When we’re struggling with addiction, depression and other mental health issues and co-occurring disorders, we have a tendency to lose our sense of self-worth. We minimize and even forget all of our wonderful qualities and focus instead on our mistakes, weaknesses and regrets. We don’t value ourselves, and we don’t believe we are of any value to others. We might even feel as though we don’t have a purpose in this world. We feel like we are letting ourselves and other people down and not living up to our potential. Our addictions can deplete our sense of self. We chip away at our self-esteem and self-confidence as we try to find ways to feel better about ourselves. Our addictions make us feel as though we are bad people, as though we are abnormal, not like most other people. We can feel rejected by society and by the people around us. We feel alone and lost. Our deep insecurities are often contributing factors in our developing addictions in the first place. Rather than face our lack of self-love, we seek to escape our painful feelings through our drugs of choice, our toxic relationships and our addictive, compulsive behaviors. Many of us grow up with an innate sense of inadequacy. We feel like we simply aren’t good enough. We mentally compete with people around us and compare our weaknesses to their strengths. We feel like we don’t measure up. We’re filled with self-doubt. We don’t believe in ourselves, our abilities or our capacity for creating the lives we want. For many of us these fears of inadequacy and inferiority contribute to serious depression and anxiety. We’re trying to operate on a daily basis living with a voice inside us that tells us we’re not good enough, that other people are better than us, that we’ll never be happy, that we’ll never be healed. Trying to escape these painful feelings, the nagging voice of our insecurities, and the growing depression within us is often what drives us to want to numb our pain with our addictive substances, relationships and behaviors. We feel a void within us that we’re constantly trying to fill with things outside of ourselves. Recovery from addiction is more than learning to cope without using. It’s just as important to grow our feelings of self-love, self-acceptance and self-worth, and to heal those deep-rooted insecurities that have been driving and compounding our addictions.
Recovery Ways has multiple forms of therapy to help you along the recovery process. Call 1-888-986-7848 for information on our treatment programs.
