People with an addiction or mental health illness can enhance their recovery and treatment by learning self-love. It will give you a more positive outlook on your journey. It will also lead you to forgiveness for yourself and others.
Practicing self-love leads to better self-esteem and self-acceptance of who you are. It will lead you to happiness with who you are as a person without comparing yourself to others.
Better self-esteem leads to more self-confidence. That self-confidence can lead to better choices in jobs, living arrangements, and more.
All sound too good to be true? I assure you it is true. Speak to anyone who has gone through addiction recovery or who has improved their mental health care treatment with self-love added to their treatment and they will tell you the same.
Is self-love easy?
Those same people you ask about self-love and addiction recovery will tell you no, it is not easy.
You have to learn to accept yourself and more importantly forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself can be tough. But to experience true happiness and self-love forgiveness is required.
Often it takes forgiving someone who has caused you pain that led to addiction such as sexual abuse before you can forgive yourself. When it comes to mental health, self-love requires that you admit that your mental health issue is a medical problem before you can learn to love yourself. Stop thinking of your mental health as you are crazy or some other stigma, it is a physical health problem.
Self-love is not easy but you can do it!
Ways to practice self-love
Here are a few ways, besides forgiveness that we already talked about to, practice self-love.
- Nourish your body. Develop a healthy eating and exercise plan. Exercise helps elevate your mood, chases away depression, anxiety, and builds self-esteem.
- Keep a journal, write down your goals and accomplishments. Start out with small manageable goals then make them a little more challenging. Write down how you feel when you achieve those goals.
- Take time to celebrate the small wins as well as the big wins. It may be that you have made it through the day, that is worth celebrating. Or you have made it through the week which is a big win. Both are worth celebrating, write them down in your journal.
- Do not compare yourself to others. Each of us accomplishes things in our own time. We all feel differently about things. And, we all handle situations differently. This does not mean you are a failure.
- Find your passion and chase it. It could be woodworking, painting, writing poetry, starting your own business, or one of many other things. Find it and chase it. Find something you love and use it to make money. If you love what you do you will never work a day in your life.
- The hardest one of all is to let go of worry and negative thinking about yourself. But, if you let go of these and replace them with self-love, acceptance, and positivity about yourself, it will become easier.
Remember you deserve to be loved, especially by you. At 449 Recovery, our therapists can help you with your treatment plan. Contact us today 855-735-7449