Traditional ideas of recovery and media representations often paint addiction treatment with a broad brush. As a result, sobriety is usually thought of as the abstinence of substances. However, detox and abstinence are only elements of your journey toward sustained recovery. Recovering from substance use disorder (SUD) and or co-occurring mental health disorders requires a whole-person approach to healing. Thus, understanding the impact of self-stigma is an important step towards maintaining your recovery.
At Driftwood Recovery, we know how important it is to find a meaningful role in life. Finding meaning and purpose is fundamental to believing in your capacity for change and growth. A sense of self can encourage self-compassion and motivation to continue to strive for wellness. However, challenges post-treatment with stressors like stigma can impede your well-being. Further, the impact of self-stigma can rob you of your confidence and hope.
Therefore, understanding the impact of self-stigma can be invaluable to dismantling barriers to a courageous life in recovery. Yet, you may question how self-stigma can dismantle all the work you have done to heal. The impact of self-stigma alone does not lead to relapse but is a powerful obstacle that erodes your resilience. Thus, understanding the impact of self-stigma, further highlights the need to break down the assumptions about treatment and recovery that disrupt adaptive coping strategies.
Assumptions About Treatment and Recovery
Many assumptions about addiction and mental health can cloud judgment on treatment and recovery. Some of the assumptions that can impede your well-being include:
- The loss of friends
- Truth: Disconnecting from friends who still abuse substances is common
- Those friendships were based on substance use
- You learn how to build healthy and mutually supportive sober relationships
- Constant boredom
- Truth: Sobriety gives you the freedom to discover or rediscover sober passions
- Finding sober activities and hobbies can foster joy and fulfillment
- Loss of identity
- Truth: Sobriety can give you the tools to uncover your true identity
- Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is not real sobriety
- Truth: MAT can help reduce withdrawal symptoms and cravings
- Support relapse prevention
- No support post-treatment
- Truth: A comprehensive and holistic approach to treatment supports continuing care resources
- You can access alumni services and resources that support sustained recovery
- Outpatient programs
- Sober living
- Stable housing resources
- Education and employment resources
- Counseling
- Peer support groups
- Family programs
- Alumni meetings, events, and activities
- Relapse equals failure
- Truth: Recovery is a dynamic process, filled with peaks and valleys
- Much like other health challenges, addiction is a disorder that requires individualized trial and error
- Recovery equals cured
- Truth: Recovery is a lifelong process of self-discovery and growth
- Through recovery, you engage in the continuation of self-education, adaptive coping strategies, forming healthy habits, and social support
- Seeking support is a weakness
- Truth: It takes significant courage and bravery to recognize the need for support and to reach out for help
The assumptions associated with treatment and recovery are often unfounded myths that perpetuate stigma. Through the perpetuation of myths about addiction and mental health, stigma is left to fester and rot the sense of self. It is imperative to understand the role stigma plays in recovery.
Understanding the Different Forms of Stigma
In general, stigma refers to the negative attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes people may hold about others. The negative attitude, prejudice, or false beliefs of stigma are often associated with specific traits, seen and unseen health symptoms, and sociocultural circumstances. Through stigma, discrimination occurs, which can increase challenges with others, laws and practices, and how you see yourself. Thus, stigma does not exist as a singular form; rather, there are many intersecting forms of stigma. As the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) notes, stigma can be broken into three categories:
- Social stigma: negative stereotypes that members or perceived members of a group have socially undesirable characteristics
- Built on misunderstandings, partial truths, and generalizations
- Leads to distancing and exclusion
- Structural stigma: discriminatory laws, policies, and practices that negatively impact specific individuals and groups
- Built on explicit and implicit biases
- Leads to unequal access to opportunities, resources, and services
- Housing
- Employment
- Education
- Healthcare
- Criminalization
- Self-stigma: when members of a stigmatized group believe the negative beliefs and stereotypes about themselves
- Built on the pervasive and persistent nature of social and structural stigma
- Leads to shame, guilt, hopelessness, low self-esteem, and the avoidance of support
Further, the impact of self-stigma in particular can be profoundly detrimental to maintaining recovery.
The Impact of Self-Stigma on Recovery
Many different characteristics like race and ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religion are stigmatized. Additionally, groups with physical disabilities, mental illness, and or SUD experience significant stigmatization. In particular, the impact of self-stigma erodes resilience to the challenges of SUD and or co-occurring mental illness. As noted in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, once you internalize negative stereotypes, you are open to physical and psychological harm:
- Self-esteem
- Self-worth
- Self-efficacy
- Health outcomes
- Quality of life
- Healthcare service use
- Increase self-isolation
Yet, how do you overcome the impact of self-stigma?
Dismantling the Impact of Self-Stigma
Stigma is a social injustice that harms countless lives. Although you cannot eradicate social and structural stigma alone, there are steps you can take to lessen the impact of self-stigma in your life. While everyone’s experiences and needs are unique, a strong support system can be invaluable to dismantling the impact of self-stigma. Connecting with your loved ones, peers, and community can support:
- Empowerment
- Self-worth
- Self-compassion
- Self-understanding
- Self-reliance
- Independence
- Knowledge
- Adaptive coping
- Resilience
- Sense of belonging
Through activities and shared experiences, you can form a sense of community with others to thrive in recovery together.
Healing Connections: Overcoming the Impact of Self-Stigma at Driftwood Recovery
At Driftwood Recovery, we know how valuable a peer-driven approach can be for whole-person healing. With a strong alumni family, you can meet, manage, and overcome everyday and unexpected stressors. Moreover, through shared experiences, you are reminded that you are not alone or less than. You are loved, wanted, valued, and worthy of health, recovery, and happiness.
Stigma contributes to myths about treatment and recovery for SUD and mental health disorders. Further, challenges with stigma can come from social stigma, structural stigma, and self-stigma. Each category of stigma can be detrimental, but the impact of self-stigma can be particularly harmful to recovery. Self-stigma can erode your self-esteem and self-worth and increase self-isolation. You become convinced that you are weak, a burden, and unworthy of healing. However, with support, you can rediscover your sense of belonging to thrive. Therefore, at Driftwood Recovery, we are dedicated to fostering a peer-driven alumni to heal through connections built from shared experiences and support. Call us at (512) 759-8330 to learn more today.