There are things that can hold us back in our Recovery.
We can count on these things keeping us from moving forward or making any significant progress.
There are certain things that will most definitely stop you dead in your tracks.
Without learning how to accept and process these them, you will have a really tough time and your recovery cannot progress.
Here they are:
1. Having the ‘if-only’s’
2. Blaming people, places, or things for what happened in our lives.
*Say Goodbye to your ‘if-only’s’.
If we had only done_____. If we had only said_______.
We have all said it.
We just cannot seem to accept ‘what is’. (or what we have created)
Here’s what we know. We can’t go back.
So much time in addiction is spent feeling regret or shame.
We replay certain things repeatedly.
We tirelessly attempt to hide from our own thoughts and feelings of shame and regret.
This is part of the insanity that is addiction.
When we are finally clean and sober, we don’t know what to do with these thoughts.
We are no longer muting these feelings. We can now hear them loud and clear.
The most important thing is what we do next.
It is important to look at what is.
As hard as it may be, we have to allow ourselves to look at things as they are.
Swallow that truth and learn to understand that from that point is what matters.
Each choice that we make right now, is a choice farther away from the ‘if-only’s’.
and that is all that we can do.
*No longer will we blame people, places, or things for what happened in our life.
The truth is, blaming another person for our choices or the situations that we find ourselves in helps us to evade any kind of responsibility for our actions. This makes addiction work well for us.
I think most people who think this way, truly believe that they would have made completely different choices if it weren’t for this person or that person.
Ultimately, a person cannot change if they don’t see their actions for what they were. If we refuse to admit that we are the source of our own detriment, we will never see our need for major change.
Just like letting go of our ‘if-only’s’ – we have to accept our blame shifting for what it is.
Another way to evade our truth.
We have to look at our current situation and allow ourselves to see how we got to that place.
In some cases we may very well have been brainwashed, manipulated, pressured, ignorant, fooled, pushed, or strung-along. But we are still the decision makers in our own lives.
The bottom line is that our actions, regardless if they were influenced in some way by someone else….are still ours.
We have a choice.
We always have a choice.
We have to choose to take responsibility for our own actions.
When we choose to say- I am going to look my truth in the face and own it,
we gain crucial ground in recovery.
There is power in owning our choices and our real, raw, current truth. We are empowering ourselves to propel forward.
As hard as these two things might be to accept, they are such powerful tools that we can use for our future.
It is really all about how we choose to cope with ‘what is’ from now on. C
Continue reminding yourself that you are in control of your choices.
Choose to use your ‘if-only’s’ as a reminder of the lessons that you can take from your past.
Take the blame that you placed on other’s for your choices and use that to remind you that no one can push your life in a direction that you don’t want it to go in.
You can start right now.