Forgive Yourself for Being an Addict

Don't you think it's about time you forgive yourself for being an addict?

The sooner you forgive yourself the better off you'll be. I've met many recovering addicts, like me, who can't seem to forgive themselves for being an addict, even after years in recovery. We become so use to carrying this guilt around that sometimes we don't even know how much it's really affecting our lives. It affects things like our self-worth and what we believe we deserve. Consequently, we pass up many amazing opportunities because we don't think we deserved them. In the end, it keeps us from making the most out of life.

Find Out How Dangerous Beliefs Can Hinder Your Recovery

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to achieve something if you didn't believe you could. 

Sounds crazy right. How are you suppose to keep trying every day if you don't think it will get you anywhere. How would you stay motivated in the face of adversity if you don't believe it will work out. What's the point, you're just wasting your time. Right? Well to be honest, if you don't believe in your recovery you probably are wasting your time. 

Recovery doesn't just happen by accident.


The key to success in anything starts with the belief you can succeed, anything else is pure luck. I'm not saying if you have doubts you're doomed to fail. Everyone has doubts, it's whether you decide to give in to those doubts or face them and say I CAN DO THIS. When faced with doubts we can either talk ourselves out of going after our goals or we can give ourselves a pep talk. You might not think you can do it at first, but remind yourself of what you've already accomplished.

People just like you succeed every day and so can you. Believing you can achieve recovery will motivate you to keep trying after a relapse and when things get difficult. If you've been having troubles staying in recovery, instead of thinking I can't do this try changing that with I haven't been able to YET, but I will. You can use self-fulfilling prophecies to your advantage or to your demise. It's up to you.

If you choose to believe you can do something your thinking and behavior becomes aligned with that belief. If you believe you can do something you start acting like you can. People who choose to believe are more likely to persevere when their goals get challenging. You find a way to make it happen because you're confident it can happen.

People are making recovery so much more difficult for themselves when they choose to believe they can't stay drug-free or have a happy life in recovery. They're setting themselves up for failure before they even start. After all our mistakes and bad decisions, it's not always easy to believe we can achieve a happy life in recovery. If we believe history has any indication on our future it's easy to think we'll fail, but it doesn't have to be like that.

Your journey to a happy life in recovery will be filled with what might at first glance appear as failures, but that's not really what they are. They're much-needed lessons. If you learned something from the experience it can't be a complete failure. Mistakes are often the best teachers and the lessons they teach you will not only help you achieve this goal but will help you achieve other goals throughout your life.

Choose to believe in yourself. Just because you haven't been able to do something so far doesn't mean you won't be able to eventually. Visualize your life the way you want it, like it's already happening right now. What would you be doing? What would it look like? What would it feel like? Know you'll have a happy life in recovery and you will. Not by magic, but because belief changes our perspective and actions in such a way that's conductive to achieving our goals.

Life is all about learning and most endeavors have a learning curve. Skills like happiness are cultivated over time and effort. When you believe in something you find a way to make it happen because you don't give up until you find a way. Believing you can achieve something leads to strategizing, seeking out solutions and hard work. People achieve incredible things every day because they believe they can and you can be one of them if you want to be.

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Yours truly, 
Chelsie Charmed

PS. Do you think the power of belief is important in recovery? 

      Let me know in the comments.

How You Can Use Your Relapse to Stay in Recovery

I want people to know that a relapse doesn't mean failure. Recovery time has been advertised as one of the most important thing in recovery, but it isn't. Whats important is never giving up and being happy. 

It's not uncommon to feel like giving up after losing all your recovery time, but what I've learned after all this time is each relapse was fundamental to my success in recovery. Its understandable to feel like you failed if you relapse, but if you learned anything at all, it wasnt a failure.

5 Simple Tips to Help Recovering Addicts Deal With Social Anxiety

Is Social Anxiety keeping you from the life you want?

Most people have dealt with social anxiety at some point in their lives. Public speaking is a great example. Have you ever had a presentation that made you so anxious that you could feel your heart beating out of your chest and feel your mouth get dryer by the second. I think we all have.

Being a college student I've had to do my fair share of presentations in the last couple years. The anxiety gets so bad that it gives me physical symptoms, and it takes me an enormous amount of effort not to talk a million miles an hour. I wish I could tell you the practice has taken away my anxiety, but its hasn't. It's gotten a bit easier, but mostly I've just gotten better at public speaking and dealing with my anxiety.

Are You Avoiding What You Really Want?

Are you settling for less than what you truly want?

