While in treatment and recovery, you will learn many skills that help you develop independence after addiction. However, when you enter early recovery it can be hard to translate these skills into the “real world,” or everyday living.
Often, addiction treatment programs only aim to help patients find healthy coping strategies for their addiction and mental health triggers. Ultimately you should be able to handle all of life’s various and unexpected challenges that are thrown your way. This helps prevent any chance of relapse and will teach you not to beat yourself up when you are faced with a challenge that you may not have experienced before.
That is why it is crucial to find a treatment program that can teach you skills and how to be self-sufficient while transitioning back into everyday living. This also offers the best chance at long-term sobriety, because you will learn how to navigate the ups and downs of life without the crutch of drugs to help you cope. Let’s take a look at the importance of self-sufficiency and how Spero Recovery actively works to help our clients build their own sense of independence.
What Does It Mean to Be Self-Sufficient?
Self-sufficiency is a person’s ability to sustain and maintain themselves without help. In other words, it is the ability to look after yourself without being dependent on another person. Becoming self-sufficient is a gradual process that doesn’t happen overnight. It requires patience with yourself to learn new ways of navigating life and handling stressful situations in a new light. With the right help and guidance, you can efficiently navigate the real world with a newfound level of independence.
The Importance of Self-Sufficiency in Recovery
While recovery requires that you have the ability to know when to ask for help, it is also necessary that you learn how to balance when to take care of yourself and when to lean on others. When you become self-sufficient you will learn how to first put your best effort toward solving a problem, and what your signs are that you are truly struggling and need outside help. For those that have spent a lifetime relying on others, it can be scary to look to themselves for inner guidance and answers to the challenges of life. It takes practice and patience to develop true self-sufficiency.
Often, addiction can make a person feel as if they have lost control over their own life. They create codependent relationships where they manipulate the people around them or allow them to enable them to continue their addictive behaviors. Recovery offers the chance to take time away from your everyday life and leave the past behind. While you work on quitting addictive behaviors, you’ll be learning life skills and how to be more independent.
Spero Recovery
Self-sufficiency also means knowing how to exist in relationships and family dynamics without becoming codependent with someone else. In the past, you may have come from toxic, abusive, or codependent relationships that were extremely unhealthy to both you and the other person. Becoming independent doesn’t mean you have to exist on your own, as connections are important to the human experience. The key is to find the balance of coexisting in relationships with other people while still being able to take care of yourself.
Developing Healthy Relationship Skills
An important part of Spero’s model is fostering a sense of community in our treatment programs. We want to teach our patients relationship skills so that when they go back into everyday living they can start to develop connections that are meaningful and beneficial to long-term sobriety. Our 12-Step program is led by alumni and people from the community who are here to use their recovery journey as inspiration for current patients. This also gives our patients the opportunity to find sponsors and outpatient resources that are going to be sincere in helping them along the way.
Holistic Treatments
We offer creative classes that are not only fun but will help you develop abstract thinking. This is important when it comes to being self-sufficient in the real world because you will need to learn problem-solving skills. Problem-solving requires you to be able to think fast and come up with unique ideas to work through stressful situations.
Another aspect of self-sufficiency is being able to control your emotions and stress levels. With the right coping strategies, even the most stressful situations can be handled in a calm and level-headed manner without having to resort to using drugs or unhealthy coping mechanisms. Through our holistic classes of yoga, meditation, and hiking we teach you how to connect with yourself and calm your inner turmoil.
Life can throw many unexpected curve balls that even some of the most equipped people can crumble over. It’s easy to resort back to old bad habits of drug abuse or self-sabotage, but that only makes your situation worse. When the weight of life puts more pressure on you than you can bear, know that it is okay to feel a little down and that it’s all a part of being human. Spero Recovery believes that with the right guidance and tools you can overcome life’s obstacles without letting it get you down. We incorporate both traditional approaches and holistic programs that help our patients develop self-sufficiency while healing the parts of them that were broken by addiction. Give us a call at (303) 351-7888 if you are ready to start the journey of rebuilding your life and confidence after addiction.
