Being So Hard On Myself

[roverl0616]

By the time I was in recovery I was sure that the way I was going to be successful at being in recovery would be through me being hard on myself. That's not how recovery has worked for me, in fact it's been the complete opposite. For me it's been difficult to learn that it's okay not being so hard on myself in order for me to succeed in recovery. At first I couldn't trust this at all, but after trying this I slowly learned that this actually works better for me when I do things this way. What is and always has been what keeps me from being willing to try doing things this way, by me being good to myself is thinking that it's not going to work. Recovery has not been what I thought it was going to be, and in many instances it has been the complete opposite to what I expected, and it's a good thing that it was, because if I had to continue being so hard of myself after all that I had been through to get to being in recovery in order for me to stay in recovery I don't think I'd still be here. And why I'm still here is because I don't have to be, and I'm not. I've given up on being so hard on myself, and it has worked for me when I did.

[yukonm]

I think it's common for us to feel bad about things we have done in the past. However, we do have to be gentle with ourselves and realize that when we are actively in our disease we aren't ourselves. Once in the recovery process we learn that we can acknowledge our past and work on doing things differently and become better people and do better things. We also learn to be gentle and tolerant with others. Thanks for sharig.