How To Deal With Negative Thoughts On The Sobriety

It is totally normal to have negative feelings while in treatment. But if you let them take over and believe them it can affect your treatment.

Some Common Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts can make you feel like a victim and make you feel powerless. They can cause you to lose hope and motivation toward your recovery. Instead of the growth, you need to move forward they cut that off. It is important to grow as much as you can during the beginning stages of recovery.

Here are some examples of common negative thoughts:

–    Thinking that you are wrong as a person: “I have no will power, and that is why I can’t get sober.”

–    Making everything black and white when it is more complicated than that: “Therapy didn’t work for so-and-so so it won’t work for me.”

–    Feeling negative toward the future: “I’ve already relapsed, and recovery is too hard. I’ll just keep failing.”

–    Being bitter about the past: “I wouldn’t be an addict if my ex hadn’t decided to divorce me.”

–    Being your harshest critic: “I forgot my appointment, and I’m an idiot. How can I ever recover if I’m that stupid?”

–    Feeling like you don’t deserve forgiveness: “I was so awful when I was high I don’t deserve to be forgiven for what I did.”

–    Resenting others for their success: “Being sober is easy for them because they have easier lives.”

–    Making assumptions about others: “Nobody will want to hire an addict so it’s pointless to look for a job.”

Continuing To Be Negative Can Put Your Recovery At Risk

Having negative thoughts isn’t rare or a bad thing, but focusing on them can be. This means your mental health can be challenging to manage. Feeling depression or anxiety can honestly make drug cravings worse especially if you have self-medicated with drugs in the past.

Your loved ones may not want to be around you if you are openly negative about your situation. It can be exhausting having to deal with someone who sees everything in a negative light, and it’s obvious they aren’t trying to grow.

If you keep that up and it causes loved ones to drift away, that can also affect your recovery. This is because you need a strong support system to succeed.

Being so negative can affect your own ability to stick with all the goals you set for yourself. If you believe it is pointless and you can’t succeed you will stop trying so hard. This can eventually lead to a relapse.

Ways To Help Negative Thinking

There are a few ways to help your negative thinking. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of those ways. A therapist can help you realize your negative thoughts have no basis and give you directions to combat them with positive thinking.

You need to be able to remind yourself that what is happening in your head isn’t necessarily what’s happening in real life. Remind yourself that your vision is skewed and try to see the events for what they really are.