For support with addiction recovery, reach out to our team at Action Rehab. We are armed with skills and services to ease your addiction recovery journey. It is a problem that some people fight for the rest of their lives. It can sneak its way into your world, grab a hold of things so tight, making you feel drained and burnt out emotionally.

Shame is one of those emotions we will do anything to avoid. It takes your breath away, makes you nauseous, and makes you want to disappear. We’ll lie, isolate ourselves, and search for any way to vanish so as not to feel it.

How To Deal with Guilt during Recovery

If active addiction has the highest amount of stigma, it’s the bottom rung on the ladder in terms of disorders. If I’m in recovery, what does that imply or indicate Well, it indicates I was addicted, not a good thing. So by that kind of guilt by association, whether I’m actively addicted, or actually committed in recovery, you still have a tremendous amount of stigma in general society. And that is, is that around in society, and we’ll talk about why this is the case, there’s more judgment about addiction than anything. And it’s next to impossible not to internalize, I don’t care what age you are in your addiction. It even gets more complicated here, Clint, because it’s not just being addicted.

One of the biggest pieces of recovery is how to deal with this thing that we’re talking about today, which is a shame. And the opposite of shame is self-compassion. So if we can develop a practice, and I’ve been practicing it daily, I did it this morning, I did it while I swim. First of all, you need to admit to yourself and others the wrongs you have committed. Unless you tell the complete truth about how you harmed others, first to yourself and then to the person or people you have hurt (if possible), you may not believe you deserve to be forgiven. (And incidentally, unless you admit what you did to harm the person or people you have harmed, they may not be willing to forgive you).

Dealing with Guilt & Shame in Recovery

However, the whole concept of rehabilitation rests on renewal and restoration. To harbor negative emotions about yourself, like guilt and shame, is self-defeating. While you should take stock of the errors made and make amends to those you might have hurt, it’s important guilt and shame in recovery not to get stuck in the past and then allow those memories to shape your present. Living with the feelings of shame and guilt can be very challenging when going through the motions of addiction. Yet, they can be even harder when experiencing addiction recovery efforts.

• Shame occurs when we blame ourselves – all of those bad feelings are intensified, and magnified in our souls.
• Once you determine the correct course of action, add this situation to your value system.
• The crazy thing is there’s a stigma about being in recovery.
• I don’t know if in the I figure you have this in Indiana, we certainly I grew up in Central California.
• I have faced my wrong and taken action to correct it in the future.

But you step outside of those rooms, and it’s a whole different world. And if you’re in recovery, you still have that scar. Understanding and confronting the shame and guilt you experience in addiction is a critical part of recovery. Dwelling on it and sitting in those toxic emotions only sets you up for a relapse.