Recovery treatment equips you with the necessary tools and resources to motivate long-term success with your sobriety. Recovery does not end when treatment ends, as it is a lifelong process of navigating through triggers, cravings, and other stressors. Outside of the treatment setting, you are given total responsibility to manage your personal wellbeing, especially regarding stress management. You are likely to experience moments of strength where cravings and triggers do not affect you. Even more likely, you will experience moments where it seems like you have built up little to no tolerance at all to these cravings. As frustrating as these experiences can be, there are steps you can take to increase your tolerance. In this case, you have to fall back on the tools you learned in treatment.
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Reflect Intentionally on Your Treatment Lessons
Reflection is a huge factor that is used in recovery treatment and beyond. Reflection can help you define what experiences are causing you to struggle, as well as what changes need to be made in your life for you to grow. Before addiction presented itself in your life, there may have been unique reasons that led you to substance use. Even though you have found healthier coping mechanisms to deal with stress, you still feel like you may relapse. These may be a few circumstances that you are experiencing, whereas reflection can help you to identify root causes for these feelings.
Recognize What Situations Cause You to Feel Stressed
It is normal to feel pressure around your loved ones while you are in recovery. You may feel pressured to present yourself as being healthier than you feel inside. Although this stress can be motivating, it can also make your feelings of stress and anxiety much worse. Reflect on any circumstances or situations that have led you to feel unhealthy volumes of stress. Try to recognize where those feelings initially began and why. Increase your tolerance to situational stress by learning to adapt to any given situation.
Sometimes, you might need to remove yourself from situations to prioritize your health. Understand that you are allowed to say no to things, especially if you sense that a particular experience could cause damage to where you stand in your recovery.
Understand That Everyone Experiences Moments of Feeling Broken
This may be one of the most difficult concepts to fully accept in recovery. It is normal to experience moments of brokenness, especially when you are first learning how to foster forgiveness in yourself and others. It is crucial to understand how to recognize these inevitable moments of brokenness within ourselves and that everyone else experiences them, too.
Even well into long-term recovery, you may feel periods where you lack feelings of control. Surrender to these feelings by acknowledging that you are not alone. To experience success with long-term recovery and healing, you need to know that these feelings are not only experienced by you. The distressing symptoms of addiction can be crippling, but when you realize that you are not alone, you may feel compelled to get back on track.
Practice Mindfulness to Increase Your Tolerance
Many different tolerances can be experienced in recovery. Distress or frustration tolerance can be viewed as one’s ability to cope with and handle stressors. It can also be understood as the ability to persevere beyond adversity. Many treatment centers use a mindfulness focus to increase these tolerances and foster important elements such as acceptance and person-centeredness.
Mindfulness does this through surrendering to the present moment and turning to factors that you can focus on and control. For example, one type of mindfulness practice is focused attention meditation. In this practice, you choose to focus and control the rise and fall of your breath. When you focus on your breath, you are increasing your ability to work through difficult or stressful situations. Instead of considering picking up your substance, mindfulness gives you a healthier and greater sense of control that motivates success in your recovery.
No matter where you stand in your recovery, there are little steps you can take to increase your tolerance to adversity, triggers, and other stressors. You are deserving of long-term recovery that fosters mental growth and success. In the moments that you feel weak or broken, reflect deeply on the situations or factors that play a role in increasing feelings of stress. You are your own best advocate for your recovery, especially when you leave the treatment setting. Engage in a recovery-focused mindset to empower your own recovery.
Tolerance in recovery encompasses your ability to handle triggers, cravings, and persevere beyond stressors. Since you left treatment, you may have experienced a number of circumstances that have caused you to feel weak in your recovery journey. Take advantage of the lessons that you learned in treatment, such as encouraging reflection during the times you feel a lack of control. Reflect on the situations that enable you to feel stressed and learn how to cope with them likewise. Understand that these moments come and go and are experienced by everyone from time to time. Recognize that you must acknowledge your own brokenness in order to heal beyond it. Renaissance Ranch encourages you to mindfully reflect on your past in order to move forward. We offer a range of services that will help you to grasp success and increase your tolerance in long-term recovery. For more information, call us today at (801) 308-8898.