Negative thought patterns are something we’re all too familiar with as men in recovery. It was negative thought patterns which likely took us down a rabbit hole of trouble in our using. I can’t do anything right, I’ll never get over my trauma, They’ll never want me, I don’t deserve to be loved, I don’t deserve to be sober, I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough…The list can go on and on and it often does, much to our dismay. For years of our lives, we’ve believed the negative thoughts in our mind. Sometimes called the “board” or the “committee”, it feels like there’s one or a whole group of other people taking up space in our brains who think increasingly less of us and take great pleasure in letting us know. Addiction reinforced our negative thought patterns, inspiring us to use drugs and alcohol, get sick, cause wreckage in our lives, then feel badly about ourselves and our choices.
The moment we decide to get clean from drugs and alcohol, we are not liberated from our negative thought patterns. In fact, we are forced to confront them more directly, as we no longer have the distraction or haze of drugs and alcohol to help us escape from our negative thoughts, even momentarily. Rather than run, hide, avoid, suppress, or ignore what goes on in our mind, we have to tackle it head on. We don’t enter a battle- instead, we enter a conversation with ourselves. Through therapy and work in treatment, we figure out where our negative thought patterns come from and what we need to do to reprogram them.
Still, the truths that we have believed by way of our negative thought patterns can be persistent. At some point, we will find ourselves asking “But what if I can’t?” We’ll doubt our ability to take back control of our minds or our lives. We’ll doubt our ability to overcome our cravings, temptations, and old ways of thinking. We only have to remember one thing: we didn’t think, for love or money, we could go even one day without drinking and using. Every hour we spend sober working on our recovery defies unbelievable odds. We can. We will. We are.
Tree House Recovery of Orange County, California is a premier men’s addiction treatment facility that uses eight different modalities to help our men become the best versions of themselves they can be. We teach our men that every day of their journey is something to celebrate, and that recovery isn’t a sprint– it’s a marathon. By showing our men how to celebrate each day’s victories, we show them that self love isn’t about what we have or haven’t done. It’s about getting a little closer to where we want to be. To get started with Tree House Recovery, call us today at (503) 850-2474
