by Sally Rosa | May 26, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
Written By: Katie Schipper
Learning how to be grateful is a spiritual practice. It’s not something that can be forced, it comes naturally when we make a commitment and start practicing it. Gratitude isn’t something readily accessible to a addict or an alcoholic active in her addiction. There’s far too much chaos, denial, self-victimization, pity, and selfishness to leave any room for gratitude. Choosing to be grateful, to practice gratitude in spite of changing moods and circumstances, is a cornerstone of recovery.
Watch a young women emerging from addiction with gratitude
The Gratitude List
A very simple, very straightforward way to begin practicing gratitude is to make a list. Ideally, this is done daily, but it shouldn’t be avoided simply because it can’t be done everyday. The list can be long or short, but should most definitely be handwritten. Taking the time to write everything out helps get it embedded in our hearts.
A gratitude list can be as simple as coming up with five things you’re grateful for. Even if you can’t find a job, even if you just got dumped, even if you’re in a very dark place and feel alone, there’s always, ALWAYS, something to be grateful for.
Sometimes, it helps to start simple, particularly if you tend to be pessimistic. Start by being grateful for the air you breathe. Be grateful that you’re alive. Be grateful for things you might not be grateful for! Things like rehab, IOP therapy, and recovery.
The beautiful thing about gratitude lists is that once you start, you seem to magically think of even more to be grateful for! The lists can be endless. The first step, as always, is simply to begin, even if you don’t want to.
And you might not want to. Complaining is easy. It gives a short-lived buzz and all that dumping of negative energy feels “good.” What it’s really doing is perpetuating the bad. Our thoughts become our reality. For addicts and alcoholics, it’s easy to become enslaved by the mind’s power. Putting a pen to paper, despite negativity, has an immediate impact.
Gratitude as an Action Word
Writing a gratitude list is a beautiful thing and a great start to expanding your spirituality. Continue to write until you feel the results. Share your lists. Add to them. Set aside specific times to write gratitude lists. Watch as your attitude changes and as some of your negative thought patterns begin to crumble.
Once this happens, practice gratitude in your daily life. Be polite to the person who’s rude to you. Hold the door open for someone. Buy someone’s coffee. Do service. Volunteer. Like any spiritual practice, gratitude is a discipline that gives back tenfold what you put into it. The freedom of knowing what you have, of cherishing where you are, are gifts beyond measure.
Learn seven things about recovery you might not know
by Fiona Stockard | May 23, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
Written By: Katie Schipper
Why Does Choosing a Good Roommate Matter?
Early recovery can often feel like a constant onslaught of suggestions, advice, appointments, therapy, outpatient, meetings, step-work, and so on. The list of things that must be considered can seem never ending!
Why, on top of everything else, does choosing the right roommate matter? Of course, certain qualities are obvious. It’s probably not a great idea to move in with someone who’s getting high or drunk. And maybe avoid moving in with the boy you met in rehab. There’s more to choosing a roommate than just the obvious though, it deserves some attention and thought.
Learning how to live sober is a process. Finding a roommate and building a home (that isn’t a recreation of the chaos you lived in during active addiction) is more than just not using in that home. Finding the right roommate matters because finding a roommate can be one of the first steps in achieving balance. It can be one of the first steps towards living in harmony as a sober woman, outside of an inpatient treatment center, a halfway house, or even a Florida intensive outpatient program.
The following suggestions are based on the assumption that you’re leaving a halfway house after finishing a commitment.
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Things to Consider in a Roommate
Like any other individual choice, the following qualities to look for in a roommate are only suggestions.
Sometimes, the easiest thing to do is pick a friend and roll with it, regardless of who she is or where she’s at in her recovery (if she’s even in recovery). Often, the easiest thing leads to a lot of extra anxiety and stress! So, before choosing someone just because, consider a few ideas.
- If you’re moving in with someone who’s not in recovery, is this something that will interfere with your recovery?
If the answer is maybe or yes, it’s not worth the risk it poses. Also, do you know that their drinking/using is that of a normal, social user? If you can’t say yes to that question with certainty, it’s a good idea to find someone else.
