Are you stuck in your recovery? What I mean by that is, you don’t think you’re ever going to get out of it, or you don’t know how to get out of it. You don’t know how to move on with your life. Well, today I’m going to give you three tips on how to move beyond recovery.

I wrote a book called How to Stop Relapsing Study Guide: Biblical Guidance to Move Beyond Addiction Recovery, Receive Permanent Healing, and Fulfill God’s Plans for You. Let’s say you’ve been in your recovery group for anywhere from six months to six years or more. In the back of your mind, you’re probably thinking, I don’t think this is normal to stay in a group that does nothing but rehash what’s been going on.

Sure, you help newcomers. And when you’re first in the group, you feel relief that there’s other people like you who know the struggles you go through. But that’s not where we’re meant to stay. God wants us to move on with our life.

But how? How do you change from being stuck in this small world? Perhaps you’ve lost all your friends, your family, and all you have is this world of support groups, perhaps a sponsor, and it’s just a daily routine you do over and over and over.

You’ve lost your joy in life, and you’re not even sure you could get it back. Your constant fear is one of, Am I going to relapse again? Am I ever going to get out of this? Well, I got out of my 10 year addiction back in 1990, and I’ve never relapsed. I got over my pity parties. I dealt with the underlying issues that caused me to escape.

Tip #1 – Decide Where You Want to Go In Life

The first tip is, where do you want to go in life? And you might ask, “well, what does that have to do with leaving recovery?” Where you want to go involves your passion in life. What do you want to do? What do you think God has called you to do? What’s your calling in life?

What is it that really excites you? It causes you to get up early in the morning or stay up late. You could talk all day about it. You could daydream about it. What is that? You may not know. You may at one time had a dream, but it’s been put on the back burner. Well, I want you to take it off the back burner today and start thinking about it.

I want you to start writing with pen and paper, not your computer about what do you want to do with your life? What are your dreams? What is it that God has called you? Plus, what are your personal desires in life? Now, these should be desires that you can accomplish by yourself and God.

Not, once I get married, I want to do this. Once I have a house, I want to do this. Once I have an income at this level, then I’ll be happy. No. What can you do today to make yourself happy? Just start thinking about the dream that God has put in your heart. You may think, well, that’s too big. I,  just don’t know how to do it.

That’s fine. God does, God knows how to do it, and He’ll show you. But you got to have trust in him. You have to have faith, and you have to believe that it is possible. And that belief comes by reading your Bible, by praying with God to God, listening to him, listen to his response. So, having a future hope in your life is what’s going to be able to help you to get out of your recovery. It comes as a byproduct of using your dream to reach out to love and help others.

Now, when I say recovery, I’m trying to shift your focus from “not doing the addiction” to focus on your dreams for your future. Let me share a huge insight. We think in pictures, but when you think about not doing your addiction, the addiction is what your mind sees. And even though you don’t want it, that is what your mind is going to try to bring about.

The Bible says what you think about is what’s going to happen. Look at the beginning of creation when God created the earth. I’m sure He had to think before He spoke everything into creation. And that’s what we have to do today. When you think about your future, it stirs up positive emotions—emotions that will pull you into your future, that will give you a hope and a solid ground to stand on.

Now you may not have thought about this, You may have thought that you have to spend the rest of your life in support groups. You don’t. Now let’s talk about recovery support groups. Yes, we need to be around people. We need people. That’s what we were created for. God created us for connection with people.

If you go to church and they have a home Bible study or a men’s group or a women’s group, I would suggest you join them so that you’re around other people.

Now I know that AA emphasizes you coming back to help other addicts, but if that’s not your gift or your calling, you need to be doing your gift or calling because that is what will give you the positive emotional fuel to keep going in the right direction. If your gift or calling is to help the needy, or if you’re a plumber, go find somebody who needs your services and offer to do it for free. Again, you need to be doing something you’re passionate about, your hobby or your calling, to reach out to love and serve others.

That’s the ultimate goal. It got me out of my 10 year relapse by addiction. It was when I stepped in, I believed God, and He showed me the way. I still remember going down, uh, 7th Street in Phoenix, Arizona, back in the early 1990s, and thinking this high of serving God is better than any high I got from using pain pills or drugs.

Tip #2 – Control Your Emotions

Are you able to control your emotions? Because a lot of our addictions are brought about by us not wanting to, or not knowing how to, handle our negative emotions. These negative emotions can be from childhood experiences, or maybe a traumatic event.

