Unhelpful Mindsets That Can Jeopardize Your Sobriety

Getting over alcohol addiction is incredibly challenging for two reasons. First, it almost always has nothing to do with the alcohol itself. People don’t drink to excess because they love the taste of beer. They do it because they’re trying to deal with some sort of emotional pain.

And second, long-term alcohol use destroys the mental machinery you need to recover from your addiction. Over the course of a decade, it harms your reasoning faculties, making you less equipped to deal with the issues.

There are also a host of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms that can last upwards of a month.

Recovering from alcohol, however, is made more difficult by some of the emotions that can come your way during the recovery phase. As you sober up, you start experiencing new sensations that the alcohol suppressed. It can be an unnerving experience.

Here are some of the emotional mindsets that can jeopardize your recovery from alcoholism.

Guilt

A lot of people recovering from alcohol addiction experience pangs of guilt. Once they become soberer, they suddenly get a dreadful sense of the extent to which they’ve hurt people in their lives.

Escaping the feeling of guilt is challenging. But it is worth remembering that nobody chooses to become addicted to alcohol. It’s not what anybody wants. Almost always, it comes from a place of pain. The drinker is trying to eliminate unbearable feelings - usually the result of trauma or abuse.

Feeling guilty, therefore, is part of the problem. It’s a kind of self-attack. The person who is kind to themselves recognizes that the addiction was a way of coping with hurt feelings. Yes - the effects of the alcohol might have been terrible, but your character isn’t in doubt. The moment you put down the bottle, you prove your worth.

Worry

When you first start getting over alcohol, you worry that whatever progress you’re making will be short-lived. You might be able to stay off the drink for a week or two, but any longer than that and you’re struggling. You fear that you’ll engage in the same repetitive behaviors over and over again, especially if your life takes a turn for the worse.

In situations like this, life coaching can help. It roots out the thought processes that make you do the same things over and over again and defuses them before they can harm you. It also gives you new strategies to cope with the emotions that are driving your actions and puts helpful strategies in place that improve your quality of life.

Loneliness

Being addicted to something can be an incredibly lonely experience. You feel helpless in the face of your addiction while everyone goes about their lives as normal.

The loneliness is often made worse by some of the labels put on people who use certain kinds of substances. Alcohol addiction is dealing with the same feelings as food addiction, but you don’t see the same kind of stigma there.

Dealing with loneliness involves reaching out to professionals and possibly people you know who can help you make a full and happy recovery.

by Contributing Authors