Healthy Living

“Be kind whenever possible,” the Dalai Lama famously said, “It is always possible.” Kindness in recovery is an essential practice. Few things are more cruel than addiction and alcoholism or the symptoms of unmanaged mental health disorders. Recovery takes tolerance, patience, and kindness to be effective.

Living with anxiety that goes unregulated can be unmanageable. Just a few simple habits throughout the day can help reduce the impact of anxiety symptoms and make life easier by improving mental and physical health.

Trying to manage your own thoughts, feelings, and actions is work enough. You can’t focus on yourself all the time, but trying manage how other people are in relation to you is hard work too. Here are a few simple tips for being closer to other people when you're recovering from a mental illness.

Therapy usually comes with a negative connotation for people. Spending money on time reserved for talking about your feelings or difficult things in the past sounds unappealing. However, immense healing can occur in therapy, helping someone to feel more free in their life.

To transcend definitively means to “be or go beyond the range or limits of”. Transcendental meditation is a specific practice which focuses on transcendence, or going beyond one’s limitations. Few things can feel more limiting to the mind than trauma. Trauma can cause blockages to memory, impair social relations, prevent intimacy, and create a wealth of other side effects. Flashbacks, nightmares, hyperarousal, panic, and feel like the world exists within the repeated memory of traumatic events. According to Good News Network, a group of female inmates who demonstrated high level symptoms of PTSD were tasked with practicing transcendental meditation, specifically. “After four months of practicing (the technique), the women inmates in the meditation group had significant reductions in total trauma symptoms, including intrust thoughts and hyperarousal,” the website reported.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress is impossible without change,and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Change is inevitable. In fact, as it is philosophically said, change is the only constant we have in life. Sometimes it can feel like life is constantly changing. The truth is, we only get a glimpse of some of the smallest changes. For example, the earth is constantly rotating and making incremental adjustments to its tilt on the axis. Cells are constantly regenerating, right before your very eyes. Things are changing all the time that we can’t see and certainly beyond what we can control. Yet it is the changes which make themselves obvious to us which are the most difficult to cope with, especially living with a mental illness. Unpredictable or unchangeable moods, childhood experiences rooted in trauma, fears of abandonment and rejection- all of these things can create an uneasy relationship to change. For many people, change was a constant which was right in their face. Living in an unstable environment which might have come with abuse can make coping with change hard. Most people will experience traumatic events in their life which can make it hard to feel like there is any security in the world. Since change is unending, that means we have to learn to live with it and cope effectively.

Do you ever feel like your negative thoughts are a rogue sailboat who guides itself at sea? Look to these suggestions for taking back control of your mind’s ship and navigating new waters. Throw An Anchor Stopping the perpetual flow of habitual thinking can feel like trying to stop a river with a plastic bag- it just isn’t going to work. Instead of fighting against the stream, just try to throw down an anchor. You might not be able to make it stop right away, but you can find a pause in the middle of the flow to take a look at what is going on. Notice where the thoughts are heading. Can you tell where they are coming from? After taking a few deep breaths, spend a moment reflecting on your current situation. Examine all the environmental and emotional factors. You’ll discover some insight you couldn’t have found when all of your attention and energy was being directed toward stopping the thoughts. Check Your Routes Likely, you’ve taken this route before. You were in a similar situation which caused a similar reaction and brought you to this train of thought. That is how habits are born. If you can clearly see the path make note of this pattern. See what other influences cause you to come to this place. Before you can make any changes to the way you charter your course, you have to acknowledge where you want to go first. Go Boldly Where You Haven’t Gone Before Breaking habits can seem daunting. When our habits of thinking are negative, it seems silly to experience any kind of fear when it comes to changing them. Habits are comfortable, familiar, and sometimes protective, however, that doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. Courage and audacity is required to set sail in a new direction. You have what it takes. Take a few more deep breaths and hoist the sails. Live In The Mystery Heading into uncharted territory is terrifying and exciting at the same time. Adventures wouldn't be so adventurous if you knew all the details. Recovery is an adventure. You’re exploring and living life in a way you never have before. Live in that mystery and focus on the journey. Expand Your Mind’s World Each time you confront your thoughts and look for new options, you expand what is possible in your mind. Quite literally, you are drawing the map for the places your mind has explored and the ways it can get there. Continue to pioneer this new path in recovery, and remember that this won’t be the last time you’ll have to follow the wind a different way. We are here to help you learn how to live again. Through clinical treatment and holistic healing, our residential programs equip each client with everything they need to carry on in life clean, serene, and happy. For a confidential assessment and more information on our programs, call 1 888-958-7511.

