Boundaries can look a lot like punishment from the outside. I remember the first time I put a lock on my own computer, how much it stung, like I’d just signed a confession. … More Boundaries Are Not Punishment

A trigger can be almost anything. It’s not usually one big dramatic event, it’s more often a small moment that quietly starts pulling you down a path toward looking for relief, and if you’re not paying attention, that path ends in relapse. … More Know Your Triggers Before They Know You

Knowing that connection matters and actually knowing how to build it are two different things, and for years I only had the first one. … More Connection Is the Cure

For years, if you’d asked me to describe myself, “addict” would have come out somewhere in the first few sentences, and not as something I’d struggled with, as something I was. … More You Are Not Your Addiction

Nobody in my life knew, for a long time, exactly how bad it had gotten. Not because I was surrounded by people who didn’t care, but because I made sure of it. … More The Loneliness Loop

For most of my struggle, I thought shame was doing me a favor. I figured if I felt bad enough about what I’d done, disgusted enough with myself, it would eventually scare me straight. … More Shame Is Not Your Friend

After I understood that I’d spent years going numb instead of finding calm, I ran straight into a new problem: I had no idea how to actually feel something on purpose. … More Learning to Feel Again

For years, acting out was how I got through things I didn’t want to deal with. If there was a project at work I was dreading, or a conversation I didn’t want to have, acting out is what let me finally sit down and do it. … More The Difference Between Numb and Calm