Sure, maybe you are new in recovery and keep telling yourself you’ve wasted years using and should’ve gotten sober sooner. When you choose to think with a grateful mindset, you will improve your physical, mental, and spiritual health. All of which makes for a healthier, happier, and more fulfilled you. One of the best ways to overcome this spiritual malady is to practice gratitude.
The Experience Blog
You likely interact with someone in recovery from substance abuse disorder frequently, perhaps even daily. Attendees include a mix of individuals and family members in recovery,program administrators and directors, clinical staff, peer professionals,as well as other recovery allies. As CEO, Joe led Exponents through the disruption of COVID-19, enabling the agency to continue to provide drug treatment and crisis management services without interruption. Quickly turning to tele-health and tele-visual individual and group counseling sessions, as well as establishing a 24-hour crisis hotline, Exponents retained over 95% of its program participants. Joe has often said that “…every crisis shines a bright light on our strengths and weaknesses”. Indeed, the strength of Exponents that was gleaned from the COVID crisis, was the forging of a “community of hope”.
Stephanie Campbell
If you’ve spent months or years soured by a negative outlook, it isn’t easy to swap rose-colored glasses with your current position of seeing everything as gray and stormy. The good news is that gratitude is contagious, and you can practice gratitude with others to help teach yourself to find positivity naturally. When you’re mired in the depths of addiction, other negative situations often come along with it. Substance abuse strains relationships, impacts personal finances, and can stymie your career, among other potential barriers to happiness. Gratitude in recovery comes more naturally to some people than others. If gratitude doesn’t come easily during your recovery, there are practices you can follow to retrain your mind toward this more positive outlook.
Ways to Maintain an Attitude of Gratitude in Addiction Recovery
Jon is a proud father of four, a long-time fitness enthusiast, graphic designer and artist. Although it would feel great to celebrate and be grateful for big wins every day, it isn’t realistic for most people. Gratitude shouldn’t only be practiced when something amazing happens, like receiving a job offer at your dream career or seeing a long-distance friend. These things certainly deserve celebration and appreciation, but so does the small stuff! You can be grateful for minor occurrences as long as they make you happy. For example, a sunny day, enjoying your cup of coffee, a compliment from a stranger, completing an assignment, and even just waking up in the morning to conquer the day are all things you can be grateful for!
- If you’re ready to enroll in a sober living program, peer recovery support program, or intensive outpatient program (IOP), call Eudaimonia Recovery Homes today to speak with one of our friendly admissions representatives.
- Reflecting on these life lessons and asking yourself what you’ve learned in the last week, month, or year is a great way to practice gratitude and reflect on your own personal growth in recovery.
- At the same time, you should work to both forgive others who may have made things worse for you or said harsh things while you were addicted and work to reach closure with them.
- When we begin thinking negative thoughts or finding something wrong with a person or situation, these thoughts grow.
Laws dealing with felons should take into account if someone is in recovery. As the SPAN Eastern Regional Coordinator, Ms. Koivula is a respected advocate for nurses who personally struggle with substance use disorder. Ms. Koivula has successfully aided many nurses including nurse anesthetists to establish their own meaningful recovery.
Substance Use Treatment
These ideas apply to anyone and everyone—being and feeling grateful just makes life better. It’s easy to become irritable, angry, and impatient when we focus on the worst qualities in others. Instead, focusing on the best qualities can help us maintain a positive attitude, develop patience, and be respectful of others, even when it’s not easy.
Police: 4 shot on Virginia State University campus
The transition from addiction to recovery isn’t overnight, and the benefits don’t come all at once. Having trouble focusing your gratitude onto a specific person, place or thing? When we honor and appreciate other people’s assets, we create a safe environment where they, too, can feel happy and grateful, and they benefit from our presence. You stub your toe on gratitude recovery the way out of bed or you spill your coffee all over your clean shirt? For a lot of people, this seemingly negative event sets off a train of thought and then everything seems to go wrong for the rest of the day. You’ll hear people say, “I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning.” This reflects the negative thinking that just draws more and more to it.
- She also serves as consultant to the NYCB Ethics Committee and as ASAP-PWI administrator.
- Regardless of how you got to where you are, you are here now, on the pathway to recovery.
- Your addiction may have led you down a destructive path, but now you’re choosing to live a better life.
- Throughout each day, be mindful of your interactions and observations of others.
Show people you are thankful for them
Another way to practice gratitude during your recovery journey is to tell others how much you appreciate them and what they do for you. Gratitude is often misunderstood as complacency or settling for less. However, it complements the journey by fostering appreciation without hindering personal growth. It empowers individuals to challenge the status quo, improve their circumstances, and transform their lives.
Thinking Positively Helps with Recovery
It can help you divert your attention away from substance use to focus on what fulfills you. Recovery is an ongoing process and those in recovery will always be there for one another. Perhaps most inspiring about this community is that new people are always welcome to join, including allies and neighbors.