A holistic approach to treatment focuses on the whole individual, not just the mind. Needs for your body, mind, social situation, spiritual well-being, and emotional health are all taken into account by this approach. The goal of holistic treatment is to obtain harmony and balance in each of these aspects. This requires the individual to focus on each of these aspects individually to search for improvement.
Mental Techniques
Working to improve your mental well-being is simply learning to adjust your mindset. People struggling with addiction often maintain a rigid mentality, telling themselves they require a substance to function. Their mind becomes more reliant on the substance than their body. Practicing the following techniques can help you regain focus on your thoughts and learn to take back control of them from cycles of negativity.
- Meditation
- Deep Breathing
- Mindfulness
Each of these is a meditative practice, the use of which is one of the most beneficial ways to access your mental state and adjust it how you desire. Spending at least ten minutes every day focusing on one of these things can help you isolate your thoughts and learn how to control them to your advantage.
Physical Techniques
Physical health is an important aspect of holistic treatment as well. For you to feel good as a whole, your body needs to be healthy enough to support your lifestyle. Working to improve your physical health has a positive effect on your mental health. The following suggestions are important to work toward achieving physical harmony.
- Maintain adequate nutrition
- Exercise moderately for at least 30 minutes a day
- Drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water a day
- Practice stretching
These techniques are simple practices you can do to stay engaged in a healthy lifestyle. Providing your body with essential nutrients and enough water helps you retain energy throughout the day. Exercise keeps your heart rate up and releases endorphins and serotonin, improving your emotional state. Stretching loosens the muscles in your body and incorporates relaxation into your physical routine.
Social Techniques
Ensuring you are surrounding yourself with positive influences is essential to maintaining holistic harmony. If your current friend group is consistently tearing you down or engaging in behaviors that do not align with your motives and goals, it may be best to step away from them and find a new social circle. After all, we adopt behaviors from the people we surround ourselves with. If you are consistently around individuals who negatively affect your addiction recovery and mental health, it will become drastically harder to make a change in your life.
The first step in finding a healthy social circle is to observe your current social situation. Ask yourself the following questions.
- Do my peers support me and my sobriety?
- Do my friends make me feel good about myself?
- Do I feel comfortable reaching out to my social circle for help?
If you find that you are answering no to any of these questions, it may be time to find a new social group. Making new friends and finding a supportive group can be challenging; however, with patience, it is fully possible. Attending group therapy or activities recommended in recovery can help you meet like-minded individuals. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself and be clear about your goals. If someone is not supporting your sobriety, don’t be afraid to walk away.
Spiritual Techniques
Improving your spirituality requires very personalized techniques. Different people have very different spiritual views and beliefs. Finding a practice that aligns with your viewpoints and helps you is important. Spiritual harmony is attained as you develop a spiritual understanding of yourself and what you believe in. It may also involve strengthening your current practices and beliefs. Determining your current spiritual state can help you define your personal path toward reaching spiritual harmony.
Emotional Techniques
Learning to regulate your emotions ties in with taking care of your mental health and learning to control your thoughts. This aspect of holistic treatment encourages you to regulate your emotions and understand the background reasoning for feeling them.
Talk therapy is a common method used to improve emotional regulation. Through discussing your symptoms and emotions, you are often able to make connections to events that are causing the emotions. We often need to hear our situation out loud to place things together. Talk therapy is a healthy way to let your emotions out and find situational connections to help you understand your feelings on a deeper level. Improving your understanding of your emotions can help you regulate them and maintain harmony emotionally.
Holistic treatment is a newly developed therapeutic method to help you find a sense of balance within your physical health, mental health, social life, spiritual life, and emotional health. Each of these involves many aspects you can focus on to improve your wellbeing and reach a state of harmony. Many of these techniques will need to be altered and specified to your specific needs; however, this outline can help you establish your path. Ultimately, the goal of holistic treatment is to help you reach a state of balance and harmony. Having a strong sense of balance in your everyday life makes overall processing easier. After holistic treatment, you should be able to recognize when one of these areas feels off balance and take the steps to improve that area when needed, regaining balance. To learn more about holistic addiction treatment and if it is right for you, contact Dream Recovery at (949) 732-1960.
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