Two Crucial Components of Relapse Prevention | Addiction Recovery 2022

These are the crucial steps for staying sober. Regardless of the recovery plan that you're working or not working, these are the essential steps. In fact, if you're not doing these things, then you're headed for relapse. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your family and your life back on track, get back out there and live the life that you want to live. Now, the whole point of getting sober is so that you have the freedom of choice, so that you can choose who you want to be in a relationship with, who you don't, what you want to do with your day so that you can enjoy things again. Being sober is about having freedom. And to be honest, being sober is actually much, much easier than being an active addiction. Think about all the time. Energy, effort, thinking, planning, scheming, hiding, getting away with, worrying, feeling guilty. Think about all the time and energy you put into doing all those things in active addiction. Guess what? In sobriety, you don't really have to do any of those things. In fact, it is much, much easier. That being said, there are a few things you do need to do. You can't just say, okay, that's it. I'm going to be sober. And then magically, everything changes because you really meant it, and then you're sober. There are a few things you need to do, and I'm going to tell you exactly what they are. Now, to make this as simple as possible, I'm going to break it down to you into two categories. And both of these categories have to do with making a plan. You got a plan on how to stay and keep your sobriety, just like you had to plan on how you were gonna use get it, get away with it, hide it, all that kind of other stuff that you did before, you gotta put a little planning into it. And I'm gonna tell you exactly what steps need to be in the plan. So the first category in planning for sobriety needs to be the big sort of overall general, how you're gonna keep yourself in a good place. Because we all know that when we're in a not good place, we're a lot more likely to make bad choices, right? So this is the big picture plan. And in the big picture plan, you've got to have some plans for how you're gonna keep your sanity. And which could include dealing with old trauma. It could include dealing with, like, underlying reasons that Maybe were driving the addiction, but it can also just include managing your daily stresses. So how are you going to manage your sanity? How are you going to keep yourself sane and stable, which is absolutely crucial for maintaining sobriety, especially in the early days? There are, of course, lots of ways you can do this. You can have a counselor, you can have a recovery coach. You can have a sponsor that you call and talk about, and you deal with all of your stuff. There are a variety of ways to do this, but you need it. And basically what you need is a really good, trustworthy sounding board to help you sort through things, keep your head on straight, right? And the other piece that goes under this sort of sanity management category is keeping the truth front and center. Now, you may be thinking, Amber, what do you mean by the truth? I mean the truth about your addiction, the truth about how it really works, the truth about what you're capable of and not capable of when it comes to things surrounding that addiction. Let me give you some examples. Most people that I know that have relapses, the big one factor that's almost always there is that somewhere along the way, the person manages to convince themselves that they can do whatever they were doing before, but do it differently and get a different outcome, right? So that might look like I'm just gonna drink or use on the weekends. I'm just gonna Dr. Use or do whatever it is on vacation. I'm only going to use this substance and not that substance. So it's these sneaky thoughts that come in about ways to maybe do it slightly differently, but keep it in your life. Now, you know, the truth is, you already tried to do that a whole bunch of times, and it hadn't worked yet, or it hadn't worked more than five minutes in a row. Come on, you're not watching this video without having tried that already, right? So let's keep the truth front and center in the front of your brain. Now, what is going to help you do that? There are a lot of things that can help keep that truth front and center, but usually it involves keeping yourself connected to some kind of recovery influence. Now, for some people, that means going to meetings. For some people, that means reading recovery books. For some people, that means listening to recovery podcast. For some people, that means that they have regular meetings with their recovery coach or their sponsor or their addiction counselor. It is very important to keep that addiction stuff right up here because it is so easy to forget the bad stuff and to start trying to bargain with it. That's what I call it, trying to bargain with how can I keep it but not have the negative stuff happen this time? Now, a lot of people have this thought when they first get sober. Like, I just want to put it behind me. I want to stay sober. That was like terrible part of my life. I'm embarrassed of it, I'm ashamed of it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. I want to close the door on it and put it behind me. And that's completely understandable, right? Like, who wants to think about that bad stuff? Who wants to think about all that terrible stuff you did? You feel bad about it. You're being sober now. You don't want to drag it all up. Completely, 100% get it. Completely understandable. And most of us, if we think about it, we can kind of relate to that. The problem is that when we want to shut it so far behind us, it leaves room for the truth to kind of slide away and the untruth to sneak in there and the bargaining starts happening. So the big picture plan has to involve sanity management, right? Which could be exercising, counseling, going to church, reading self help books. There's a lot of things that can go in that category. And truth management. Making sure that you don't start trying to trick yourself. That little addiction is going to start talking to you. It's going to start trying