Balance Your Emotions and Addiction Recovery
One of the most common myths in addiction treatment is that once you start your recovery, your whole life will be perfect and you will be a ray of sunshine. But is that really how things work—or even should work? Emotions and addiction recovery cause some angst during treatment but emotional regulation can help you gain some sunshine. Work through your emotions during rehab with addiction counseling in South Florida.
Positivity is highly encouraged in the addiction community. To paraphrase the founder of Moderation Management, Audrey Kishline, the best predictor of how effective addiction treatment will be is how effective clients think the treatment will be. If you have positive feelings and about the outcome of your treatment, your treatment will most likely yield positive outcomes regardless of how your emotions and addiction recovery interact.
Yet many people in recovery think that having more positivity means ignoring and suppressing negative feelings. Unfortunately, this mindset often brings people more trouble than benefits.
Suppressing Negative Emotions Intensifies Them
Tal Ben-Shahar, professor of a popular Harvard University class entitled “Positive Psychology,” says that suppressing your negative emotions will actually intensify them. Not only does suppressing negative emotions intensify them, but it also blocks your ability to have positive emotions. The relationship between emotions and addiction recovery demands to process through these understandable emotions.
“When we suppress these painful emotions, they intensify, they become stronger, they prevent us, often, from experiencing positive emotions,” says Ben-Shahar. This is what emotional regulation is all about.
Instead of feeling negative for a moment and then moving to a new emotion, you will sit and stew in the negative emotion while attempting to suppress it. However, by allowing yourself to have negative feelings, you will accept your own humanity. These feelings include:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Envy
- Sadness
- Loneliness
The key to allowing yourself to move on to more positive feelings and grow in emotional regulation is to allow yourself to feel all emotions.
You Don’t Have to Change You to be Happier
Positivity is an important tool in sober recovery in FL, but positivity doesn’t mean you have to change your personality. You don’t have to become a bubbly, outgoing, charismatic extrovert. Being a normal person who has faith in the power of treatment and therapy will make all the difference. All you have to do is stay in sober recovery and the rest will follow.
The key to recovery is to have a healthy emotional life. To accomplish this, you must feel free to experience both sides of the treatment coin–your emotions and addiction recovery. Allow yourself to be human, and to be yourself.
Processing Emotions and Addiction Recovery in Florida
If you are looking for substance abuse treatment that places an emphasis on developing healthy emotions and lasting addiction recovery, contact Serenity House Detox & Recovery today. Our transformative Florida detox center will get your recovery started the right way. Our treatment center provides therapy that includes:
- Individual, family, group therapy in FL
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Dialectical behavior therapy
- Meditation therapy in Jupiter
- Dual diagnosis therapy treatment in FL
Call addiction treatment specialists at 866.294.5306 to discuss therapy programs during rehab.