It could be PTSD from going to war and seeing all that bad stuff. Do you have any idea what your underlying issues are, is the first thing. Do you know how to deal with them, through forgiveness and so forth? And I do cover this in my book, How to Stop Relapsing.

It’s not complicated. But it is hard, unless you make a commitment to trust God as you go through it. He’ll get you through it. Jesus says to cast all our cares upon Him. Well, our negative emotions from our past are our cares. Then I ask God to help me to forgive the person. And also help me to stop rehashing and getting myself emotionally upset.

Some of us who have been in our addiction for a long time, mine was 10 years long, we get in the habit of getting ourselves stirred up emotionally, getting ourselves down into pity parties. And then it’s an endless cycle that we find ourselves in.

Pretty soon our whole world just seems to be crashing in on us. We lost our friends. We lost our family, and other important relationships. All we have is me, myself, and I, and the few people in a recovery support group who understand what I’m going through. But God says there are people who understand what you’re going through.

Whether it’s temptation to use your drug or drink, a temptation to steal, or temptation to lie, there are ways of handling temptation. So there is a way to get our emotions under control. What happens a lot is a person goes into a rehab facility and some people leave right after detox, because all those negative emotions come up, and they’ve not been taught how to handle them.

Many are taught “coping skills,” which is only a Band-Aid approach, and doesn’t deal with the root problems that eliminate the uprising of the emotional turmoil.  If you leave a rehab facility and you don’t know how to handle your emotions, the first person or event or situation that triggers you, you’re off to relapse. Despite how much you don’t want to.

We need to learn how to stop the internal battles we go through. Once we learn how to manage the internal battles, we don’t have to be concerned about relapsing. As I mentioned earlier, if your church has a Bible study or another type of small group, I suggest you get involved as soon as possible. The more you learn the Word (the Bible), the more you will understand how God acts, how he expects us to act, and how we can change.

Tip #3 – Find Emotionally Healthy Friends

Do you have emotionally healthy friends? Now remember, you may be in this little bubble of me, myself, and I, and the recovery people. There’s probably no emotionally healthy people there. If there are, it’s a rarity. So where do you find these people? And why is it necessary?

Why? Because we need to see how other people handle problems and don’t get pulled into drugs like we did.

We need to observe how they are able to handle situations. Ask them. Say, “hey, you know, I saw this happen and you, you were cool. You didn’t get mad. You didn’t blow up. How come? And how can I do that?”

To get out of your recovery mode, you need to bring other factors into your life—positive ones, positive people, positive environments, such as church and home Bible studies.

You can go on meetup.com and find a group in your area that does hobbies that you like. It doesn’t have to be Christian based, just be around other people. And again, being around other people also gives you the ability to see there is still some good in your life that you can do. There’s still some fun you can do. That’s why you need to be around emotionally healthy people.

Will they come from your family? At this stage, probably not. Although they want you to change and you want to change. While your family loves you, most of them have not given up on you, and it’s going to take time to restore your relationships.

They have to learn to trust you, and you have to learn to trust yourself. You know, it’s not easy to, because when we say we’re going to do something and we don’t, we come down on ourselves real hard. That’s a fact. We all do that. Not just people in recovery. So becoming a woman of your word or a man of your word is going to be very important in a large part of your recovery.

Push through the difficulties to make your dreams come true. You’re not going to be handed your dreams on a silver platter. It takes work, it takes the right work, and it takes hard effort over time with God guiding you and directing you.

Here is a review of the three tips:

• Where do you want to go in life? Write down your dreams.
• Can you control your emotions? Learn how. What does the Bible say? Do some research.
• Do you have emotionally healthy friends? Where can you find them? I’m not asking you to stop your 12 step group right now. That will come in time. I don’t want you to be into solitude completely if you don’t have emotionally healthy friends.

But for right now, I just want you to know everything is possible with God. He loves you so much. Until next time, God bless you and have a great day.

Forgiveness Brings Freedom

The following is an excerpt from my new book to be released this summer Victorious Achievers: Create Your Personal Roadmap to Fulfill God’s Vision for You, Overcome All Obstacles, and Step Into Your Greatness! Before we can begin our journey on our Biblical Roadmap to Freedom For a Higher Purpose, I discuss one of the items of baggage that can hinder us.

