When we think of grief, we tend to associate it with certain losses like someone we love dying or the end of a relationship. Grief is incredibly common in addiction recovery, but it’s not something you might typically associate with recovery. Dating, healing wounds in your current relationships, building new social connections, finding new, and enjoyable and meaningful things to do can all leave you with a sense of loss. This is because addiction recovery often means making new commitments. Of course those commitments can be fulfilling, but changes are hard.
At our Dallas-based therapy practice, we work with people on helping them find ways of managing behaviors and healing the relationships that are damaged from these addictions. During that process, we also work with grief, loss, and trauma. Making long-term lifestyle changes can be really hard. Most addictive behaviors have been used to numb or relax difficult feelings. Sometimes things like drugs and alcohol are used to fit in or ease social anxiety. Learning to live your life without these things can be problematic for a few reasons. It can seem like you have to give up fun, connections, and even feeling okay. Obviously, you don’t have to give these things up, but if you’re used to relying on these behaviors to cope and connect, learning how to live without them can feel like a loss.
Recovering from addiction isn’t just about avoiding certain behaviors. It often means facing difficult emotions like grief. You’re not only letting go of addictive behaviors but also the parts of your life, social circle, or identity that were tied to them. In this article, I’ll explore how grief shows up in addiction recovery and how to cope with it to achieve long-term success
Dealing with Discomfort
The fear of vulnerability, rejection, and difficult emotions often leads people with addictions to think fondly of times when they used behaviors to numb and feel at ease. Learning to live with difficult feelings can help you tolerate the vulnerability required to build deep connections. Our relationships ironically can be enhanced by going through difficult times and surviving them.
Depression, Anger, and Blame
People struggling with addiction may also experience depression and anger as part of this grief. Thoughts like “I give up, changing is too hard” can make them vulnerable to giving up entirely or even to suicidal thoughts. In other cases, they might direct their anger outward, blaming others or circumstances. It’s not uncommon for someone who’s received a DUI to think the officer was just a “jerk” or unfair. While there may be difficult officers, the truth is, without the drinking and driving, they likely wouldn’t have had the encounter in the first place.
As you learn to tolerate discomfort, you’ll become less reactive and make sounder decisions. Sometimes the best things are the things that come when you take your time and figure out the best ways to approach complicated situations. Thus, although alcohol, drugs, or even mindless sexual situations can feel good, they also can create more problems over time. They can distract you, which may feel positive, but those distractions can take you away from responsibilities.
These fond memories of feeling good can create their own sense of grief and loss. When people develop their relapse prevention plans, they often realize that those old environments and even people have to become off limits to make a change. Then you can feel like you’re missing out on fun, friends, and places. However, in time, most find that living with their values brings rewards that are much more important in the long-run.
Denial as a Coping Mechanism
Denial plays into the grief that you might experience in addiction recovery as well. When people leave denial and face reality, they must confront some very difficult things. This can include a relationship that’s falling apart, the loss of a job, or health problems.
When people are in denial, they often tell themselves they are fine, even when their behavior has led to trouble in their lives. Someone might lose their job because of addictive behaviors, but convince themselves it’s for the best, rather than admitting the role that their addiction played.
Grief as a Sign of Progress
Grief is a difficult feeling to experience, but it can be a sign of progress in your recovery. I like to say that grief is a sign of love. When you’re working really hard to make changes in your life, it’s important to think of it as a way of loving yourself. You’re making some really important changes for health, longevity, and deeper, closer connections. Although it seems like that should be easy, it’s really not at all. Taking care of yourself is hard, and the grief that you’re experiencing is just a temporary phase that will pass in time.
Acceptance as a Path to Recovery
If you’re reading this and struggling with a behavior you find difficult to control, acceptance is key to moving forward. What do you need to accept? First, it’s important to learn how to accept the difficult feelings. They will pass and ebb and flow. However, if you go to war with them, they’ll stick around and gain power.
Acceptance also becomes important because it’ll take time for you to build new connections, find new ways of enjoying your time, and discover what is most valuable to you. You can’t control the time that it takes. However, you can manage how patient you are with yourself and these changes. Change becomes something that requires less effort over time. For now, you have to just accept that it’s hard work. There’s no way around that.
When you accept these things, you can direct your attention to goals. I recommend you focus on small, daily changes that will add up over time to help you reach your long-term goal. This requires that you avoid getting all-or-nothing about how you view your success. Break it up so that you can see the small successes for what they are, while also making changes. View mistakes as an opportunity to amend your daily plan and goals.
Building New Places for Social Support
Support groups aren’t for everyone, but some people find these groups really helpful. Fo some, these groups offer space to share, open up, and reduce shame, They also provide others with supportive peers who can help you in your recovery. Groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), SMART Recovery, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) and other local support systems provide an opportunity to build new connections with people who understand the emotional challenges of recovery. These groups can offer the sense of community and encouragement needed during difficult times.
When Addiction Therapy Can Help
If you find you get stuck in grief, depression or shame, addiction therapy can help. This can help you accept yourself, while also improving your plan.
Therapy can also help deal with trauma. Trauma often impacts how we deal with change, difficult emotions, and how we seek out support. All of these things are important in recovery.
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If you’re in the Dallas area, looking for an addiction therapist, please feel free to contact us today.
