Many of us in recovery have guilt about things we said or did (or didn’t say or do) during active addiction. We are not always in full control of our actions when we are drinking or using, so we often act in ways that don’t align with our values. Addiction can also lead to secrecy, adding another layer of guilt.
You can take responsibility for the harm you caused without shaming yourself for having an addiction.
Reframing Guilt
When you get sober, those feelings don’t automatically go away—but you can learn to work with them. One method that has worked for me is transforming the guilt into action.
For instance, instead of feeling guilty for lying to someone in your life, you might apologize to them. If you don’t feel like an apology would be welcome, you could try practicing full honesty in other parts of your life.
Sometimes guilt can inspire negative self-worth. For example, we conclude that if we were able to be secretive during active addiction, we must inherently be liars.
But you are not who you were in your worst moments of active addiction. Chronic substance use changes the brain, reducing dopamine receptors[1], imprinting a powerful memory of pleasure onto the substance, and altering the prefrontal cortex[2]—a part of the brain that helps us make decisions and control impulses.
Processing Guilt
Sometimes, as the cliché says, the only way out is through. It can be healing to face your guilt head-on and process it in healthy ways. You might try journaling about the things that make you feel guilty. If you have any creative outlets, you could use them to process these feelings. For example, if you paint, you might make an image of what you think your guilt would look like if it materialized.
If processed healthily, guilt can be a useful emotion. Shame and guilt are often lumped together, but they are separate feelings. Researcher Brené Brown—who has spent decades studying shame and vulnerability—defines shame as when you believe something you’ve done makes you inherently wrong and unworthy of love. She says guilt, on the other hand, is “holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.”[3]
If you sit with that discomfort and understand why you are having it, it can bring you closer to your values. You wouldn’t be guilty about it if it felt right to you. When you have this emotion, you can figure out how to stick more closely to your values in the future. When looked at this way, guilt can be empowering.
If you are struggling with a substance use or mental health disorder, there is hope. TruHealing Centers offers high-quality treatment for addiction and mental health disorders in facilities across the country. Our staff—many of whom are in recovery themselves—will help you build coping skills to process any emotion without using drugs or alcohol. Call an admissions specialist at 410-593-0005.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2948245/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462342/#:~:text=However%2C%20imaging%20studies%20in%20addictive,%2C%20salience%20attribution%20and%20awareness).
[3] https://brenebrown.com/blog/2013/01/14/shame-v-guilt/