Best 925 quotes in «recovery quotes» category

We require to get out of our own built up Cocoons, these need to be worn, softened and freed through.

We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason.

We take action when we have the honesty to admit that things are still broken, despite our best efforts otherwise. We take action when we hold ourselves continually open to new techniques, remaining resolutely receptive to new sources of support and new feeds of information. We take action when we are willing, in each new moment, to try again.

What a lucky girl you are to have found this place and with it your story, Alice. What a lucky girl you are to get the chance to learn and know where you come from and who you belong to.

whatever happened to me in my formative years – my past – it basically shaped who I am today.

What makes a successful relationship? . . . Research shows that when a partner dominates another through the abuse of power, it is a prime deterrent to a successful relationship (Greenberg and Goldman 2008). When a controlling partner uses coercive tactics to overpower you, it is a setup for the relationship to fail - without exception. Research about marital relationships in general reveals that husbands are likely to receive more support from their spouse and this fair far better, while women tend to receive less support and experience greater stress from giving support. These are among the conditions that contribute to the higher rates of depression in women.

What life means, it came to him (or he seemed to overhear it), it means all the time, not just at isolated dramatic moments that never happened. If life means anything at all, it means whatever it means every hour, every minute, through any episode big or small, if only one has the awareness to sense it … each step, the dramatic and the humdrum alike — every fleeting second of the way.

What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.

When I first stopped trying to fix other people, I turned my attention to 'curing' myself. I was in a hurry to get this healing process over. I wanted immediate recovery from the effects of growing up in a family riddled with alcoholism and from being married to an alcoholic. I looked forward to the day I would graduate from Al-Anon and get on with my life. As year two and year three passed, I was still in the program. I began to despair as the character defects I had worked so long to overcome came back to haunt me, particularly during times of stress and during periods when I didn't attend meetings. I have severe arthritis in my joints. To cope with my condition, I have to assess my body each day and patiently respond to its needs. Some days I need a warm bath to get going in the morning. On other days I apply a medicated rub to the painful areas. Yet other days some light stretching and exercise help to loosen me up. I'ave accepted that my arthritis will never go away. It's a condition I manage daily with consistent, on-going care. One day I made a connection between my medical condition and my struggle with recovery. I began to look at myself as having 'arthritis of the personality,' requiring patient, continuous care to keep me from 'stiffening' into old habits and attitudes. This care includes attending meetings, reading Al-Anon literature, calling my sponsor, and engaging in service. Now, as long as I practice patience, recovery is a manageable and adventurous process instead of an arduously sought end point.

When Clients say they're wrestling with depression, what I choose to hear is that they're in a state of decompression -- in a deserved limbo, taking a little time to recover from a something that set them back... I don't see the hopelessness of the here-and-now. I see the hope in what's to come.

When addiction steals a loved one, it takes with it a piece of your soul.

When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others.

When I met Maria at Sachs' apartment in 1979, she hadn't slept with a man in close to three years. It took her that long to recover from the shock of the beating, and abstinence was not a choice so much as a necessity, the only possible cure. As much as the physical humiliation she had suffered, the incident with Jerome had been a spiritual defeat. For the first time in her life, Maria had been chastened. She had stepped over the boundaries of herself, and the brutality of that experience had altered her sense of who she was. Until then, she had imagined herself capable of any thing: any adventure, any transgression, any dare. She had felt stronger than other people, immunized against the ravages and failures that afflict the rest of humanity. After the switch with Lilian, she learned how badly she had deceived herself. She was weak, she discovered, a person hemmed in by her own fears and inner constraints, as mortal and confused as anyone else. It took her three years to repair the damage (to the extent that it was ever repaired), and when we crossed paths at Sachs's apartment that night, she was more or less ready to emerge from her shell.

When I realized that my body had been damaged from adverse environmental exposures, I decided to use it for medical research and to develop the recovery techniques.

When the body forces you to STOP it's saying, hey buddy, you've gone too far.

When I was around Sunny, there was no time to dream about some easier, prettier, more comprehensible, less fucked-up existence. Now was all we had: Sunny lifting her eyes to meet mine. Cupping water in my own hands to rinse the blood off her head. Sunny’s tongue on my nose, her tail thudding on my leg. The reach of my hand across her spine. The words of comfort and rage and fear and sadness and hope that I spoke only in her presence.

When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense — first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.

when these little ones don’t receive the love, they need in their homes, they seek attention outside.

When they begin to feel that others don’t love them, they already consider their worth and consider that they are not worth living at all.

When was the last time you woke up and wished you'd had just one more drink the night before? I have never regretted not drinking. Say this to yourself, and you'll get through anything.

When the sum of our faith and humility is sufficient, it reaches a type of spiritual critical mass and hope is fostered and grows. A willing heart emerges which generates the ability for us to submit to the process of recovery.

When you are aligned with the truth of who you truly are, then you experience bliss.

When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this hope by connecting with others. I’ve found it not only in individuals who have dealt with eating disorders but also in people who have battled addictions and those who have survived abuse, cancer, and broken hearts. I have found much-needed hope in my passions and dreams for the future. I’ve found it in prayer. Real hope combined with real actions has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through. In other words, sitting around and simply hoping that things will change won’t pick you up after a fall. Hope only gives you strength when you use it as a tool to move forward. Taking real action with a hopeful mind will pull you off the ground that eighth time and beyond.

