Dialectical behaviour therapy and addiction treatment

Undoubtedly your relationship with drugs, alcohol or gambling has seemed like a huge life crutch upon which you have become dependent; to the extent that there has been little if any control. Your addiction has probably controlled you, possibly for a long time. I imagine that whilst part of you is saying “I’ve had enough and I want to stop”, another, more destructive part is playing games of temptation with alluring thoughts of what has been and what might still be.

Perhaps you have just left treatment, along with a continued plan for recovery that seems rather lightweight in the wake of peer support from which you have just been separated?

Maybe you are feeling alone, very anxious about the immense task of personal recovery that lies before you?

Time is on your side in this battle against the old, with each day becoming a milestone along the path of a new life. But time alone may not erode the habitual patterns that have become entrenched within your living self, and effort and will are needed to pave the way forward. For life’s tricksters and sirens who linger and loiter in patience, await a moment of weakness, to creep back in, in stealthy wilfulness, to crush any resistance in the blink of an eye.

Be wise and let inner wisdom into your everyday processing. Our minds have great capacity to be influenced by reason as well as emotional enticements, but only time can engage the innate wisdom that emerges when reason and emotion stand hand in hand. When they part, they create a void that may too quickly be filled with dangerous inlays of chaos and strife; a chasm of despair.

However desperate or depressed, miserable or fed up, lonely, rejected or misunderstood that you become, never stop searching for the wisdom that resides within you - it is your only hope of a life in which all is not lost.

Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) offers support to those learning to live life after addiction, in the form of simple skills, that you may want to try. Counselling can help you find a few specific skills to help strengthen you in recovery.