3 Steps To Rebuilding Self-Esteem in Early Recovery

How do you rebuild your self esteem in the early recovery process? Many of you have been asking for me to address the issue of self esteem. So in this video, I'm going to give you three very, very actionable steps that you can take to build your self esteem and your self confidence in a way that is actually going to last. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you the science and psychology of addiction and recovery so that you can get your life and your family back on track. And today's video really focuses in on the recovery side of things. Now there are a lot of people out there who think that drug or alcohol addiction is a direct result of bad self esteem. And I guess in some situations it could be. But what I can tell you with some pretty solid certainty is when you have a drug or alcohol problem or any other kind of addiction, it will result in bad self esteem. And the reason that happens is because you behave in ways that you normally wouldn't because of the addiction. You violate your own boundaries in ways that you normally wouldn't. You let go of things that are important to you. You hurt people who you really care about. And the end result is feeling totally, totally horrible about yourself. And it's really, really hard to dig out of the hole of addiction when you feel terrible and crappy and horrible about yourself. In fact, your addiction really wants you to think horrible and crappy and terrible about yourself because it keeps you down low. You don't have the strength to dig yourself up out of the hole. Think about it like being in a relationship with somebody that's abusive. What's one of the things that always happened? The abusive person begins to attack the self esteem of the other person to make sure that they don't fight back. Well, let me tell you what addiction has absolutely attacked your self esteem and your self confidence. It's one of the big huge ways it keeps you stuck. It's probably a an even more important substantial factor than the detox or the withdrawal or the psychological part of addiction. It's the self esteem part. It's the self worth. Am I worth more? Can I do better? Do I have what it takes to overcome addiction? If you're really, really struggling, a good place to start is going to be to build your self esteem because this gives you the strength and the tools and the courage and the belief that you can win this battle. And let me tell you what you it's a totally winnable battle. So let's get started on building that self esteem and confidence so you can go out there and win this battle. Now, the first thing to think about is the idea that when you have bad self esteem, you really stop taking care of yourself. Because deep down inside you feel like you're not worth it, you're not good enough, you're not going to do these good things anyway. And that not taking care of yourself can come in many, many forms. Maybe you let your hygiene go or your appearance go. Maybe you stop taking care of your house or your car. Because let's face it, when you're in active addiction, you're so dang busy you can't manage all of life's stuff and manage those things at the same time. And it's really easy to let them go because the addiction is running the show. And ultimately those things fall off of the priority list. So if you found yourself in this situation where you've been treating yourself badly and allowing bad habits to take over your life, which then make you feel even worse about yourself, which then makes yourself seem lower, it makes you not take care of yourself even more. You've got to reverse this cycle. The first easiest step you can take to help you feel better about yourself is to start taking care of yourself. And maybe it's simple like, I'm going to get up, get dressed and fix my hair, my makeup, if you wear makeup every day, I'm going to brush my teeth. Maybe I'm even going to put some white strips on my teeth if that'll make you feel better. I'm going to make it my bed. I'm going to clean my car, I'm going to take a wash rag and wipe off my shoes a little bit so that they don't look so dirty. Any of these small things actually is a big, big help to you because you know when you get up and you get dressed and you fix your hair and you put your face on and your clothes aren't all wrinkled up, you just generally feel better almost immediately, right? So maybe one of your early recovery goals is just to get up, brush your teeth, brush your hair, get looking as nice as possible, and make up your bed. You don't have to look like a movie star. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying make yourself presentable in a way that you feel good about it. If someone came and knocked on your door and you weren't expecting them, would you be hiding in the other room because you were too scared to answer? The door because you look like a hot mess. If that's the case, get up, get dressed. Even if you don't have anywhere to go, or if you're doing the whole work from home thing, get up and get dressed. It's going to help you feel better. Taking care of yourself in these small ways goes a long way to helping you feel better. The next step, step number two, that you need to take to build your self esteem and confidence is to address your negative self talk. This is that little voice in your head that's always telling you you're crappy. You can't, you'll never amount to this. You don't have what it takes. I want you to start thinking about that little voice in your head like some kind of abusive relationship that you're in. In fact, I have a video, I kind of call it like a monster mouth. It's a monster mouth in your head that's abusing you. Doesn't mean that it's true. So stop listening to it. In fact, when you hear those negative self talk thoughts, you've got to confront them. Because when you allow yourself to go down that rabbit hole, ultimately what you're doing is you're letting yourself off the hook and you're not holding yourself accountable for doing and accomplishing all the things that you know deep down inside that you could if you just try. If you don't want to do something, I'm totally cool. If you want to say I don't want to because. But no more, I can't. Because, okay, no more, I can't help it, right? That's such a negative bad thought. And if you're telling yourself you can't help it, guess what? Then you can't help becomes your truth and your reality. Now another couple of really common really bad negative self talk statements that you might fall into is if you think to yourself I always blank or I never blank. Anytime you're thinking or saying always and never, you're using really black and white thinking, which is rarely ever even true. I'm okay if you want to say I often or regularly this happens to me. But it's probably not true that you always blank. It's probably not true that you always oversleep or you always fail your test or you always say the wrong things, right? Maybe you do that sometimes, but you probably don't do it all the time, right? So confront these negative thinking patterns. And ultimately what it boils down to is you have to hold yourself accountable for dealing with the things that you struggle with the first step to doing that is to know that you can do that. Which leads me to my third step of addressing self esteem and that is addressing your expectation of yourself and others. You've got to raise the bar on your expectations because guess what? You get out of life what you're looking for. You get out of life what you expect. In fact, I've got a whole video about that. Now. If you are either thinking about getting recovery or you're in early recovery or in your recovery but you need a little tune up, then I'm going to put the link in the Description to our 30 day jumpstart program that you can sign up for. It is 100% free and it's going to help you jumpstart that recovery self esteem process. And I'm also going to put a link in the description to our Recovery to Go program which is a community built around helping you address these types of situations. Now up next, I want you to watch that video about changing your expectations. Because like I said before, it is the third and very important step of building your self confidence and your self esteem.