9 Tips to Manage Stress in Recovery
Stress is an unfortunate part of life, and in recovery, it can be flat-out dangerous. Small amounts can push us to find solutions, overcome challenges, and thrive. Yet too much can affect our health, decrease our productivity, and cause us to make poor decisions.
Even more concerning, it can push us back towards unhealthy coping mechanisms. It is vital to have a list of tools you can draw on when dealing with stress to prevent relapse in recovery.
Mindful Journaling
Many people struggling with addiction commonly say that they don't understand their feelings or why they do the things they do, constantly feeling like situations happen to them or falling into the same messes. A solution to this is to slow down and get thoughtful. Make a habit of writing out your day, the interactions you had, events that happened, and how you felt during them. You will soon be able to see a pattern emerge and identify when and where your buttons tend to get pushed. Journaling will help you mentally prepare for events before they happen.
Go Outside & Get into Nature
Often, when we feel stressed, we feel unable to disconnect from the situation, doing obsessive mental cartwheels that don't provide solutions but make us more likely to consider drinking or using substances. By choosing to go outside, we allow ourselves to take both some physical and mental distance from what troubles us. Being in nature is proven to have a profound soothing effect on our nervous system, helping us regulate difficult emotions.
Exercise
Exercise will always be the cheapest and easiest way to take care of your stress levels and mental health. It engages both your physical and psychological concentration while causing endorphins to flood your body. The result? You leave feeling calm, happy, and with a fresh perspective. With so many different options available, choosing to prioritize exercise can lead to discovering a new, satisfying hobby. The more avenues of fulfilment available to you, the less stressed you'll feel.
Healthy Diet
Alongside exercise, having a healthy diet can be transformative in terms of stress management. No expensive supplements are required, nor any new complicated regimens. By simply limiting refined sugars and committing to eating as many fruits and vegetables a day as possible, you will notice more stability in your energy levels throughout the day and feel less vulnerable to the perils of stress.
Prioritize time
You cannot do or be everything to everyone, and trying to do so will drive you straight back to where you were before. It can be a complicated concept to grasp today, but sometimes the answer is to do nothing. If the choice is between having days and weeks that look good on paper, but you're holding onto sobriety by the fingertips and doing only the most essential tasks and resting when you need to - choose the latter. Pick the three most pressing jobs to get done, do them, then give yourself a break. Your number one priority is staying sober.
Hobbies
Hobbies are the playtime of adults. If you don't have time for a hobby, you are in danger of pushing yourself too hard. This is an excellent opportunity to take stock of what makes you happy and what you'd like to get to know more about. Do you want to try painting, sculpting, karate, boxing? Getting creative is known to work wonders in helping you feel more balanced, calm, and in control.
Family & Friends
Quality time with the people that love and care about you is truly the best cure for the soul. Feeling understood, comforted, and surrounded by compassion is the most that any person can honestly hope for and what many addicts struggle with finding for themselves and others. Choose the people that choose you, take care of them, and they will take care of you. Spend quality time with them and feel how good it is for the soul. If you don't have those people, put yourself out there to meet new friends. Websites like Meetup, Bumble Friends, or Facebook events, offer ways for people to connect with like-minded individuals.
Ditch Technology
Humans were not made to look at a screen for countless hours in a day, and in forcing ourselves to do so, we suffer. Devoting at least one to two hours a day to no screen time opens up your reading schedule, creating, spending quality time with friends, family (or yourself,) and reducing racing thoughts. You will give yourself the emotional reboot you didn't know you needed. We often forget, but the internet will still be there when we decide to come back. The big difference will be with you.
Breathe
When we are completely overwhelmed with stress, even breathing will seem impossible. Panic can take over, and we can feel helpless in its grasp. By learning breathing techniques, we can prevent the most severe of stress responses. Mindfulness, meditation, and yoga all offer us different ways to manipulate our breath, so we keep control of ourselves. Investing time in practicing techniques every day means that soothing ourselves is second nature when the panic comes.
There you have it – 9 ways to help combat stress and stick to your recovery. It isn't easy, but it sure is worth it. For more articles like these, check out our blog, where we have a lot more information to help you make the right choices for you.
Get The Latest Updates In Drug & Alcohol Recovery News To Your Inbox
If you opt into our newsletter, we promise to respect your privacy. We don’t share your information with any other parties. Sign up to get info about the science behind addiction, the latest trends in addiction treatment, inspirational recovery stories, and much more.
