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Accountability is holding yourself responsible for your actions and commitments. For many, this is the most crucial knot to untangle at the heart of an effective recovery. Unless you accept yourself as you were and learn from your mistakes, you won’t have that urgent inner source of motivation to push you forward into healing and away from destructive behavior. Take the time to reflect on who you were and realize that you have to heal the parts of you that caused you to be that way in order to move ahead.
How Can I Take Responsibility for My Past?
While it’s certainly important to make amends to the people you’ve hurt over the course of your addiction, the deepest-rooted part of recovery is creating a change within your own identity. You may be tempted to distance yourself from the person you were in addiction by saying, “That was the old me.” Though it may be painful or unsettling to accept the fact that you’re the same person you were then, this is what you must do. Distancing yourself from your past actions puts you at risk to repeat the same mistakes.
Once you’ve accepted yourself, the most impactful way you can take responsibility for your past is to learn from it so that you make better decisions in the present. Internalize the reality of how your actions affected your life and the lives of the people around you. Make a conscious habit of identifying how the old you would have acted and then do the opposite. Let your past inform your present so that you can rise above and truly show yourself that you’ve grown.
How Does Making Amends Make a Difference?
You aren’t the only one you hurt during your struggle with addiction. Spend some time thinking about the ways that your addiction affected the people around you. Some may be obvious and some will reveal themselves with time. A good rule of thumb can be to reach out to anyone for whom hearing from you could potentially improve things. If you think someone doesn’t want to hear from you at this time, don’t reach out just to make yourself feel better. Use this opportunity to act with the benefit of others in mind.
As apologizing and owning up to your mistakes helps heal your relationships, it will also help you to accept your new responsibility in becoming the person you want to be. Every relationship you mend will reinforce the importance of moving forward. Each person you open up to about recovery will be another source of accountability to back up your words with action.
Finally, do this with yourself as well. Apologize to yourself for the ways you let yourself down or prevented yourself from achieving your potential. Accept your own apology, forgive yourself for your past mistakes, and you’ll become your own strongest source of accountability for becoming the version of yourself that you wanted to be all along.
How Hard Should I Be on Myself?
To face your past head-on can be extremely painful. It can fill you with dread and disgust at yourself, leading you to doubt whether you are capable of getting better. You must look your past in the face and accept yourself, past and present, and, at the same time, you must remember that you are already on the path to bettering yourself. Your past self wasn’t in recovery--you are. Your past self made mistakes that you won’t make again. Remember that although it may feel like you have a long way to go, you’ve already come a long way from the way you used to be. Celebrate your successes. You’re already doing it.
Being overly hard on yourself will only lead you to burnout and despair. A healthy approach to self-improvement will balance accountability with encouragement. START UP RECOVERY approaches recovery on the basis of four pillars: accountability, education, community, and love. Holding yourself accountable gives you the impetus to learn from your past, understand yourself better, and make change in yourself. A supportive community will encourage you to succeed, comfort you when you’re low, and hold you accountable when you slip up. Love is what you’re doing all this for--the love of your family and friends, your love for others, and the love you deserve to accept. Combining these factors leads to a much more sustainable and lasting recovery than simply raking yourself over the coals. Kindness with yourself is just as important as kindness with others.
Taking accountability doesn’t end at apologizing to people around you. Just as important as overcoming addiction is the commitment to learn from your mistakes and adapt your present so that you become a stronger, healthier version of yourself. If you’re serious about making change in your life, placing yourself in a conducive environment can make a world of difference. START UP RECOVERY provides a state-of-the-art sober living center for people who are ready to press the reset button and rebuild their lives by their own design. We connect you with vital personal resources, including one-on-one counseling and valuable peer support, to make sure that you use this chance to get the most you can out of your healing process. You don’t have to take on your recovery alone. This is a defining moment for the person you are going to be next, so take it on with intention and achieve your potential. Call (310) 773-3809 to learn more.