Unlocking Your Fears Through Positive Self-confrontations

Recovery is a very emotional phase, but the most common emotion faced by an addict at any point of his recovery is 'fear'. During addiction too, fears are a common emotion, but those fears are very different from the fears that he faces during recovery. For e.g., he may feel worried about running out of his drugs during addiction, or losing his job, his loved ones if he is not able to cope with addiction. While there are many types of fears that a person comes across, the root cause for all these fears is that the addict is worried about the potential negative outcomes of certain situations. This happens because an addict, just like all beings made by God, is a good person on the inside. He too is concerned about his future, but he is also worried about situations that may become a threat to his future, to his relationships or even to his recovery. So would you call this a positive fear or a negative one?

Identifying your fear is the first step in managing it, so finding the root cause of that fear is very important while analyzing how to fix it. Instead of ignoring the feelings when they arise, try to define them. Why keep these fears bottled inside when you can easily discuss them with a friend or family member, why not share them with a counselor, or in the simplest way, why not just write it down for now, so that you can at least identify what the problem is? The thing to understand here is, that when you know what you're scared of, it will be easier to fix the problem - as when we know who our enemy is going to be, isn't it going to be easy fighting him in the battlefield?

Fear is always rooted in the future, because you worry about things that haven't even happened yet, and most likely they never will, unless you yourself bring them onto yourself. Hence, staying focused in the present is also a key factor when managing your fears. There are many positive ways of doing this. Meditation is a very powerful tool that helps you see your fears from a more peaceful perspective, instead of feeling panicky in the moment, as you may experience otherwise. Building strong, positive relationships with people around you, especially with people who are supportive of your recovery efforts, can certainly help you deal with your fears more successfully. These people obviously want to see you in recovery, so they will always be there to listen to your fears, even though it's you who has to win your battles yourself - but every time you need someone to share your problems with - these people will be your strongest pillars of hope, of strength and of courage to change your life!