Posts by Julie Katz
Can Sad Music Help with Depression?
You might be asking, why would someone who is struggling with depression want to listen to sad music? Most of us would suggest listening to something upbeat and cheerful! It’s not exactly the first thing we recommend when our friends are feeling down. But there’s actually some science behind this suggestion. And it’s related to…
Read MorePTSD and Addiction Recovery: A Process of Healing
“Every day I wake up to a different version of me. Will I be happy or sad, will I feel safe or scared? The things I feel because of my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) aren’t invisible to others. I like to think of myself as a warrior in my own right, because I face invisible…
Read MoreSelf-Care Is Critical, No Matter How Long You’ve Been in Recovery
Self-care is all about nurturing a loving, kind, respectful relationship with ourselves, and it’s takes work – just as other meaningful relationships in our lives do. As an ongoing, lifelong process, we have to remind ourselves to continue building upon that relationship – but if we get too comfortable in our recovery, we may find…
Read MoreWhat is Humility and How Does That Relate to Recovery?
“I find I am at my best when I can let the flow of my experience carry me…” – Carl Rogers The dictionary defines humility as: “a modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness”. As human beings, it’s pretty natural for us to feel an inflated sense of importance. We are so focused…
Read MoreIncorporating Creative Activities in Recovery: Getting Back to the Basics
When we’re kids, we’re much more open to exploring the world with curiosity and wonder. Vince Gowmon, a life coach, counselor, author and more, emphasizes that it’s because children are still connected to their body rather than strictly through their mindset. They’re able to move much more fluidly – and with little association to place…
Read MoreRelapse Prevention & The 12 Steps: What You Need to Know
Relapse prevention is a crucial part of addiction recovery, but it happens gradually. Those in recovery learn of the strategies, coping mechanisms and resources needed to work through troubling emotions such as with anger, guilt, sadness and more. It takes time to learn more about our cravings and triggers, as it’s something that we can’t…
Read MoreHow Men and Women Differ When It Comes to Spirituality and Long-Term Recovery
Men and women are hardwired differently, so it’s natural that they experience addiction, recovery, and the associations that go along with them differently. As DrugFree.org states, biological differences in women means that they can become much more easily dependent on substances; they are also at higher risk of developing health-related issues, such as breast cancer,…
Read MoreMoving Past Shame in Addiction Recovery: Choosing to Move Forward
Shame is defined as, “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.” Shame is a powerful emotion that can cause people to feel worthless, defective, and damaged beyond repair – and for those in addiction recovery, shame can be quite a common feeling. One fundamental area of…
Read MoreIn What Ways Can I Find Freedom Through Sobriety?
The journey to recovery is different for everyone. We’re all made up of unique thought processes, personalities, histories, relationships, painful experiences, accomplishments, health conditions and so much more – it’s only fitting that these elements that make up who we are will go onto influence the way we perceive ourselves and our recovery. As the…
Read MoreHow Do I Overcome Insecurity?
Being insecure is the feeling of believing that you are not good enough. This can cause you to question everything around you as being too good to be true. You can overcome insecurity by understanding the value of your worth and being confident that everything in your life will be fine. Insecurity can lead to…
Read MoreGifts to Give Someone with Anxiety
If you do not have anxiety, it may be hard to understand what your loved one is going through. Whether it is your loved one’s birthday, a special occasion, Christmas, Chanukah, anniversary, or any other holiday, this present you give them will show them how much you care about their struggles with anxiety and that…
Read MoreLearning From Amanda Bynes’s Struggles with Addiction and Mental Illness
Amanda Bynes had a promising career as a child star with a lot of promise. What looked like bizarre behavior on Twitter and her series of arrests were just a cry for help for her mental health disorder. Bynes showed the world how with the use of the internet, we can see how mental illness…
Read MoreIs Social Media Anxiety Real?
Most people who have social media accounts are able to check their notifications without feeling any form of anxiety. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America says that 20% of people with social media account cannot go more than three hours without checking them which can be a symptom of social media anxiety. It is…
Read MoreHow to Help Your Depressed Child
Childhood depression can often be mistaken as just child-like hormones as a part of growing up. According to the Child Mind Institute Children’s Mental Health Report, 60% of children with diagnosable depression are not in treatment. It is important not to ignore the signs of childhood depression and to create a safety plan to ensure…
Read MoreWhat Happens When You Stop Drinking Alcohol?
