If you experience substance use disorder (SUD) and mental illness, you may doubt whether you will ever recover. You have the ability to heal. Through awareness, giving yourself permission to change, and becoming comfortable with the unknown, you can start believing in your ability to overcome SUD and co-occurring disorders.
Awareness of What Self-Doubt Says
Have you ever asked yourself the questions:
- Is recovery for me too?
- Could recovery actually last this time?
- Can I actually trust myself to follow through with treatment?
- What would life be like without addiction?
Maybe while part of you wonders what recovery from SUD would look like in your life and relationships, another part of you feels as if you are the exception to the rule.
Start by cultivating awareness around your narrative of self-doubt. Being open with your treatment team about what self-doubt says is crucial. Doing so helps you learn how to make peace with self-doubt and work with it in your recovery.
Giving Yourself Permission to Change
If you have been stuck in patterns of addiction, mental illness, and pain and suffering in life, it can be challenging to allow yourself to change. True healing challenges what has become familiar to you. Although change is not easy, it is possible, and you must permit yourself to heal. Get to know yourself outside of who you had to become to keep yourself safe and protected during difficult past experiences.
Leaning Into Uncertainty
Recovery can be an incredibly uncertain time. This is especially true if you are unsure of what recovery means for you, let alone if it will actually happen. Uncertainty can be scary, but without uncertainty, there would not be any room for possibility, change, and freedom.
What if instead of denying and avoiding uncertainty, you shifted your relationship with uncertainty to one that recognizes how it signals your untapped potential and innate ability to heal?
Recovery from SUD and mental illness doesn’t happen in the absence of self-doubt, but in learning how to befriend self-doubt and be curious about your potential rather than doubt it. Through recovery, you get to learn how to build self-trust as you give yourself permission to change. Mending your relationship with self-doubt helps you change as you shift old patterns, habits, and beliefs preventing you from living as your authentic self.
Recovering from addiction and mental illness doesn’t mean self-doubt will be absent. Beginning recovery gives you the space and tools to learn how to befriend self-doubt so you can build self-trust. At Avalon Malibu, we recognize how tricky navigating self-doubt can be as you battle mental illness and addiction. We also know that recovery is possible for you, too, even if part of you doubts that. To learn how to overcome self-doubt to achieve healing, call Avalon Malibu today at (844) 857-5992.
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