Recovering individuals are often overwhelmed by the idea of change. As part of their all-or-nothing thinking, they assume that change means they must change everything in their lives. It helps them to know that there is usually only a small percent of their lives that needs to be changed. It can also be assuring to know that most people have the same problems and need to make similar changes.
This means engaging in activities that fulfill various aspects of life, such as work, social connections, and personal growth. Individuals should aim to nurture relationships with supportive friends and family while avoiding contacts or environments that may trigger a desire to use substances. Effective support from family and friends can significantly enhance the chances of successful recovery by ensuring that individuals feel less alone in their journey.
Of course, discretion can be used when it comes to sharing your story. The circle of people you share with often starts small but grows as you become more comfortable. In the repair stage of recovery, individuals will focus on repairing the damage addiction has caused. This often leads to dealing with difficult conversations and feelings.
Family and Friends: A Supportive Network
With help, you can arm yourself with the knowledge and tools you need to cope with and help prevent relapse in the future. Sobriety and recovery is difficult, even with the help of others. You can ask for help from those who love you or even go to meetings. These are some of the ways that asking for help can benefit you. Knowing when you need to ask for help is an important part of staying sober. Users often lie, cheat, and steal, in order to get the high that they want.
It is useful to understand these basic rules and start to live by them to help your chances of avoiding relapse. You might think that just not using is enough to keep you in recovery. It is helpful at first to make your life revolve around sobriety and recovery. This impacts everything from your thoughts and actions to who you socialize with. Arbor Behavioral Healthcare wants to help you reduce your relapses as much as possible and keep you on the path to recovery. We know, however, that no one is perfect and we’re here to help you anyways.
Eat a healthier lunch so you’re not as hungry at the end of the day. Learn how to relax so that you’re not filled with fears and resentments. These are some of the components of HALT, mentioned earlier. This is one of the reasons that self-help groups are important.
- Living a balanced lifestyle is an essential part of relapse prevention.
- The more you lie, the less you like yourself, which makes you want to escape your feelings, which leads to more using and more lying.
- If this is avoided, everything contributing to your addiction will still be there, causing relapses.
- The only way to recover is total and complete abstinence from drugs and alcohol.
- Mindfulness techniques such as meditation and breathing exercises can promote self-awareness and emotional regulation.
The Role of Counseling in Medication-Assisted Treatment
Those needs don’t disappear in recovery; learning to satisfy them and practicing healthy alternatives and coping skills is self-care. Relapse is a complex, often unavoidable part of the recovery journey. It can lead to loneliness and increased anxiety, making individuals more susceptible to negative thoughts and behaviors. Connecting with a support network helps mitigate these risks. Engaging in support groups and consistent communication with loved ones fortifies one’s recovery by providing reassurance and shared experiences.
Here are some common things that people need to change in recovery. A common question about honesty is how honest should a person be when dealing with past lies. The general answer is that honesty is always preferable, except where it may harm others 14,21.
Cognitive Therapy and Relapse Prevention
These triggers can elicit feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression, increasing the likelihood of a relapse. The first rule of recovery emphasizes the importance of embracing life changes to create a new, healthier lifestyle. It’s essential to replace unhealthy behaviors or negative thinking patterns that have led to addiction with positive alternatives. Addicts must lie about getting their drug, hiding the drug, denying the consequences, and planning their next relapse. Eventually, addicted individuals end up lying to themselves. Clinical experience shows that when clients feel they cannot be completely honest, it is a sign of emotional relapse.
Our Lancaster, California, drug rehab center is committed to providing the guidance, resources, and support necessary for effective relapse prevention and recovery. There are many modern therapies available to deal with standard relapse prevention. Seek help from therapists, counselors, or medical professionals who specialize in addiction recovery and cognitive therapy. They can provide guidance, strategies, and emotional support. Committing to continuous learning and self-improvement is vital for personal growth and preventing relapse. Engage in activities that expand your knowledge, cultivate new skills, and nurture your spiritual and emotional well-being.
Call us Today to Find Your Path to Recovery
It’s about a few little changes that can change the path of your life. You don’t recover from an addiction by simply stopping using. You recover by creating a new life where it is easier to not use. If you don’t create a new life, then all the factors that brought you to your addiction will eventually catch up with you again. There are five simple rules that cover most of what you need to do in recovery. If you are ever in doubt of what to do, or if you are on the right track, ask yourself if you are following these five simple rules.
RULE 1: Change Your Life So that it’s Easier to Not Use
When individuals continue to refer to their using days as “fun,” they continue to downplay the negative consequences of addiction. Expectancy theory has shown that when people expect to have fun, they usually do, and when they expect that something will not be fun, it usually isn’t 15. In the early stages of substance abuse, using is mostly a positive experience for those who are emotionally and genetically predisposed.
Aftercare helps individuals build coping skills, develop addiction relapse prevention strategies, and create a relapse prevention plan to handle high-risk situations. Most importantly, aftercare instills confidence, reminding individuals that they’re not alone as they work toward long-term sobriety. For those living with addiction, everyday life can feel like a relentless cycle of cravings, use, and guilt. Families often struggle too, dealing with the pain of watching a loved one battle substance use disorder. The good news is that addiction is treatable, and recovery is possible with the right support.
How to Develop Effective Conflict Resolution Skills
One mistake people make in the early stages of recovery is they think that honesty means being honest about other people. They think they should share what’s “wrong” with other people. Focusing on what you don’t like about others is easy because it deflects attention from yourself.
Long-term recovery is not achieved simply by making the decision to not use and sticking with it. Sticking with it requires you to change your life so that not using it becomes easier. This might involve examining current relationships, avoiding triggering locations, and learning how to change negative thought patterns. Making no changes to your lifestyle will result in being exposed to temptations and triggers that were in place during active addiction.
These activities not only distract from cravings but also foster a sense of accomplishment and joy, which are vital for sustained recovery. Regularly practicing self-care helps individuals build resilience against the emotional and mental challenges that may otherwise jeopardize their sobriety. Self-care plays a critical role in preventing relapse by ensuring that individuals maintain both their physical and mental well-being. Engaging in regular recovery meetings is crucial as it provides a support network and helps individuals remain focused on their recovery journey. Creating a tailored relapse prevention plan is essential for anyone in recovery.
Our team includes licensed therapists and counselors, medical professionals, support staff, and community outreach coordinators. Mind-body relaxation is a form of self-care because it creates part of a new life in recovery by finding time to decompress and relax. Honesty is about relapse prevention and the five rules of recovery self-honesty involving the reality of your addiction and its impact on your life, but also being completely honest within your recovery support group. Recovery means creating a new life for yourself so it’s easier not to use. If this is avoided, everything contributing to your addiction will still be there, causing relapses. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) explains that experience shows the five rules can define most relapses.
What if there was a way to navigate the road to recovery with confidence and clarity, armed with tools and strategies to keep you on track? Introducing the “5 rules of recovery”, a roadmap to relapse prevention that will empower you to take control of your recovery and build a lasting, fulfilling life. More broadly speaking, I believe that recovering individuals need to learn to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. They often assume that non-addicts don’t have the same problems or experience the same negative emotions. Therefore, they feel it is defensible or necessary to escape their negative feelings. The cognitive challenge is to indicate that negative feelings are not signs of failure, but a normal part of life and opportunities for growth.