Getting more honest in addiction recovery

How can get we get even MORE honest with ourselves in addiction recovery. Three (3) pointers from addiction therapist and coach, Luke Richardson, here.

2
minute read
By Luke Richardson

Working with Honesty in Addiction Treatment

Honesty in addiction treatment and recovery is all important to make the necessary changes needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But how can you continue to look at honesty AFTER you get sober?

More here, with considerations on really getting honest in addiction recovery. Then, we invite you to post your questions or comments in the section at the end. In fact, we’ll do our best to respond to you personally and promptly.

Honesty in the Process of Recovery

We work with honesty in many ways in the process of recovery. We can be honest with ourselves in many ways:

  1. Honest about the choices that we have made.
  2. Honest about the beliefs we have formed about ourselves.
  3. Honest about the beliefs we have of the world we live in.

This plays a big role in overcoming denial. The denial that life has stopped working, that the continuous cycle of destruction must stop.

But honesty goes further than this.

How can we up our game?

1. Start listening honestly.
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”
– Steven R. Covey

To listen honestly is to truly listen, without preconceived limits, outcomes, or ideas. Honest Listening is hearing and receiving without an intent to reply. A desire to understand the conversation and view point of the other.

2. Get honest with “Cause and Effect”.
True honesty looks at the world with a timeless view. Not to short term goals for the day or week, but, “How do my actions, thoughts and words affect the world around me for now and evermore?”

We have a cause and effect relationship to the world around us. This is much like the butterfly effect. One small action can snowball to a much larger one. Honesty allows us to perceive the effect that our efforts, thoughts and beliefs may cause. We live in the effect of our actions , we feel the effect of our thoughts.

3. Start receiving honestly.
The art of receiving and allowing requires an honest look at ourselves. To truly receive compliments, help and gifts with an honest appreciation can take time to find within ourselves.

Honest receiving takes us on journey of asking, “What do I really want?”. To truly receive we need to be honest with our selves about what we are asking for, from our self via our values and belief and from others with our boundaries.

More reading on Honesty in recovery can be found on the Hope Rehab website.

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About the Author: Luke is an Addiction therapist and meditation coach from Sydney Australia at Hope Rehab Thailand. Since 2009, Luke has been working one on one with clients from all around the globe to empower them and find peace.
About the author
Lee Weber is a published author, medical writer, and woman in long-term recovery from addiction. Her latest book, The Definitive Guide to Addiction Interventions is set to reach university bookstores in early 2019.
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