Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through five reflective questions for addiction and mental health treatment. Compare how recovery behaviors versus old addictive ones affect your emotions. Identify what you use instead of relapse to manage feelings, and notice how emotions trigger the cycle.
Hey there, everybody, and welcome back to the Addiction and Mental Health Disorders treatment Manual. This is unit one, part 11, enhancing affective or emotional motivation. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this part, we're going to explore affective or emotional motivation and how to enhance it. Just like the other parts that you've gone through till now, you're going to spend about 50 minutes answering the following questions. How is the new behavior, whatever that new behavior you chose in, in the previous parts, how is that new behavior going to make you feel better emotionally? How will it help you feel happier, more curious, more a struck, more content, Whatever happy words you want to use, how is it going to help you feel less guilty, depressed, anxious, angry? How does the old behavior, whatever you're doing right now, whatever you are planning on changing, how does that behavior make you feel bad emotionally? How does it make you feel bad with anxiety, anger, depression, guilt, grief? How did the old behavior make you happy? There were things about it that were rewarding or you wouldn't have continued to do it. Now, it might, might not have made you, you know, happy in the typical sense, but it may have numbed the pain for a while. How else could you achieve that besides relapse, that is? How could you increase your happiness? What can you do to feel happy, curious, content, besides engaging in that old behavior? How might recovery or the new behavior make you unhappy, especially in the short term? And how can you deal with those feelings when you start doing this, and I been talking about this in each part. Change is hard and change can be uncomfortable at times. There are going to be times when you know you need to do something for the change, but you really don't want to. You really don't feel like you have the energy, but you got to pick yourself up and make yourself do it. So how can you deal with those feelings when part of you says, oh, you know, I just, I really don't want to do that today. In what ways did your emotions cause addictive behaviors or emotional or physical illness relapses in the past? Now remember, a lot of people will engage in addictive behaviors to numb their feelings, especially the dysphoric feelings, or to help them feel something. If they're just kind of flat, flat and blah all the time, they may engage in addictive behaviors in order to feel something, in order to feel a rush because they just feel numb so much of the time. Emotions, especially unpleasant emotions, can also trigger other unpleasant emotions. So if you start feeling anxious, then it may trigger anxiety issues. It may trigger depression issues. It may trigger anger in you because you're frustrated that you're feeling anxious all the time, and when you're feeling dysphoric, angry, anxious, depressed, etc. It also impacts your immune system. When you are feeling stressed out, your immune system is impaired. So think about how the behavior you want to change has affected your emotions, and think about how this new behavior is going to help you feel happier and more content and healthier and in less pain.