When you are recovering from something, don't be in such a hurry to jump back into it full-throttle. Ease up. Hold yourself back a little. Pace yourself. It's OK to do what you can, but there is no need to go crazy with it. Don't let your enthusiasm be the very thing that hurts you! Grace and Ease.

When you are on the brink of giving up...then you’re right around the corner of where you were headed.

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive.

When you have spent long years in the dark, there is joy in seeing the light and pleasure, above all, in the ordinary.

When you enable the addict, you nourish the disease.

When you find yourself drowning in self-hate, you have to remind yourself that you weren’t born feeling this way. That at some point in your journey, some person or experience sent you the message that there was something wrong with who you are, and you internalized those messages and took them on as your truth. But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and those judgments aren’t about you. And in the same way that you learned to think badly of yourself, you can learn to think new, self-loving and accepting thoughts. You can learn to challenge those beliefs, take away their power, and reclaim your own. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen over night. But it is possible. And it starts when you decide that there has to be more to life than this pain you feel. It starts when you decide that you deserve to discover it.

When you fall don’t get up until you figure out what tripped you.

While the system of institutional churches of various stripes has been well established, the recovery of the independent assembly in homes, house by house, according to the New Testament, is still in it's infancy. Ironically, it is the assembly located in homes that the apostles labored to build up. Yet two thousand years later, it is still obscure. However, the Lord Jesus, according to His desire, has not given up and is recovering the assembly back to its rightful prominence. Since it is a fresh discovery by many believers in recent decades, trial and error is still taking place as believers learn and negotiate their way back to assembling as prescribed by the early apostles.

While in principle groups for survivors are a good idea, in practice it soon becomes apparent that to organize a successful group is no simple matter. Groups that start out with hope and promise can dissolve acrimoniously, causing pain and disappointment to all involved. The destructive potential of groups is equal to their therapeutic promise. The role of the group leader carries with it a risk of the irresponsible exercise of authority. Conflicts that erupt among group members can all too easily re-create the dynamics of the traumatic event, with group members assuming the roles of perpetrator, accomplice, bystander, victim, and rescuer. Such conflicts can be hurtful to individual participants and can lead to the group’s demise. In order to be successful, a group must have a clear and focused understanding of its therapeutic task and a structure that protects all participants adequately against the dangers of traumatic reenactment. Though groups may vary widely in composition and structure, these basic conditions must be fulfilled without exception. Commonality with other people carries with it all the meanings of the word common. It means belonging to a society, having a public role, being part of that which is universal. It means having a feeling of familiarity, of being known, of communion. It means taking part in the customary, the commonplace, the ordinary, and the everyday. It also carries with it a feeling of smallness, or insignificance, a sense that one’s own troubles are ‘as a drop of rain in the sea.’ The survivor who has achieved commonality with others can rest from her labors. Her recovery is accomplished; all that remains before her is her life.

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn’t to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness—that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life.

Whole night hanged with panic Sparking tears in those big wide eyes.

Why me” goes along to haunt many survivors even today. Why was I abused? Or Why was I not protected?

Why lie, Robert? Why lie? You know that lying is the alcoholics kryptonite, you can’t afford it, the reasonable voice in his head screamed.

Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . .

Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.

With Ed, I always pushed away the good and only heard the bad. Today, I let in the good.

Willpower, though important in its own way, is never enough. In order for you to be truly powerful, you must open up and trust in something beyond yourself—something you cannot prove for certain.

With every step we take we have a choice to make. Our choices determine our actions. Our actions determine who we are.

Will you be all right?" she asked me. It was not an empty question; she genuinely listened for my reply. "In time," I told her, and for the first time, I admitted that was true. As disloyal as the thought felt, I knew that as time passed, I would be myself again. And in that moment, I felt for the first time the sensation that Black Rolf had tried to describe to me. The wolfish part of my soul stirred, and, Yes, you will be yourself again, and that is as it should be, I heard near as clearly as if Nighteyes had truly shared the thought with me.

Within weeks of being at St Camillus, I was up from my wheelchair actually walking. Kathy was holding a gate belt around me and I was using the grab bar, but I was up and walking. This started a mew phase of my recovery.

Without struggle there is no progress.

Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no flashbacks. I wouldn't wake up and think about my histories of violence. I wouldn't smell the yeasty aroma of beer and for a second, for several minutes, for hours, forget where I was. And on and on and on. That day never came, or it hasn't come, and I am no longer waiting for it. A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don't always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is coming. I harbor less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses.

Working out that I am not Mizuko has been an important step towards feeling better. If I have hit on a moral, it is this: the body is our natural barrier. There were lines I should not have crossed, and I did so without permission. I was looking always for correspondences, but meaning is found through difference.

Worry not if you are in darkness and the void sucks you in further. This is not the place we go to die. It’s where we are born and our stories begin.

Yes, you deserved a better childhood, but as a survivor of abuse, you certainly deserve a blissful life.

Would they be cheered by their recovery, or marked for life by their trauma?

Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me—little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.