You Are Your Most Important Relationship

Building your relationship with yourself takes time in recovery. You use tools for meditation, mindfulness, adventure, self-care and many other things to maintain your relationship with yourself. To start, you have to decide to get to know who it is that you are and who it is that you want to be.

Get to know yourself

You might think you know yourself...but you have no idea. Self-knowledge is an experience for everyone. We might know a lot about ourselves but have certain beliefs about what we know, thus changing what it is we know. For example, we know parts of ourselves which might be rebellious, and because rebelliousness is frowned upon in society and is closely related to addiction we think it is a bad thing. Since we form negative beliefs about some of our tendencies and behaviors we actually believe that we are bad people- that having this quality makes us bad. As a result, we criticize, blame, and shame ourselves for being who we are. Working on gaining self-knowledge helps us realize that it’s possible the parts of us which might be challenging aren’t necessarily bad. We have to work to make the most out of who we truly are without letting it become destructive. The way we gain self-knowledge is through self-reflection. Treatment and therapy provide a lot of daily insight to who we are, what we do, and why we do the things we do. Once treatment ends and therapy is only once a week, we continue to gain self-knowledge through self-exploration. We read books specific to changes we are going through. Daily meditations are helpful in setting a tone for introspection. Mindfulness and meditation can help us find a way to objectively observe our own thoughts and behaviors.

Get to know who you want to be

Expectations are a shortcut to resentment. The people who have the highest expectations of us are usually ourselves. We hold ourselves to high standards because we have all of those confused beliefs about who we are. Our confused beliefs create expectations of who we think we should be, but don’t create goals or a plan for achieving the goals of who we want to be. Often, we don’t think we deserve to become who we want to become. We might not even think we deserve to be who we really want to be, now or in the future. Just as we get to know our present selves by spending time in reflection we get to know our future selves by spending time setting goals and creating challenges. Our behavior is only changed by change. Who we want to be becomes who we are through incremental changes we make over time. Once we clear the clutter standing in the way of our ability to create goals, we can start achieving them.

Enlightened Recovery Solutions believes in the healing and transformative power of the 12 steps, holistic healing, and clinical care. Creating a harmonious blend, our partial care programs for dual diagnosis show clients how to create a loving and sustainable relationship with themselves and their recovery.

For information, call us today: 888-234-LIVE.

Are You Codependent?

Recovering from codependency and codependent tendencies can feel as difficult as recovering from drug addiction and alcoholism. Letting go of lifetime behaviors and survival techniques is hard, but it is not impossible. You can have loving and healthy relationships. Are you codependent? See if you resonate with any of these descriptions:

• You feel that if you don’t meet the needs of others you will be abandoned, rejected, abused, or neglected

• As a result, you value the needs and wants of others over your own

• Sometimes, the way you prioritize other people over yourself can lead to problems in your relationships and responsibilities

• You feel like you cannot escape the cycle of trying to control, manipulate, care-take, and be overbearing in relationships. Once it starts causing problems, you feel as though it gets worse.

• You either have poor boundaries or don’t set any boundaries when it comes to other people. You’re willing to let someone completely into your life and insert yourself completely into someone else’s. You’re often tired and feel like you have lost your sense of self.

• You constantly dismiss your own thoughts, opinions, desires, wants, and needs as though they are unimportant and bothersome to other people. It’s possible you believe they are unimportant because you believe that you are unimportant.

• Your life is full of obligations and responsibilities which drain you of your time, energy, and spirit. You are constantly in a state of giving, care taking, and managing. Frequently, you find yourself burned out and feeling resentful towards others. Eventually, you take on responsibilities from others just to be mad at them because you don’t feel there is any other way.

• There is a good chance you’re in a relationship with an addict, an alcoholic, someone with narcissistic personality disorder, another codependent, or in some other kind of dysfunctional relationship.

• You likely grew up in a home with someone who was abusive, neglectful, or who abandoned you and also suffered with an untreated mental health disorder.

• You likely have a mental health disorder of your own, outside of your codependency.

• Deep down, you feel that if you can just do enough, be enough, and please other people they won’t leave or hurt you.

Enlightened Recovery Solutions knows that there is freedom and serenity in recovery. It starts with you. Start your recovery with us. We integrate the best of holistic healing, spiritual wellness, clinically proven therapy, and 12 step philosophy. For more information, call us today at 844-234-LIVE.

