The Emotional Toolbox: Addiction Recovery Methods To Help Each And Every One Of Us

Addiction is a long-term battle. We can spend our entire lives wrestling with the anxiety or depression that the specter of addiction can cast over us. A lot of people, unfortunately, suffer relapses, and this can be at the back of our minds when we’ve taken those first tentative steps to finally tackle our addiction. Whether it’s substance, alcohol, tobacco, or even chocolate, recovering from these addictive tendencies boils down to what is inside us and our emotional toolbox…

Avoiding High-Risk Situations

Understanding the triggers of relapse is essential. And to understand where your triggers come from, getting the knowledge of what can be considered high risk for you, is an essential undertaking. It boils down to three aspects; the places, the people, and the things that remind you of your habit. And while it’s not impossible to completely avoid these situations, by getting a better understanding of how they affect you, you can minimize your exposure.

Checking In With Your Emotional State

Understanding if you are more vulnerable today than you were yesterday is something that can be done with mindfulness techniques. It’s essential for us to all get a true opinion of how we are feeling on a specific day. It’s a long journey, and when we get to the point where we have to function, in everyday life, but we still have these urges, there may be little tools that can help you through this. For example, if you want to stop drinking hypnosis sessions could prove to take the edge off by implanting in your subconscious certain triggers to avoid the temptations.

Learning Relaxation And Coping Skills

While you can understand where you are, you still have to function in certain environments; this is where learning coping skills can come in handy. It’s not just beneficial to people who have certain addictions, but it can help us all in life. We need to reduce stress and anxiety where possible, but also gain perspective of the situation. While it’s a cliché that it’s “all in the mind” if you have control over your impulses, you will learn how to understand them and minimize them. And this is where relaxation and coping skills are incredible. We all feel that fight or flight from time to time, and there are numerous breathing exercises that can work to our advantage, but it’s not just about doing these exercises when you feel the tension. More so, it is about implementing this as a regular practice.

Recovering from addiction is not achievable overnight, and when you are classed as an addict, you are one “for life”. But once we’ve admitted to ourselves that we need that little bit of extra help to cope, then we can understand our emotional triggers, how we feel from day to day, but also take the appropriate steps to cope under pressure. Recovery isn’t a quick thing, and now, with pills readily available to cure all ills, we can be forgiven for thinking that we can solve these problems overnight, but recovery isn’t that simple.