When we struggle with addiction, our drugs of choice are the coping mechanisms we use to manage and often avoid and suppress our emotions. One of the most painful emotions we encounter is that of anger, especially when someone has deeply hurt or wronged us. It can feel impossible to forgive someone who has wounded or traumatized us. We can feel as though they don’t deserve our forgiveness. We want to separate ourselves from them, and we don’t feel they deserve for us to be in their lives. We can find ourselves feeling consumed by bitterness, resentment, and spite. We hold grudges. We lash out at people, even people we aren’t angry with. We can have a hard time controlling our anger, and we can feel as though it has taken over our lives. We use our drugs of choice more and more, to try and forget the person we’re angry with and the ways in which they’ve hurt us. Can having forgiveness help our sobriety?
Choosing Healing and Peace
As we know, anger can be destabilizing and unsettling. We can feel imbalanced and off-center when we’re angry. Anger can add to our feelings of anxiety and depression. We can feel that we manifest troublesome circumstances in our lives because of the negative energy of our anger. Choosing forgiveness means choosing peace. It means deciding that we deserve to be free from the damaging energy and consequences that our anger creates in our lives. When we forgive, we choose to heal. We choose to feel more grounded and centered within ourselves. We choose to let go of the past so that we can be content in the present moment, and so that we can move forward in peace.
Eliminating a Major Trigger
Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we allow a harmful relationship or dynamic to continue in our lives, or even that we ever speak to the person who hurt us again. It means we choose to let ourselves have the release, detachment, happiness, and emotional freedom we deserve. Making the choice to forgive means we’re freeing ourselves emotionally from one of the major triggers we have to use our drugs of choice. The more emotionally stable and at peace we are within ourselves, the stronger we are in our sobriety.
The caring, compassionate staff of The Guest House is here to support you along your journey to recovery and healing.
Call 855-823-5463 today for more information.