The Benefits Of Boundaries

Boundaries are lines which mark the limit of an area. In relationships with other people, we don’t exactly go around drawing imaginary lines and struggling to make sure nobody crosses them. If everyone displayed their boundaries with each person they interact with on a visual plane, we would live in a criss crossed tangled world of millions upon millions of lines. One’s person's boundaries will differ from another’s. Everyone has to spend time learning what their boundaries are, how to make their boundaries work for them, and how to ask others to respect them. Similarly, we have to learn how to respect other people’s boundaries when they set them with us.

What Is The Purpose Of A Boundary?

The purpose of a boundary is to create a definitive place where you end and someone else begins. Boundaries are what help us keep our personal space mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s the place where we feel safe and comfortable. Boundaries can be rigid, which might be problematic, and they can be loose, which can also be problematic. Working to create balanced boundaries is a way to make sure you have balanced, happy relationships in every area of your life.

Why Are Boundaries Important?

Simply stated, you can’t let someone walk all over you for the rest of your life. Likewise, you can’t walk all over other people in any way either. Boundaries are the way to make sure everyone is treated fairly, with respect. According to one Huffington Post article, boundaries can help:

• Make you more self-aware

• Be a better friend

• Be a better partner

• Take better care of yourself

• Reduce stress

• Improve communication

• Help you trust people

• Limit your anger

• Say “no”

• Be more understanding

Recovery from drug addiction, alcoholism, and co-occurring mental health conditions is about learning to “live life on life’s terms”. Boundaries are a way you can make the way you live life on life’s terms a little more flexibly. You get to live in relationships on your terms as you learn to be flexible and make room for compromise.

Promises of better relationships and better tomorrows are just the beginning of recovery. If you are ready to recover and enter treatment, call Enlightened Solutions today. Our integrative and holistic programs are designed to heal mind, body, and spirit, for lifelong recovery. For more information call 844-234-LIVE.

5 Tips For Setting Goals

For those in recovery sometimes “what are your goals” only has one answer: staying sober. Living life sober gives you an opportunity to go after whatever you wnt in life. Here are some suggestions for getting started.

How Do You Want To Feel?

Most often, our goals come with a feeling. When we achieve that goal, we imagine feeling a certain way about ourselves and as ourselves. Perhaps more confident, more capable, or more accomplished. Envision your goal in mind. How do you imagine you will feel once you achieve it? Are there feelings assosciated with this goal that you think you can only have if you achieve it?

Keep Yourself Inspired

Goals, no matter how big or small, can seem impossible when we are in a negative mindset. Stay inspired about your goal by setting little reminders of why you’re working so hard for it. Focus on that moment where you achieve your goal and how good it will feel. Leave yourself encouraging notes. Read stories of others who have gone after a siilar thing. Everyone experiences feeling discouraged and afraid of failure.

Get A Goal Buddy!

Accountability is key to achieving your goals. Have some who is working on the same or a similar goal to help cheer you on and give inspiration to as well. Sometimes it is our pep talks to others that we personally need to hear the most. Your goal buddy will help you stay on track and keeping working toward what you want.

Set A Time Limit

Goals aren’t indefinite- they’re definite and finite things we want to accomplish. How much can you work toward your goal each day? Each month? In six months? You’re capable of accomplishing more than you know. Don’t make your goals indefinite. Set a reasonable amount of time to achieve it and you will.

Choose Something Realistic

We can’t change our body types, become millionaires in a day, or excel in a hobby we’ve never tired before when we try it for the first time. There are rare occurrencesof these things happening, but such miracles aren’t common. Make sure you know what you are going after is a realistic opportunity. It doesn’t mean you can’t dream big- dream as big as you want- but separate your dreams from fantasies.

Enlightened Soltuions is here to help s=you reach your goal of lifelong recovery. Our dual diagnosis problems serve those in need of treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. Call us today for inofrmaiton on how we can help you achieve your goals 844-234-LIVE.

5 Reasons To Stay Out Of A Relationship In Early Recovery

Emotions run high in early recovery and many people seek comfort through a relationship. Here are our top five reasons to stay out of a relationship in early recovery.

