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Someone who has ever struggled with a drug or alcohol addiction knows that they might have said or done anything they needed to get their next fix. When you are caught up in the addiction spiral, you may not see the dysfunction behind any manipulative or abusive behavior displayed that helps to maintain your addiction. Learning to identify “gaslighting” can help put an end to this traumatic and abusive behavior.

When we experience trauma in our lives, we might begin to experience anxiety or PTSD afterward, but why does this happen? Is there a physical component to it, or is it all psychologically driven? Understanding what the limbic system is and what limbic trauma loops are can help answer these questions.

Achieving lasting recovery becomes complicated when your ego still rules you. The ego is one major contributor to addiction for some people, leading them to believe they don’t have a problem or push others away since they don’t think they need their advice or help. If you are in recovery and still have your ego assuming an influential role in your decisions and life, know that it affects you on many levels, not just in your recovery. Likely, it is also preventing you from truly connecting with yourself, your partner, and others.

The words “recovery” and “treatment” are often used interchangeably through each individual’s journey to sobriety. However, they refer to two distinct parts of the process. While “treatment” is the actual program in which a person is enrolled, such as their detox or residential treatment that has a distinct start and end date, the term “recovery” refers to the entirety of an individual’s journey to sobriety. Recovery is not just the things an individual learns during treatment but also incorporates how a person conducts themselves outside of the treatment sphere, reflecting the entirety of one’s new journey through their sober life. This recovery may have a start date that coincides with their treatment depending on the individual, but recovery as a whole will often extend far beyond when a person may have graduated from a treatment program. Completing a treatment program is undeniably an impressive and difficult feat, but it doesn’t mean that one has completed recovery as a whole. Because of this, aftercare planning and preparation are paramount for maintaining many of the skills and mindset initially instilled during treatment.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 264 million people suffer from depression worldwide. Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States. Depression can look very different depending on the person, with over 50 symptoms associated with depression. You may not even realize depression could be affecting you, so it’s important to be aware of your thoughts and how they influence your behavior. By challenging and redirecting any negative thoughts you have, you can ease the symptoms of depression and find a piece of the solution to overcoming your depression.

Turning off the voice inside our heads that tells us we need our next quick fix is made much more complicated by the world around us continually reinforcing that instant gratification is entirely normal. Everything is available to us at a push of a button, from the information we want at a second’s notice online to the food we can get delivered to us from almost any restaurant. Living in a world that promotes instant gratification makes it harder to exercise impulse control. However, by self-imposing delayed gratification into your lifestyle, you may become more successful in long-term recovery.

Springtime signifies a season of rebirth and new beginnings, popularly used as a time for cleaning our homes and reorganizing our belongings. Realizing that the environment we create might reflect our internal state of mind can help us understand that if our rooms need tidying, our minds probably do too. Two simple but powerful ways of helping “clean” our minds to lower stress, improve focus, and support good mental health are through meditation and visualization.

The addiction world is full of helpful resources and information, compelling stories of individual recovery journeys, and countless recovery centers dedicated to the success of helping those struggling to find lasting sobriety. Among this beautiful world of helpers and healers trying to support and encourage others in their path to sobriety, myths and misconceptions persist and prevent some from getting the treatment help they need. Probing the truth behind these claims helps to bring greater understanding to the reality of addiction issues. Dispelling common myths about addiction can stop the cycle of hurtful misinformation that brings unnecessary pain to family, friends, and those suffering from addiction.

March 2020 was the month that marked a complete 180 turn in every American’s lives (along with everyone around the globe). Now one year later, for better or for worse, we have all learned a thing or two about how to better care for ourselves in totally new ways. Some of the most important lessons we learned were how to better care for our mental health through self-care routines. We realized that contrary to what we believed self-care to be, it turns out to be some of the least glamorous things we may have to do in our day.

Addiction affects every facet of a person’s life, but those suffering from the disease may not realize the extent of the impact of their drug or alcohol use. Addiction can develop beneath the surface over a long period before a person realizes that they have developed a genuinely unhealthy practice. At that point, addiction may be extremely difficult to overcome with willpower alone. Reevaluating one’s relationship with drugs and alcohol frequently can help an individual identify problematic behaviors early in addiction’s development. However, it is also possible that a person is continually rationalizing or normalizing their behavior to avoid confronting the problem. Normalizing dangerous behaviors can not just lead someone away from getting the help they may need to overcome an addiction; it can lead to romanticizing the meaning of drugs or alcohol or otherwise avoid the adverse effects of addiction in one’s life.

Do you ever feel like you have to explain yourself or justify why you did something? Understanding what JADE means and the times you may be JADE-ing yourself or others can change how you interact with life for the better. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it originates from Al-Anon and stands for Justify, Argue, Defend and Explain. It becomes particularly problematic when used in communication with abusers, toxic relationships, or with ourselves.

Everywhere you turn, stress is all around, and you don’t have to look any further than the ensuing global pandemic to see how stressful everyday life is. Being mindful of stress is important because it wreaks havoc on our minds and bodies, and since it isn’t going anywhere, we have to learn how to properly manage it, so it won’t have negative impacts on our health.