Consuming large quantities of alcohol can have horrible effects on your body as well as your social life. You could be feeling very sluggish, sick, develop cancers such as towards your liver and colon, and you will not be the best you can be. When you stop drinking alcohol, you will get back everything you…
Read MoreHow to Overcome Anxiety on Your First Day of Work
It can be very stressful starting a new job. Even if this is familiar work that you have done for other companies, every company has their own rules and policies that must be followed. It is important to remember how normal it is to be nervous on your first day of work and to breathe,…
Read MoreHow to Go From Being Your Own Worst Enemy to Your Own Best Friend
We all have a tendency to be our own critic. We tend not to look at ourselves in a very appealing light when we compare ourselves to others. It is important to remind yourself every day why you stand out from the rest and how liking yourself is a very important quality people like to…
Read MoreHow Do Women Handle Anxiety Differently Than Men?
Because women are expected to be perfect in their roles of wife and mother, there is a lot of anxiety and stress that they experience to ensure they do a good job. The hormones of a woman tend to fluctuate more than a man which can affect their mood and they also do not hold…
Read MoreThe Addictive Qualities of Fortnite
Fortnite is one of the most popular video games in the world with over 125 million members playing. There have been reports of parents sending children to rehab as a result of their non-stop playing. In order to better understand what makes Fortnite so addicting, you should know the qualities that are in a video…
Read MoreWhat Gifts Do I Give Someone in Recovery?
It may be hard to shop for someone who is in recovery from substance abuse. If you ask them what kind of present they would want during a holiday, they may ask for money which leaves them the opportunity to buy more drugs. It is important to be mindful about what present you give to…
Read MoreSongs About Suicide Prevention
When the song “1-800-273-8255” by Logic premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline rose up to 27%. Sometimes, you just need that one special song to remind you that it is time for you to seek help. By listening to songs about suicide prevention, you can listen…
Read MoreCo-Occurring Disorders: What Are They?
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) conducted a study in 2014 to assess how many people had substance use disorders (SUDs) and how many had mental illness. They found that 20.2 million adults experienced a SUD, while 43.6 million were experiencing a mental illness; of these, a total of 7.9 million people…
Read MoreDealing with Embarrassment after Relapse in Long-Term Sobriety
Relapse is one of the most commonly feared topics of addiction recovery, mostly because nobody likes to think of themselves as “starting over” or “going back to Day 1”. The reality is the relapse is a normal part of recovery; we’re naturally going to slip back into old addictive patterns of behavior from time to…
Read MoreJournaling Methods to Help with Anxiety
Anxiety means having a lot of troubling, worrisome thoughts racing in your head. If you do not find a healthy outlet for those thoughts, you might feel like you are going to explode one day. By using different journaling methods to clear your mind, you will feel like a huge weight has been lifted off…
Read MoreWhat’s New In Mental Health Science?
Because mental illness continues to have a giant stigma, this makes it continually hard to make advancements towards new treatment methods. The National Alliance on Mental illness say that 43.8 million Americans experience mental illness a year. With that many people struggling with their symptoms, researchers have been making huge leaps in 2018 towards new…
Read MoreThe Best Jobs for Those Living with Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can create a barrier when it comes to applying for companies. You get nervous when you are surrounded by people and in roles where you are forced to socialize with others. If you are struggling with social anxiety, you are better off trying to find jobs where you can work on your own…
Read MoreWhat Should Not Be Ignored When You Are Depressed
Depression can make you feel so sad that you feel no urge to want to get out of bed when you wake up. By doing nothing about your depression, you are only making it persist or get worsen. According to The Power of Positivity, there are certain elements that may seem minor in treating but…
Read MoreWhen Have You Lost Control with Exercise?
Exercising is very good for your body as you are strengthening the bones in your body, getting your heart pumping, and releasing all of those feel-good endorphins to keep you on an all-day high. But too much of a good thing can turn into a bad thing if you lose control of what makes you…
Read MoreCouples Rehab- Healing Together
It has been known to happen where couples are both suffering with addiction and can cause serious problems in their home in regards to their children, health, and finances. If one person in the relationship goes to rehab, there is a big chance of relapsing if your partner refuses to quit. If both people in…
Read MoreHow to Fight Through Depression at Work
Going to work can do wonders for your depression in that it will give you something to do every week that you will enjoy and feel rewarded by the end of your shift. Work can also worsen your depression from the sense of having no control or if you do not like your job. Since…
Read MoreWhat Are The Little Things That Can Help Someone with Depression?