You'll never get what you want if you don't first figure out what you want.

I don't mean the small stuff or in the moment instant gratification stuff. I mean what we want out of life, our jobs, our relationships and what we want from ourselves. Like when I finally realized I wanted a successful career and a better future I knew I would have to quit drugs.

5 Reasons Addicts Leave Treatment Early – And How to Prevent It

It is common for addiction patients to leave the rehab program without completing it. In order to live a healthy and happy lifestyle it is important that the patient is able to go through the entire treatment process and is able to continue to abstain from drug abuse after the completion of rehab process.

Reluctance

The patient could be resistant to go to rehab in the first place and may fail to achieve the desired result out of the rehab program if they lack motivation and drive to become healthy.

Solution: It is important to understand that the patient might be experiencing emotional turbulence and may feel that they would be isolated at the rehab center. The individual must be taken into confidence that all the changes are temporary and once the treatment is well on course, he will recover to a healthier life.

How to Cope With Devastating News Without Relapsing

When I fell in love with a Hep C patient I knew the risk I was taking, but somehow it still wasn't enough to prepare me for the bad news I received last week. My fiance caught Hep C from a blood transfusion for his hemophilia at 10 years old and he's been living with it for 22 years now. We knew liver cirrhosis was a possibility, but we never imagined that it would happen so soon.

5 Simple Tips on How to be Happy in Recovery

Over my 7 years in Recovery I've had many ups and downs. Like everything in our lives, nothing is good, easy or happy all of the time. That would just be weird and not real at all. In Recovery we get better at coping with the struggles and stress in our daily lives because if we don't, a relapse will surely follow. Recovery gets easier with time because we get wiser and stronger with each mistake and struggle we overcome. 

5 Great Ways Pets Can Help With Addiction Recovery

Did you know owning a pet can help with Addiction Recovery?

Around the time I decided I wanted to quit using, I saw an ad giving away free lab/huskie puppies. I usually don't read the newspaper but that day I was bored at my grandmother's house and decided to look at the newspaper when I came across the ad giving away free puppies. Right away I knew I wanted a dog, although at the time I had no idea how significant a role she would have in my recovery. They can do great things for someone in addiction recovery and it might just be that little bit of extra help that keeps them on the path to recovery.


However, I can't stress how important it is to be absolutely sure you can take care of them forever. It's very hard on a dog to get rehomed and they do not deserve to be neglected. I'd suggest adopting with someone who can take over if anything should happen. Whether it be a parent or a significant other make sure they're responsible and stable. Other great options are volunteering at a shelter, fostering for a shelter, or babysitting a friends dog. At least this way you can take care of a dog before you decide if its the right decision for you. There's also plenty of different pets to choose from.

Maggie opening her Christmas gift

 The 5 ways my dog Maggie helped with my addiction recovery:

1. My dog eased my stress and anxiety

Spending time with an animal has shown to reduce stress. This is important to recovery because stress and anxiety are some of the most common triggers that lead to using. Petting Maggie helped my body release tension which eased that feeling of pressure that stress can have. It feels similar to meditation in some ways. I became more relaxed and I was able to think more clearly. 

2. My dog taught me responsibility

Pets depend on us for their survival. If we don't feed them they won't eat. There's a strong bond that forms when we are responsible for someone's survival. Being responsible for Maggies survival brought out strength in me I didn't know we had. I had to think about someone else besides myself and budget money for her food every month.

3. My dog helped me keep a routine

Stability and some kind of routine is important in recovery. It helps create a sense of safety and helps reduce stress. If I didn't take her out to do her business she would do it in the house so I had to have some kind of routine with her as to when I took her out. I wouldn't have been able to train her not to go in the house if I didn't take her out regularly and I couldn't just leave for long periods at a time without her.

4. My dog gave me unconditional love

Animals don't judge or discriminate. They don't care that you were an addict or that you did things you're ashamed of in the past. They don't care how you look or if you're poor all they want is your attention and some food. They will always be happy to see you. Unconditional love like that helped heal things I didn't even know were broken. It helped me start loving myself again.

5. My dog gave me companionship 

Addiction can sometimes make us feel alone, like no one understands us. It was difficult to open up to people but not my dog. She was always there for me. Never too busy for a cuddle or to listen to me talked. She helped me get out of the house and go on walks. She helped me have fun and enjoy the smaller things around me. She was a great dog and I miss her so much.

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Yours truly,

Charmed

A Recovering Addicts Fear of Change

I'm re-posting this because I find the topic important. Hope you enjoy!

