What Can You Do To Rebuild Your Self-Esteem During Substance Abuse Recovery?

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Drug addiction can impact every facet of your life and well-being, including your self-esteem. While going through recovery, it is imperative that you also work on rebuilding your self-esteem. Without a healthy self-esteem in place, you could be vulnerable to relapsing. Here are some ways you can work on rebuilding.  

Forgive Yourself for the Past

One of the unfortunate consequences of addiction is a past riddled with mistakes. Although the past cannot be changed, many recovering addicts spend years of their lives beating themselves up over past mistakes. It is important to acknowledge those mistakes because denying them would put you at a greater risk of relapse.  

However, you also have to give yourself permission to forgive yourself. You have to move on from what happened. Take the lessons that you can from it and use that experience to be a better person in the future.  

Write Daily Affirmations

Unless you have past experience with affirmations, you might doubt how helpful they can be. Although writing daily positive sayings to yourself might seem silly, they can help rebuild your self-esteem. As you are writing the affirmations and repeating them, the words will eventually start to sink into your psyche, and you will begin to believe them.  

If you are having trouble finding anything positive to say about yourself, you can start with the fact that you reached out for help. It takes courage to admit that you need help, and it takes even more to commit to doing what you can to move forward. 

Find Healthy Activities to Join

In the midst of your addiction, you more than likely engaged in unhealthy activities that not only took a toll on your body, but also your emotional and mental health. Part of rebuilding your self-esteem is countering those negative activities with positive ones.  

By engaging in positive activities, such as joining a sports team, you are not only working on your physical health, but you are also helping to improve your mental and emotional health. It feels good to do something positive. In addition to this, you are surrounding yourself with people who are in a more positive frame of mind. Without realizing it, you can get a boost from just being around them.  

Your counselor at the drug rehab facility can help you find other ways to improve your self-esteem. Just as you have to work to overcome your addiction, you have to work to rebuild your self-esteem. In the long run though, you will discover it was well worth it. contact a drug addiction treatment center like Olalla Recovery Centers for more advice.


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