Helping other people in recovery through sharing of ourselves is beneficial to them, but it is also powerfully healing for us as well. We stand to learn so much, about ourselves and our lives, about our strengths and our gifts, and about the recovery process and all it can entail.
Addiction can cause us to feel totally down on ourselves. We’re filled with shame, guilt, embarrassment, regret and remorse. We suffer from insecurity, self-hate and self-rejection. When we help other people in recovery, through sharing our stories and being a source of support for them, we learn that we do in fact have goodness within us. We aren’t defined by our mistakes and wrongdoings. We don’t have to be limited by our pain or fear. We can be bigger and better than we ever thought possible. We’re reminded of our gifts of empathy, compassion and understanding. The lessons we’ve learned can directly help someone else to learn something valuable they could not have learned in exactly the same way without us. Our unique stories can be eye-opening for other people and help them in their journey. When we share, we encourage others to share also, and this can be an important step in their healing process.
Sharing enables us to learn how to give of ourselves. We often have shut down and closed ourselves off from other people. We’ve become alienated from our families and communities. We haven’t connected or been in fellowship with others in a long time. When we support others, we remember what it means to share of ourselves through own personal stories and experiences. We see that what we’ve been through is not only useful to our development but also valuable to other people.
Sharing allows us to apply our life lessons to a cause outside of ourselves. We develop the courage to share our personal experiences. We see firsthand how strong and resilient we truly are. We learn that our trauma doesn’t have to destroy us, our fears don’t have to hold us back. We learn that we are bigger than our pain. We learn how to be a supportive friend, how to be loyal, caring and understanding. We learn how to listen, how to communicate, how to process our thoughts and feelings and help others to do the same. Relationship building is often something we neglected while struggling with addiction, but in recovery we have a chance to develop and then implement this very useful skill through sharing of ourselves.
The community at Bayview Recovery is full of like-minded people, committed to healing and supporting each other’s recovery. Call 888-570-7154 today.
