Resilience is the capability of individuals and families to sustain their functioning and thrive when threatened by a risk or adversity. Moments of high stress throughout the recovery journey can impact the ability of your brain and body to function properly. This can make it more difficult for you to engage in healthy practices moving forward.
Developing a sense of resilience can help you overcome these stress factors. This ability allows you to respond efficiently and effectively to the adverse events that occur in your life. Thus, you will be able to stay on track to success.
How Resilience Effects Recovery
Resilience can benefit your recovery journey in many ways. It does this by increasing your ability to move forward from conflict, trauma, or disappointment.
The following are additional benefits of resilience that can play a role in your recovery success.
Maintains Balance
Establishing a sense of balance in recovery is vital to your long-term success. It is not always easy to understand which aspects of your life are out of balance. By considering each pillar of well-being, you can figure out what areas might need improvement.
With this in mind, you can implement various holistic practices to improve those areas. By engaging in these practices, you increase your resilience. You will be better able to handle setbacks in any particular area. Your ability to stay grounded and focus on your goals is greatly increased, naturally creating a balanced state of mind.
Reduces Stress Levels
Stress can have a major impact on the cycle of addiction and the recovery process as a whole. Because stress leads to various negative physical and mental health effects, it can reinforce the use of substances as a coping mechanism.
To counteract this, resilience empowers you to overcome stress. It teaches you healthy ways of coping with stress and keeping your mind stable through different stress factors. As your life balance continues to improve, stress levels overall will likely be reduced as well.
Improves Coping Skills
Throughout your recovery journey, you will add many tools to your toolbox to help you cope with the stress factors of addiction and recovery. No matter how many skills you have obtained and applied, there is always room for improvement. Working to improve each skill you have can make it a more familiar coping mechanism that you naturally turn to during times of high stress.
Coping skills help you maintain resilience by bringing you back to a grounded emotional state. At the same time, resilience gives you the motivation to improve your coping skills. This is a positive cycle, with your coping skills and resilience strengthening each other in turn. As this cycle benefits you, you will become more confident in your ability to handle stress without the use of substances.
How to Maintain Resilience
There are various ways to maintain your levels of resilience through recovery. With each of these techniques, practice is a key component. It is important to practice each method, as no method will provide instantaneous results.
Remember: recovery is a lifelong journey. Acquiring resilience is a lengthy step in this process. The following techniques can help you maintain resilience and improve your ability to be resilient during difficult times.
Remember: You Are in Control
Nobody or nothing should be in control of your life except for you. During the cycle of addiction, it is common to let substances control you. Allow yourself to mentally take back control. Remind yourself that you are the headmaster of your journey.
Taking back control is often a mental game. As soon as you can recognize your abilities to control the outcome of your life, you have already worked toward improving your state of resilience.
When high moments of stress arise, try to refrain from falling into a state of helplessness. Remind yourself of what you are capable of. Keeping this mindset can allow you to maintain control over your emotions and avoid falling into a hole of self-doubt, further decapitating your abilities to maintain resilience.
Maintain Meaningful Connections
Family relationships and support systems are greatly important in the realm of recovery. By maintaining connections with others that bring meaning to your life, you may begin to establish a sense of self-purpose.
These feelings and levels of support are amazing for maintaining resilience. After all, they can remind you of the positive aspects of your life. Focusing on these positive relationships and the qualities they bring into your everyday life can help you function properly through recovery moving forward.
Have Fun
It can be easy to lose sight of having fun in recovery. However, there are many ways to accomplish this. Every once in a while, step back from your intense recovery focus and allow yourself to have fun. To maintain resilience, you need to have a reason worth pushing past the adversities you are facing.
Areas of enjoyment and purpose can be that reasoning for maintaining resilience and continuing your success. Allow yourself the opportunity to have fun and enjoy this process as much as possible.
Resilience is a skill that is often overlooked in the journey of recovery. Resilience in moments of high stress can help you to ground yourself, understand your needs, and face the adversities within your life in a functional manner. We all will encounter times of high stress throughout our lives. Learning to maintain resilience and channel your energy through the hardships of recovery can help you push past the difficulties that arise and keep yourself on track to success. Having the ability to bounce back from your downfalls in recovery is a powerful skill to have. To learn more about resilience and how to maintain resilience through your recovery, reach out to Dream Recovery at (657) 216-7218.
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