Substance use treatment at High Focus Centers is comprehensive, involving multiple avenues of help from qualified professionals, from group therapy to psychiatric care. Together, they improve your quality of life. However, success also relies on you doing your part to reach recovery, and your part is to acquire recovery skills that will support your treatment plan and prevent relapse after initial treatment. They may seem minor, but they form the foundation of drug-free life, reducing your risk of returning to unhealthy life choices.
What Are Recovery Skills?
Essentially, these are tools that aid in achieving and sustaining recovery. Common skills people use include:
- Trigger identification: Using substances can be a way to numb feelings and escape reality. Eliminating this distraction means you’ll need to learn how to identify what you’re feeling in a given moment and why, so you can pinpoint your real needs and meet them in a healthy manner.
- Stress management: Triggers and other life stressors can pull you back to wanting to use substances. Discover better methods of handling life’s challenges. Effective options are meditation, exercise, and rest.
- Accountability: Substance use recovery isn’t meant to be a solo journey. You need a support system to keep you accountable and provide encouragement. When you feel triggered to use, reach out to trustworthy people and be honest about how you feel.
- Boundaries: Come up with a plan to avoid relapse, as well as set boundaries that will help you evade triggers in the first place, such as staying away from certain situations, people, and places. Even something as simple as regular food and water intake can prevent the desire to act out.
Overall, anything that provides a healthy and effective way to cope with life can be a recovery skill you can add to your toolbox.
How They Aid in Substance Use Treatment
These skills are imperative to your treatment because they teach you alternative strategies to using substances in facing setbacks and painful emotions. They keep you grounded in the present moment and give you a framework to use as you work through obstacles while remaining sober. They also offer you constant support when medication or therapy is unavailable.
How They Benefit Life After Treatment
After you receive initial treatment, you may experience self-doubt about maintaining recovery. With recovery skills, that transition is made easier. You have the skills you need to continue on the path to long-term recovery.
An added benefit of recovery skills is that they’re useful in all areas of life, not just in overcoming substance use disorders. For example, if there’s a problem at work, you can name your emotion and not be afraid to feel it, reach out to someone for wise advice, and then bring up the matter with your boss in an assertive yet respectful way, if necessary. Or, if you’re taking a road trip, practicing mindfulness can keep you alert and aware.
Recovery skills training is an essential part of the substance use treatment programs at High Focus Centers. Our staff utilizes evidence-based treatment models to help clients overcome addiction. If you or someone you love are struggling with a substance use disorder, contact our team today and start your path to recovery.