While helping someone with depression can mean learning more about depression itself, it’s also the little things you do that can have a great impact in their overall well-being. According to Huffington Post, the smallest but most important things you can do for someone with depression can be offering gifts of kindness or looking for…
Read MoreStaying Motivated in Long-Term Sobriety
As human beings, we’re naturally going to “fall off the bandwagon” every now and then. We’re going to make mistakes, get lost, take a few steps back and find our way again – and it’s all part of the journey. Even those who have experienced 10 excellent, sober years may find their recovery motivation start…
Read MoreHow to Have a Sober St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is known for going to pubs and drinking pints of beer with your friends. If you are in recovery, on the other hand, you should not feel like you need to miss out on the fun because you can longer drink. You can celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by remembering what the holiday…
Read MoreWhat Can Make Your Depression Worse
Having depression is when your sadness interferes with your everyday activities. Even if you are in treatment for your depression such as going to therapy and taking medication, it can still mean that you are repeating habits that can make your depression worse. It is important to make a change in your routine to ensure…
Read MoreHow Weather Can Affect the Severity of Alcohol
If you are too hot or too cold and you are drinking, you will not be aware of your own body’s temperature. This can cause you to develop a lot of health problems whether it is heat stroke from being in the sun for too long or you freeze to death. It is important that…
Read MoreRelapse Prevention: How Can I Discover What Triggers Me Personally?
We’re all made up of different thoughts, feelings and life experiences. Just as a person entering a new relationship will need to learn more about what they can/cannot say to their new beau because of past experiences, you’ll need to learn about yourself in recovery to discover what triggers you. Not one of us are…
Read MoreContinuing to Build Your Spirituality in Long-Term Recovery: 12-Step Programs
12-Step programs have helped thousands of people strengthen their recovery over time, and much of it is because of their focus on spirituality. Those in active addiction often find a void that they’re trying to fill: a sense of loneliness, anger, discomfort, pain, or something else that is causing them despair. It is often through…
Read MoreWhat Strategies Are There to be More Mindful in the Present Moment?
Author Lawrence Peltz stated in his book titled, The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery, “Rather than feeling compelled to fall into our addictive behavior whenever we feel the urge, we discover that we can create a gap between impulse and action – we take a breath, feel whatever is behind our urge, and decide whether or…
Read MoreMaintaining Recovery Long After Treatment: Key Elements to a Lifestyle of Sobriety
Living a life of sobriety is easily one of the most rewarding paths you could take. You’ve spent so much time working on bettering yourself, and you can probably list many of the steps that you’ve taken over the past year (or years) that have lifted you up in recovery. A lifestyle of sobriety is…
Read MoreHow Can I Celebrate Milestones in My Recovery?
Congratulations! Whether it’s your 1-week, 1-month, 1-year or 1-decade of sobriety, you’ve been taking some amazing strides towards your health and wellbeing. Only you can take the steps that you’ve been taking to improve your life, and you’ve been taking them. Milestones are a huge part of recovery because they remind people of how far…
Read MoreCould You Be Sabotaging Your Sobriety?
A common assumption for those who’ve completed treatment is that they’ve got everything figured out. They’ve made it through a year, or two years, or twenty years or more of sobriety thus far, so they shouldn’t have to worry anymore about relapse, right? Well, not quite – recovery is a lifelong process, and that doesn’t…
Read MoreAcceptance, Gratitude and Strength: Positive Messages Received in Recovery
When we’re in the throes of addiction, we often lose sight of what’s real. We become confused about our sense of purpose in life, sometimes with the belief that substances are all we’re meant to seek out. We may lose aspects of our lives that were once near and dear to our hearts – such…
Read MoreWhat are the Dangers of Complacency?
Complacency is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, “a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.” We all become complacent from time to time; we stop pushing ourselves to achieve new goals at work, we become a bit too comfortable in our relationship, and we nonetheless…
Read MoreRecovery Life: The Importance of Establishing Structure in Your Daily Routine
When we’re actively involved in addiction, our daily schedule involves the intense desire to abuse substances. As Harvard Health indicates, craving, loss of control, and continued involvement in substances – despite their consequences – essentially hardwires our brain to want nothing else. In 2017, CNBC covered a study that surveyed 1,057 individuals who identified as…
Read More7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Hide Your Depression
Depression is the number one cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. In America, an estimated 16 million adults suffer an episode of depression every single year. Symptoms of a depressive epsiode can include persistent sadness, fatigue, disturbed sleep, physical aches, poor concentration, loss of appetite, slow movements, and thoughts of death,…
Read MoreCoping With Time Change When You’re In Recovery
For people in the US, daylight saving time begins on March 10. That means we set our clocks forward and lose an hour of the day. For most people, the beginning of daylight saving is harder than the end. Most people’s circadian rhythms are slightly longer than 24 hours, so losing an hour feels like…
Read MoreFinding Our Purpose
A universal part of the human experience, whether or not we’re living with addiction and mental illness, is the existential crisis of not knowing our purpose in life. When we’re recovering from addiction, we often feel an acute sense of overwhelm and pressure when we experience this kind of crisis. We already feel like failures…
Read MoreWhich Habits Will Make You Happier in Addiction Recovery?
