Self esteem is the cornerstone of a healthy attitude. You can not go through addiction recovery and expect to succeed if you do not work on your self esteem. While self esteem often suffers during and before addiction treatment, it is especially tough to maintain after addiction recovery. There are times when your sober mind simply can not accept the things that you might have done while addicted, be it to alcohol, drugs, sex or even gambling. Any addiction can play havoc with your self esteem for a lifetime if you allow it.
After you recover from addiction and find yourself at that point when you consider yourself healing, you are likely to have a huge boost in self esteem. You will see the changes you have made, and the Herculean type efforts that led you to it. You will see all the positives that you are experiencing in your new sober life, and it will feel very good to your self esteem. Many people, however, will then begin to experience a slow erosion of those self esteem wins, and begin to feel terrible about themselves as they slowly face the wasteland that their addictions may have created.
What do you do when your addiction begins to reveal the consequences to a mind that is likely sober for the first time in ages? Being sober of mind does not truly happen until you face those things that you ran from in the first place. You might be physically sober, but you need to prepare for the emotional sobriety that is to come when you see the results of what your addiction has done. This is one important part of treatment that is often overlooked in treatment centers. What about your self esteem after you are healed physically?
The first thing you must remember is that you are more than capable of fixing things. You may not be able to solve every single problem completely, but you can certainly reach out and try. The key to self esteem is to know that you are doing whatever you can to right certain wrongs, and that you reach out to those that you have hurt for forgiveness. Some will give it and some will not. You need only try. You can not control others, nor can you afford to base your self esteem around their decisions.
That is the key. You must build your own self esteem and let the chips fall where they may. Your self esteem depends upon it and it is the first step to handling the difficulties of post addiction recovery.
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