Because unforgiveness is a huge detriment to us moving forward, I want to discuss this process in detail. The need to forgive sometimes can be an hourly or  a daily process. Most people are not taught that once you forgive, you need to commit to never bring up that episode again—either verbally or in your thoughts. Without this step, you end up rehashing how you were hurt in your past (even if it was this morning) and how you were done wrong (the victim mentality).

Are you holding on to anger and hurt from your upbringing, current relationships, your circumstances, financial problems, health issues, etc.? You may feel that you’re not ready to forgive the people who hurt you. However, you can’t let your feelings make decisions for you. This act of forgiveness isn’t for the benefit of those who hurt you, it’s for you. If you wait until your feelings tell you it’s time to forgive him or her, you will be waiting a long time, as well as wasting a lot of your life that could be lived from a better place of peace and purpose.

In our effort to become more like Christ, we model how He acts. When we do something wrong, we ask God to forgive us. How soon does God forgive us? Immediately! And He forgets the incident forever.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12).

For I will be merciful and gracious toward their sins and I will remember their deeds of unrighteousness no more (Hebrews 8:12).

I’m not always successful to immediately forgive someone who hurt me and immediately take control of my emotions to stop rehashing the hurt, but I’m getting better.

Forgiveness Brings Freedom

To turn our focus from the past, or from today’s problems, to the future requires us to let go of some of the ugly stuff we’ve been hanging on to for many years, or even just the last few months. Without forgiveness, we will always have a string tied to our past, holding us back from reaching the fulfilled, purpose-filled life.

“I will never forgive him until he pays for what he did to me!” These words spew out of our mouths and turn our stomachs into knots. We carry a grudge (known as bitterness), sometimes for years, and wonder why we can’t enjoy life. Our tendency is to rehash the wrong that was done to us, not for the purpose of designing retaliation, but because it feels good to do so. While the person who hurt us carries on with his or her life unaware of our grudge, we let our bitterness smolder like ashes, and at times fan them into a full-blown blaze. This festering wound in our spirit can only be healed by forgiving that person.

We also use what another person (whether it is a family member, friend, boss, or a politician) has done to us as an excuse for our current behavior. I am not denying the pain and hurt we endured, but we are responsible for our behavior, despite how others act. When bad things were done to us as children, we did not know how to properly react. Now, as adults, we are responsible for our current behavior. Sometimes that involves forgiveness and restoration.

Definition of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the act of setting someone free from an obligation to us that is a result of a wrong done to us. It also entails a commitment not to bring up again the wrong that was committed.

To fully understand forgiveness, it helps to know what it is not. It does not mean that what the person did was okay. It does not mean that with time the memory will go away (the pain will, but not the memory). It does not mean there won’t be any consequences for the bad behavior.

Forgiveness is also not based upon our feelings. I hear many people say, “I’m not ready to forgive that person.” They’re waiting for their feelings to tell them that it’s okay. Those feelings rarely come. Even in the midst of the tremendous hurt we may be going through, we must forgive the person who hurt us now.

Our hurt will be healed by our forgiving that person and moving on with our own life, not by our withholding forgiveness.

Types of Forgiveness and the Process

We want to hang on to the memories and let our feelings fester to their fullest fit of turmoil. We want the other person to pay for their mistake. However, reality shows that we are the ones who suffer, while the other person hasn’t a clue of how hurt we are over the situation. Part of this healing process is learning to forgive.

Forgiving Others

Forgiveness is a choice. It’s a decision we make based upon our desire to improve our life, not based upon our feelings. If we wait until we feel like forgiving people, we may never forgive. How soon after an event are we to forgive? Immediately. However, we don’t immediately forget the event when others hurt us, but we can learn to allow the painful emotion to lessen over time.

Forgiveness is a process. Once we make the initial decision to forgive someone, we must decide whether we need to verbally tell that person we forgive them, or whether our internal decision is sufficient. This decision will be determined by the individuals involved and the circumstances. Dealing with our personal emotional pain should not bring additional emotional pain to others.

After our act of forgiveness, when the memories surface, we must immediately remind ourselves we have forgiven that person. We are to stop our thought process from rehashing the event and stirring our emotions into a frenzy. This thought process is where most people enjoy replaying the event in their mind and allowing themselves to feel justified for their reactions (both mentally and physically) to the hurt. Some don’t want to let go of the memory and the hurt. They want to hold it as an ace for when that person hurts them again, then they can recall all instances of hurt to attack the person. Sound familiar spouses?