1. No Harm Will Come To You If You Don’t Date: Loneliness is not an ideal prospect. Falling in love can feel good- really good, but it can also be a distraction. Though you might feel lonely, longing for attention, and cravings for physical intimacy, living without those things won’t cause you any damage. They are manageable triggers that don’t include the overwhelming stimulus of another person. You can live without it, the same way you’re learning to live without drugs and alcohol.

2. Harm Might Come To You If You Do: Unfortunately, you’re at greater risk for desperation in a relationship than you are out of one. People are complicated and so is love. In early recovery, you’re sensitive and not completely in touch with your feelings yet. Dating another person in early recovery, or anyone, can bring up stuff you aren’t ready to work on, put you in tough situations, or, in the event of a break up, cause inconsolable heartbreak. Sadly, many people relapse and overdose because of their inability to cope with rejection, abandonment, and codependency which comes from a break up.

3. You’re Just Getting To Know Yourself: Being in a relationship is about more than being in a relationship. Romantic partnerships are about meeting someone else’s needs and your needs in a healthy way. Most people in early recovery are only just beginning to discover what their needs are. You’ve just started the journey of getting to know yourself and how you work as a person. Trying to balance that with a whole other person and all of their ‘stuff’ can be really hard to do.

4. You’ve Had Abusive Relationships In The Past: If you've had abusive relationships in the past and are in early recovery, you might miss the signs of an abuser. Repeating patterns is easy to do in early recovery. You're Dedicated to healing and changing your life in a way you never have before. There’s no need to suffer more abuse or stay in a situation that might inspire you to relapse.

5. It’s About You Right Now: Balancing your time and energy with another person is hard when you’re in such a selfish place. Right now, compared to the past, you’re in a  good selfish place. It’s all about you, your recovery, and your fight to save your life. When you are ready for a relationship, you will have new standards in who you want and how you want to be in a relationship with them.

Enlightened Solutions is a certified co-occurring treatment center, offering treatment and support for both substance use disorders and mental health disorders. If you are struggling to get sober and need help recovering, call us today for more information at 844-234-LIVE.

Essential Life Skills For Lifelong Recovery

Empathy and Compassion: Living with compassion and empathy is not something many would call an essential life skill. However, in order to be a good human who does good things on earth, empathy and compassion is a must. We are tasked in recovery to always reach out our hands. As the saying in Alcoholics Anonymous goes, “love and tolerance is our code”. We are inherently self centered human beings. After developing an addiction, we tend to be even more selfish. Empathy and compassion are the ways in which we connect with others and step outside of ourselves in order to connect with someone else. Our relationships and connections with people are made deeper by practicing empathy and compassion.

• Time management: Change is the only constant, it is said, and time is constantly changing. We only have so many waking hours in a day, days in a week, and so on. How we use our time is incredibly important because we’re either wasting it or making the most of it. Learning how to use a calendar, schedule appointments, prioritize activities, and make enough time for self-care in a day are essential life skills.

• Asking for help: People who have had to make the decision to ask for help in finding treatment understand how life saving this life skill can be. We can’t possible know it all. In order to get things done, we often have to ask for help. Help you help yourself by feeling no shame when it comes to asking for assistance with something.

• Active listening: We can go our entire lives without really listening to what someone has to say. From instructions to suggestions to someone's expression of their needs, if we don’t actively and reflectively listen we miss out on what is being said.

• Meditation: Taking time to quiet the mind is more than calming- it helps grow new brain muscle memory, reduces symptoms of stress, reduces intensity of mental health disorders, and radically improves health.

• Financial Management: Some people never learn how to manage their money. Living in chronic debt or without any money can lead to stress and hardship which could eventually cause someone to relapse. Money comes and goes. Learning how to manage finances for the long term and the short term are essential for reducing stress and creating a sense of security.

• Healthy Living: Eating organic, having a balanced diet, staying nutritionally well, and having basic cooking skills are all a part of healthy living. Your long term future depends on your physical health as much as it does your mental wellbeing.

• Communication: communication is a part of everyday life >learning how to communicate honestly, tactfully, and articulately is helpful in every single area of life.

Enlightened Solutions believes that people entering recovery for an addiction are in need of developing or redeveloping essential life skills for life after treatment. If you or a loved one are ready to learn a new way of being, call us today for more information, 844-234-LIVE.

