How Can I Restore Trust After Addiction Treatment? Here’s 5 Ways To Restore Trust While Healing

Having the support of friends and family is critical during your treatment and recovery process. However, it is not easy to face the people you love when you know you have hurt or betrayed them. No matter how guilty you may feel about the behaviors associated with your addiction, apologizing, and even gaining forgiveness does not mean that you've restored trust. 

Repairing trust in relationships is hard, especially when addiction is involved. However, it's crucial that you do so, and there are steps you can take that will help. 

Why Restoring Trust Is Important 

In an article from Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment, experts claim that to reach and maintain abstinence from drugs and alcohol, "[I]t is crucial to maintain positive relationships and to engage self-agency to protect oneself from 
being influenced by negative relationships." This facet of your recovery should be a motivating factor rather than something you feel pressured to do. The support of your loved ones will encourage you along your journey.  

During your addiction, your behavior could have been dangerous, violent, manipulative, or simply unpredictable. Likewise, you may have encountered financial problems, legal troubles, and more. Coming to terms with how your behaviors may have affected your loved ones and handling such issues is part of a successful recovery. 

Even if you are devoted to staying sober and intent on being a better person, a pattern of lying in your past can prevent your loved ones from trusting you — even during recovery. Regaining their trust requires patience, understanding, and hard work.  

Trusting Yourself While Managing Addiction  

When trying to regain trust from those around you, you also need to work on trusting yourself. The odds are you made mistakes that you are ashamed of, and your addiction probably scared you. You may be in fear of relapsing … but trusting yourself means you have self-control. You need to learn how to trust yourself and your instincts if you expect those around you also to trust you. 

It can be hard to take accountability for your actions and forgive yourself at the same time. However, you need to accept the things you've done while letting them remain in the past. Shaming yourself or sitting in guilt will not push you forward but only hold you back. Here are some things you can do to regain trust in yourself: 

• Be kind to yourself. 

• Forgive yourself for mistakes and weak moments, as these are parts of your journey. 

• Practice self-care. 

• Believe in yourself and your abilities. 

• Have faith and confidence that you can accomplish your goals. 

• Trust your ability to make it through rough times. 

• Set your moral code and follow it. 

With practice, you can develop a strong sense of self, which you may have lost within your addiction.  

Restoring Trust While Managing Addiction 

If you can't trust yourself, how do you expect others to? Once you believe that you can stay true to your word, you can help others believe that as well. When you have built up your self-confidence, you can show others that they can have that same confidence in you.  

Things may have changed for you while working through recovery, but any sort of betrayal in your past is still fresh in their minds. It can feel odd to prove to your loved ones that you've changed, but you must earn their trust back. Here are steps you can take to restore others' trust in you: 

#1. Take responsibility: Do not be a victim. Yes, you have a disease, but blaming trauma or addiction for your choices will not help you gain trust from anyone. If you own up to your actions and take responsibility, the people in your life will be much more open to letting you back in.  

#2. Family counseling: If your loved ones are open to family counseling, it is an excellent outlet for honesty. Counseling is a safe space for everyone to open up and feel heard. 

#3. Be honest: Be truthful about everything. Do not hold back about things you want to apologize for or how you hope to move forward. Lacking honesty only increases the risk of relapse and reduces your odds of restoring trust. 

#4. Be trustworthy: Stay true to your word. Even if you said you would do the dishes and don't do it, that could ingrain a sense of distrust in the people around you.  

#5. Continue communicating: Restoring trust in addiction is not a one-time conversation. You need to keep the lines of communication open and hear out your loved ones.  

#6. Be patient: Others will not begin to trust you overnight; be prepared to work hard and wait for the trust to return. 

Restoring trust when you are recovering from addiction to drugs or alcohol is complicated, but it's essential to your success. Showing yourself and others that you can live up to your word and be reliable takes time, and patience is key to rebuilding trust with loved ones. 

You are facing a long journey of recovery and having the support of those around you will help you stick to your program, but it won't happen overnight. Learning to take responsibility for your actions and forgive yourself can push you to become stronger and more reliable. 

Having Faith Means Having Faith In Yourself 

Likewise, having faith and belief in yourself can help you remain sober and honest. The people you love need time to see how you've grown, and you need to give them that time to learn how to trust you again. Use the many resources offered at DetoxNearMe.com to incorporate rebuilding trust in your relationships into your recovery plan.