11 Set Relapse Prevention: Stages, Triggers, Strategies, and Skills
Part of challenging addictive thinking is to encourage clients to see that they cannot be good to others if they are first not good to themselves. Despite its importance, self-care is one of the most overlooked aspects of recovery. Without it, individuals can go to self-help meetings, have a sponsor, do step work, and still relapse.
- Instead of allowing the trigger to overcome you, talk to yourself logically.
- Educating clients in these few rules can help them focus on what is important.
- Past relapses are taken as proof that the individual does not have what it takes to recover [9].
- One of the challenges of therapy is to help clients practice telling the truth and practice admitting when they have misspoken and quickly correcting it.
- Once a person has experienced addiction, it is impossible to erase the memory.
- The belief that addiction is a disease can make people feel hopeless about changing behavior and powerless to do so.
Relapse triggers are far more extreme for recovering addicts in the early recovery months of addiction treatment. The first thing you should do is get in touch with your therapist or sponsor so they can assess https://ecosoberhouse.com/ the situation and decide the best immediate plan of action. This may mean going back to treatment or attending more meetings/therapy sessions each week, but it will all depend on your personal situation.
Feeling Overwhelmed or Inadequate
Having a support system that includes friends and family is one of the main ingredients for a sober life. However, there are most likely people in your life who encouraged your substance abuse in the past, and you have most likely tried to avoid them. Unfortunately, you may come across situations in which you run into these people. To steer clear of these relapse triggers, make an effort to stay close with people in your support system who encourage your recovery and well being.
- It helps you break free from unhelpful thought patterns and focus on healthier alternatives for managing stress.
- For that reason, some experts prefer not to use the term “relapse” but to use more morally neutral terms such as “resumed” use or a “recurrence” of symptoms.
- In fact, positive changes are one of the most powerful relapse triggers there is.
The sooner you take steps to intervene following a relapse, the easier it is to get back on track. However, it is never too late to recover from a relapse, so don’t be discouraged if you think you’ve gone too far back into your addiction. Many different philosophies about recovery and relapse exist, often with opposing tenets, which can leave you confused about which is correct.
Types Of Addiction Relapse Triggers
Taking quick action can ensure that relapse is a part of recovery, not a detour from it. That view contrasts with the evidence that addiction itself changes the brain—and stopping use changes it back. Use of a substance delivers such an intense and pleasurable “high that it motivates people to repeat the behavior, and the repeated use rewires the brain circuitry in ways that make it difficult to stop. Evidence shows that eventually, in the months after stopping substance use, the brain rewires itself so that craving diminishes and the ability to control behavior increases.
- Developing the self-awareness to know when something is affecting someone’s mood or emotions can take time and consideration.
- A lapse is viewed as the initial or one-time use after not using, while a relapse is characterized by uncontrolled or continued use of substances.
- One way to prevent stress from triggering you is to evaluate your stress levels.
- Enlist the help of a friend, counselor or sponsor to get down the triggers you may not think of right off the bat.
These thoughts can lead to anxiety, resentments, stress, and depression, all of which can lead to relapse. Cognitive therapy and mind-body relaxation help break old habits and retrain neural circuits to create new, healthier ways of thinking [12,13]. Helping clients avoid high-risk situations is an important goal of therapy. Clinical experience has shown that individuals have a hard time identifying their high-risk situations and believing that they are high-risk. Sometimes they think that avoiding high-risk situations is a sign of weakness.
Seeing or Sensing the Object of Your Addiction
Understanding these risk factors will help you to avoid the potential risk of relapse during or following recovery. Rarely does the alcoholic/addict become or try to become clean and sober without help. True and strong recovery takes years of work and is successful when coupled with an ongoing and consistent clean and sober program. Sobriety can be a very new, often times uncertain and even a scary state of mind. The alcoholic/addict has been used to living and functioning a certain way. Therefore, a key aspect of recovery is identifying potential triggers and risk factors and avoiding them as much as possible.
Scheduling can also get stressful, as patients in treatment or aftercare may think about skipping therapy or support group meetings to attend family events they consider obligatory. The holidays also represent a break types of relapse triggers in routine that can influence a person’s desire to use a substance. Groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and SMART Recovery provide invaluable help, resources, and substance abuse group activities.
It forces people to reevaluate their lives and make changes that non-addicts don’t have to make. This is also the time to deal with any family of origin issues or any past trauma that may have occurred. But they can be stressful issues, and, if tackled too soon, clients may not have the necessary coping skills to handle them, which may lead to relapse.