Helicopter Parenting

Parents have a difficult task in gauging how involved or not involved they need to be in their child’s life. Research, critics, and opinions abound on either side. It’s all too easy to be uninvolved to the point of neglect, or too involved to the point of harm. Cyclically, there is one style of parenting that comes under fire as a new generation of children demonstrated psychological effect. In recent years that parenting style is helicoptering.

Helicopter Parenting

Helicopter parents are those who are overly involved in their children’s lives to the point of disabling their kids from accomplishing things on their own. Playground arguments to science projects, helicopter parents swoop in and perform. Helicopter parents also tend to be overprotective. Short of keeping their child in a plastic bubble suit (likely only if it were recycled post-consumer material that was BPA free), they don’t let their kids engage in the everyday kid activities which result in scraped knees or broken bones. Just like an actual helicopter, these parents hover and rescue on a regular basis.

Here are signs of growing up with helicopter parents;

You talk to your Parents all the time...You have to call your parents for everything.

Your parents know better than they do. Even in your late teens and early twenties, you feel certain that your Mom or Dad have a better answer or idea than you do. Each time you face a decision, you call your parents to have them help you choose. You find it difficult to trust yourself or make decisions alone.

Your parents are extremely supportive...You resent your parents’ support.

Gifts are endless when you are open to your parents’ love and support. You listen to them, you obey them, and they provide you with financial and emotional support. They also provide you with endless questions, concerns, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and even doubts about your abilities. There’s two areas of resentment. First, you resent their involvement in your life and the bartered relationship that seems to accompany it. Second, you resent their involvement in your life while accepting everything that they give you.

Other signs of helicopter parenting include feeling anxious all the time, being obsessed with perfectionism and credentials, and the fact that your parents are your best friends. This sort of performance anxiety can lead to depression, prolonged ADHD, and substance abuse.

Enlightened Solutions believes that uncovering the underlying issues surrounding addiction and alcoholism leads to complete healing. We offer a holistic program focused on healing past, present, and future. For more information call us today at 844-234-LIVE.

Is Empathy a Universal Trait?

Empathy is a universal language of recognizing in others what we are able to recognize in ourselves. If I have been through an experience you are describing, I am able to emotionally and intuitively relate to what you are saying. Not only do I understand, I have a deep comprehension of where you are. So to speak, I have walked a mile in your shoes.

One of the most basic human needs, especially in recovery, is to feel understood. Without being addicted to drugs and alcohol, it is hard to understand the depth of addiction. Family members and friends struggle to truly grasp the experience of addiction their loved ones are witnessing. Compassionately, they acknowledge how their loved one suffers, and they sympathize with their experience. Yet, they struggle in developing the empathy needed for validation.

Being in treatment or the rooms of 12 step fellowships offers solidarity in these departments. Walking into a room of like-minded, like-lived people is a sense of relief to many addicts in recovery. In all the world, there is at least one place where they know they will be understood. Someone, at some point in their life has lived through similar trial, tribulation, and even triumph. This sort of fellowship is a keystone in the continuum of recovery.

Is Empathy a Universal Trait?

Is everyone so kind? Research shows that the answer is conditional according to perceived struggle. It might be expected that the people who have suffered the most would have the greatest empathy. Quartz did a social experiment revealing that, at times, those with recent relevant experience were less inclined to have compassion and more inclined to show contempt. For example, one study examined bullying. Participants in the study reacted to two types of people who had overcome bullying. The first coped with the bullying in a way that was defined as successful. The second coped with bullying through violence and lashing out. Compared to people who had not experienced bullying, the people who had were most compassionate toward the successful subject. Yet, for the subject who reacted in violence, people who had experienced bullying themselves were the least compassionate, comparatively. Researchers believe it is a combination of forgetting what it was like, and the ability to overcome such hardships, that turn people cold.

Conclusively, the study reveals an important part of recovery: remembering what it was like. There is no need to stay haunted by one’s past, but rather embrace the humility of recognizing the hardships we have faced. It is important not to lose sight of how far you’ve come because of where you started. We remember that each person’s journey is unique.

Enlightened Solutions offers a spiritual solution to the problem of pervasive drug and alcohol addiction. Our multidisciplinary program offers a holistic approach to healing rooted in twelve step philosophy. It starts with hope. Start your journey to recovery with us. For more information on our treatment programs please call 844-234-LIVE.