Addiction is renowned for being a huge challenge. Entering recovery tends to come after deep self-reflection and accepting some honest truths.
This is a disease that’s characterised by compulsive and automatic behaviours. Those who suffer become completely disjointed from themselves, others, and their environment.
Mindfulness offers a powerful and practical tool to use during recovery. As sobriety goes on, many find that what they have learnt to maintain abstinence becomes a healthy lifestyle.
Using mindfulness techniques transforms struggles into strengths and this is discussed below.
Understanding Addiction Recovery
To understand recovery, it’s imperative to understand the premise on which addiction works.
Addiction develops when a person uses psychoactive substances compulsively. The habit is severe and continues in the face of devastating consequences. A person’s physical and mental health declines, their relationships face ruination and financial and social issues are rife. Due to how addiction impacts the brain and body, it’s viewed as a disease.
Recovery from addiction is when a person reduces, abstains, and stops using substances, and starts to heal mentally and physically.
Due to the complex nature of the disease, professional addiction rehabilitation treatment is necessary. People suffering with addiction require medical, therapeutic, and social interventions.
As with all diseases, it’s common during recovery for people to lapse and relapse. This is why professionals work with patients to develop care plans which include coping strategies and steps to return to recovery as quickly as possible.
Therapists and keyworkers support patients to build inner resilience through learning how to adapt thoughts and behaviours on relation to triggers. Eventually, with effort and ongoing support, patients learn to trust themselves and learn healthier ways of being.
The Role of Mindfulness in Mental Wellness
Mindfulness is the practise of settling in to the present moment, bringing attention to it, becoming aware of the senses, the now, the internal and external world, and letting go of judgements.
It’s an active and open form of meditation. Developing mindfulness requires cognitive skill and can be learnt in the therapeutic setting or through a personal practice.
Anxiety and depression are mental illnesses that tend to be linked to thoughts of the future or the past and the practise of mindfulness returns people to the present. This is therefore a relevant skill for people to develop as a coping mechanism, returning thoughts to the here and now.
Mindfulness also offers an option for people who want to avoid pharmaceuticals or keep medicinal treatments to a minimum.
Long-term, mindfulness is a strategy that often develops into a way of being that integrates throughout a person’s life.
Practical Mindfulness: Tools for Recovery
There are a variety of mindfulness tools that practitioners teach patients in recovery. Using these offers a helpful go-to strategy when people are triggered emotionally and might feel angry or upset. They’re also useful to help manage substance cravings.
People tend to bring these tools to their lives outside of the therapeutic room and with regular application, these tools become healthy habits.
1. Breath Awareness
Some of the most basic and common mindfulness practices are linked to breath Awareness. Learning breath exercises to focus thought on timed inhalation and exhalation brings the mind simply to counting and to the breath. It’s about taking a moment to quiet and calm the mind.
2. Body Scan Meditation
This mindfulness approach is very common, especially in therapeutic settings. It’s also very simple to return to at home.
Sitting or laying quietly, a person tunes into the body. They tend to start by focusing on the feet, then the ankles, then the calves, and slowly go up through the body. At each part of the body, focus is on releasing tension and relaxation.
3. Mindful Journaling
Mindful journaling is the practice of identifying emotions and triggers that are being felt through the body. The person might write descriptions of how emotions feel (i.e. “the stress feels like a red flame in my chest”). They might write what led up to the feelings.
There is no judgement. Simply identifying and labelling. The person might also use the senses to tune into the present moment and to describe these on the page.
4. Mindful Movement
With the rise in awareness of emotional triggers and how feelings are experienced in the body, people are learning that movement can lead to emotional processing and shifts.
Mindful movement includes practices such as yoga and walking meditation. As a person begins to move, they might feel a sudden swell of emotion and realise that they’re sad. Movement can help release tension and encourages connection to the breath.
Returning to the breath is an essential element of mindfulness.
Bridging Mindfulness and Addiction Recovery
Mindfulness is a hugely powerful tool when it comes to abstaining from substances and thriving in recovery.
It offers people an approach to successfully manage themselves. Rather than automatically becoming subject to uncontrolled urges, mindfulness helps people to become aware of thoughts, to let go of any judgements, and to understand how to sit with the present without succumbing to cravings.
Self-help expert and author, Eckhart Tolle, says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
With a mindfulness mindset, people pause. They let go of the past and accept that the present is reality and they can control their thoughts, process their feelings and alter behavioural responses.
It takes repeated practise to become second nature, but for thousands mindfulness works successfully in helping to improve recovery outcomes.
Transforming Struggles into Strengths
It’s inevitable when faced with addiction that even when starting out with mindfulness tools, there are likely to be relapses.
However, as the person returns to sobriety and adopts mindfulness exercises such as journaling to reflect, and movement to process emotions, these slip-ups become easier to avoid in the future.
Often, people use the power of pausing when a craving hits. During recovery and by employing a mindful moment, returning to the breath and present moment, it becomes clearer that a craving will pass.
The more often this coping strategy is used, the easier it is to use. This helps build resilience and confidence in one’s own ability to remain abstinent.
As time goes on in a mindful lifestyle, people develop deep self-awareness on triggers and how to navigate them with helpful tools that support emotional regulation, and resilience.
Getting Started: Tips for Everyday Mindfulness
It’s easy to get started with basic mindfulness activities. There are things you can try straight away to see how you get on. Get used to mindful exercises before trying specific tools in response to a trigger. It’s easier to return to and use a mindfulness exercise when you’ve already practised it.
You might start by getting into a comfortable spot and trying some breathwork. There are lots of apps that guide you through different methods. Try out a few, see what suits and set reminders in your phone two or three times a day to take five minutes out to practise.
You might opt for sitting quietly with eyes closed and connecting to sound, smell and touch, labelling what you’re experiencing in the present moment.
Alternatively, you might seek a mindfulness group and get some guidance while connecting to others.
There are no right or wrong ways to practise mindfulness, but finding what personally works makes all the difference in it becoming an effective tool.
Some parting works
In order to recover from addiction, developing new healthy coping strategies is essential. Having the practical tools gained through mindfulness helps facilitate a sustainable recovery.
While there are struggles throughout life, developing a mindful headspace brings with it the opportunities for growth and newfound strength.
Exploring new ways to heal gives you the power to take recovery into your hands. With great effort comes great success.
Leave a Comment