For many of us, moving into addiction recovery is just the first step of the path to recovery. Once we’ve overcome chemical dependence, we have to work towards recovering from the damage that substance abuse has caused in the rest of our lives. That means behavioral addiction, self-esteem problems, relationship problems, etc. Often, that will mean rebuilding your entire life – and while not everything can happen at once, self-esteem and overcoming shame and guilt should be a priority.
Shame and guilt in recovery can be based on many things. For example, you may be experiencing social stigma and responding to that. You might feel worthless because you are a person who can be addicted. Shame and guilt can also revolve around real things that need to be resolved. Taking steps to work through and overcome shame and guilt is an important part of addiction recovery.
Process Shame and Guilt
It’s important to realize that you’ve probably hurt people. If you’re throwing shame and guilt out the window and going “I don’t need these” you’re probably not recovering in a healthy fashion. Understanding what you feel shame about and what you feel guilty about is important.
- What do you feel shame and guilt about? Make a list
- What are those linked to?
You might find that you feel shame in yourself as a person because of social stigma and failing to be a good person, failing to achieve things that everyone else is achieving. This kind of guilt is something that requires processing and working through.
You might also find that you experience shame and guilt around having hurt people, having let people down, having let yourself down, having done things you aren’t proud of. This will also have to be worked through, but often means acknowledging it, owning up to it, and making reparations where that’s possible. Taking responsibility for harm that you caused, even while you were sick, will help you to rebuild your sense of self-esteem and to overcome guilt.
Get Professional Help
Recovery often means looking into professional help to overcome behavioral use disorders. At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that professional help also exists to help you improve your mental health, including your self-esteem. You can seek out professional help as part of rehab or independently to get the guidance you need in overcoming shame and guilt.
CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is designed to help individuals challenge negative patterns and replace them with positive ones. By changing self-critical thoughts, you can work towards breaking free from cycles of shame and guilt, and therefore move to a place where you can actively work to improve things rather than feeling bad about them.
Group Therapy – Group therapy can be especially powerful in challenging feelings of guilt and shame, because one of the primary causes of feeling shame is feeling alone and isolated. Sharing shame in a group means that you get to understand that others are in the same place, have done the same things, are dealing with the same problems. This can foster a sense of connection and can normalize your disorder, meaning you are more able to see it as it is, a disorder, than to see it as a point of shame.
Mindfulness – Complementary therapies such as mindfulness are increasingly used to help individuals ground themselves and stay rooted in the present. That can help you direct thoughts away from past behavior you feel ashamed of and towards the present – while building tools for self-acceptance and emotional regulation.
Get Your Questions Answered
Reach out today to get the answers you need about drug and alcohol detox. Our compassionate team is here to guide you through every step of the process and help you take the first step toward recovery.
Working on Self-Compassion
For many of us, being kind to ourselves is a skill we have yet to learn. In addiction recovery, that can mean you have to learn how to give yourself space to fail, to fall back, to have flaws. If you can’t be kind to yourself, you’re likely to spiral into destructive self-judgement and guilt whenever anything goes wrong. That can interfere with your recovery, your ability to live a normal life, and your ability to improve.
Self-compassion often means treating yourself and your behavior in the same way you would that of a friend or loved one. That can mean picking someone you care about and deliberately going through an exercise where you pretend they did the thing you did, and then figure out how you’d respond to that – and then applying that to yourself.
Working Towards Forgiveness
Asking for forgiveness is an important part of recovery. In fact, if you’re doing a 12-step program, asking your loved ones for forgiveness is literally part of the program. It’s important to work up to a point where you understand what you did wrong, how you hurt people, and that you hurt people and then to ask forgiveness. It’s also important to do this for yourself.
That might feel weird. Chances are, you’ve never acknowledged to yourself that you hurt yourself before. Chances are, you’ve never taken responsibility for yourself for changing and making things better before. But, that’s part of what recovery is. “I acknowledge that I deserve care and that means caring for myself”. From there, you’ll want to work on forgiving yourself for making those mistakes, forgiving yourself for taking bad care of yourself, forgiving yourself for hurting yourself. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending it never happened, it means accepting that they happened, accepting that people make mistakes, and working towards a way forward.
Self Help Programs
Self-help programs have many of the same benefits as group therapy, because you’ll have a space to share, to learn how others experience the same problems, and to overcome guilt and shame as a group. Most also have active programs to work through personal accountability, forgiveness, and acknowledging change needs to happen.
For example, 12 Step programs help individuals to work through shame and guilt with self-reflection, steps to improve the future, and steps to make amends with others. That, plus sharing in a group and seeing substance abuse as a normal disorder that affects others in the same way, can be a powerful part of your recovery.
Building a Better Future
Potentially the most powerful way to let go of the past and your past actions is to build a better future for yourself. The more you work towards being the person you want to be, the harder it will be to continue seeing yourself as whoever you were in the past. That will take time, but it is an important part of recovery and growth. That means:
- Be consistent, take small steps and work to keep your health and mental health in good condition so you can stay in recovery
- Be honest, even if you relapse, be honest with the people you love and share, get help again, continue to work towards recovery
- Work on building relationships based on give and take, communication, and sharing.
- Actively work towards the future you want for yourself even if, for the moment, that’s nothing but “being clean and sober”.
The more work you put in and the more work you consistently put in to take care of yourself and build the future you want, the more you’ll be able to build trust in yourself to make the right decisions, to do the things that you value, and to take care of yourself.
Shame and guilt in addiction recovery can be a serious problem that can interfere with your recovery. If you’re falling into negative spirals of guilt and self-blame, it’s still important to look for mental health support so you can break those cycles and focus on recovery and what you can improve, rather than staying focused on what you did wrong.
