The New Year welcomes a fresh start. New goals, new hobbies, new routine. It’s a time of renewal and self-improvement. It’s about doing better. Being better. Even when COVID restrictions are high, there’s still potential and room to make positive change.
Whether its new year resolutions or intentions, to lose weight, get fit, stop smoking, get a new job…. self development and collective improvement start here… movements such as Veganuary, Dry January and Sugar Awareness Week know this and help you harness change and kick start the year with good intention and good habits for better wellbeing.
So what happens when, despite good intention to change bad habits, we can’t?
Addictive behavioural patterns and relationships can lead to destructive lifestyles regardless of best efforts to stop or make changes. Addictions can play out with people, behaviours and substances. For people who struggle with the dis-ease of addiction or co-dependency, it takes more than a New Year’s resolution to make sustainable changes to well-being and recovery.
Be Compassionate with yourself.
Choosing to look at your relationship with your addiction as a means to solve the problem rather than the problem in itself. Addiction expert, Dr Gabor Mate, states that the question to ask isn’t why the addiction….but why the pain? Your addiction is no longer serving you – be kind to yourself; it came about as a solution.
Be honest with yourself too. Admitting that there is a problem can be difficult; it takes courage to step into the pain for resolution.
In other words, what pain are you trying to resolve and deal with via your addiction?
Reach Out
We are social beings, wired for attachment, relationship and love. With COVID restrictions ongoing, taking the extra initiative to connect is important. Seek support and comfort from a trusted friend or family member.
Seek Professional Support
Because addiction is an attempt to solve your own emotional pain or traumas, getting a trained professional on board can be beneficial and recommended. Quite simply, we cannot change what we are not aware of. Counselling seeks to make the unconscious process conscious, so you can make the changes you want to. That makes it sounds so simple, and in theory, it is. But the complexities of being a human can make the road to recovery a difficult one.
Gaining support from a trained addiction professional gives you the opportunity to delve deeper into what is causing the pain, gain self-awareness and find emotional resolution and healing.
Since 2009 we have been supporting individuals, couples and professional relationships back into a state of thriving and fulfilment. Get in touch today.
- About the Author
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Co-founder and director of Leone Centre, 20+ years of experience in supporting people, and offering valuable knowledge through Couples Counselling and Individual Counselling. Before becoming a therapist, I worked in the financial sector.
Talk with a Leone Centre Professional
If you do feel like you need some help and support, our Leone Centre professionals are available 7 days a week. Call us on 020 3930 1007. We can also provide fast track therapy.
We can offer in-person counselling in London appointments at our head office in Fulham and our offices in Kensington, Wimbledon and Belgravia, We also service Victoria, Putney, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and City of London.
In addition, we offer Online Therapy appointments wherever in the world you are located, should this better fit around your existing commitments or if you are not able to attend an in-person appointment.
