Inviting Change

If you have someone in your life who is using substances in a problematic way, you may often wonder what you can do to help them decide to change. You may be frightened or mad at them for making bad choices. It’s also likely you have absorbed the cultural message that there isn’t anything you can do to help because that would be enabling or that the only way they will change is when they bottom out. Science, however, offers some different options about how to help someone change…

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Finding the Courage to Grab Your Lifeline

He was famous in his field: a psychiatrist and professor at the local Ivy League university. A flyer initially drew me to one of his lectures.
As he spoke, it felt like my mind was exploding into millions of revelations. He spoke about things I’d always suspected, but had never known much about. And he showed, through studies and his own experience treating patients, how it worked. And it did work. I felt hope start to rise within me.

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Finding the Courage to Grab Your Lifeline

He was famous in his field: a psychiatrist and professor at the local Ivy League university. A flyer initially drew me to one of his lectures.
As he spoke, it felt like my mind was exploding into millions of revelations. He spoke about things I’d always suspected, but had never known much about. And he showed, through studies and his own experience treating patients, how it worked. And it did work. I felt hope start to rise within me.

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Finding the Courage to Grab Your Lifeline

He was famous in his field: a psychiatrist and professor at the local Ivy League university. A flyer initially drew me to one of his lectures.
As he spoke, it felt like my mind was exploding into millions of revelations. He spoke about things I’d always suspected, but had never known much about. And he showed, through studies and his own experience treating patients, how it worked. And it did work. I felt hope start to rise within me.

Read More

Finding the Courage to Grab Your Lifeline

He was famous in his field: a psychiatrist and professor at the local Ivy League university. A flyer initially drew me to one of his lectures.
As he spoke, it felt like my mind was exploding into millions of revelations. He spoke about things I’d always suspected, but had never known much about. And he showed, through studies and his own experience treating patients, how it worked. And it did work. I felt hope start to rise within me.

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How to Forgive

Forgiveness is often discussed in addiction treatment, and in general has been shown to bolster mental health, hope, and self-esteem.  People are frequently told that they ‘should’ forgive a loved one, or that they ‘need to’ forgive themselves.  Tangible tactics on how to forgive are oft-omitted.  This article neglects philosophical pontifications as to what forgiveness is and instead focuses on specific techniques, based on the Enright model of forgiveness, that actually result in the experience of forgiveness.

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Overcoming Addiction: Is it Possible? Do You Ever Get Over An Addiction?

It’s well-known that addiction hijacks the brain. Even though addicts are aware of the negative consequences of continuing to use, they still do it. As the disease progresses, they will start to lie, steal, cheat, and worse… anything to get their drug of choice. Eventually, they find themselves alone, with all their relationships in smoldering ruins and nowhere to turn for help. But is there hope when it comes to overcoming addiction? Can you ever get over it? If so, how?

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All Emotions Welcome: Why Emotions are Okay

There’s no such thing as good emotions and bad emotions—they’re all what makes us human. Here’s why we should reevaluate how we view and treat emotions.

As a society, we don’t try to hide the simple fact that we don’t like emotions. We view them as weak, as troublesome and useless, specifically if they are termed “negative.” They get in the way of our everyday lives. As a result, we do not express what we feel but instead suppress our emotions.

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8 Ways Your Environment Can Support Recovery

Crafting your environment can help you create a solid foundation for your life in recovery. What’s your environment like? When you were living with addiction your environment might have been filled with people coming and going, so-called friends that you couldn’t actually trust. It might have been loud or unpredictable. Just like a negative environment can contribute to the chaos of addiction, a healthy environment can help you thrive in recovery.

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Human Connection is the Answer to Treating Addiction

According to Johann Hari, the author of New York Time’s bestselling book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,” everything we have come to know about addiction is wrong. Johann Hari is one of the many people who have been affected by their loved one’s struggles with substance abuse. Whether we like it or not, addiction is a family disease that needs to be addressed and treated as such.

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