What Does Resilience Mean In Recovery?
Resilience can be defined with different, often interchangeable meanings. In the world of addiction recovery, resilience is much more than just a trendy phrase. For anyone considering a sustainable way toward healing, resources such as https://heartwoodrecovery.com/ could provide a sense of hope to engage to the development of skills and supports that promote genuine, sustained change, rather than just a quick fix.
Hope is a significant part of resilience as a learned behavior—no background or history matters—anyone can try out and practice this important trait for themselves. Resilience strengthens and progresses as someone experiences recovery while taking strategic steps and ongoing effort, and can support the expansion of new beginnings or improved lifestyles.
Key Resiliency Strategies
Obtain self-education on your vulnerabilities and strengths; self-awareness is frequently the first step in a meaningful change process. Activity of a Person on a Growth Mindset: Those that engage in recovery with an attitude of lifelong learning (and not feel they need to be perfect) tend to bounce back quickly when they experience slips or setbacks, or other challenges.
- Health habits: Ultimately, building a base of sleep, nutrition, and exercise may appear easy but these habits are solid assists to mental and physical health. When a person takes care of their body, emotions can be better controlled and people tend to have the capacity to tolerate stressful situations better.
- Goal setting: When goal setting, it can be helpful to create smaller tangible steps from larger goals to celebrate along the way.
The importance of community and support networks
Little in this life is as helpful to recovery as community. The simple act of having others on your side (Family, friends, a faith-based group, or peers in/or a recovery meeting) can make impossible, possible. Community is more than support; it adds accountability, perspective and even a place to be vulnerable (safe space). The research shows, time and time again, as the bonds of social ties and bonds become stronger, the less likely there is a risk for relapse and enhanced emotional health.Psychology Today highlighted the importance of connection in recovery from addiction by stating that connection allows us to reduce stress and provides a critical way to cope from shared experience.
There are many who silently struggle with addiction – out of fear of stigma or judgment. Building community in recovery becomes the foundation for sustainable recovery – it’s much easier to believe you can change when you are surrounded by supportive and understanding individuals.
The Science of Resilience and Recovery
Individuals who have experienced addiction and are on the path to recovery will find the contribution of science encouraging and hopeful. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reminds us that individuals can “train” their brains, over time, to resist cravings and negative thinking, through intentional and sustained effort. As individuals create new neural connections associated with healthier models of coping, old habits will become less engrained in the brain and more effective mechanisms of abstaining from drugs will develop. With ongoing therapy, community support, and self-care individuals will find resilience will become a possibility and a certainty.
Useful Tools To Build Resilience Every Day
Resiliency doesn’t have to be anything fancy or elaborate, it will be the little things you do every day that will matter most. Here are some tools to help strengthen your resiliency:
- Take the first five minutes of your morning to practice some mindful breathing, meditating or setting an intention to your day. This practices clearing the noise in your mind and helps with focus.
- Call, text or grab a coffee with someone who sends positive messages, like a supportive friend, family member or someone from a recovery program every day (they don’t have to be long). You may feel lost and alone when we dose small amounts of socializing into our day weeks at a time. Even with little doses, socializing creates belonging and power of accountability.
- Create a daily structure – write a gratitude list, schedule a walk or get a recovery notebook together. You can spark motivation when you have a daily approach.
- Take time to journal every day and write wins, triggers, and thoughts you may have. The process of thinking back through the day helps illuminate progress of your day and identify patterns for your future decision making.
These helpful steps will hold your goal in recovery scope, even on the hardest days. These tools help your cope with life and feel a inner strength that is rewarded overtime.
Stories Of Resilience In Real-Time Recovery
Real resiliency comes from living your own story. For someone, resiliency might be deciding to go back to a meeting after relapsing and finding the courage to speak truth and hope in the face of shame.For others, it’s about confronting stigmas cast upon them from family, friends and colleagues and embarking upon a new journey to develop supportive circles that understand the recovery journey from addiction. Each of these stories reminds us that we measure recovery from addiction not through success and perfection, instead, through our ability to continue trying, continue learning and continue to build our sobriety after each fall. Individuals who reach out for mentoring purpose, individuals who volunteer in recovery communities and individuals who support the newcomer exhibit the ability for resilience to become a radiation of strength to self and others.
Common Challenges and Tips to Overcome
Most people have or will encounter ongoing cravings, negative self-talk, numbness of emotion and many moments of loneliness. The issue is not trying to avoid or ignore these challenges; the issue is establishing ways to constructively deal with these issues:
Resources For Further Learning
For the committed that want to build resilience and maintain recovery, tailored to the individual’s growth needs, learning and understanding challenge is appropriately and essentially a continual process. For example, organizations such as SAMHSA, a well-respected resource, provides evidence based recommendations, a guide for self-assessment and what is current in the science of recovery addiction. For the interested community member looking to enhance the understanding of recovery women, cadre material from the Addiction Policy Forum incorporate evidence-based recommendations and engaging personal stories to keep recovery learning stimulating and fresh.
Growth towards recovery does not stop at sobriety; growth progresses as individuals’ engage and create healthy, enriching and purposeful lives. Using evidence-based recommendations, initiating continued educational opportunities, and advocating for community and self-support with peers are appropriate steps that will enhance transformational enduring change.
Every recovery journey is an individual experience, however building resilience remain a continued developmental thread of recovery challenges. Persons use engagement of personal growth through, practical ways to manage challenges, understanding more about addiction science, and engaging people and social platforms for in promotion of strength self and all around us can make a difference in developing the resilience to recovery from addiction and confidence for a hopeful purposeful future.
