Sherry Gaba, LCSW, is a Licensed Psychotherapist and Certified Transformational and Recovery Coach. She is the author of “The Law of the Sobriety: Attracting Positive Energy for a Powerful Recovery” and the creator of wake up recovery. She is the go to expert on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinsky and media expert on CNN, HLN, Showbiz Tonight, The Bio Channel, Inside Edition, and E!News. Go to www.wakeuprecovery.com and get your free audio mediation download and/or sign up here for her free preview Out of the Box Recovery call. http://www.wakeuprecovery.com/outside-the-box-recovery-call/ – See more at: http://www.sherrygaba.com/blog/why-i-created-wake-up-recovery1#sthash.GRcWLjOn.dpuf
For most people with addictions denial is a part of their everyday life. They deny the addiction is an issue, they blame everything but the addiction for the disasters in their life, and they deny that they have a problem of any type. This denial has to end before there will be the opportunity to make changes that bring about a positive, healthy, and sober reality.
Denial, or the refusal to honestly accept that an addiction is at the root of the problems, can result in the loss of literally everything in the addict’s life. I have worked with many such individuals and I have provided their individual stories in The Law of Sobriety to highlight just how deep denial can run.
One of the most devastating scenarios of denial is found in Christi’s story. She had a great life with beautiful kids, a loving husband, and a very comfortable lifestyle. In just two short years her drug addiction and denial of the problem caused her husband and kids to leave. She lost her comfortable lifestyle and was homeless and broke. To get her drugs she hooked up with a dealer and was involved in multiple thefts, embezzlement charges, and drug related arrests. Even going to jail wasn’t her rock bottom; she simply returned to the lifestyle when she was released.
Christi, when she came to me, was in such deep denial she had no guilt or remorse over the choices she had made and the people she had hurt. She didn’t care about jail or about the loss of her family. She was so deep in denial she could not recognize that she even had the potential to be a happy, authentic, and sober person. And, because she had not hit bottom and been forced to face her reality, she didn’t want to change.
The Law of Attraction is the best way that I have found to help those deep in denial, when they are ready to start their path to recovery, to set goals to move them towards the person they want to be. While Christi may not have been there yet, there are people I see on a daily basis that set goals, see themselves as authentic, sober people and live that reality day by day.
This all starts with changing how you see yourself. Living authentically and not in denial but in honesty, positive and optimistic about your current and future reality. Sending out that positive message about your sobriety today and in the future sets your course for recovery and health without dwelling on the negatives of what you did and who you were in the past.