Now if your potential roommate is in recovery, consider a few things, things that have been found to be largely true across the board.
- Is your roommate through her steps?
If not, consider finding someone who is. If you aren’t through your steps, consider getting through them before leaving your halfway house. Steps completed = some level of sanity has returned. This results in less likelihood of drama in your home!
- Can you find someone who has taken the time to build her recovery through treatment, IOP, and step-work?
- Find someone with whom you can be honest
Honesty usually isn’t a strong point for addicts, so building a roommate relationship based on honesty and openness is a really great foundation for future relationships.
- Find someone who is employable and employed
- Find someone who has similar values or requirements in a roommate as you
For example, if you’re cool with having overnight guests regularly, but your potential roommate isn’t, that’s going to become an issue.
Are you an alcoholic with an anxiety disorder? This article is about you!
What Makes a House a Home?
All of the above are starting points for finding a roommate. If the right roommate isn’t immediately in front of you, don’t pick a random girl! It’s not always wise to jump into a living arrangement with your best friend from IOP, or with someone you’re just getting to know. Be patient and wait until you find someone who you believe you could live with harmoniously.
Having a sober home, a harmonious home, a home instead of a house, is new to most addicts. It’s definitely something worth seeking.
by A Women in Sobriety | May 22, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
Blaming Others
Before getting help for my addiction, I spent years blaming others for everything. It was always someone else’s fault that I drank and used drugs the way I did. “If what happened to me had happened to you, you’d use drugs like I do,” was pretty much my go to response for everything.
I have heard this same phrase repeated by countless women in recovery. It seems to be a faulty slogan that many of us lived by. Of course, addiction is a disease and this wasn’t the only reason I drank and used drugs. It was a great way to justify my actions and shift the blame on others. This cycle of shifting blame allowed my disease to stay strong for years.
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The Progression of My Disease
During my years getting high, and before I ever picked up a drug or drink, my disease was progressing. I stopped speaking to “normal” people and my life became hanging out with my drug dealer. As I became less and less accountable to regular people, I also lost any notion of self-accountability. See, addiction is a selfish disease. The only thing I cared about was how and when I’d get drugs.
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Misguided Truth
Finally, I had this misguided belief that there were no consequences to ANY of my actions. Whether it was stealing something or hurting a loved one, the obsession to drink and drug trumped any potential consequences. Mostly, I barely gave consequences a passing thought. I just didn’t care.
Moving Towards Recovery
As a woman takes her first step into recovery, it’s extremely importance that she begin to understand what it actually means to be sober and accountable.
Accountability, sobriety, and honesty are all linked. Really, you can’t have one without the others. While in treatment, you learn to be accountable to your peers and therapists. You can get “honest” with your group about your feelings or a potential mistake. Practicing this kind of honesty is integral to staying sober, because, first and foremost, you must be honest with yourself about being an addict.
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Continued Accountability
If you decide to work a twelve-step program after drug treatment, you’ll learn to be accountable to your sponsor. Practicing this kind of accountability with your home group and sponsor helps in the long run. Staying sober is about being accountable to yourself and to God as you understand God. You’re making a commitment to yourself to stay sober for the rest of your life, one day at a time. With a sponsor, you’ll learn to set goals and stick to those goals.
Look, as addicts we’re used to running from responsibility. It was avoided at all costs. “I’ll pay that bill tomorrow,” “tomorrow I’ll stop drinking,” “I’ll apologize to my loved ones tomorrow.” Those are just a few examples. It’s important to remember that we can’t get sober alone. With the help of support groups, therapy, and a sponsor we can learn to treat this disease. We can learn to be accountable and productive members of society!
by Fiona Stockard | May 21, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
I recently celebrated my first anniversary in sobriety. I was in a deep state of regret coming up to my anniversary. Things were piling up. Those years in college when I’d done no work and had poor grades. That stage of my life when I should have been figuring out what I wanted to be. My family, who I’d hurt terribly. Yeah, things were starting to pile up.
How can the family of an alcoholic recover?
