Recovery isn’t always the best time to find love, primarily because it’s a time when you should be strengthening your mind, body and spirit. Creating a lifestyle that is conducive to your happiness, health and overall wellness takes a lot of time and work – and many people find that maintaining a relationship is quite challenging amidst all of their responsibilities. Valentine’s Day often places so much pressure on us to be in a relationship, but as a commercialized holiday, it’s truly just another day. If you can place less pressure on yourself to find love and place more emphasis on strengthening your relationship with yourself and God or another Higher Power, you’ll find that your life becomes much more enriched – in ways you wouldn’t even imagine.
12-Step programs aim to help people strengthen their relationship with a Higher Power through principles that assert that has humans, we simply don’t have all the answers. By attending 12-Step meetings, connecting with a sponsor and developing connections with others, you’ll find that your perspective on life becomes wider; likewise, as you engage in more holistic practices, such as prayer, meditation, yoga, art therapy and more, you’ll find deeper ways of relating to both yourself and others because greater clarity is found through exploration.
In 2015, the Huffington Post noted several key ways to practice self-love this holiday season:
- Empathize with yourself. As a human, you’re doing the best that you can. You’re making mistakes, you’re learning and you’re growing. Recognize that.
- Give yourself space to find your emotions. Addiction makes us tune out from our emotions, but recovery is what reels us back in. Get back in tune with yourself by journaling, listening to music, creating artwork and more.
- Practice gratitude for how far you’ve come. Recovery is a lifelong process, but you’ve been taking some amazing steps so far. Be grateful for the resources, tools and support you’ve received, and that will bring you even closer to balance and serenity in recovery.
Don’t allow Valentine’s Day to make you feel as though you’re not where you need to be. For those who’ve struggled with addiction, trauma, mental illness and more, recovery is exactly what’s needed for more self-love to take place.
Cumberland Heights is a nonprofit alcohol and drug-addiction treatment center located on the banks of the Cumberland river in Nashville, Tennessee. On a sprawling 177-acre campus, we are made up of 2 12-Step immersion campuses, 12 outpatient recovery centers and 4 sober living homes. We believe that each person has a unique story to tell – and that’s why we always put the patient first.
