Why it's so hard to give yourself credit

One of the hardest things about being an addict is you learn not to trust yourself. Because while you might say what you know to be “right,” your actions tell a different story.

When our words and actions don’t match up, it creates a type of suffering that only self-hatred can make sense of.

And then that becomes the norm. The more I hated myself, the more I wanted a reprieve from it. The first drink quiets the thoughts. The first line makes it possible to like myself, suddenly. The rest of the night doesn’t matter. Everything is a great idea. As free as a car driving down a highway with no brakes, no destination.

And then, morning. The anxiety of trying the piece the night together, the flashbacks of things I’d never do when I was “normal.”

Guilt, shame, embarrassment. Obsessing over the same thought, same words, same memory over and over. Anger, frustration, hopelessness. The anger is enough to make you swear it off forever. The frustration around repeating the same “mistake.” The hopelessness around not being able to change.

But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t hopeless.

So often it's not our feelings that actually hurt us, but our thoughts about them.

No amount of doing is going to make up for a lack of feeling.

I was stuck in a chase or suppress cycle with my emotions.

What finally changed my habits for good was repairing my relationship with my thoughts inside my head, rather than trying to control my emotions by using drugs and alcohol.

We all have our “drugs of choice.”

We’ve all been places we’re not proud of.

And there’s often a feeling that if we dare to not be so hard on ourselves, we’ll revert back to old ways.

But as I learned, it was precisely because I was so hard on myself that I stayed stuck in the same shame and relief cycle for almost two decades.

So what if still seeing yourself as the person who stayed there, you started to see yourself as the person who got you out?

We often regret the amount of time we stayed, or the amount of time it took for us to finally say “enough.”

But the past isn’t here anymore. So perhaps the kindest thing you can do is start counting the days since you’ve been there. Start walking around knowing that you’re on a different clock now. You’re adding, not subtracting.

Stop seeing it as the time that you took away from yourself, and start seeing it as the time you’re giving back to yourself, now.

The time that you’re giving back to the things you love, the people you care about. You did that. Nobody else.

And every time you find yourself slipping back into that comfortable pit of regret, remind yourself that you’re the one that got you out last time, and you’ll keep getting yourself out. This is how you build trust with yourself again. Not just by doing it, but recognizing it. Giving yourself the credit where it’s due.

Our self-talk is often the last to change. So if it feels awkward right now, just start by saying “thank you.” Not even to anyone in particular. Just saying and thinking these words shifts your focus, and your energy. From there, the rest will start to take care of itself.

One of the most dishonest things you can do is to only tell yourself the ways you’ve failed.

At the end of a long day, when you’re recounting what’s happened, how often do you say to yourself, “Wow, I really got that right.”

We often spend so much time fixating on the things that we did “wrong,” we start to distort what’s really true - that we’re doing a lot better than we think we are.

How we feel, how we be, how we love.

You owe it to the part of you that didn’t stop.

The part of you that had hope for something better.

The part of you that felt a glimmer of happiness each day and used that as fuel for the rest.

Your inner critic is just one of many parts of you that once felt useful.

None of these parts exist without you.

Who decides your life?

The only one that can choose that, is you.