The Benefits Of Stopping Your Whining
During treatment in the early months of recovery from addiction or a co-occurring mental health disorder, people tend to whine and complain. Stuck in a frenzy of new emotions, uncomfortable feelings, and agitating symptoms of withdrawal, there is room for whining. However, with chronic complaining often comes a lack of gratitude for being where you are, doing what you’re doing– in treatment, getting help. Cutting back on the complaints might help you in more ways than you imagine. Here are just a few of them:
When You Don’t Complain, You Don’t Focus On The Negative
Complaining is just an ongoing expression of negative thoughts and thinking negative things. In fact, that is the purpose of complaining. When you make a formal complaint, you are expressing a negative experience. You are hoping that the company or business in question will take action to apologize for their behaviors and make positive changes. Complaining can have an end, when it has a purpose. Otherwise, complaining carries on with no purpose. Endless, purposeless complaining is just swimming in a sea of negativity. Ruminating on the past in such a way that it continues to dominate your present moment, isn’t mentally health.
When You Don’t Complain, You Get More Done
Negativity can weigh you down. Have you ever had a conversation with someone where all they do is complain? It’s exhausting! There is only so much negativity one can handle. If you are working on your recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, or from a co-occurring mental health disorder, you need as much positivity and energy as you can, for there is work to be done. Rather than focusing on complaining about something which has now happened in the past, you look toward the future. You free up your time and energy to focus on what can be done now, and moving forward, rather than on the past.
When You Don’t Complain, You Learn A Valuable Lesson
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” This is one of the most popular sayings in recovery. Life will present you people, problems, places, and situations, over which you will have no control. You can only change yourself. Recreational abuse of drugs and alcohol is often a form of coping. The euphoric effects produced by mind altering substances gives someone a sense of control or helps them feel out of control. Drugs and alcohol changed the way they felt. You can change the way you feel about things happening in life without turning to substances. Not complaining is one of many ways to practice that.
Harmony Place offers a continuum of care from residential detox to transitional living complete with vocational services. Our goal is to see each client through to discovering a happy way to live. For a private consultation and more information on all of our available treatment programs, call 1-855-652-9048.