Hi Zedhead
We are good people. You are so right! We made mistakes sure – who hasn’t? Ours had financial consequences but we were never intentionally bad.
Something which I have had to learn and it feels like it has been the missing key to my recovery is self-compassion.
It is so easy for us to accept the blame for everything which goes wrong in life- we spent our time under such stress with this addiction and really hating ourselves. We can easily feel that we deserve any treatment others choose to give us.
We must remember it is an addiction not a choice – taking action to control this addiction however is up to us- and it’s really hard but here we all are doing our best.
Something which helped me hugely was writing a nice letter to myself – a letter like that I would write to a good friend who had messed up- it helped me to understand that I had suffered as much anyone.
It helped to realise that I was really a good person trapped in a bad cycle. It helped me to take the focus off gambling and put it onto me and my hopes and dreams. It was a letter of self compassion, a letter of self forgiveness and I guess a letter which allowed me to soothe the little hurt down-beaten person that hid inside me.
You are now gamble free and you deserve to be !
Keep strong .