Category: Alumni

Being grateful is a daily reprieve that can act as ideal medicine when pulling anyone out of a negative head space.  Sometimes getting caught in the vicious lies that the mind can hold is all too easy.

How to Focus On Being Grateful

To combat feelings of self pity and anguish, try to concentrate on the areas of your life that you are thankful for.  This should diminish a significant amount of negativity from your mind and instead transfer thoughts of hopefulness over.  You may find being grateful difficult during times where it is easier to count all the areas wrong in life but this won’t change anything.  When you add positivity into your life, you open your eyes to areas of life that you couldn’t see before. 

Stop Thinking of Where You “Should” Be

When you start thinking of statements that tell you where you “should” be, you start belittling yourself.  You start to focus on self-knowledge and take control.  Thinking that you “should” be at a certain place in your life other than where you currently are can prove to have negative consequences.  You can shift your focus to being grateful just by redirecting and changing your thinking around.  The problem with staying stuck in where you think you “should” be is simply that you are not there and living in a fantasy world isn’t going to bring you there magically.  All these “should” comments set up an expectation for yourself that you don’t need to be putting pressure on yourself for.  Commonly, these statements stem from the comparison of others.  Seeing that someone else is at a certain point in their life may make you wonder why you haven’t reached that milestone and then you may find yourself believing that you “should” be there already.  This is why it has been said time and time again that comparison is the greatest thief of joy.  Most of the time what you see isn’t the whole truth anyway.  The saying “the grass is greener on the other side” goes to say that things aren’t always as they seem.  People love to make their lives seem a certain way and others perceive it to look astonishing, but the ones who truly enjoy it are typically the ones doing just that – enjoying it usually unseen.  In the end, the grass is green where you water it.  Putting in the effort, taking the time, and doing the hard work to reach the point of success is what will prove to allow you to accomplish your goals.  Being grateful can help get you to this point because it will provide you with the ability to see that where you currently is good enough.  All that you have is wonderful and you can appreciate your life for all that it is worth.

Seeing that life is not about having the most or being the greatest can bring true humility.  With this, an individual can be in better touch with what is really important in life.  This is where being grateful comes into play as well because the meaningful relationships seem to matter the most and simple moments most cherishing in turn.

Looking for more on gratitude? Click here: How To Be Grateful Resources 

“Just trust the process.” As an addict and/or alcoholic, how many times have you heard this from another fellow recovering individual? It can be frustrating to hear, but it’s true. The depth of the disease of addiction pulls at the addict and/or alcoholic, causing them to over-think and analyze just about anything, even something as simple as a rock! Particularly in the beginning of your recovery, it is imperative that you cling to the logistics behind recovery by remaining honest, open-minded, and willing to subject yourself to this simple program.

Trust the Process: The Process of Change Occurs

When there is trust, not just in the process of recovery but also geared toward an external power greater than one’s self up to your discretion whatever that may be, there is strength of spirituality within the recovering individual that helps them rise above their dampened shortcomings. It is only by being negligent and failing to rise to the opportunities laid before you to help another individual during your journey that your strides would weaken. So to prevent this unwanted result, trust the process by taking it step by step, being open to suggestions, and being there for other recovering individuals in the program.

But what happens amidst distress, discomfort, anxiety, fears, or resentment?

Understand that no matter what stage you are in during your recovery process, you do not become immune to growth, which is actually a positive attribute because you should want to continue to develop and not be satisfied with a stagnant recovery. There is no ceiling to spiritual growth. You can always learn more about yourself, in addition to defining yourself more as each day goes by. However slow or rapid the process of change occurs for you, try to see that the no matter what phase you are at, you still need to be spot-checking yourself by being open and honest of your fears, feelings, and difficulties throughout the day. Seeing the role that you played and how you can repair the damage that you have caused is a vital portion of your recovery otherwise you put yourself at risk of picking up that next drink and/or drug. To trust the process means that the recovering individual must be willing to make certain changes that another alcoholic and/or addict who was once just as sick was willing to make in order to recover and did as a result of doing so.

Don’t Compare

The process of change can occur at different times for everyone. This is important to remember because alcoholics and addicts are known for quickly comparing and this creates chaos in recovery. Everyone recovers at their own pace and because of this; people may see changes at different times. Some may notice gifts of recovery sooner or later than others. Don’t fret if you are still struggling and you haven’t had this instantaneous amount of relief from the obsession of alcohol and/or drugs just yet. Try to remember that you did not become addicted in one day and that this is a process, not an event. It takes work, but don’t ever give up. Implementing changes requires an immense amount of continual effort and the process of change is sometimes difficult to see in the eye of the beholder, but the truth is that you’ve probably made an incredible amount of progress from the very first day you began your journey.

If you’re struggling with the ability to trust the process because you can’t put that drink and/or drug down just yet, contact The Watershed for help today. You don’t have to be stuck living in the insanity of the disease of addiction. There is hope to be lifted from the obsession of active addiction. Recovery is possible.

The weight that stress and depression has the potential to put on you at times can be overwhelming.  Though there are ways to manage the symptoms, sometimes it feels like there is no other option other than to accept what you’re feeling and suffer from it.  No one should have to feel like this though.  Stress and depression can negatively affect your life.  With new research being contemplated on a regular basis at a higher rate than ever before, treatments are being revealed to provide relief.  These treatments might be something you do regularly and just aren’t quite yet aware they are benefiting you!  The idea that dreams can alleviate stress and depression has been proposed recently, as studies report people feeling less distressed not just from sleep itself but from the actual dream, having remembered it.

