self discipline - Sustain Recovery

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Personal Discipline in Recovery

December 27, 2016 10:39 AM Leave a Comment

Do you ever doubt your willpower? Do you expect yourself to fail, instead of just fearing failure, like everyone does?

Developing Self-Discipline

Positive disciplines are crucial. Life is about adaptation, about dropping old ways and learning new ones. Never are these skills more important than during a mental health crisis. As the urge arises to return to drugs and alcohol, you can turn to productive activities and coping methods instead.

The first two steps in this process:

Plan Ahead

When the urge to use drugs or alcohol hits, you should already know what to do. It helps to have multiple plans, each for a different scenario. It may help to go for a walk, but what if you’re stuck at work? You can’t just let the cravings build and build all day; you’ll have to find a way to ease your mind while sitting there. Can you call a sponsor and vent for a bit? Can you meditate? Can you pull out a journal and immerse yourself in some private writing, if that’s your thing?

Find Healthy Alternatives

On a neurological level, drug abuse robs us of our ability to feel joy and excitement from anything besides the drugs. Boredom and numbness are typical of people entering rehab.

Some more “healthy disciplines”:

Get Active – Physical activity – exercise daily, go for walks, pick a new sport.

Get a Journal – Documenting your struggle is cathartic. Just admitting your struggles on paper can be incredibly self-empowering.

Get New Thoughts – Healthy self-talk is important for self-discipline because it reminds us why we stopped in the first place. Addiction is partly a disease of willpower, but it also has a lot to do with miscalculations and deceptive thought-processes: Often, we actually believe, logically, that it’s okay to take just one sip or puff, or to put ourselves in a possibly stressful situation because, hey, it’s probably going to be fine.

Get a Friend – Make sure they’re the right kind of friend, not just a friend. Even if someone cares deeply about you, he or she can still be a triggering factor, especially if they’re into drugs or alcohol themselves.

When surrounded by healthy peers in a recovery setting, it’s much easier to establish some healthy activities. Give us a call at 949-637-5499 to get started on your recovery journey ASAP.

How a 5-Minute Meditation Can Change Your Life

July 15, 2016 7:38 AM Leave a Comment

The disease that takes over the lives of drug addicts and alcoholics can make them cynical and unreceptive to new ideas. Recovering addicts who can get past that cynicism and who can open their minds to those ideas will find that five minutes of daily meditation will substantially increase their chances of achieving long-lasting and true sobriety.

The Benefits of Meditation in Recovery

You will be better able to understand the benefits of meditation if you first understand exactly what meditation is. Meditation involves quieting your mind and focusing on a single thought or idea, rather than letting yourself be distracted by the jumble of thoughts and stimuli that confront you from the moment you wake up every morning. Meditation practitioners typically find a quiet place where they can meditate by themselves, although group meditation in increasing in popularity. Meditation is an element of many organized religions, but meditation by itself need not be a religious practice.

Meditation has no set format or time limits. Individuals typically begin their meditation practices with just a minute or two of daily meditation. For many people, one or two minutes leads to five minutes or more of daily meditation practice. The single thought that an individual might focus upon can be the same thought every day, or it can change from day to day. Over time, an individual might find that he has no specific thought when he commences meditation, and his practice simply involves freeing his mind of all thoughts.

Using Meditation as a Recovery Tool

In addiction recovery, meditation is one of many tools that recovery counselors will recommend to aid an individual’s recovery. It is not the only tool nor is it a substitute for counseling and other tools and therapies that counselors will use. When it is introduced early in an addict’s or alcoholic’s recovery, it can become an integral part of a lifelong path to true sobriety. Alcoholics and addicts report that they continue to return to meditation long after they have gotten past their addictions because the practice helps them to handle so many other stresses in their daily routines.

Clinical research supports the benefits of meditation. In one study, practitioners who meditated for thirty minutes daily over an eight-week period showed a noticeable increase in their learning abilities and memory retention, as well as improved self-awareness and introspection. Five minutes of daily meditation might not give these same noticeable effects, but it will point a recovering addict or alcoholic in the right direction to begin to achieve these effects. From this perspective, five minutes of daily meditation will definitely change the life of an addict or alcoholic.

Meditation may also be particularly well-suited for addiction recovery because it is easy to learn and it can be done anywhere. Recovering addicts face countless challenges, and they generally do not need to be challenged with an additional burden of complex recovery techniques and methods. It takes no special skill to do something as simple as sitting quietly for five minutes every day. Even the most hardened of cynics can be convinced to try this technique, and the results that they see will often break down the walls of their cynicism.

For more suggestions and recommendation on using daily meditation to aid in your addiction recovery, please call Sustain Recovery Services at (949) 407-9052. Our counselors can answer your questions and give you additional guidance on the benefits of meditating for five minutes every day.

I first met Sayeh in November of 2013 just after my 15 year old daughter had been admitted to a residential treatment program. As part of the program I was required to attend 2-3 AlAnon meetings a week. Sayeh attended the same AlAnon meetings as well as Alumni events as I. It soon became apparent to me that Sayeh had a heart for recovery, program, and God. When I was encouraged to get a sponsor I didn’t hesitate. Dependable, respectful, kind and generous of spirit, she exudes an inner peace that I hope to achieve with her loving guidance, as I work my own program. She is patient, & full of wisdom that she is always happy to share with her sponsees and fellow parents. I am so grateful our journeys brought us together.

Megan