8 Life Skills for Recovery

Rehab Offers the Path to Recovery

While in rehab, I had the chance to reset my life. It’s exactly what I needed to do on my road to recovery. My experience isn’t the same as everyone else’s. But here are some of the top life skills for recovery I learned to help me transition into sobriety.

Life Skills for Recovery

1.) Make the Bed

In rehab, making your bed is a small and effective task you can achieve every morning.

Once completed, you have accomplished something already. Everything could go wrong after that. You know, at the end of the day, you return to the task you accomplished.

It’s a reminder that tomorrow will be a new day, a new chance to accomplish even one task.

This life skill is small but important for recovery.

Many times, we can feel overwhelmed. Especially while in recovery.

In rehab, we might be experiencing a feeling that we are out of control.

Doing simple things like making the bed can give you a sense of regaining control.

I am driven to drinking or drugs when I’ve had a bad day.

A bad day is when events happen that are out of my control.

These events have the appearance of a negative result.

What I found out in my program was how I saw life depended on my attitude.

Making your bed in the morning gave me a sense of control.

A sense of accomplishment.

This is important on days when things out of your control seem to keep on happening.

2.) Change your Environment

When you get into rehab, you are changing your environment. Changing your environment can do wonders for you in recovery. It is crucial to change your environment and move someplace new. Even in rehab, when I felt overwhelmed, I was able to go outdoors and be alone.

I found rehab to be a peaceful place. It was a place where I was free of all the outside pressures driving me to addiction. It was a place where I could ground myself and get back on track. When I felt overwhelmed or any emotion overtaking me, I was able to recharge and have a team of people supporting me.

3.) Focus on one Task at a Time in Recovery

Especially as you move through recovery, you truly do not need to know everything right now. When you wake up in the morning, begin your day with the simple task of making your bed. Focus on that. Then, think of breakfast. Give yourself enough time to do what you need to do at whatever pace it is you’d like to do it. Rehab teaches you to adjust your schedule accordingly to that pace. Rehab resets your clock and gives you routine.

As a friend said, “Wash the dishes to wash the dishes.” Rehab teaches us to take time and pride in simple activities and self-care that needs to be done every day. Living in the present is where you are. It is where you have the most control over what happens to you. The future is not here, yet and the past is gone.

4.) Go to Therapy in Recovery

In rehab, you will find that you have a lot of choices for therapy. Therapy can mean a lot of things. It can mean talking in a group, sharing your story through art, but in rehab, you have the opportunity to figure out what is the most effective therapy for you.

You find a space where you can vent your emotional self. It is a place to put the parts that you previously stored in your addiction. Sometimes people have a bad experience with a therapist. It’s important to know that finding the right therapist for you can take a few tries of different people and different methods.

There are many resources, including online options to get therapy once you leave therapy. Rehab can set you up with a lot of options. Find a person that you feel good with. Make sure that after almost every session you leave with new tools to deal with life and recovery.

5.) Purpose of Life Skills for Recovery

Living life in the fast lane is a part of being an addict. The fast lane to destroying yourself. Yet this kind of life can seem exciting. There is a lot of drama and twists and turns.

When you begin rehab and find that drama is lacking with sober friends, or that the simplicity of a mug of hot tea is not fulfilling enough, you may consider what fulfills you. According to a study by the NIH, the purpose is an important life skill to avoid negative thinking and behavior. What issue is important to you? What do you care about? You can write a list of things you care about and rank them.

Rehab helped give me the skills to understand what to do to find your purpose. You will figure out how to pursue the top item on your list or any others that deserve your energy. Knowing where to place your energy is one of the more fundamental tasks of giving meaning to life. Rehab You’ll know where to put that energy because you will feel anxiety towards it until you are actively doing whatever it is that is causing you that anxiety for not doing.

Do everything in rehab as your life depends on it. There’s a reason why things are structured the way they are. The program not only helped heal me, but it reminded me of my purpose. Finding your purpose is one of the greatest reasons for living. And even if you have three, four, fifteen purposes, you can see them clearly as they come up.

6.) Exercise in Recovery

According to a Harvard Study, Exercise might be able to help fight off addiction. Find a way of getting exercise that works for you. There are classes in rehab that you can take. Yoga, group exercise, and you will also have time to do any sort of exercise you prefer.

Take advantage of this. If you like walking, start walking every day. If you like biking, bike every day. If you like the feeling of sweating, take a cardio class. If you like getting outside, take a walk outside. Go somewhere beautiful and inspiring to you. Exercise does wonders for your recovery.

7.) Learn to Love Food

When you have an addiction, food becomes secondary. In rehab, hopefully, you will find a love to eat once again. I loved it because I was provided all of my meals, and I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to make. It gave me inspiration for what I would want to eat when I got out of my program.

Once I got out of my program, I immediately went to the library to get some new cookbooks. Cooking a simple, delicious meal is a great way to self-care for yourself.

8.) Become your Own Best Friend

One thing I learned in rehab was that I was my own worst enemy. Rehab taught me that I could choose to be my own best friend. According to this NIH study, positive self-talk can help improve your quality of life. Learning to love yourself means that even though you need help from time to time, you know how to take care of yourself.

Rehab gives you the basic skills to understand how to care for yourself. You begin to understand that all bad things eventually do pass, and time moves on. If you can become your own best friend, you will realize that you have more to give other people.

Recovery Skills I Learned in Rehab

When you make a mistake, rather than beating yourself up, imagine what your kindest friend would say to you. This is what I learned in rehab. Even though I didn’t believe I deserved it, I learned to practice saying whatever my best friend would say to me.

Then I constantly heard that reinforced by all of the staff around me, cheering me on in my recovery. It will take practice, but eventually, you will believe the positive voice inside of yourself. You will also begin to see how much more productive it can be to love yourself.

Things will seem possible that did not seem possible before. So do it, become your own best friend.

Recovery at Emerald Isle

We understand that every addiction is different.

We work with you to learn about your addiction and your goals for recovery before we put a treatment plan together.

Then we build a treatment plan around you, your addiction, and your goals.

We offer free insurance verification to get you the help you need.

Call today to get started.