This process is not easy nor is it a one-time event. Sometimes it takes years for the pain from the memories to completely go away. Notice I didn’t say the memories will go away. Hopefully, the memories stir us to become better people because of what happened to us and the lessons we learned from them.

What we turn our thoughts toward is important. Instead of dwelling upon other problems we may have, our goal is to direct our energy toward our future. Involvement in a project big enough to immerse ourselves in is what we’re looking for. This will be discussed in Part 2 of this book.

Seeking Forgiveness

When we become aware that we have hurt someone, we are to go to that person as soon as possible and ask that person to forgive us.

This perspective differs from the above section on forgiving others. In that scenario, a person has hurt us and has not asked us for forgiveness. Here is a scenario under this section that we may not recognize: as a child, our parents did something that caused us great pain, and over the years we developed bitterness toward our parents. This bitterness now affects our relationship with our parents. As an adult, we are to forgive the things done to us as a child.

Depending upon our relationship with our parents, we need to ask our parents for forgiveness for the bitterness we have or had toward them. However, if doing so would make things worse (i.e., they are unaware you are bitter toward them, nor do they know why), then it may not be a good idea to verbally tell them you forgive them. An alternative is to write out your request for forgiveness, detailing the reasons, so you can get it out of your mind for good, and then tear up the paper.

Forgiving Ourselves

What I see a lot of today is not giving or receiving forgiveness and staying stuck in the realm of feeding upon our guilt and also the sympathy we get from others. We enjoy our pity-parties. However, they lead to self-hatred every time we try to do better and we fail. We are the hardest person on ourselves. It’s time to stop looking at the negative and start living in the positive. Forgiving ourselves is the first step to let go of this bondage we find ourselves in.

Restoring Relationships

After forgiveness has been given or received, we are to take the initiative to restore broken relationships. It’s up to the other person whether he or she will accept our attempt at reconciliation. A lot of time should not elapse between the time of the hurtful event, our forgiveness, and our attempts at reconciliation. The more time allowed to pass, the harder hearts become–both ours and the other person’s.

Restoration efforts should have the proper motivation and attitude. We are to lay aside our selfish desires and to love others unconditionally. Thus, our motivation is to put others ahead of our own desires. Because of our right motivation and our outpouring of our love, miracles can happen.

Hindrances to Forgiving

If you feel like something inside is stopping you from seeking forgiveness, review the following hindrances and see if any of them apply to you.

Pride. Forgiving others may make us appear weak. We also enjoy the attention and sympathy we receive from others who know we’ve been wronged.

Control. We want to make sure the person is punished, in case God forgets. We won’t release the person into God’s hands.

Ignorance. We’ve not been taught how to respond to hurts and painful situations. We find it difficult to forgive because we haven’t experienced others forgiving us.

The Keys to Forgiving

One of the keys to a forgiving spirit is to see the freedom it will bring us, and perhaps a restoration of the relationship.

A second key is that we have to want to change. We must want to rid ourselves of the guilt, allow peace to fill us and then move on with our life.

Results of Forgiveness

When we think of forgiving others we usually don’t think of the benefits and how our life will be changed for the better.

Freedom from bondage. We have instant freedom from our internal turmoil. Our bitterness is gone. We don’t feel tied to our past any longer.

Pain from memories begins to fade. As we let go of our grip on the past, the pain from our memories begins to fade. As the pain lessens, we spend less time dwelling upon our past.

We see the forgiven person in a different light. We can slowly change how we feel towards the person we forgave.

Possible reconciliation. Relationships now have the freedom to grow and develop into healthy, loving relationships.

As you can see from the above, forgiveness is something we must do to get rid of the bitterness, resentment and anger. This is something we must do daily, even for the small things that people do that affect us.

Yes You Do Have Power To Change

Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do super abundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]. Ephesians 3:20 [AMPC emphasis added]

How would you act differently if you knew beyond any shadow of doubt that you DO have power inside you to change?

As a Christian, we have God’s power residing inside us. But we don’t access it because we don’t know we have it nor how to put it to use.

God will not override our decisions, Therefore, it’s up to us to gain the knowledge about this power and then learn how to apply it to our situation. Let’s look at three major keys to accessing this power.

Believe – Get Rid of Your Excuses

We are taught that we don’t have power over our lives, circumstances, nor our future. But we do. The sooner we begin to believe this, the sooner we can do what’s necessary to transform our situations.