Relapse is a difficult part of recovery. It is a part of recovery but it does not have to be a part of recovery. Some say that relapse is part of the story. Not everyone relapses. If you are struggling with a drug addiction or alcoholism problem and are considering treatment know that you don’t have to relapse to stay sober forever. You just have to take things one day at a time. Understanding Relapse Understanding relapse is difficult for anyone on the outside of chemical dependency. Acting on impulse in spite of negative consequences is a characteristic of addiction. Drugs and alcohol overtake the brain in a very severe way. Many attribute the craving and desire for using to pleasure. Pleasure is only a small part of what really happened in the brain when the impulse to use arises. The pleasure which is derived from drugs and alcohol comes from the overproduction of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine communicates feelings of pleasure to the reward center of the brain. From there, the substances causing pleasure are committed to memory. The memory channels feed into an area of the brain called the midbrain. Survival necessities like eating, sleep, and reproducing live in the midbrain. Overtime, the messages of pleasure and reward stored to memory inundate the midbrain. To say a relapse is born out of a need for pleasure is not to give the intricacy of addiction it’s fair due. Relapse is born out of a need to survive pain. Confronting Emotions Treatment and recovery can be painful. Dealing with emotions, confronting trauma, and living life each day without euphoria inducing substances can be hard. After a brain has become chemically dependent upon drugs or alcohol for providing pleasure, it is difficult to live without it. The brain has learned how to live off of drugs and alcohol. Problematically, it has learned to source all of its pleasurable sensations from it. The brain struggles to produce its own dopamine without the presence of drugs and alcohol. Essentially, when the brain feels a need for pleasure, and cannot create any on its own, it craves drugs and alcohol. When those cravings don’t get met, the brain becomes obsessive, causing more tension, stress, and chaos in the mind to which the only answer seems to be: drink or use, as soon as possible. It is true, people relapse because they want to get drunk or high. However, why it is they want to get drunk or high is more of the point. Relapse isn’t an episode , it's a process. Avalon By The Sea continuously evaluates and checks in with patients to gauge their recovery beyond the scope of clinical judgment. Your life is important to use. We know how precious this opportunity is to live it. For a private consultation or more information on our residential treatment programs, call 1 888-958-7511.

We know what lies ahead for you after treatment. Let Avalon By The Sea help you get there. We provide treatment to men and women at residential levels for both substance use disorders and mental health disorders. For a confidential assessment and more information on our programs, call 1 (888) 958-7511 today.

“Pink cloud” is the term used to describe the euphoric state of being sober. Pink clouds come and go. When a new person to sobriety is feeling good, optimistic, happy, grateful, and clear-minded, they are often told they are on a “pink cloud”. Unfortunately, at some point, the pink cloud evaporates and they are left with all the emotions from the other side of the spectrum. Not feeling good is not a favorite experience for people in recovery from both substance use disorders and mental health disorders. Especially those who have rewired their brain through substance abuse, not feeling any feelings which are pleasurable are especially triggering. After all, what is the point of staying sober if you can’t feel good all the time? It takes time to understand that “good” and “bad” are subjective experiences and that they are transitory. Each period of up will be followed by a period of down, or at least a little less up. This is the natural flow of life. As it is commonly said, “This too shall pass.”

Of spiritual matters, humans have for a long time pondered until they’ve gone mad. Where do we come from? Where do we go when life ends? We have wealth of scientific evidence regarding the ‘miracle of life’ which explains how human beings are created and born. Though we have accounts from those who have temporarily died and come back, we are not yet evidenced in what happens when we pass. Spiritual disciplines and religious faiths have their respective ideals on the meaning of life, the meaning of being a human, and what happens when we die. For the most part, people are left to come up with these answers on their own. Spirituality Questioning such existential philosophy is not a way most people would choose to spend their time. Spirituality is not about finding answers but developing a faith regarding that answer. What does it mean to be alive and to be a human among other human beings? How do we make the most of our time here- or is that even necessary? Many who enter recovery find that they are far more spiritual than they had ever known. Recovery in itself is a very spiritual process. Some programs of recovery, like the traditional twelve steps, regard themselves as spiritual programs, helping people discover a power greater than themselves and a manner of moral living. Atheist or Agnostic Those who have found themselves to be atheist or agnostic are usually turned off by all of the spiritual talk. Spirituality is a luxury for people who cannot make any other sense of life, is typically their opinion. Spirituality is not a luxury but a necessity, especially for those in recovery. Drugs and alcohol are often coping mechanisms for those who struggle to make sense of how they are and what their role is in the world. Developing a spirituality helps make sense of those larger questions and create a way of life that doesn’t require drugs and alcohol to cope. Instead, they are able to find peace, acceptance, and serenity. Avalon By The Sea supports the use of the 12 step method and the development of a spiritual manner of living for recovery. For a confidential assessment and more information on our programs, call 1 (888) 958-7511 for more information.

One of the easiest ways to cause ourselves anxiety is to set expectations that are way too high. New year’s resolutions are often a time people do this for themselves. The start of a new year can make you feel like you are on top of the world with a host of new opportunities. January 1 is just another day, like the day before, and the day after. It is important to continue taking care of yourself. The ultimate new year’s resolution when living with anxiety would be to stay committed to self-care and anxiety management. There is no reason to feel pessimistic about the new year as if nothing can change. Just because someone is living with anxiety does not mean they are not capable of creating new routines and habits. How those routines and habits are embarked upon is the difference. Each day is like starting a new year. You always have a chance to change direction, shake it off, and start anew. Here are some basic new year’s resolutions if you are living with anxiety to help prepare you for whatever comes your way this year. This Year, Stop Feeling Guilty For Having Anxiety You didn’t choose to have anxiety, and if you could choose to not have anxiety, you probably would. Mental health conditions are faced by millions of people everyday including people in government, celebrities, and performers. Anxiety is incredibly common. You are not alone in your struggles. To stop weighing yourself down for having anxiety, practice embracing the fact that it is part of what makes up your life. It’s your special challenge which motivates you to take extra care of yourself. Walk Through Your Fears Having anxiety usually means having a lot of general, as well as specific fears. Anxiety doesn’t mean you can’t do things that scare you, but it does mean you have to do them a certain way. This year make a list of fears you’d like to walk through. Know that you don’t have to complete them. However, setting up an intention can help inspire you to do what it takes to prepare yourself to walk through what you feel you can’t. As a result, you’ll find anything is possible, even with anxiety. Avalon By The Sea is a mental health treatment center offering primary care to those with mental health conditions such as anxiety. For a private consultation or more information on our residential treatment programs, call 1 888-958-7511.