You Are Your Most Important Relationship

Building your relationship with yourself takes time in recovery. You use tools for meditation, mindfulness, adventure, self-care and many other things to maintain your relationship with yourself. To start, you have to decide to get to know who it is that you are and who it is that you want to be.

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF

You might think you know yourself…but you have no idea. Self-knowledge is an experience for everyone. We might know a lot about ourselves but have certain beliefs about what we know, thus changing what it is we know. For example, we know parts of ourselves which might be rebellious, and because rebelliousness is frowned upon in society and is closely related to addiction we think it is a bad thing. Since we form negative beliefs about some of our tendencies and behaviors we actually believe that we are bad people- that having this quality makes us bad. As a result, we criticize, blame, and shame ourselves for being who we are. Working on gaining self-knowledge helps us realize that it’s possible the parts of us which might be challenging aren’t necessarily bad. We have to work to make the most out of who we truly are without letting it become destructive. The way we gain self-knowledge is through self-reflection. Treatment and therapy provide a lot of daily insight to who we are, what we do, and why we do the things we do. Once treatment ends and therapy is only once a week, we continue to gain self-knowledge through self-exploration. We read books specific to changes we are going through. Daily meditations are helpful in setting a tone for introspection. Mindfulness and meditation can help us find a way to objectively observe our own thoughts and behaviors.

GET TO KNOW WHO YOU WANT TO BE

Expectations are a shortcut to resentment. The people who have the highest expectations of us are usually ourselves. We hold ourselves to high standards because we have all of those confused beliefs about who we are. Our confused beliefs create expectations of who we think we should be, but don’t create goals or a plan for achieving the goals of who we want to be. Often, we don’t think we deserve to become who we want to become. We might not even think we deserve to be who we really want to be, now or in the future. Just as we get to know our present selves by spending time in reflection we get to know our future selves by spending time setting goals and creating challenges. Our behavior is only changed by change. Who we want to be becomes who we are through incremental changes we make over time. Once we clear the clutter standing in the way of our ability to create goals, we can start achieving them.

Enlightened Recovery Solutions believes in the healing and transformative power of the 12 steps, holistic healing, and clinical care. Creating a harmonious blend, our partial care programs for dual diagnosis show clients how to create a loving and sustainable relationship with themselves and their recovery.

For information, call us today: 888-234-LIVE.