Addiction is a severe disease that can lead to many negative life changes. For example, substance use may have caused you to stop activities that used to bring your joy. Fortunately, recovery is the perfect time to rediscover these hobbies. After all, finding things that bring you joy can help you stay sober. However, this may be easier said than done. One tool that can help is called VACI.
What Is Vital Absorbing Creative Interest (VACI)?
Vital Absorbing Creative Interest (VACI) is a tool that you can use to assess different hobbies and interests when you try them. It can help you discover new ways to enjoy life after treatment.
VACI is part of SMART Recovery. The goal of using VACI is to bring back the simple joys and pleasures of living a substance-free life. It is designed to assess how you feel about different interests.
How Does VACI Work?
Simply put, VACI is a worksheet. To use it, you fill out its questionnaire before and after you do an activity. This involves rating your interest in the activity. You will rate it twice, which can show you the difference between your expected experience of the activity and your actual experience. This can help you assess your overall interest in the activity.
You can use VACI by yourself. Alternatively, you can use VACI with a clinician who can help you to talk through how you feel, improve your awareness of activities and hobbies, and asses what the best next steps are for you.
How Can VACI Help in Recovery?
Using VACI as a tool can be very helpful in recovery. This is because VACI helps people improve their awareness, change patterns, and rediscover hobbies. Ultimately, it can help you to make changes in your life. Recovery is a lifelong journey, after all. The more you are aware of your feelings and able to build patterns that support your sobriety, the better.
By finding hobbies and interests in your life after treatment, you can improve your mental health. You can also reduce your risk of relapse and bring joy back into your life. When you see how much fun and purpose you can experience without substances, your motivation to maintain your sobriety can increase.
Improving Awareness
The process of improving awareness is complex. Over time, and with help, your awareness of your feelings, thoughts, and patterns can improve. Many different types of therapy can help to improve your awareness. Additionally, tools like journaling, sharing with others, and VACI can help.
VACI provides a unique opportunity to put your feelings and expectations about activities on a scale. There is no right answer when you are using VACI. It is all about you exploring new activities and assessing your true enjoyment.
Your awareness of your feelings can increase through VACI. After all, for you to be able to rate your expectations and experiences, you first have to draw your attention to your feelings. This requires practicing awareness.
You may also decide to write about your expectations and experiences of the activity. This can further improve your awareness of your feelings. For example, you may notice that your feelings were different because of the day or that doing the activity with a certain person made it better. Regardless of your findings, you are gathering information that can help you to make positive changes in your life.
Changing Patterns
Once you have a deeper awareness of your feelings regarding activities, the next step is to assess and make changes. After all, gathering information is the first step. Once you have that information, you can look at it and decide what it means to you.
For example, you may discover that you did not expect to enjoy multiple outdoor activities but rated them high after doing them. Exploring more outdoor activities might be a good option for you.
The specifics of your discoveries will be unique to you. VACI helps by allowing you to gather the information and assess it. You can take this information and change patterns that can help you to find more joy in your life.
Rediscovering Hobbies Using VACI
In a culture where work and productivity are considered vital, hobbies might seem unimportant to you. However, in recovery, having hobbies and activities that you enjoy can make a big difference. They provide something outside of substances that bring you joy. This can remind you that you don’t need drugs or alcohol to have a good time.
There are also scientific reasons that hobbies are good for recovery. Research has found that addiction hijacks the pleasure system in the brain. This system, when healthy, helps to reinforce behaviors that are good for you. However, when you are struggling with addiction, the pleasure system reinforces substance use. In recovery, this can result in cravings. Fortunately, over time, your brain can recalibrate and find balance without substances. Hobbies can help by activating this part of the brain in healthy, safe ways.
Additionally, VACI provides options that you enjoy. By writing them down and categorizing them, you start to see there are other activities you like. While it takes time, it is worth the effort. This is because when you rediscover joy in recovery, you feel less need to return to drugs and alcohol.
VACI (Vital Absorbing Creative Interest) is a tool people can use to explore hobbies and interests while maintaining sobriety. At Dream Recovery, we believe that everyone can learn to live a new and sober life after treatment. However, we also believe it takes effort and time to invest in this lifestyle. We use tools like VACI to help our clients improve their awareness and learn how to find joy in healthy ways. Dream Recovery is where change happens. Change is not immediate, but it is worth it. We provide the support and structure you need to heal from addiction and build a new and sober life after treatment. To learn more, call us today at (657) 216-7218.
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