Recovery During the Holidays: Navigating Triggers and Staying Sober
Recovery during the holidays can be challenging. Whether this is your first holiday season staying sober or your seventieth, the stress that comes from holiday events, traditions, family get-togethers, family fights, expectations, financial pressure, and more can make it difficult to avoid triggers, let alone stay sober. How to Maintain Recovery During the Holidays During the holiday season, take time to check in with yourself, especially if this is the first holiday where you are trying to remain sober. It’s easy to feel angry, overwhelmed, or anxious, which are perfectly normal feelings. However, if you don’t take time to assess how you are feeling and what you can do to manage those emotions, those normal feelings might lead to a relapse. That’s why it’s important to have strategies for navigating triggers and maintaining sobriety during the holidays. Be Open and Honest Be open and honest about your recovery. The holiday season is particularly stressful for many people because of how big a role alcohol or drug use might play in events or parties. It’s important to be open and honest about your journey in recovery so that other people understand and respect your wishes. Don’t let someone pressure you with the old adage that “one drink won’t hurt.” Instead, avoid stressful or potentially vulnerable situations, and for other events, consider bringing non-alcoholic beverages. You might be surprised at how many other people, for whatever reason, are also staying sober and might appreciate an opportunity to still socialize with a tasty beverage that won’t get them into trouble. Self-Care Sobriety during the holidays is best done when you have an established self-care routine. Techniques that you may have learned from therapy or support groups can be particularly useful when practiced all year round, but they can be especially important when you face extra stress and triggers during the holiday season. Maintaining sobriety during the holidays is a lot easier if you plan ahead. By planning ahead, you can: Get Support Get support. Help can come in so many forms, like a sponsor, a friend, or someone who sympathizes with what you are going through. You might need to schedule extra support group meetings or group therapy sessions so that you are in a good place and have the skills to maintain your emotional bandwidth at parties or events. You might even consider getting professional support from The Differents, where you can participate in our Reno intensive outpatient programs or partial hospitalization programs right before the stress of the holiday season begins to build. Change Your Focus Maintaining recovery during the holidays might mean changing your focus. While you will likely expend a lot of energy checking in with yourself and how you are feeling, you can also go back to some of the basic tenets of SMART and 12-step programs, which is to give back and see how you can serve others. When you change your focus, you can get a much bigger picture of what’s happening in the world and gain some perspective about your issues with recovery. It can also offer an opportunity to deepen your connection with others and focus on the things that matter most during an otherwise complicated holiday season. Overall, what matters most is that you know your limits and that you know when and how to reach out to others if you are in need. There’s really no way to avoid all triggers during the holiday season, but what you can do is apply techniques and tools to navigate those triggers and cope with the stress instead of letting it encourage a relapse. Let The Differents lend a helping hand if you are struggling with your recovery this holiday season. Contact our trusted drug rehab in Reno today.
The Role of Forgiveness in Addiction Recovery
Addiction is a chronic condition, the effects of which can spread from the person with an addiction to their loved ones. If you or someone close to you is struggling with addiction, you can increase the chances of recovery by offering and accepting forgiveness. Why Forgiveness Matters If you don’t forgive yourself, you are more likely to harbor negative thoughts about yourself and have low self-esteem, which can lead to relapse. If you truly believe that you are a bad person or you’re incapable of change, it’s more likely that you will see every setback as confirmation of the incorrect belief and let it stop your progress. If you have a family member who has struggled with addiction, you need to forgive them so that you can repair the relationship and support them in their recovery. Individuals are more likely to complete drug and alcohol rehab programs and maintain sobriety long-term if they have support and involvement from their family or close friends. Forgiveness in Addiction Recovery: Forgiveness of the Self and Others When you seek professional help for addiction, many of the therapeutic opportunities you have provide a chance for deep reflection and getting to know yourself. During these sessions, you’ll have a chance to review what aspects of your life may have contributed to addiction, how your addiction may have hurt those around you, and what negative automatic thoughts you have about yourself. Forgiving Yourself Negative automatic thoughts like guilt and shame can come from knowing that you have stumbled along your path and chosen things that have hurt yourself or others. It’s not uncommon to let these feelings define who you are when struggling with addiction, but it shouldn’t be that way. With addiction, your full recovery comes when you learn to forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made. By forgiving yourself, you can learn to build your self-esteem and recognize your true potential. Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy can include sessions where you identify negative automatic thoughts stemming from low self-esteem and feelings of resentment or shame about yourself. You can learn strategies for changing these automatic thoughts to positive versions and forgiving yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has failures, but they’re only bad if you can’t learn from them, and you can’t learn from them if you don’t learn to forgive yourself. Forgiving Others If you have a loved one who has struggled with addiction, you also play an important role in recovery. Addiction and forgiveness are concepts that have to apply to everyone who is touched by the chronic condition. If your spouse, parent, sibling, child, or even close friend has struggled with addiction and is in recovery, you’ll need to be aware of how important it is for you to offer them forgiveness for mistakes they have made. This might take place in family therapy sessions or support group sessions. It’s not uncommon for addiction to cause a great deal of mistrust, damage relationships, hinder communication, and make every party involved feel as though they are stuck and can’t move forward or rebuild their bonds. But forgiveness in addiction recovery helps rebuild these broken aspects of relationships. Addiction and Forgiveness with The Differents In each of our programs at our Nevada addiction treatment center, clients benefit from several therapies, including forgiveness in addiction recovery. With our Reno partial hospitalization program, intensive outpatient program, and withdrawal management programs, clients can enjoy holistic treatment, including: Each of these holistic treatments is there to enhance forgiveness in addiction recovery by encouraging self-awareness–so that you might know better what you need from those around you–and reflections on what has led to addiction–so that you might ask forgiveness of those who were affected by it. Forgiveness plays an essential role in moving forward in recovery. Without it, you will find yourself tripping emotionally and mentally over barriers on your path that won’t be resolved until forgiveness is given. At The Differents, we know that addiction and forgiveness go hand in hand, so we work hard to ensure you can achieve it during your time with us. Contact us today to learn more about forgiveness in addiction recovery and how our holistic care can put you on the right path.