The Difference Between Guilt and Shame
“Do you know the difference between guilt and shame?” my therapist asked, as I struggled to explain my feelings to her. “No,” I replied. They felt like the same thing.
The psychoanalyst Helen B. Lewis reasons that “The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus”[1].
“Shame is thinking that you’re a bad person, while guilt is thinking that you did bad things,” my therapist explained. I instantly knew which one I felt. Shame. I felt shame.
I wonder why my mind had translated me doing bad things into me being a bad person. So, I spoke to some friends about it. Many of my female friends had the same experience I did.
“I think there’s a healthy and unhealthy way to deal with shame” said one of my friends.
“What’s a healthy way?” I replied.
“Amends,” she said.
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Making Proper Amends
Amends are tricky! It’s important to write your amends list and amends letters with a sponsor. She’ll be able to give you an objective opinion about what to include and what not to include in your amends letters.
Remember, if you’re not on the ninth step, don’t make amends! Don’t rush out to make amends, a lot could go wrong! However, if you’re early in sobriety, or perhaps don’t feel your amends were good enough, make a living amends. This is when you simply live in a different way, a sober way. Living amends are good ways of challenging shame.
It’s hard to right all the wrongs we’ve done to people, especially those closest to us. My amends experience is a perfect example. When I sat down with my mom, she asked me “what about all the pain?” She thought my amends would make away all the pain I’d caused her. Through my living amends to my family (staying sober and being present as a daughter), I can save her any new heartbreak.
Staying sober one day at a time is also a living amends I make to myself. It’s my way of fighting shame. Today, I can do the right thing as a sober woman of integrity.
Join in on the conversation with other sober women
[1] Lewis, Helen B. (1971), Shame and guilt in neurosis, International University Press, New York, ISBN0-8236-8307-9 & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame
by Sally Rosa | May 20, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Written By: Katie Schipper
Negative Contracts and Women In Treatment
Many of us enter recovery with a limited and almost always skewed version of reality. Honesty is a foreign concept. We’ve lived with so many lies that we can’t tell what the truth is anymore.
Negative contracts are a necessity in unhealthy relationships. In fact, they’re the foundation of any sick relationship. The drive to keep secrets, deny the truth, and protect our drinking and drugging is paramount for an addict or alcoholic. So, the concept of a negative contract is incredibly natural in any relationship involving addicts. Even after entering a women’s treatment center, falling into negative contracts can happen very easily.
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What is a Negative Contract?
A negative contract is formed any time two people agree to keep a secret that is harmful or dangerous. Unfortunately, after entering recovery this habit doesn’t just disappear!
Addiction appears in many disguises and the heart of all of them is the idea that certain things must be kept secret. That’s why forming negative contracts is so natural. It’s easy to believe that being a good friend means keeping secrets.
Oftentimes, negative contracts start out innocently. The secret could be as simple as someone breaking a rule that doesn’t seem like a big deal. Think passing a note, or flirting with a male client. What’s overlooked, however, is that it usually isn’t the secret that’s the core issue. The bigger picture is that when engaged in a negative contract, both parties are forgoing honesty, a cornerstone of recovery. It’s agreed, across the board, that without honesty, long-term recovery isn’t possible.
Whether the negative contract in question is over a small or large secret, the end result is the same – the people involved stay sick.
How fear can shape relationships in sobriety
Bonding with Others
For females in recovery, negative contracts can take on special significance. Such a contract is a secret and serves as a bond and a type of camaraderie. Negative contracts can feel deceptively like friendship. They can feel like intimacy and, to be the one who tells the secret, can feel a lot like betrayal.
Of course, the reality is that making a choice to not keep secrets is the ultimate freedom. Like many things that are revealed to a newly sober woman, secrets have to be exposed as what they are – tools of addiction.
Knowing what a negative contract is, what holding one means, and the consequences involved is vital knowledge for any woman in recovery. Acknowledging that keeping secrets is not the foundation of a healthy relationship is very empowering. Learning to be honest above all else is a necessary trait for anyone in recovery.
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