Many characteristics and abilities are important to consider in recovery. One that is often overlooked is resilience. Many are unsure of what this term means and how it plays a role in recovery, but it may be more influential than you initially think.
What Is Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to adapt to stressors and maintain a state of well-being when in the face of adversity. In simple terms, it is the ability to bounce back from moments of hardship. This characteristic takes practice and thought to achieve, but it can be achieved by anyone. Utilizing this skill can help you come back from the obstacles you encounter and start fresh moving forward.
Who Does Resilience Affect?
Resilience plays a key role in your recovery journey, and it can influence others around you. Working through recovery with a loved one as a family member can be a difficult journey as well. It can be challenging to know how to best support them and regulate your emotions through the process. Having resilience can benefit people in recovery and their family members.
Your peers and treatment team professionals can also benefit from resilience. When relapse is encountered, stress and heightened emotions can affect everyone involved. Having the ability to move past these encounters and start fresh with a newfound level of confidence can be challenging. However, doing so is beneficial to all these parties. Resilience can benefit everyone, even in aspects outside of recovery.
How to Increase Your Resilience
Understanding the importance of resilience is useful. However, achieving this state is a different task. Many individuals are unsure of how they can improve their level of resilience, especially if they struggle to do so already. Using these techniques, you can slowly improve your resilience and utilize the benefits involved with this mindset through your recovery journey.
#1 Recognize Stress
We all feel stress throughout our lives. However, recognizing the specific factors of stress in ate moment can be difficult for many individuals.
The following signs of stress may occur during moments of hardship:
- Difficulty concentrating
- Headaches
- Tight muscles
- Nausea
- Cold hands
- Irritability
- Clenched teeth
These do not encounter all of the potential symptoms of stress but can be clear indicators of when stress is arising. Being able to recognize stress can help you understand the proper timing to implement coping mechanisms to help you overcome these stressors.
#2 Use Coping Skills
When these signs and symptoms of stress arise, it is time to put your coping skills to use. Utilize the coping skills that you have found best help you to destress during recovery. If you have not established core coping skills that help you, you may have to experiment a bit to find what mechanisms work best for you.
Taking specific actions to counter the effects of stress can help calm your emotions quickly and bring you into a clear state of mind. Establishing resilience is much easier to do when your stress is alleviated and managed efficiently.
#3 Use a Different Lens
The viewpoint through which you view your problems can make a drastic difference in your ability to overcome them. Obtaining a different lens when looking at the problems ahead of you can help you to establish a sense of resilience.
If you look ahead at your problems and tell yourself that you will never be able to overcome them, that likely will be true. Having a positive outlook on your abilities and potential solutions ahead of you can help you keep a positive outlook on your recovery journey moving forward.
Benefits of Resilience
Resilience is a great skill to obtain throughout recovery for many reasons. As you encounter various hardships through your recovery journey, this mindset can be applied to get you back on your feet again.
The following areas specifically benefit from acts of resilience.
Find a Purpose
Engaging in acts of resilience can help you establish a sense of purpose and self-worth. Being able to come back from hardships requires you to understand the bigger picture of your recovery journey. You may find a purpose within your life that is greater and more substantial than any obstacle you encounter.
Having a purpose and engaging in resilience can help you to more productively work through issues that arise and maintain motivation to continue doing so. This mindset can help you work away from potential trauma responses and have a clear mindset of your journey moving forward.
Improve Individual Success
Dream Recovery focuses on creating a treatment plan that is aligned with your individual needs. By establishing a sense of resilience, you can efficiently overcome obstacles that come into your path and improve your rate of individual success. This can help boost your confidence in your abilities to keep pushing forward and overall improve levels of self-esteem.
Resilience is a characteristic that allows you to move past hardships through your recovery journey in healthy ways. Increasing your resilience is a great way to maintain motivation moving forward. It can also help you develop confidence in your abilities to overcome any obstacle that falls into your path. By recognizing thae signs of stress, utilizing your coping skills to manage stress levels, and viewing your issues through a different lens, you can establish a sense of resilience to benefit your recovery journey. Learn how acts of resilience can play a role in your recovery journey and how you can establish this state to benefit your recovery moving forward. Reach out to Dream Recovery today at (657) 216-7218.