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Emotional Self-Management for Addiction


Emotions are more than just feelings. They’re motivations and powerful forces in all of our lives. When it comes to addiction recovery, it’s easy for negative emotions to take hold, and it can be challenging to manage them properly and focus. At our Christian drug rehab, we focus on helping patients heal using faith-based recovery programs designed to support long-term sobriety. These programs include unique services and therapy options, such as our emotional self-management program.

What Is Emotion Management?

Emotional or emotion management refers to a set of skills that can help you react constructively and appropriately to people or situations. Learning how to manage emotions and develop emotional intelligence can benefit a person’s career, relationships, and ability to sustain abstinence from drugs and alcohol, among other things.

Improving your emotional management strategies and skills may take time and effort, but it can have positive results in various areas of your life, including your work and home relationships, mental health, and recovery. Emotional management is also centered on the development of emotional intelligence, which refers to a person’s ability to identify and understand their own emotions and the emotions of others.

For people recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, emotional intelligence is crucial for coping with stress, drug cravings, and other things, people, or situations that could potentially trigger a relapse. To further support clients in their endeavors of sobriety, our Christian drug rehabilitation center offers an emotional self-management program that teaches participants to identify and handle their emotions and those of others.

Emotional Triggers in Addiction Recovery

Triggers are cues that prompt a response. In cases of addiction, a trigger is a cue that prompts the use of drugs or alcohol. Triggers come in all shapes and sizes and include people, places, things, smells, and anything that could cause a drug-taking response.

Many elements feed into the perpetuation of addiction, including physical and chemical influences. But emotions are also a powerful factor in the continuation of addiction. While physical cravings make it tough to get sober, emotions also play a major role.

Common emotional triggers in addiction recovery include stress, anxiety, and depression, each of which can occur for a multitude of reasons. These emotional triggers are especially common in early recovery as the individual transitions to a sober life after rehab. This necessary but challenging shift can come with a loss of friendships, changes in careers, and other stressors.

There are also various emotional consequences of substance abuse, including broken relationships, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and guilt. Struggling with a drug or alcohol problem can bring down anyone emotionally and mentally.

Negative emotions often lead to relapse, and self-doubt is often the cornerstone of this struggle. Properly managing these emotions can help set the stage for a more successful recovery. The more success you see from emotional self-management, remaining abstinent, and applying relapse prevention strategies, become easier.

How Faith Helps Manage Emotions

Managing emotions in recovery can be challenging, but our faith-based IOP can help. We offer faith-focused approaches to treatment with our variety of faith-based recovery programs. Programs include detox, inpatient treatment, PHP, and IOP. Faith is the cornerstone of all our treatment approaches.

Our emotional self-management skills program is among these treatment approaches. Being aware of your emotions and those of others is crucial for knowing how to cope properly with difficult situations. We help clients develop emotional intelligence by:

  • Applying scripture to recovery’s challenges through Bible studies
  • Group therapy to provide peer support
  • Individual therapy to answer questions about unique situations
  • Instilling true hope in each patient
  • Providing proper perspective on negative emotions
  • Role-playing different scenarios for practice
  • Showing the benefits of prayer to recovery

Faith helps patients better manage their emotions in recovery and throughout their lives. This is because faith helps us recognize that there is a power greater than us, and today’s challenges are sure to pass. With our support, patients can learn how to pray and seek answers for their struggles in scripture and other teachings.

Choosing Faith-Based Recovery

As patients continue along the path of recovery, many start to feel regret, shame, or guilt over their past actions in the throes of addiction. Faith helps patients properly process these negative emotions. The past provides lessons that we can use today to build a better tomorrow.

At Faith in Recovery, we help patients maintain this perspective through faith-based addiction recovery programs like our anger resolution group or emotional self-management group. By recognizing the importance of the past to help us learn in the present, many patients can manage any negativity they may feel.

In addition to various addiction therapy programs, our facility also offers both non-denominational and Christ-centered addiction treatment for various kinds of substance use disorders. These programs are administered a continuum of care that incorporates detox, inpatient treatment, and more.

For more information about our levels of addiction treatment and how we can help you or a loved one get sober, contact Faith in Recovery today.

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