4 Tips For Developing And Maintaining The Motivation To Beat Your Addiction
Addiction is a powerful beast for a person to try and wrestle with. It can be intimidating and can cause you to lose the motivation necessary to beat it. In order to successfully tackle, beat, and survive addiction, one must know how to develop and maintain their motivations.
Stay Involved
Being an active participant in the recovery community can be a fantastic way to develop and maintain your motivation to beat your addiction. Going to support group meetings or continuing your counseling sessions well into the later stages of your treatment can help you stay on track.
Even when you have been addiction free for some time, relapses can occur and they sometimes sneak up on you. Those in your support system and in the recovery community can help you out when you feel yourself slipping.
Having a sponsor, or later on becoming one yourself, can also function as a means of motivation to continue with your recovery.
Talk It Out
Keeping a journal can help you express your emotions and remind you of your goals.
Sometimes, the stress that presents itself during recovery can take its toll and rob you of your motivation. A safe and healthy way to relieve that stress is talking about it. Discussing what you are feeling and what you are going through can help you work things out and remind you of why you chose to go into recovery in the first place.
It can help you stay connected to those in your support system, who can help you out during those moments where you just want to give up. Keeping a journal, where you can express your feelings when there isn’t someone readily available can be another option, one that you can revisit during those low moments as well.
Adjust Your Expectations
There is a misconception that recovering from addiction can be simple, only if you have the will power to do so. This, sadly, is not true and there are very few cases of people beating addiction based on the strength of their will alone.
The DEA stresses that addictive substances have a different effect on each person, which can create variations in the recovery process. Addiction is a very complex condition, and beating it is going to be different for every person.
Acknowledging the strength of your opponent, addiction, can be the best way to help you defeat it. Having somewhat realistic expectations about your recovery will increase your chances of actually completing treatment, instead of becoming discouraged when something doesn’t go as planned.
Pay Attention To Your Health
It may seem like by staying sober you are staying healthy, but the body’s overall health can impact a person’s recovery and their motivation during treatment. The NIDA lists healthy life skills and habits amongst their methods for effective addiction recovery.
In some cases, addiction can have co-occurring conditions, which can affect the medical aspect of the recovery process. General changes in diet and lifestyle are often recommended not only to help you physically recover from addiction and complications, but also to help remove temptations that can cause you to relapse.
If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, consider contacting us via our website or phone at 888-647-0051 (Who Answers?) to receive information on treatment from one of our caring specialists.
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