Tips for Making Amends in Recovery Addiction Resources

For many, this is one of the most important components of recovery, because it allows them to work on rebuilding their relationships and letting go of those they cannot repair. Our team works closely with you throughout this process to help you achieve your goals in recovery. It can be tempting to say things like “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you,” but try to avoid these blanket statements. They miss the opportunity to be truly reflective about how your wrongdoings have impacted the other person and can be misread. The other person may hear the same statement as exasperation with them or a minimizing of the ways you’ve hurt them. Instead, try to reference specific times when you hurt the other person and/or let them down.

• Making amends with the people you’ve fallen out with as you’re thinking about mortality and what happens when you die is one way of finding emotional freedom and closure.
• Perhaps you often let down your friends and family by not fulfilling promises.
• You can start making amends by showing up, even if it’s years later, to do the things you said you’d do.
• Should others be unreceptive or outcomes aren’t as planned, don’t blame yourself.

This action can demonstrate the person’s new way of life in recovery. It goes beyond simply apologizing to taking steps to right a wrong. Whenever possible, those in recovery are encouraged to make direct amends face-to-face with those they’d harmed while living in addiction. Whether or not you’re intimately familiar with the Twelve Steps of AA, you’ve probably heard of Step Nine. Making Amends with Others has positioned itself in the public eye to a degree that many of the other eleven steps haven’t. That’s because it attempts to rectify the outward consequences of the disease.

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Every person enrolled in a drug and alcohol rehab program will have a different experience making amends. Thankfully, a substance abuse treatment plan can help you on your road to recovery. Throughout your addiction treatment, it’s important to understand that the things you learn need to be applied to your everyday life. Being able to make amends for the pain you caused during your addiction can make a huge difference in your recovery. It can also bring your friends and family back to you, so you’ll have a support system. Making amends is about acknowledging and correcting the harm you have inflicted on your family or friends during active addiction.

In these circumstances, you can make an indirect amend to rectify the wrong in the best way possible. Giving back to the community and helping others is a common way to make an indirect amend when you are in recovery. Direct amends involves meeting the individual in person to correct your wrongdoings.

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In most cases, the offender owes apologies to the people closest to them, like their friends, parents, and children. These promises are often the most difficult to keep because addiction plays a decisive role in a person’s ability to live up to their promises. Their parent may feel more pain for their addicted child’s inability to get sober than the material items lost due to the thefts. Oregon Trail Recovery is an incredible treatment center 100% dedicated to their clients and supporting them in obtaining long-term high-quality sobriety. The staff and their person centered approach made the experience comfortable and helped put my mind at ease. I’m so grateful to OTR for the second chance I now have at living a happy sober life.

• What about the late nights that we kept our parents up worrying?
• We do not receive any commission or fee that is dependent upon which treatment provider a caller chooses.
• An important element of step nine is that those in recovery have already begun making amends to themselves by changing some of their behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.

Get in the habit of crediting yourself when you do something good. It’s easy to point out what’s going wrong in life, but taking the time to acknowledge positive https://ecosoberhouse.com/ things makes them all the more powerful. You can rewrite your narrative and begin to form a positive perspective of yourself that leads to self-forgivness.

What It Means to Make Amends in Recovery

An amend involves rectifying or making right what was wrong. For example, say that you stole $20 from your brother while you were using. In the midst of your ninth step, you say to him “I’m so sorry that I stole that money from you and used it for drugs”. A true amend would be giving him $20 back along with the apology. Unfortunately, there are many things that we do in our using that we can not rectify with tangible goods or direct amends. What about the late nights that we kept our parents up worrying?

We can’t know for certain how another person will respond—or even how the interaction might affect us emotionally. So be sure to talk with your sponsor and/or support group about your plan in the event that you need support. The goal in making amends is “to freely admit the damage we’ve done and make our apologies,” according to The Big Book. In some cases, making amends may mean paying or promising to pay “whatever obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe,” the Big Book also states. We do not receive any commission or fee that is dependent upon which treatment provider a caller chooses. Was this relationship positive and healthy before the events in question?

Commit to living a sober and honest life

At Boardwalk Recovery Center, we support clients through the steps and encourage them to make amends when appropriate to restore their relationships and sense of morality. If you want, try sending the letter, living amends or burn the letter as a symbolic gesture of forgiveness if the person is deceased. Forgiveness means letting go of anger, frustration, resentment and negative feelings towards another person or ourselves.

• A recovering addict needs to be able to manage his own feelings and realizations before he can attempt to mend bridges with others.
• In many cases, making direct amends to them is simply not possible.
• At Spearhead Lodge, we believe everyone has the power to make a full recovery from the disease of addiction and to free themselves from the suffering substance abuse causes.
• Getting sober and being able to maintain that sobriety should be your primary focus early on in your recovery.
• Every person enrolled in a drug and alcohol rehab program will have a different experience making amends.