Trauma-informed care is an important part of therapy for many drug treatment clients. Whereas many treatment centers focus on using and addiction, there are many benefits of trauma-informed care. Many people come to recovery and treatment with unresolved issues related to something traumatic they have experienced in their life.
Some people may have anxiety or PTSD, which are both mental health disorders that are treatable and often require medication and talk therapy. For others, the effects of trauma may not be as noticeable but can often reveal themselves during therapy or recovery work.
Trauma and Coping Behaviors
In recovery, people often “peel back the layers” of their life and discover that their past trauma is a trigger to continue to use alcohol or drugs. They may learn that their poor coping behaviors were a result of dealing with trauma.
Oftentimes, an individual may have developed coping behaviors that worked well while in crisis but now need to be changed to live a happier, healthier life.
Understanding how traumatic experiences can affect the individual and how they can learn to cope with their past trauma today are important parts of trauma-informed care.
Trauma-Informed Care and Addiction
Post-traumatic stress disorder is one way a person’s life can change when they have survived a traumatic experience. Professionals will often describe this mental health disorder as a “normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.” The brain often creates different ways of thinking as a result of a person’s life experiences.
Coping with trauma can change how a person acts, feels, and thinks, as they often go into “survival mode,” and their mind continues to return to that mode after the threat has passed. Trauma-informed care can help treatment providers address both addiction and triggers resulting from traumatic experiences.
Addiction is common among people who have experienced trauma. People who have been to war or survived sexual assault often are diagnosed with PTSD and other issues. It’s widespread for people who have unresolved or unexplored traumatic experiences in their past to self-medicate, especially during the holidays or even anniversaries of the event that caused them so much pain.
Addiction can make a bad situation much worse and puts further strain on your mental health.
Getting Help for Addiction and Trauma
Getting help for resolving past trauma and caring for mental disorders can help a person become more healthy and cope with their life instead of using substances.
At Cycles of Change Recovery Center, trauma-informed treatment helps us meet our clients where they’re at. Trauma-informed care encompasses a treatment framework that involves understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma.
Through this trauma-informed approach, we can help our clients by emphasizing physical, psychological, and emotional safety. This approach helps trauma survivors rebuild a sense of control and empowerment in their lives and provide new coping skills.
Get help for addiction and learn to cope with past trauma. We’re here to help you chart your path to recovery. Please call us at 855-604-1367 to learn more about our services and which insurance companies we accept.
In early recovery, it’s a great time to start setting new patterns to help shape your new life trajectory. Getting better sleep, building deeper connections with people, and learning new coping skills are all critical. Exercise, too, can make an essential difference for newly sober people.
Health Benefits of Exercise
Exercise can do a lot of essential things for your physical health. It can help you loosen up when you’re feeling the bodily effects of stress. Regular aerobic exercise, including walking, can help keep your blood pressure in check. And people who exercise tend to sleep better.
The more you sweat, the easier it is to flush any toxins from your body. People who detox are flushing toxins for months (and up to a year and a half) after detoxing from drugs. Exercise can help you move these toxins out of your body more quickly.
Mental Health and Fitness
You’ve probably heard by now that exercise is an integral part of maintaining your mental health. In the era of COVID-19, it’s a little more challenging to do but still tremendously useful when it comes to banishing negative moods or alleviating your anxiety. Luckily, there are now online fitness classes and plenty of videos you can use to establish a daily routine. (Check Evenbrite or Youtube.)
According to the National Library of Medicine, exercise can perform a variety of important functions to improve your mental wellness. Aerobic exercises improve symptoms of depression, reduce anxiety, and improve cognition. Many people who describe a “brain fog” when they’re experiencing mental health issues will explain how exercise helps them think more clearly and make more rational decisions.
Getting Help for Addiction
Addiction is a disorder that can affect the mind, body, and spirit, yet recovery is possible. You’re never alone! We help people from all walks of life begin the journey to recovery. Learn more about our programs and how we can help by calling us at 855-976-1495
.
When you were using drugs or alcohol, how well did you take care of yourself? For most people with substance use disorders, the answer is, “I didn’t!” Using your substance of choice was probably one of your highest priorities, despite your best intentions. This is a part of the disease aspect of addiction. Addiction behavior includes obsession and compulsion, meaning you’re thinking about things to do with the drug, and will make reckless decisions quickly in order to obtain it. Because of this, most people in recovery have to learn how to take care of themselves. Not only does your body need to heal, but so does your mind and spirit. Self-care can help you learn to nurture your body, mind and spirit.
What Is Self-Care?
Self-care is typically an activity that you perform alone, for yourself, that helps calm your mind and emotions. Usually this means doing something you find soothing, but for some people, it may be something that helps get your adrenaline pumping so you can relieve negative feelings like anxiety.
Whatever the case is, self-care doesn’t do harm like drugs or alcohol. This means that gambling, competing, or overworking have nothing to do with self-care. Activities that make you feel calmer, happier, and more peaceful are great ideas for practicing self-care.
Practical Self-Care In Recovery
People in recovery can get pretty busy, especially when they’re going to 30 meetings in 30 days or attending an inpatient treatment center. Yet it’s important to carve out at least 15 minutes a day to de-stress from whatever activity you’re doing. Here are some ideas to make self-care a part of your life:
- Write in a journal every day. Explore feelings, wants and dreams. Getting these out on paper can be highly motivating.