I watched the movie Eat Pray Love tonight and it definitely became one of my all time favorites  It made me think of how much we struggle to hold on to our present situation, it being good or bad makes no difference. All we want is to stay in the safety of the familiar even if it makes us unhappy. Its funny how all this is usually about wanting to be safe but in wanting to be safe we put ourselves in danger of being unhappy. 

How easy t is to stay in the constant rather than move on to the unknown. The fear of being alone, of the unknown or of failing can paralyses us to stay exactly where we are and we don't even realize it. As miserable as it makes us we rather stay in the familiar. Our fear of change can be of either our relationship status (which is the case for me), or of moving, changing jobs, having kids, growing up. This never ending list keeps us trapped and unable to grow and experience the wonders that could be.

Even knowing this, I'm still here, in a relationship where I'm more unhappy than happy lately. I am so very good at fooling myself into believing that everything is ok. But the truth is, it hasn't been ok in a very long time. How so very tired I am of giving my everything and being left with nothing. I don't like thinking about this because I'm a usually a happy positive person and this makes me sad. 

How very strongly I struggle to stay exactly where I am, as irrational as it may be. I'd like to make a promise to myself here and now that I'll make the change. But I've made this promise to myself so many times before and I've lost hope of a follow through on my part. I haven't been single since I was 14 years old and I just don't know how to be alone anymore. If I had friends near me I believe it would really help because I need people around me even if it's not every day. 

Making new friends just isn't the same because they don't really know me, they don't know the hard things I've been through, how big my heart is, how sensitive I am even if I don't show it. If they don't know this then I feel like I need to constantly explain myself. And I wouldn't ask of anyone who hasn't been a long time friend to be a support system if I hadn't had the chance to be there for them in the past.

I've been trying to find myself these last couple months, taking joy in the time I have alone, exploring the different things that make me happy like drawing, blogging or reading. I've been focusing on my strengths and make myself constantly remember them so that I may find courage to work on my weaknesses. I've also been trying to keep in contact with the people around me instead of ignoring everyone's calls. I've come to realize just how much friends can be a great support in times of need. 

When the fear of change finds its way to me I can find strength to go on from the people around me. Making me regret that I've pushed people away this long for fear that they just wouldn't understand me or that they would ask too much of me. I think that if I can get a good support system I'll be able to be single if that's what I have to do. All this is still a work in progress but I'm hoping I can be strong enough one day to do what needs to be done.

Charmed

Finding Your Confidence in Recovery

With the theme of my last post Insecurities-self-esteem-issues I decided to follow up with a post on how I stay confident despite any self-doubt and insecurities I have. I'm constantly trying to change my way of thinking and how I see myself, so I may find my inner worth and a greater confidence in myself. To stop hiding and become all I can be. To take risks and reap the benefits of taking those risks. Hell, we all have those moments of self-doubt, what's important is that we don't let it hold us back. It would be a shame if we were to miss out on any great experience life has to offer for fear of judgment or self-doubt.

Living life to the fullest is something most recovering addicts have come to really appreciate and strive for, especially knowing how fast life can pass us by and how much already has during our addiction. We also have this new found confidence in ourselves despite our doubts because we learned that there's no boundaries we can not achieve when we put our minds to it. Overcoming addiction, one of life's greatest battles has shown us just how much we can achieve, and we best never forget it. When self-doubt sets in I try to keep in mind just how much I've already overcome and achieved, so I may remind myself of the strength I possess.

Something as easy as starting your day with a smile can change your whole day. I've already put the word SMILE on my mirror to remind myself every morning to try to smile even if I don't feel like it. I've also thought about putting sticky notes stating positive reinforcements around my place. I learned an interesting fact about how smiling releases these happy hormones in one of my psychology class.This kind of gives credence to the statement FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT, which just amuses me to no end.

Even if you're not happy smiling may help you feel better and when you feel better well everything seems to just get better. You can get a clearer, more positive and open mindset. Which helps me open and talk to people more or even just simply ask questions in class. Another great way I boost my mood and confidence is to listen to uplifting music. We all have different taste and for me something like the song I'M BRINGING SEXY BACK is a great confidence boost and also a lot of fun.

I find music can do that for me and the words find a way to touch my soul in all aspect of my life, it being a broken heart, a confidence boost or that extra push when I'm working out. The music moves me. What matters here, is not the how you get there, but simply being there. So whether it's music or a sticky note doesn't matter, what matters is that you have found a way to tap into your greatness and have removed all self-doubt. And in doing so you may give courage to those around you to do so as well.

Charmed