9 Signs Your Loved One is Sabotaging Their Own Recovery

Finding and sustaining recovery is hard. It’s crucial to have a solid recovery plan that keeps you on track and helps you navigate life’s challenges. Sometimes, however, it can be hard to tell if we’re on the right track. Could you be self-sabotaging your recovery process and not even know it? What about a loved one? Could someone you care about be taking risks that could put their progress in jeopardy?

Let’s take a look at what this might look like, and the steps you can take to get back on track.

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What Is Self-Sabotaging?

Self-sabotage is another way of saying self-destruction. Much like addiction, it is a cycle of self-harm. Before you enter active recovery, this might mean using drugs despite the negative consequences you encounter.

When you’re in active recovery, self-sabotaging means either taking risks with your recovery or stopping the very things that helped you find recovery in the first place.

Bottom line: Self-sabotage in recovery is compromising your recovery goals through action or inaction.

Nine Signs of Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage isn’t always obvious. It helps to know what to look for. Here are some of the most common ways people are sabotaging their own recovery:

1. Feeling Stress

Chronic stress is a red flag for people in recovery. We’re not talking about one stressful encounter at work, but rather repeated episodes of stress. Stress is bad news because many people in recovery are still learning positive coping strategies that don’t involve alcohol or drugs.

It takes time to practice these new coping skills. Stress is a surefire way of knocking yourself off track. When this happens, you’re more likely to reach for those old coping strategies, which could include unhealthy habits like drug or alcohol use.

Keep in mind that stress can be the gateway to self-destruction. Be sure to keep it in check.

Stress is a surefire way of knocking yourself off track. When this happens, you’re more likely to reach for those old coping strategies, like drug or alcohol use.

2. Experiencing Resentfulness

Resentments are toxic to recovery. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous states: “Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.”

Whether you subscribe to AA for your recovery or not, this statement is accurate. Resentment is a very negative feeling that sabotages recovery.

3. Negative Thinking or Thought Distortions

Similar to resentment, negative thinking can cause someone to begin sabotaging their own recovery. You could add a negative mental narrative to a conversation. It can also be as simple as having an interaction that causes despair or low self-esteem.

Negative thinking can also bring up other unhelpful feelings like jealousy and self-hatred. All of these negative feelings can result in reaching for substances to ease the pain.

4. Socially Isolating

Staying away from recovery friends or skipping a few meetings here and there can feel like a small issue. Yet, before you know it, you’ve missed a month of meetings and a ton of social gatherings with recovery friends.

Like using substances to ease pain or stress, isolating yourself leads to avoiding your recovery. As a rule of thumb, try not to miss more than one meeting (unless you’re sick, of course).

5. Stopping Recovery Activities

Not attending meetings, not calling their sponsor, and canceling therapy appointments are all signs of someone sabotaging their own recovery. These are the activities designed to keep you sober. When you don’t participate in these activities, you lose focus on what’s important.

It’s helpful to remember that, even though life can get in the way of recovery, you wouldn’t have such an abundant and busy life without recovery.

6. Bottling up Emotions

Bottling up your emotions is another way of sabotaging your own recovery. In this case, you’re not allowing yourself to process stress and feelings that naturally develop over the course of the day. Therapy, group meetings, journaling, and more are all critical outlets for our emotions.

Not allowing your emotions to flow can lead to feelings of resentment and even relapse.

7. Relapsing

It goes without saying that returning to substance use is a sign of someone sabotaging their own recovery. Addiction is a relapsing condition. It’s important to not dwell on your relapse and return to what’s important: your recovery.

Feeling guilt and shame about using will only keep you stuck in using substances to deal with those emotions. The next right step is going to a meeting, calling your sponsor, or getting an emergency appointment with your therapist or treatment facility. Relapse is not the end of the road.

8. Refusing Help

If a loved one comes to you voicing their concern about your recovery, they likely have something useful to say. Sometimes, it takes someone else to spot that we’re not ourselves for us to recognize that we might be off-track.

The best thing to do is listen and reach out to your recovery mentor or therapist to check in with them and develop a plan.

9. Developing Unhealthy Relationships

Maybe you’ve been hanging around with the “fun” people in recovery, but instead of working on yourself, you’re out playing around. While fun is definitely a part of recovery, you may have been using socializing to avoid the real work of recovery.

We’re not saying don’t have fun! Rather, it’s important to keep a balance between having fun and doing the things necessary to maintain your recovery.