This belief of having power to change contradicts what society is teaching addicts, alcoholics, people with mental illness, people struggling with health issues or finances—that they are powerless to change.

Jesus said at Matthew 19:26: With men this is impossible, but all things are possible with God. Now it’s up to us to change our belief. And Jesus will help us: I believe, help me with my unbelief (Mark 9:24).

To help solidify our new belief, we have to look at the excuses we use which contain an element of unbelief:

• I am an addict … a person with mental illness … the doctors say I have this ailment … I can’t rise above my financial situation, etc.
• It is so-and-so’s fault that I am the way I am and I can’t change.
• It’s impossible for me to change, I’ve failed so many times!

What are your excuses? Make a list of them in order to identify the lies. Then find Scriptures that contradict those lies and write those down. From this day forward we must take 100% responsibility for the outcomes in our lives.

Speak Forth Your Change

Proverbs 18:21 states: Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Many Scriptures teach that what we think and say have power that creates outcomes in our lives. (Do a Google search for Bible verses about speaking.) Even more powerful is to speak forth God’s Word as it contains a promise:

So shall My word be that goes forth out of My mouth: it shall not return to Me void [without producing any effect, useless], but it shall accomplish that which I please and purpose, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:11).

Once you have identified your excuses and looked up God’s promises and Scriptures that counter them, now you have something to look to when you begin to falter in your thinking.

After you deal with the excuses and your faulty beliefs about who you are and your past, now it is time to speak forth your future. This is powerful. Remember, you have God’s power inside you and this is one of the main ways to access it.

So, what are your dreams for your future? What are your hopes and dreams? These are pictures of what you want to do, not what you “don’t want to do (your current situation).”

Write out some statements about the future you want and locate Scriptures to help you in your journey to get there.

A personal example is my verse for Victorious Achievers and all the big visions I have for it which are supported by the verse for this ministry, especially the financial support needed:

And God is able to make all grace (every favor and earthly blessing) come to you in abundance, so that you may always and under all circumstances and whatever the need be self-sufficient [possessing enough to require no aid or support and furnished in abundance for every good work and charitable donation] 2 Corinthians 9:8.

When doubt and discouragement start to come, I recite this verse from memory—to remind myself of God’s promise and faithfulness to fulfill what He has called me to do.

Do you have a main verse to support the vision for your life that God has called you to fulfill? Have you memorized it so it’s available at your moment of doubt?

Take Physical Actions

I see a lot of people say they don’t have any power to change, but I rarely see someone do the physical things required if they knew they did have the power.

“I can’t stop my addiction.” Physically stop going to your dealer, stop making calls to set up a score, stop verbalizing your inadequacies, etc. Now, determine what physical actions you will do instead: preferably something to help you draw closer to obtaining your goals for an awesome future.

“I can’t do that because I have a mental illness.” Stop using the label of “mentally ill.” I talk to people every week who are so focused on their inability to do something because of this label that has been put on them. What are some physical actions you can take to go toward a goal you thought was impossible because of your identity of a mentally ill person? Write them down.

“I will never increase my financial income.” If you knew (believed) that your financial circumstances could be changed, what would you do? Financial income can be improved by following systems that work and are successful for others. It’s not always a personal, internal blockage that stops us. If it worked to others, it CAN work for me too! Just do it! The power shows up when you take the action (instead of only planning and learning).

Leave a reply below on one or two actions you will take as a result of reading this article.

I don’t know where you are at in your journey with the person in your life who is addicted to alcohol or drugs. But I do recognize you have a lot of unanswered questions around this relationship.

I know I did.

How can you “influence” this person? I’m sure you’ve heard that you cannot “change” an addict. In fact, we can’t change anybody besides ourselves. You can’t change a toddler, but you can influence the child’s behavior and plenty of books exist on how to do this.

But where’s the book to help the loved ones of an addict to not only “influence” the addict, but also help you take back YOUR life?

Your life can be one without all the drama . . .

I’m not saying it’s going to be easy to change, but I do have a process that you can follow that will help you change. And as you change, you can teach the addict the same process so they can get hope and start making little changes too.

If you want quick access to this process, check out my book on Amazon: My Friend Is an Addict – What Can I Do? Use the Roadmap Out of Addiction to Influence Your Friend And To Take Back Your Life.

You can always email me your questions regarding your personal situation. Kathy@VictoriousAchievers.com