Everyone wants to be happy, but for someone recovering from addiction, happiness can mean the difference between a sustained recovery and falling back into old destructive patterns. Much of what we do in life is determined by our habits, those things we do every day without even thinking about them. Bad habits can sabotage your…
Read More5 Ways to Exercise When You Aren’t “In The Mood”
Regular exercise is one of the best things you can do for yourself in recovery. Numerous studies have supported the many benefits of exercise. It has been shown to increase activity in your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for executive functions like planning, self-control, emotional regulation, concentration, and working memory. It has…
Read MoreCelebrating Sobriety
We live in a culture that glamorizes substance use but stigmatizes addiction. We celebrate drinking alcohol and using drugs, but we demonize addicts. Our mainstream culture, our popular media, our music, television, movies, video games, social media and entertainment all trivialize and normalize excessive drinking, drug use and addiction. We’re brainwashed to think that a…
Read MoreHow Do You Overcome Fear of Change in Addiction Recovery?
Change can be scary for anyone. You don’t quite know what to expect. You may face new problems you don’t know how to deal with. Your life might get worse. Fear of change is especially scary for someone considering getting treatment for addiction. Addiction is often characterized by set patterns and rigid behavior. People with…
Read MoreCreating Healthy Habits in Recovery
A successful, lasting recovery depends on our willingness to shed our unhealthy habits and replace them with new, empowering ones. Living with addiction, we’ve developed all kinds of habits that fed our insecurities and self-hate, that perpetuated our cycles of self-destructiveness and self-sabotage, that exacerbated our addictions and kept us living in pain and fear.…
Read MoreUnusual Ways to Improve Your Mood
Whether you’ve struggled with addiction, depression, or anxiety, you are likely to have days, or even weeks, when you can’t seem to get out of a funk. If you’ve struggled with depression, you might fear the onset of another episode. If you have recently started addiction recovery, you may be suffering from post-acute-withdrawal syndrome, or…
Read MoreDo Your Habits Sabotage Happiness in Your Recovery?
Finding happiness is challenging for anyone, and it may be especially challenging for someone recovering from addiction. Maintaining a positive attitude in recovery requires learning new skills and ways of thinking. On top of that, you have to learn to manage cravings and deal with life’s stress without resorting to old destructive coping mechanisms. Many…
Read MoreThe Journey of Recovery
After years of living with painful addictions and mental health issues, we’re inclined to think that our recovery will be straightforward and simple, based on a foundation of sobriety, committed abstinence from our addictive substance or behavior. While sobriety is a large part of recovery, it is only one part. Our recovery is not a…
Read MoreReasons to Stop Drinking Today
For some people, the reasons to stop drinking are obvious. They may have a health problem such as liver disease or heart disease and their doctor has advised quitting. They may have had a brush with the law, such as a fight or DUI. It may be obvious that drinking is hurting them in other…
Read MoreWhy Don’t People Seek Help for Mental Illness?
Awareness of mental illness and the need for treatment has been growing in recent years. This is in large part due to campaigns designed to raise awareness of depression, addiction, bipolar disorder, and suicide, as well as more celebrities being open about their own mental health struggles. Despite this progress, many people who need help…
Read MoreBreaking Down the Barriers of Shame and Stigma
One of the things so many of us continue to carry with us into our recovery, even after doing some great, transformative healing work, is our sense of shame. We hold onto intense guilt for years after the mistake or wrongdoing in question. We refuse to forgive ourselves. We see ourselves as shameful, immoral, bad…
Read More6 Ways to Make Relaxation Part of Your Addiction Recovery
Relaxation is an essential recovery skill for several reasons. First, and most importantly, stress is a major relapse trigger. When you feel stressed and overwhelmed, you become negative and feel like recovery is pointless. Often times, you have used drugs and alcohol for years as a way to cope with stress. Due to the way…
Read MoreCould Impostor Syndrome Threaten My Recovery?
Impostor syndrome is the feeling that your successes in life are merely the result of luck or deception and that you don’t really deserve to be where you are. People with impostor syndrome often feel like frauds. Whenever someone compliments them on having done something well, they feel inwardly guilty, like they’ve managed to pull…
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