Self-esteem is how a person feels about him or herself. Self-esteem can refer to a person’s self-worth or personal value. It can also refer to anything that would influence how a person looks at him or herself in the mirror. Self-esteem and addiction go hand in hand in a number of different ways. People who suffer from low self-esteem often turn to drugs or alcohol as a way to numb the pain. Thus, the best way for people that suffer from low self-esteem and addiction to treat their conditions is to both attend addiction treatment and focus on rebuilding confidence.
Using substances might mask some insecurities initially. In the long run though, it ultimately does more harm than good. Thus, in the long run, abusing substances will likely only bring one’s self-esteem issues to light. Furthermore, abusing substances usually causes people to struggle more in life. This, in turn, will cause people’s self-esteem to become even lower. Continued substance abuse also causes people to struggle even more to get the mental health assistance and addiction treatment that they need.
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How Can I Improve My Self-Esteem?
Whether you are someone who’s suffering from addiction as a result of self-esteem issues, or you’re someone who has depleted his or her self-worth as a result of your substance addiction, rebuilding your self-esteem can be a great way to make yourself feel better about yourself. Rebuilding your self-esteem can also help you more easily achieve recovery. Let’s take a look at some tactics that an individual that suffers from low self-esteem and addiction can use to achieve the goal of rebuilding confidence.
Forgive Yourself
People with low self-esteem or low self-worth tend to overanalyze everything they do. As a result, they also tend to beat themselves up over their faults and failures way more than they should. Beating yourself up over your faults and failures just leaves you feeling as if your self-worth was even lower than before.
Individuals that suffer from addiction tend to have poor judgment and impulse control. As a result, people with addictions and low self-esteem might do something that they later regret.
Exhibiting such regretful behavior then only causes individuals to continue to metaphorically beat themselves up over it. This is especially true once such individuals have sobered up and realized the consequences of their actions.
It’s important to remember that everyone is human and we all make mistakes. While it is important to take responsibility for your actions, dwelling on them and continuing to beat yourself up over them doesn’t do yourself or anyone else any good.
Instead of continuing to dwell on your past mistakes, it’s best to simply forgive yourself. Once you do that, you can focus on learning from your mistakes so that you can avoid committing them again in the future.
Write Down Some of the Things You Like About Yourself
While writing down things that you like about yourself might just seem like a way to boost your own ego, doing so can change the overall way in which you view yourself. Writing down things that you like about yourself can also help you achieve the goal of rebuilding confidence.
The things that you write down about yourself can be as simple as “I like my hair.” You can also write down deeper and more specific reasons for why you like yourself such as because of the time that you helped an elderly woman load groceries into her car.
Writing things that you like about yourself down allows you to reflect on them at the moment. Doing this also gives you something to look at and read during periods of time where you are particularly down in the dumps or being hard on yourself. In fact, studies show that writing things down that you like about yourself is particularly helpful for individuals who are in recovery from substance use disorders.
Perform Good Deeds
Another way to start rebuilding confidence and improve your overall self-worth is to do something nice for others. It doesn’t have to be some giant grand gesture. It can be something as simple as holding the door open for someone or giving someone directions. Anything that would elicit the response of “thank you” from the person receiving the good deed can count.
Even if the person doesn’t express gratitude in return for your good deed, you can hold your head high knowing that you did something nice for someone simply out of the kindness of your heart and not because you were being told to. Also, doing something for others helps you stay grateful and appreciate life. You would be surprised how much that alone can help boost your mood and self-esteem.
Be Willing To Accept Compliments
People who suffer from low self-esteem oftentimes have trouble accepting compliments from others. This is in large part due to the negative feelings that they have of themselves. Since people with low self-esteem think so little of themselves when others give them compliments, they oftentimes don’t think that the compliments are genuine or sincere.
This can oftentimes lead to individuals feeling embarrassed and patronized. This can then lead to the development of even lower self-esteem.
Making the decision to just accept compliments for what they are rather than assuming that they are coming from a disingenuous place can go a long way in making you feel better about yourself. Besides, the fact that someone is going out of his or her way to compliment you has to mean something good. Most people don’t do that if they don’t think something good about the person that they are complimenting.
Set Goals For Yourself
Setting goals and then achieving them can be a great way to give yourself a sense of purpose. It doesn’t matter how big or small the goals that you set for yourself are, achieving these goals can give you a sense of worth accomplishment. This, in turn, can help you start rebuilding confidence.
Don’t Compare Yourself To Others
Comparing ourselves to others is a great way to lower your self-esteem. Many times we compare ourselves to those who are more successful or make more money or have accomplished more than we have. Doing so makes us feel bad about ourselves. All this does is lower our self-esteem.
Instead of comparing yourself to others, the only thing you should be worried about is yourself and your life. Remember, there are always going to be people above you and there are always going to be people below you. Ultimately though, your life journey is unique to you and is thus incomparable.
It’s important to make sure that you are doing the best you can on a daily basis. If you can come home at the end of each day and know that you did everything that you could to have the best day possible, you will feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. This sense of accomplishment and pride will then help in the process of rebuilding confidence and self-esteem.
Make Changes in Your Life
Ultimately at the end of the day, you have to want to feel better about yourself in order to make a change. Every example listed above on ways to improve your self-esteem is predicated on you doing things in order to improve it. Thus, you need to know that you have the ability to succeed in achieving the goals of rebuilding confidence and developing higher self-esteem.
It’s also important to remember that improving your self-esteem takes time. You can’t expect to see results overnight. Thus, patience is key to achieving your goals.
If achieving goals seem overwhelming at times, break down your goals into smaller steps and focus on gradually achieving those first. You would be surprised how at slowly achieving small steps towards a goal can slowly rebuild your confidence and self-esteem. On top of that, slowly achieving your goals can improve your overall life.
How Can Improving My Self-Esteem Help With My Recovery?
The addiction recovery process is difficult. People start addiction recovery by detoxing from drugs and alcohol. They then undergo intense counseling and learn how to live brand new lifestyles. Rebuilding confidence and self-esteem while going through the addiction recovery process can help you not only achieve sobriety, but also maintain it.
If you have confidence in yourself and know that you’re doing the right thing, treatment will come easier to you. Having confidence in yourself and healthy self-esteem can also increase your chances of avoiding relapse. After all, if you aren’t feeling sorry for yourself or thinking badly about yourself, you’re going to be less likely to be tempted to drink or do drugs again.
Want To Know More About Self-Esteem and Addiction?
Oftentimes, low self-esteem can lead to addiction. On the other side of things, addiction can also lead to low self-esteem.
Most people who enter into treatment do so with very low self-esteem. That’s because people that enter addiction treatment often feel that they are failures.
People that enter addiction treatment are also often embarrassed that they even need to attend rehab in the first place. Thus, it’s very common for rehab patients to have very negative opinions about themselves.
Here at Phoenix Rising Recovery, we understand that self-esteem and addiction go hand in hand. Thus, we know that before rehab patients can truly recover from substance addictions, they have to be willing to accept themselves for who they are.
Rehab patients must also learn ways to raise their own self-esteem. We here at Phoenix Rising Recovery offer a variety of treatments and therapies. These treatments and therapies help people both achieve recovery and rebuild their inner confidence.
Here at Phoenix Rising, we want everyone who receives treatment at our facility to leave with a sense of pride and self-worth, knowing that they can live happy, healthy, and sober lives from that point on. If you or someone you know is suffering from low self-esteem and addiction and could benefit from treatment, contact us today.