhealed trauma and unresolved issues. Sometimes our conflict is interpersonal, and we struggle with toxicity in our relationships and endless cycles of unhealthy relationships. For many of us, the turmoil is both internal and external, with both playing off of each other and exacerbating one another. One way we can remedy this conflict is to create space within ourselves and our lives. When we create space, we distance ourselves from the healthy patterns we’ve become embroiled in and make room for healthier patterns to take root.

Creating space can be challenging because it asks us to shed things we’ve become accustomed to, things we’re familiar and comfortable with. Take a look at what is causing the overwhelm in your life. Is it a toxic thought pattern causing you to obsess about unnecessary things and bringing you down? Is it a relationship that leaves you feeling drained and depleted of your energy? Is it someone in your life who is toxic for you, who encroaches upon your space and doesn’t allow you the solitude you need to heal? Taking inventory of all the things taking up your mental and emotional space is an important first step in creating more room for yourself.

We can create space for ourselves in different ways. We can remove the relationships that are harmful to our well-being. We can work to heal the thought patterns occupying our minds. We can give ourselves plenty of time for solitude. Mindfulness practices help us to access the space within us that offers us peace, tranquility and stillness. Meditate and learn to reach for that silence. Journal to help you process the thoughts and emotions that are cluttering your mind and overwhelming your heart. Practice visualizing yourself liberated from the constraints and limitations that were robbing you of your internal space and freedom.

When we’ve learned how to access our inner stillness, silence and spaciousness, we create room for new and healthier things to develop. We can practice habits that lead to better health. We can take better care of our minds, hearts and bodies. We can form relationships that bolster our well-being rather than detract from it. We can start develop new patterns that reflect self-love and healing rather than conflict and turmoil.

Holistic healing is an important part of recovery here at Enlightened Recovery. We work with you to heal mind, body and spirit. Call (833) 801-LIVE for more information on our effective and transformative treatment programs.

Benefiting from Support Groups

Many of us struggling with addiction have formed the very destructive and limiting belief that we need to recover alone. We isolate ourselves thinking that no one else can relate to us or understand our pain. We often have given up hope altogether and don’t believe we can be helped. When we isolate ourselves, we remove ourselves from the communities and resources that can in fact support us in our recovery. One of the best resources available to us are the many support groups with regular meetings we can attend and benefit from.

Support groups are comprised of other people living with similar addictions and experiencing similar struggles. When we join a support group, we can immediately feel less alone and less isolated. We can look around us and see just how prevalent addiction is. We see firsthand how it runs the entire spectrum of religion, ethnicity, background and socio-economic status. When we feel less isolated, we’re more likely to come out of our shell and share our story. This powerful experience helps us to conquer our fears of expressing ourselves. Our addictions no longer have our silence, avoidance and denial to feed on. We’ve allowed our pain to come into the light of our awareness. We start to develop courage and resilience. We learn that we are stronger than our addictions.

Being in community with other people is like holding up a mirror to ourselves and our lives. The people with whom we are in fellowship help us to measure our progress, track our efforts and take inventory of where we can improve. We learn so much not just from sharing our own experiences but from hearing the stories of the people around us. We absorb all their wisdom. We benefit from their learning experiences almost as if they were our own. We share of ourselves and learn things about ourselves we might never have been aware of had we not joined this community. We can become more mindful of the behaviors and thought patterns that contributed to our addictions. We benefit from the cumulative awareness and collective consciousness of a group of people all striving towards the same goal of sobriety.

Support groups can give us the encouragement and motivation we need. They can be our source of strength when we feel down, weak and defeated. In addition, we can benefit from a renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment when we feel we are of service to other people.

Enlightened Recovery is here to provide you the community, love and support we all need for a successful recovery. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Investigating our Triggers

For those of us living with addiction, something we often have in common is that we are easily triggered by certain things. Our triggers are the things, events or people that cause us anxiety and distress. We normally feel inclined to want to avoid our triggers at all costs. Our instinct is to not want to have to feel the weight of the bothersome trigger. We try to escape the sadness and fear that accompany them. Part of our recovery is learning how to manage the things that bother us so that we can be at peace no matter what comes our way. Our avoidance has a way of making issues grow stronger until they are totally overpowering us. To work through our triggers, it’s so important that we take the time to investigate them so that we can move through them instead of avoiding them, so that we can reclaim our power and maintain our inner peace.

To investigate our triggers, let’s take a closer look at them. What is it exactly that caused the spike in anxiety and sadness for you? Was it something someone said or did? Are you triggered by specific people, events or statements? Rather than running from your trigger, turn towards it. Face it, and lean into it. As you expose yourself to your trigger, you become more desensitized to it. The more you face your triggering issue head on, the less power it threatens to wield over you.

Let’s start to examine what our triggers represent. We might not be consciously aware of the reasons we’re so triggered, and the more we avoid our issue in question, the less awareness we’re able to develop around it. Let’s dig deep and look at what underlying issues are triggering us and causing us to feel so distressed. For example, someone mentioning death might be particularly triggering for you if you’ve experienced a tragic loss.

Once we know what is fueling our triggers, we can take the necessary steps to do the important healing work we need to do. We can start therapy, attend support group meetings and work with a sponsor. The first step is mustering the courage to face our triggers head on and reminding ourselves that even though they hurt, they don’t have to overpower us if we don’t allow them to.

Addiction has layers of complexities that we aren’t always familiar with. At Enlightened Recovery, we have years of experience helping people heal in profound, life-changing ways. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Healing Our Toxic Energy

When we are working towards recovery, abstaining from our addictive drugs and behaviors is only half the battle. We also must heal our energy that has been adversely affected by our struggle with addiction. Our energy is made up of our thoughts, emotions, fears, habits and behaviors. Our energy can dictate our moods, patterns and cycles. Having unhealed energy can mean we’re manifesting more struggle rather than the healing we’re hoping for. Healing our toxic energy is a crucial step in our recovery process.

We often are unaware of our energy and whether or not it is healthy. Our energy is often something we don’t have a conscious understanding of. Energy operates on unconscious and subconscious levels, and the first step in healing it is becoming conscious of it. We can start by paying more attention to our feelings and our moods. How do you feel when you first wake up? If you’re filled with anxiety upon waking, for example, your energy is one of fear. How do your emotions and moods fluctuate throughout the day, how do they operate, and how do they cause you to act? Are you filled with anger and resentment? Are you worried, stressed, pessimistic or negative?

Take note of how you’re treating the people around you. How would you describe your relationships? Are you easily frustrated and impatient with other people? Do you find yourself treating people with unkindness and disrespect, and then feeling ashamed afterwards? Are you often involved in some kind of conflict, tension or interpersonal disharmony? Do you trust people or do you keep them at a distance? How do you resolve conflict? Are you able to listen and communicate in healthy ways?

Take inventory of your self-talk. Do you speak to and about yourself in disparaging or uplifting ways? Are the words you choose full of negativity and self-hatred? Are you constantly beating yourself up, criticizing yourself, judging yourself and knocking yourself down? All of these are signs you have unhealed, toxic energy within you dictating the ways in which you feel about yourself.

Once we’ve grown our conscious awareness about the energy we’re carrying within ourselves, we have a better understanding with which to heal it. Energy practices we can use to heal ourselves include meditation, prayer, reiki, tapping and energy clearing. We can work with a spiritual guide or therapist to address our unhealed energy. The more we actively work to create positive energy within ourselves, the stronger our foundation is for healing and recovery.

The community at Enlightened Recovery is here to provide you with the support, encouragement, love and care that come from our own personal experience with recovery. Call (833) 801-LIVE today to start your journey towards healing.