to tell you some lies again. Think of it like a crappy ex boyfriend or girlfriend that tries to weasel their way back in. And you got to remember why that relationship didn't work. And don't be trying to trick yourself. This is going to be different. That is the big picture plan. That is category number one essential step for staying sober. Now if you need some help and some resources for things that can help you manage your sanity and help you keep the truth in the front of your mind, I am going to put some links in the description. There are several resources down there that might be helpful if you need an addiction recovery coach or counselor. Links in the description. If you need just like a daily relapse prevention checklist, right. You can download that for free. Links in the description. If you need a regular recovery program. I'm also going to put a link in the description for our recovery to go program, which is a flexible online program because you can access it anytime from anywhere on your terms completely. It kind of makes recovery very, very accessible. All of those links are in the description. Now let's move on to the second category for planning to make sure you keep your sobriety the second category is I call making a plan for how to deal with specific high risk or danger zone type of situations. Right. So there's the overall how I keep myself healthy category number one. And there's the how do I deal with these difficult situations? You got to plan for that too. And I'm going to give you some secret steps on how to plan for how to get through those high risk times or tempting times or difficult conversations. What I'm talking about is maybe social events you have to go to, work events you have to go to, family members you're going to need to be around for whatever particular reason who engage in the behavior you're trying not to do. Family, weddings, holidays, vacations. You know, the more difficult times where it might be a little extra tempting to fall back into old behavior. Alright, here are the steps for how you need to make your plan to get around those kind of situations. Number one step, this is really important is I want you to ahead of time, before you get to the event, before it happens, I want you to preemptively let whoever those other people know are, know that you're not going to be drinking, using, engaging in whatever behavior, gambling, whatever the behavior was. I want you to preemptively let people know that you're not going to be doing that. Now the best way to do that is to tell people that you're in recovery. That's the best way to do that. And then you head it off at the pass. Then you don't have to get asked 100 times if you want to drink and say no 500 times. Right? You don't have to deal with that peer pressure. But if you're not ready to tell people that you're in recovery or you don't want to, maybe it's a work event that you might have your reasons, right? Then make up another reason. Okay? Tell them you're not drinking, using or doing that because whatever, because you're on a diet, because you have to take drug tests for your probation officer, because you're doing it to support your wife, whatever, I don't care. But have a reason and tell people ahead of time. Because what that does is it kind of heads it off at the past. You get much less like questions about it. Do you want this? You need this. And so you don't have to do all that hard work of explaining it 400 times and turning it down a thousand times. It's just gonna make it easier. Do this ahead of time. Another thing you can do to make getting through those Kind of situations easier is decide what you're gonna do instead. Maybe if you're trying to stop drinking, decide what you are gonna drink instead. Is there another drink that you like? Right? What are you gonna hold in your hand instead of alcohol? Who are you gonna talk to that's gonna be fun? Who are you going to talk to and who you're not going to talk to? What can you do that's going to be fun so that you're not in this event being miserable all the whole time, feeling like you're being left out. What are you going to do instead of the old behavior? And another thing you can do to help yourself get through these kind of tough situations is ask for what you need from other close people around you that you care about. So a good idea is if you're going to be in a high risk situation, bring someone along with you that kind of knows the deal, they know what you're going through and ask them for the support that you need. What kind of support do I mean? Like maybe you need them to run interference for you, right? Maybe you need them to be kind of like your sober wingman. Maybe you need to have a secret code word with them where they make up an excuse and you guys get to leave early. Maybe you tell your recovery wingman that there's a particular person that's there that you really don't want to be around and you don't want to talk to and you have them run interference for you. You make that plan ahead of time. Trust me, the people in your life that know what's going on, they are going to love having a job because they totally want to help you and support you, but they don't know what to do that's helpful. And so tell people what to do that's helpful. They'll really appreciate it and it'll make the whole event easier for you. If you're not taking care of those two categories, the two categories being the overall big picture plan, which is the sanity management and the truth telling and the little picture plan, which is the how do I get through specific difficult situations Then you don't got a good relapse prevention plan. These are essentials. Doesn't matter to me whether you work a 12 step program, a smart recovery, a Dharma recovery, whatever these things need to be in your plan. Now if you need more resources, I am going to have all those links in the description for you. In fact, there's a link in the description for easy daily recovery habits you can do that are going to help you keep your truth connected, that are going to help you keep your sanity in place. All that good stuff, you can find that in the description. And up next, I want you to watch this video, which is a slightly more advanced version of relapse prevention.