Mindfulness

Having a positive mindset can impact many areas of your life. Taking time to assess your natural mindset is a great way to reflect and make adjustments. When was the last time you thought consciously and critically about your outlook? Mindsets can vary greatly from person to person. Some see the cup as half full, while others see it as half empty. This analogy may be cliche, but it's an excellent example of just how different various mindsets can be.

Getting in a thought cycle of rumination, worry, obsession, or repetitive, looping thoughts all cause a person extreme frustration. It can take up all of your energy and mental capacity, making it feel impossible to think about anything else. These looping thoughts feel charged with emotion, causing you more distress the more energy you give them. When you find yourself in the middle of this circular thinking, you need to do something to disrupt the pattern and change the course of your thoughts outside of this hard-to-control thought loop.

When applying your mind to something, you can visualize the outcome before acting upon it. Visualizing yourself in addiction recovery is vital to the success of your recovery goals. When you aim to change a habit you have in your life, visualizing the result can help you achieve it. Visualization creates positive habits and progress towards your self-growth and future, and it makes all the difference in the path to recovery.

The idea of treating addiction, mental health issues, or dual-diagnosis by addressing both dimensions in one’s recovery plan often includes having each individual make key changes for their own wellness or betterment. However, the terms “wellness” and “betterment” are often used generally, and an individual may not fully embrace what the terms entail. The path towards “wellness” and “betterment” has a few hallmark traits. Understanding what these terms include and do not include can help each individual better understand how to formulate their recovery plan throughout their journey.

Recovery is a lifelong journey that involves many people and services, from dedicated supports and established recovery programs to interconnected peers working towards their own sober goals. Moving through each phase of recovery is a test on its own, and emerging through these programs transformed is cause for celebration.

You don’t have to rely on seeing your therapist experience the benefits of hypnosis. By practicing self-hypnosis, you can improve your behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about yourself and your success in recovery. Learning how to use self-hypnosis as a tool for healing in recovery will allow you to gain better control over your thoughts and experience deep relaxation along the way.

Journaling is one of the most common forms of writing therapy for those in recovery, and with good reason. It offers writers space to freely process and express themselves and their story, something which the emotional numbing of addiction works directly against. Beginning a regular journaling practice in recovery will invite a time for consistent self-reflection and self-development to help grow the connection to yourself. Journaling can make sense of the chaos in early recovery and continue to be a powerful stress-relieving tool in aftercare.

The onset of spring brings with it a wealth of new opportunities. As temperatures warm, new therapeutic options become available to explore for all those looking to either begin constructing new daily routines in their sobriety or looking for new ways to tackle the complicated and difficult process of maintaining one’s aversion to drugs or alcohol. Gardening, while a seasonal practice, can also be a profound therapeutic outlet that can reward an individual’s determination and effort, all while helping them continue to practice responsibility in their lives and adding a needed element of structure and consistency to a daily routine.

Springtime signifies a season of rebirth and new beginnings, popularly used as a time for cleaning our homes and reorganizing our belongings. Realizing that the environment we create might reflect our internal state of mind can help us understand that if our rooms need tidying, our minds probably do too. Two simple but powerful ways of helping “clean” our minds to lower stress, improve focus, and support good mental health are through meditation and visualization.

Recovery from substance use is often only talked about in terms of detoxification, therapy, and medication. However, there are so many more treatment modalities available. Specifically, holistic interventions have grown to become an excellent addition to recovery because they add another dimension to treatment without being intrusive. There are many types of holistic activities that can enhance one’s recovery experience, including meditation, acupuncture, chiropractic services, massage therapy, yoga, and more.

Studies show that nearly 50% of all jobs today require some degree of technology, and it is predicted that number will rise to 77% within the next decade. Furthermore, Vision Council states that as many as 95% of Americans spend at least 2 hours or more each day on a digital device. Nearly one-third of Americans spend 9 or more hours a day. Between the amount of technology required for jobs and the number of people becoming addicted to the internet, it’s safe to say that technology is at the forefront. According to CBS News, many Americans report eye problems including dryness, irritation, and blurred vision. If you’ve experienced these things, you may have also experienced frequent headaches, back pain, neck strain, and more. Another report titled Diverse: Issues in Higher Education states that increased technology use has caused us to difficulty interacting with one another in person - while the ideal circumstance would be for us to cut down our use of technology, this is not always feasible. However, are there are some steps that we can take to ensure our health alongside our productivity:

Imagine this: You’re in a crowded room, and you look around. Everyone seems to be talking with one another – perhaps you arrived by yourself or you came with friends. Laughter fills the air, and your self-awareness heightens. You realize that you are just standing there, and you feel distanced from the rest of the people in the room. You feel as though everyone could walk right through you, as if you weren’t there. You think to yourself, “Maybe I’m just not meant to fit in”. Deepak Chopra, an American author, public speaker, holistic therapy advocate, and prominent figure in the New Age movement, explained on Oprah Winfrey’s website that there are different kinds of invisibility, and you must first understand what you are feeling and what it is about you that you feel is being unseen or unheard. For example, are you not feeling heard when you speak, or do you feel your opinions are being discredited? Once you can pinpoint the situations that make you feel invisible, you can go on to do something about them. The Huffington Post notes that most of the time we develop this sense of “wounded self” – it’s a view of ourselves that we let affect us based on how our parents, teachers, friends, family members, and strangers treated us in the past. There are a number of things we must do to overcome feelings of invisibility: