Everyone will have different emotions that cause their substance use. Ask your therapist for additional guidance if you need help identifying these emotions. Recognizing these emotions can help you seek other therapy or a recovery meeting if necessary. In this stage, you may not be actively feeding your addictive behavior. However, you’re inadvertently placing yourself at risk for a relapse. Even positive events in life, like achieving a promotion or attaining sobriety goals, can unexpectedly lead to a relapse.
By providing the company of others and flesh-and-blood examples of those who have recovered despite relapsing, support groups also help diminish negative self-feelings, which tend to fester in isolation. Reflect on what triggered the relapse—the emotional, physical, situational, or relational experiences that immediately preceded the lapse. Inventory not only the feelings you had just before it occurred but examine the environment you were in when you decided to use again.
Care for yourself
Chronic stressors may also overlap between self-efficacy and other areas of intrapersonal determinants, like emotional states, by presenting more adaptational strain on the treatment-seeking client4. “There should always be a plan and skills in place,” Gottlich said. Once you’ve made your relapse prevention plan, share it with friends, family, and the people you live with, so they can provide support, but also remove triggers from the home. Share it with the people you spend a lot of the time with, including those who have used substances with you in the past, so they can be aware.
The acronym “HALT” stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired—four common conditions that can trigger a relapse. A relapse prevention plan works best when you do it under a therapist or counselor’s supervision. That way, you can explore new behaviors and thought patterns to help you stay clean. Many triggers can come from environmental, mental, and emotional sources.
Manage withdrawal symptoms
When recovering individuals do not develop healthy life skills, the consequence is that they also may be unhappy in life, but that can lead to relapse. A basic fear of recovery is that the individual is not capable of https://ecosoberhouse.com/ recovery. The belief is that recovery requires some special strength or willpower that the individual does not possess. Past relapses are taken as proof that the individual does not have what it takes to recover [9].
This stage is characterized by a tug of war between past habits and the desire to change. Thinking about and romanticizing past drug use, hanging out with old friends, lying, and thoughts about relapse are danger signs. Individuals may be bargaining with themselves about when to use, imagining that they can do so in a controlled way. In the absence of an emergency plan for just such situations, or a new life with routines to jump into, or a strong social network to call upon, or enhanced coping skills, use looms as attractive. Alternatively, a person might encounter some life difficulties that make memories of drug use particularly alluring.
What Is a Relapse?
The expected drug effects do not necessarily correspond with the actual effects experienced after consumption. Based on operant conditioning, the motivation to use in a particular situation is based on the expected positive or negative reinforcement https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/9-most-important-relapse-prevention-skills-in-recovery/ value of a specific outcome in that situation5. Both negative and positive expectancies are related to relapse, with negative expectancies being protective against relapse and positive expectancies being a risk factor for relapse4.
