Are Toxic Relationships Destroying Your Recovery?
The therapists and counselors at Milford Counseling provide effective strategies to succeed in recovery and life.
Why bother getting in the sobriety game if you just want to be a “dry drunk” and go nowhere? I’m sure you didn’t make the biggest step of your life to get sober so you could be miserable. You’re on your way to a new way of living so don’t let anyone kill your dreams. Negative people can drag you down with them. Your addiction was a tough journey, why make your recovery tough too?
Negativity breeds more negativity, but positive people make everything better for everyone. Have you ever been in a toxic relationship or around toxic people? Was it at work, home, a friend or situation? Did you get sucked in to the negativity or did it create more stress for everyone? Toxic people are contagious and the low energy they bring to a situation can make everything more difficult. Sometimes the person being negative doesn’t know they are doing this because it’s the way they learned how to think and have been thinking this way for a long time.
Stop being used. You don’t have to walk on eggshells anymore. Don’t let anyone control what you do or how you feel. Get out of the relationships that are having negative impact on you. If you let it continue, you put yourself at high risk of depression, anxiety and relapse.
Toxic people can dampen your spirit, creativity and motivation.
Maybe you can’t completely eliminate the interactions because they are family, or you live or work with them. If this is the case, you need to do the next best thing and place some tough boundaries and limits on your interactions with them. You can keep interactions and communications with them brief and polite. Protect yourself from getting caught up and distracted by the drama. A good therapist can help you set healthy boundaries with difficult people. Having clarity and focus on your recovery and what is important to you in your life is a huge part of crushing your goals and achieving top-level sobriety.
Supportive friends can help you:
Stop complaining.
Take responsibility for your recovery.
Be accountable.
Clean up your past if you want to get to where you want to be.
You can’t expect to surround yourself with the same unhappy people and cut out a new pathway to getting what you want out of your life. If you want to follow your new path, you have to be with the people who know how to get there. People that are living the way you want to live your life. People who give you motivation and inspiration. They support you and want to help you succeed. They can help you solve problems because they have done it before.
Good boundaries are important and can eliminate people that are toxic to your sobriety.
The old saying: “misery loves company” is 100% true. I was talking with a client I am working with the other day, and he was telling me about his last relapse and how it happened. He said it didn’t take much for him to go from 90 days sober to a full blown relapse. He said the guy he was living with stopped working his recovery program. His roommate relapsed and was closet drinking and hiding it from everyone. One night, his roommate was drinking and mentioned to him that he just called his dope dealer. My client told me that within a couple of minutes he had talked himself into getting high with his roommate and flushed his sobriety and dignity down the toilet. Luckily my client came back to Milford Counseling and is doing great. The moral to this tragic story is that if my client would have been surrounding himself with the right people, none of this would have happened. Has anything like my client’s relapse happened to you before? I got news for you, unless you get rid of these relationships, you will continue to get less than you deserve and the same old results. Even if you a have history with them, you have to protect yourself.
It’s time to connect with the right people. It’s time to get to where you want to be. If you are working with an addiction or substance abuse counselor, you have already invested a lot of time into your dreams and goals. It’s time to surround yourself with people that help you achieve your goals.
Spend the time with the people who support you and are living life sober and to the fullest. When you eliminate the toxic people from your life you will have a lot more time to do what’s important for you. It won’t take long and you will notice that your life is getting better. You will find that your life is full of good people, sobriety and success.
One of the best choices you can make to surround yourself with supportive people is to get help from a professional therapist. Milford Counseling and our team of counselors can help you find the support you need to live a sober and happy life. Call us now to request an appointment: 248-529-6383. It would be an honor to serve you.