Stress and Depression Relief

When it comes to stress and depression, dreams may not typically be your first guess for alleviation.  Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, has went as far to describe the benefits of dreams as stating, “It’s almost like having an internal therapist, because you associate [through dreams] to previous similar feelings, and you work through the emotion related to it so that it is reduced by morning.”  With this concept, dreams share a person’s subconscious thoughts and allow them an opportunity to figure out ways to deal with pressing issues they tackle in their waking life.  In this sense, dreams can be compared to the new method of upcoming and noticeably beneficial virtual reality therapy.  This is because dreams, like the virtual reality therapy, provides a similar but alternative state to reality where the sufferer can face their feelings in a setting that lets them misbehave if they must and “live” an almost rough draft or rehearsal of a situation without the actual consequences that would occur in reality of their waking life.

Rosalind Cartwright’s View on Dreams

With studies dating back to 2003, acclaimed researcher Cartwright had proved her hypothesis that a person’s dreams could indeed result in a better mindset for them upon awakening.  She viewed 31 participants that were suffering from major depression.  The people that had started their dreaming before others also had their dreams occur for a greater amount of time.  In addition to lengthier dreams, these people could remember what happened during their dreams and carried an overall content mindset as opposed to the other dreamers who were claimed to have “felt even worse in the morning.”  This lead to a well backed-up conclusion of the study that showed how dreams can not only affect a person’s mood, but more specifically can relieve feelings of stress and depression.  Cartwright took her inception of dreams and their benefits further in time, as demonstrated in her publishing “Concerns “article is specifically were she states her stance on dreaming being a probable factor for regulation of mood.  She goes into further detail on her study’s findings that show how the participants with longer length dreams also proved that their dreams were denser.  With this, their dreams involved them being accompanied by a greater number of people and being in several different settings.  Cartwright extrapolated as to why by stating, “This heightened dream complexity was characteristic… they seemed to be putting things together in new ways, ‘changing their minds’ during sleep.”  This is where she inferred that these participants’ dreams acted similar to how a therapy session would work because underlying emotions are being addressed through situations.  She did go on to add that, “Those who failed to remit without treatment had short rather stark dreams or no recall at all. These are the depressed that require some treatment intervention, antidepressant medication, psychotherapy, or a therapy directed to dream change.”  This is important to take to heart because, although dreams may alleviate stress and depression, some mental states have a severity that needs professional attention. 

Dreams are shown to ease the depressed and anxiety ridden minds of plagued individuals.  Though the state of the subconscious mind when dreaming is still being studied and not entirely understood, it is a widely intrigued topic and expected to provide beneficial information pertaining to possible health benefits after more scientific studies are conducted.  Nevertheless, an adequate amount of sleep guarantees proper replenishment of the body and restoration of the mind to prepare for the next day, which can be an important factor when it comes to maintaining relief from daily stress and anxiety.

Understanding 12 Stepwork: 4th Step Inventory Spreadsheet

It’s safe to assume nobody wants to be dredging up the past, but recovering from addiction requires you as an alcoholic and/or addict to take a serious look at your past when embarking on your journey in sobriety. When working on the 4th step inventory in particular, it can be overbearing when you are overridden with memories you haven’t recalled for some time. Mentally revisiting these occasions can be enervating, so it’s crucial to remember that it’s all part of the process. Looking back at your life isn’t supposed to be torturous but rather get you in a better…

Explaining your drug addiction to your children may be something you find yourself procrastinating.  It is important to realize that this is a matter both worthy and necessary to address.  If you are debating how to tackle such a topic, communicating with your kids about the disease you have will clear up any misinformation.  You should focus on how talking about difficulties helps the outcome and brings a greater bond in the relationships of all people involved.

How Do I Talk To My Kids?

Something that may be keeping you from having a talk with your kids about what is going on with you in your recovery could be the guilt you may be experiencing.  You may feel like you have failed as a parent, even though the truth is that you have not.  Just by you being in recovery and working to better yourself, you are an inspiration.  The willingness for change is never a letdown.  Your kids will notice your perseverance and desire to grow, giving them the good model for striving towards healthy goals. If you ever feel like you have disappointed your family, just take a deep breath and remind yourself that addiction is a disease.  Your disease wants you to suffer, be miserable, and wallow in self-pity.  Focus on your recovery and further developing your relationship with your children. Keep trying your best and do not give up.

You should also consider that if you are not discussing your recovery process even vaguely with your kids, then they might make their own assumptions about what is going on.  This will drive a wedge between your relationship with them and even increase their chances of having issues later in their life based on false interpreting of what they thought was going on in their childhood with you.  Try to answer the questions that your kids have the right to know without getting too detailed with the residuals.

It can be especially tough to explain what is going on to your children when you are in the process of your recovery if they are young.  If this is the case, the details can get spared according to what they know.  The best method when having the discussion would be to relate your illness of addiction to a form of physical illness, like diabetes for example.  Kids may have a better comprehension of the idea that you are sick and trying to get well.  This may make more sense to them because of the times that you come off as exhausted and irritable, or even when you have to get out of the house to attend meetings.  When making the comparison, try not to overwhelm them or instill any fear.

There are conversations that people may never want to endure, and having to talk to your children about your addiction may be one of them.  It is of course important for you to first talk with your sponsor, sober supports, counselors, spouse, and family before discussing this with your children. Just remember to remain calm, be honest, and relax.  This process is a journey, and each day relationships will get rebuilt and worked on for the better.