Let’s face it. Part of the addiction cycle is not feeling good about yourself. Part of the disease of addiction is having a low self-esteem. And as a result, part of the recovery process is learning how to love yourself again. It’s learning how to recover from a low self-esteem.
Self esteem could be described as having confidence in yourself. It’s having confidence in your abilities and having respect for who you are inside and out.
Yet, there are so many factors that can contribute to a low self esteem, such as a having difficult upbringing, experiencing teasing or bullying as a child, abusive adult relationships, not being able to find work, or having lived many years not believing in yourself.
A significant part of finding drug abuse help is improving the way you feel about yourself. The following tips are ways that you can help improve your self esteem and self confidence.
Look for the good in your life
If you have a son or daughter and you wanted to look for the good in your child, you might praise him or her on the B that he got instead of seeing the A he should have gotten. Or instead of seeing the marks that your daughter got on her term paper, you might praise her for researching and completing the paper in the first place.
And the same is true in your own life. Instead of seeing what’s going wrong, look for your desires, your motivations, and your positive talents. Look for your unique values, viewpoints, and beliefs that make you who you are. Look for the good in your life instead of what’s going wrong. This alone can help you feel better about your life.
Tell and show yourself love
It might sound odd to tell yourself that you love yourself. But it’s essential to do so, especially if we’ve never been told that by anyone else. If you’ve had an abusive childhood or dysfunctional relationships with parents, acknowledging love for yourself can transform the way you feel about yourself.
Just as when a child feels love from his or her parents, it facilitates with loving him or herself. For many people, recovery and drug abuse help is learning to parent yourself. Part of this re-parenting is finding the love that you might have never received when you were a child.
Even if you weren’t abused as a child, there is an overwhelming amount of teasing and bullying in childhood that it can be difficult to fully form a positive self-esteem as a child. You can ease the pain of a low self-esteem by showing love to yourself by clearly saying, “I love you.”
Praise yourself as much as possible
This might be another re-parenting technique. If you have a low self-esteem, you might not have received enough praise as a child or even as an adult. For this reason, you might need to do it for yourself. Look for the things you’re doing right. Look for the ways that you are improving your life. If you’re seeking drug abuse help that alone is something to compliment yourself on. You’re already creating change.
Listen to your soft inner voice
One of the most significant ways to find self-confidence is to listen and follow that soft, inner, intuitive voice. When you follow something that you know you were meant to do and it creates a positive result, it can bring great feelings of self-connection and self-confidence.
Although during an addiction, it might be difficult to even hear that soft voice. It’s always there. In fact, it’s always guiding and leading you in the right direction. You have your own intelligence and learning to trust yourself is part of recovery.
Self esteem can play a significant role in your overall well being. Although it’s easy to get lost in meeting life’s responsibilities, the underlying thoughts and feelings about yourself make such a difference in your experience of life. You can facilitate a healthy self-esteem with the above suggestions.
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