As you enter recovery and begin the task of identifying your reasons for healing, remembering your core values is necessary. Core values vary from family to family and in individuals. However, values assist you in moving forward with your recovery. Understand that everybody makes mistakes and abandons their values at some point in their lives, so try not to become discouraged if you have lost touch with your values. With forgiveness, self-love, and trust in your Higher Power, you can reconnect with your core values.
What Are Core Values?
Core values are your beliefs about right and wrong and include those most essential to you as an individual. Core values can consist of honesty, perseverance, consistency, accountability, and many other beliefs about the right and wrong ways to approach life.
Having a solid set of core values improves your self-confidence, self-esteem, and relationships with others. Your core values also give you a sense of purpose and belonging to others who share your values.
Core Values Help You to Know Who You Are
Identifying who you are as an individual comes from knowing your belief system and understanding what is most important to you. In the beginning stages of recovery, not being able to identify those core values is not uncommon. You may have spent a significant amount of time avoiding the idea of those values as you succumbed to the weight of addiction.
Addiction can rob you of integrity, loyalty, kindness, meaning, and purpose. As you lose your most important values, you might begin to feel like you are losing yourself. Slipping further into addiction is often the result of this loss, and the cycle continues.
What Happens When You Lose Your Sense of Core Values?
Losing your sense of core values can set in motion an emotional roller coaster of anger, shame, self-loathing, and a sense of failure. You do not have to stay on this roller coaster. There is hope to rebuild your life. The disease of addiction robs so many of who they are and what they value in life. Addiction does not have to be lifelong.
You can rebuild your life, rediscover your values, and maybe even discover other core values necessary to who you want to be. As you learn about yourself and the changes addiction made in your life, you will rediscover what is most important to you. With this growth, your shame and suffering will cease, and you will rediscover joy.
Three Examples of Core Values
#1. Honesty and Integrity
Honesty and integrity are two values similar in that they encourage being truthful in your life and how you live your life. Being honest is critical to recovery as you face the effects your addiction has had on your life and the lives of those around you. Integrity is about living a good life and doing your best, being honest, and faithful to yourself and others.
#2. Being a Good Steward in Your Education
Addiction often steals a person’s sense of accomplishment and willingness to engage with life surrounding careers and education. Failing classes and recognizing the importance of learning about others and the world could create a significant setback as you again try to engage during recovery. As you enter recovery from your addiction, your willingness to engage with the world and be a good steward of your present education and future goals will become easier. You can overcome your previous lack of engagement and focus as you relearn how to live out your core values and identify what is most important for you and your future.
#3. Sense of Loyalty
Your relationships with family and friends may have suffered due to your addiction to alcohol or other substances. You may have lied and stolen and disregarded your values as you fell deeper into addictive behaviors. Your acting outside of your values does not make you a bad person, but one who is fallible. You can make amends and build friendships once again. Understanding the importance of loyalty and trusting your friends, and being trustworthy will assist you in creating a life worth living within your core values.
Your recovery is dependent upon you identifying what is most important to who you want to be as a person. You need to identify your values and relearn how to apply them to your behaviors. You can create a new legacy for yourself and become the person you always wanted to be. Addiction does not have to be lifelong. You can overcome the behaviors, your mistakes and build the life you want and deserve. There is hope and healing.
Learning who you are as an individual might be difficult after struggling to manage addiction; you may have abandoned or even forgotten your core values. Rediscovering your core values will help you heal from addiction to alcohol or other substances or behaviors. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is available now. You and your family do not have to suffer alone. At Clearfork Academy, we assist with every step of the recovery process. We offer Christ-Centered treatment in residential and intensive outpatient settings, providing options for your family’s individual needs. We can also help you relearn your core values and identify the person you want to be. We believe that there is always hope for healing from addiction. Find out more and call Clearfork Academy today at (817) 259-2597. Remember, there is always help for you to live the life you want, free from addiction.
Originally from the Saginaw, Eagle Mountain area, Austin Davis earned a Bachelor of Science in Pastoral Ministry from Lee University in Cleveland, TN and a Master of Arts in Counseling from The Church of God Theological Seminary. He then went on to become a Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor in the State of Texas.
Austin’s professional history includes both local church ministry and clinical counseling. At a young age, he began serving youth at the local church in various capacities which led to clinical training and education. Austin gained a vast knowledge of mental health disorders while working in state and public mental health hospitals. This is where he was exposed to almost every type of diagnosis and carries this experience into the daily treatment.
Austin’s longtime passion is Clearfork Academy, a christ-centered residential facility focused on mental health and substance abuse. He finds joy and fulfillment working with “difficult” clients that challenge his heart and clinical skill set. It is his hope and desire that each resident that passes through Clearfork Academy will be one step closer to their created design.
Austin’s greatest pleasures in life are being a husband to his wife, and a father to his growing children. He serves at his local church by playing guitar, speaking and helping with tech arts. Austin also enjoys being physically active, reading, woodworking, and music.
