When addiction takes over your life, it negatively impacts your mental, physical, and spiritual health. The greatest weapon to take control of your life again is self-care. A recovering patient will experience joy, peace of mind, and the zeal to win the addiction battle through self-care.
Types of Self-Care
- Emotional self-care: These practices help a person regain self-awareness through self-reflection, therapy, massage, confiding in friends, or going out to have fun.
- Social self-care: You can achieve this through getting rid of toxic people, living in a safer area, and setting healthy boundaries.
- Spiritual self-care: The purpose of this self-care is to connect with your creator or what you believe in. It can be through prayers, attending religious places, or meditation. Also, spiritual self-care helps you to practice gratitude and focus on nourishing your spiritual growth.
- Physical self-care: The common physical self-care practices include; exercising, eating a balanced meal, getting enough sleep, skincare, and grooming.
- Mental self-care: You can take care of your mental health through reading, journaling, forgiving yourself and others, resting, or practicing new hobbies.
Importance of Self-Care in Recovery
Self-Control
Controlling your body, thoughts, and emotions during recovery is a good way to fight addiction. Thanks to self-care, a patient can decide what to eat, do, and how to speak. Self-control erases the thoughts of hopelessness, despair, and discouragement and replaces them with renewed energy and creativity.
Assists you to Recognize Triggers
Once you practice self-care, your mental health will improve, and you will be in a better position to understand addiction triggers. You’ll stop hanging out with drinking friends and make sound decisions to say no to drugs or alcohol. The more you practice self-love, the more you will love soberness. If you get overwhelmed by cravings, seek help from Los Angeles.
Boost Your Health
Self-care helps to establish the skills needed to make healthy decisions in your sober life. You will take balanced meals, stay hydrated, get enough sleep, exercise, and avoid relapse. Self-love will motivate you to look good, watch your weight and seek support when struggles overwhelm you.
Raises Self Esteem
When you are unkempt, stressed, or depressed, you don’t like to interact with people. Learning self-care skills will help you open up and interact with colleagues and friends. You will even be motivated to talk with people struggling with addiction.
Helps To Maintain Personal Hygiene
Showering, brushing teeth, grooming are some of the practices that show you care about your personal hygiene. Practicing the mentioned self-care habits makes you physically and emotionally fit.
Amends Relationships
Throughout your addiction, you likely separate yourself from your friends and loved ones. In most cases, addicts hurl insults or become physical when intoxicated. Such behaviors distance them from their family. Self-care can help you rebuild broken relationships by being humble, kind, and clean. You will also make new friends who are conscientious and sober.
Boost Mental health
Addiction has a negative impact on one’s mental health. In most cases, addicts feel depressed, anxious, or stressed. Self-care helps to alleviate stress and other related feelings that make a person feel worthless. In turn, the patient is happy, relaxed, and ready to face life challenges. You can maintain mental health by attending therapy, 12-step programs, getting new friends, and regular checkups.
Helps You Get New Hobbies
Self-care will challenge your mind through new activities. You will find yourself spending time gardening, reading, listening to music, painting, among other constructive activities. Keeping yourself busy helps you avoid internal or external negativity in your life.
Self-care is a crucial part of addiction recovery. Forming healthy habits will help you fight addiction and bring positive impacts on your life.
