Guilt and Shame in Addiction Recovery

While shame and guilt can result in various mental health conditions, having a mental disorder cause these feelings to surface. A person might be ashamed of their mental health and guilty for how they treat others when they’re struggling. Sometimes, mental health conditions aren’t the cause of these emotions, but they simply exist together. For example, a traumatic event in childhood can trigger a mental disorder and feelings of shame or guilt, even if these feelings are misplaced. Witnessing someone you love deal with addiction shame can emotionally taxing.

Most people deal with them successfully, but for those with a substance abuse disorder, guilt, and shame can fuel their addictions. Because guilt and shame are such huge emotions when it comes to addiction, treatment centers have therapy for them as part of addiction treatment. Our substance abuse-only treatment programs include detox, residential and partial hospitalization program .

How To Deal With The Shame And Guilt In Addiction Recovery

While they may not be in a place to be able to forgive you immediately, you will have done your best to make amends and put your actions behind you. Seek support – asking for help can be difficult but at times necessary. Therapy and other treatment options provide an outlet and can help create strategies for a relapse prevention plan that specifically addresses shame. The chronic feeling of unworthiness and inferiority can make a person feel undeserving of happiness, health, life, and even love. Becoming ashamed of who you are as a person can also manifest in other ways like depression, thoughts of suicide, and risky behavior to relieve oneself of being ashamed. Getting help for shame often begins with identifying or recognizing shameful emotions.

• Recognizing how these feelings can impact recovery can mitigate doubt and allows people to focus on strengthening their recovery and resilience.
• We strive to create treatment plans that will accommodate the individual goals and needs of each person we serve.
• The important thing is to recognize the behavior, and let it out rather than keep it inside.
• It isn’t easy to acknowledge the mistakes made while in active substance use.
• Even non-addicts commonly struggle with shame.

We encourage all of our patients to seek support, therapy, and other forms of treatment that address the emotional aspects of their conditions. Ignoring your feelings, as complicated as they may be, is dangerous and unhelpful. What tends to happen is that these feelings are bottled up so tightly to the point where everything pops. When this happens, you may turn to methods that provide immediate relief, like drug or alcohol abuse. Ignoring difficult feelings can also promote isolation and bitterness. When negative thoughts and emotions are never addressed, they often sow seeds of anger and bitterness that can cause you to act out towards people you care about.

Risks of Guilt and Shame

Families play an essential part in the healing process. The patient is the family, and the family is the patient. Break away from guilt and shame and turn your focus to the present, on the person you are today.

Guilt from using substances in the past and hurting others can prevent a person from using again once they’ve entered treatment. When you realize that you are a human guilt and shame in recovery and everyone makes mistakes, you take the pressure off of yourself. What you can do to make up for your mistakes is ask for forgiveness from those you have wronged.

What Roles Do Guilt and Shame Play in Addiction?

Shame, on the other hand, is related to humiliation. Embarrassment is the root of shame, which can lead to additional feelings of hurt. Usually, people who feel ashamed isolate themselves, which can be especially dangerous in addiction recovery. Unlike people who feel guilty, those who feel shameful may avoid a situation instead of trying to help it.

Now, this ties into your question about what I do as somebody who’s in recovery. What can I do to support my child who’s in recovery? One of the biggest pieces of recovery is how to deal with this thing that we’re talking about today, which is a shame.