- Exercise. Try swimming, surfing, yoga, running or walking for at least 15 minutes a day. Exercising creates natural endorphins – the feel-good chemicals that helps use destress and stay calm.
- Spend time vibing to your favorite music. Upbeat music is a great way to start or end the day, and can also give you a mood boost.
- Get a massage. Massage is a great way to practice relaxation and help any physical tension you carry.
- Learn to meditate. Meditation, including mindfulness, has been shown to lower stress levels and help maintain optimal blood pressure.
- Paint, draw, or do something else that’s creativity. Creativity is a great way to work through emotions and clear your head.
These are just a few ideas for self-care. There are many other ways that may be overlooked in this list. Don’t be afraid to create your own list of things that can help you de-stress. As long as it’s not harmful or cause negative emotions, try it out.
Getting Help for Addiction
At Cycles of Change, we understand how that addiction affects your mind, body and spirit. We are fully invested in helping create an individualized treatment plan to help you recover and reclaim your life. You deserve a chance to get and stay sober. Contact us at 855-631-2548 to learn more about how we can help.
If you’re considering drug and alcohol treatment, you may have a lot of questions. What will the environment be like? How will you be treated? Will you have access to medication-assisted treatment? What will the treatment community be like? These are all reasonable questions you can prepare to ask. One question that is often overlooked is the size of the community you’ll be in when you opt to go to treatment. Treatment staff size can make a huge difference in the way a person responds to drug and alcohol treatment.
Treatment Staff Size Matters
Many people don’t realize that there are many benefits of a small treatment staff.
While many treatment centers offer a one-size-fits-all approach to recovery, others are more focused on the individual. A smaller staff and clientele helps provide more individual attention. This is especially helpful for people who struggle with mental health disorders or those who have opted for medication-assisted treatment.
While in treatment, staff is able to monitor clients and spend more time one-on-one with them. Recovery is a journey, and while everyone can use tools to make the journey easier, there are many individual choices that staff can help clients make along the way.
After all, while no one became addicted overnight, each person seeking recovery has their own background and life story. For people who need help, a cookie cutter model treatment program isn’t the best option.
Learning Trust and Intimacy
Many people who enter treatment have trouble with personal relationships. Some have trauma in their backgrounds. It’s hard to open up when their are still wounds from the past.
A small treatment staff and community can help clients become more trusting and learn intimacy — not the sexual kind, but the friendship and family kind. Learning to trust can also help clients learn to become trustworthy themselves again.
Creating bond with others – not just staff, but others in the community as wel – can help heal old wounds and create a new perspective when it comes to relationships. Addiction is a disease that wants to keep you lonely and isolated, but recovery offers new tools, relationships and friendships that can help you fight those lonely feelings.
With a smaller staff comes more personal attention and help when a person needs it, helping people cope with problems and issues as they arise.
Getting Help for Addiction
Are you looking for help for a drug or alcohol program? We offer a recovery community of experience, strength and hope. Our program here at Cycles of Change can assist you with Medication-Assisted Treatment, one-on-one counseling and group therapy. We’re here when you’re ready. Give yourself a chance by calling us at 855-631-3460.
Relationships are essential to a happy and healthy life. Many people who take the path to recovery from addiction describe themselves and their lives as “broken” when they first get sober. Addiction can create broken dreams, broken friendships, and broken families. The thought of getting clean and sober can sometimes seem overwhelming when you think about these things that seem so broken. Yet people pick up the pieces and put them back together all the time as they learn to recover and rebuild their lives as a person in recovery.
It takes courage and willingness to take the path that heals. With therapy, treatment, and some work, you can learn to strengthen and maintain the friendships and family relationships that you have.
Addiction is a Family Disease
You may have felt alone when you were addicted, but the truth is you were never the only person harmed by your disease. Other people often develop their own coping behaviors when they love somebody who is addicted to drugs or alcohol.
They may develop poor coping skills and lash out, or begin to withdraw from the relationship. That doesn’t mean they don’t care – most likely, they’re afraid and don’t know what to do.
People who love addicted people often have a lot of hurt and pain. Some people respond by feeling relieved and grateful when their loved on finds sobriety, but others may feel angry and mistrustful of the process.
These are problems they will need to work through just as you have to work on your own recovery. They may benefit from family therapy or one-on-one therapy, or even joining a 12-step group such as Al-Anon that focuses on supporting families.
Changing Your Relationships
For every action, there is an equal or opposite reaction. With a change in a family dynamic, there is more change! If you, as an addicted person, begin to become more independent and reliable, somebody who has been picking up the slack feels less useful. Everyone will adapt to your new way of life in their own time.
Working on yourself is the best you can do when you first start out in recovery. If you want to strengthen your relationships, you will have to start establishing trust. Having boundaries is also essential. These are issues you can work on in recovery with your own therapist.
Getting Help for Addiction
Recovery from addiction is a journey, not a destination. We can help you begin to live a fulfilling life and transform your life. Getting help may sound scary, but the first step is easy – just reach out. You can contact us to learn about your options at 855-976-1495.
Contact Us
Need Help? (661) 630-4176
Verify Insurance
About Us
