I Can Get Sober but I Can't Stay Sober...What am I doing wrong?
If you are reading this you have likely been to multiple treatment centers, followed by sober living and the use of monitoring programs for accountability, yet you still struggle with staying sober. This can leave you feeling guilty, ashamed and hopeless. Perhaps you believe you are “constitutionally incapable” as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes. Regardless, you are well aware of what you "should" be doing to maintain sobriety.
I would like to challenge you on these beliefs and help you find your own path to recovery. There are many reasons that relapse occurs: unresolved trauma, untreated anxiety, low self esteem, to name a few. The 3 biggest obstacles I believe contribute to relapse are the following:
Low Tolerance For Feeling Uncomfortable:
Most people who suffer from addiction began using at a young age. This creates a "freezing" of
emotional coping. I have often heard it explained as waking up one day and finding out your an
adult with no clue what your doing. It takes time to build your coping skills, meanwhile there are a
lot of uncomfortable moments.
I can help you develop better coping skills while you're building tolerance!
Building A Life To Be Sober For
Often people get sober and they feel lost - they go through an Identity crisis. They are told to get an
unfulfilling job and just focus on staying sober. The problem with this is you start to believe this is what a
sober life looks like and get discouraged quickly. Although I agree recovery has to be a priority and
working is essential to survival, I also believe if the identity crisis is not addressed it makes it easier to
relapse. Letting go of the old image and creating a new one can help fight for recovery. Creating a life
you want to be sober for gives you something you might lose if you don't.
I can help you find the new you!
Self Defeating Beliefs Leading to Self Sabotage
Our belief systems are developed from the perspective of a child and have been with you so long you
don't really know they are influencing you. Sabotage is the sustaining of beliefs. People who suffer from
substance use disorders are inherently talented at living in a contradiction which always seems to end in
some form of sabotage. For example: you have a fear of failure and equally a fear of success. The
response to this will be a) over compensate by working ten times harder than anyone else until you burn out
and manage to get yourself fired or b) become paralyzed in the contradiction and do nothing. Either way
you walk away sustaining the belief that you are a failure.
I can help you identify how you sabotage yourself.
