Cultivating self-love during addiction treatment and recovery helps an individual build a more optimistic outlook on life while creating a buffer against triggers of relapse, stressors, or triggers that might reactivate an addictive response.
Establishing healthy and loving habits begins by understanding why they're necessary. From there, practicing supportive thoughts and actions becomes critical. Here are a few tips to get you going:
1. Practice Self-Care
Self-care is one of the cornerstones of recovery from addiction. Aimee Cabo highlights that finding healthy ways to care for and nurture yourself - such as eating well, exercising regularly, or even meditation - is essential.
Encouraging positive relationships during recovery is also crucial for strengthening confidence and resilience against triggers that threaten sobriety, such as joining support groups or attending recovery events.
Additionally, it's essential to foster positive self-talk and form a healthier relationship with your body. You can do this by focusing on what you love about yourself instead of what bothers you - for instance, by keeping a "body love" journal where each day you list three things about your body that make you grateful - for example, keeping upright and moving. Or try practicing mindfulness by finding gratitude in small things such as smelling flowers or feeling sunlight on your skin.
2. Practice Self-Acceptance
Love yourself and accept all your strengths, quirks, and mistakes to find happiness and stability in daily life. Affirming yourself can also be an effective healing mechanism, allowing us to recognize negative thoughts or feelings without holding on to them for too long.
Aimee Cabo clarifies self-acceptance involves learning to care for yourself without criticizing or comparing yourself with others, which differs from narcissism, which consists of seeing oneself as superior and seeking external validation. People who love themselves recognize their flaws and mistakes while treating themselves with kindness, just as they would treat anyone else.
Practice self-acceptance, which can involve listing your strengths or successes and reading it when feeling down. Or it could mean forgiving yourself for past mistakes while accepting that, at the time, they were all part of becoming the best version of yourself possible. Studies show that happier people tend to have solid relationships and support networks.
3. Practice Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is an inner power that enables you to persist despite setbacks and failure, providing the strength to take action against temptations, resist them, and overcome self-sabotaging thoughts.
Aimee Cabo points out that self-discipline in addiction recovery means taking steps to avoid activities that trigger cravings by engaging in healthier behaviors instead. Instead of watching television or video games when feeling an urge, try walking or participating in physical activities. Physical activity releases endorphins, which reduce cravings while improving your mood and overall quality of life.
Self-discipline involves setting healthy boundaries. For instance, you might restrict contact with people who drain your energy and make you anxious or set aside regular "me time," like running early morning runs or taking nightly baths.
Establishing self-discipline takes effort, but it can bring long-term gains over time. By sticking with your commitment to practicing self-discipline, for example, you will reduce impulsive spending of money and become more inclined to save for the future.
4. Practice Self-Forgiveness
Self-forgiveness is essential to breaking free of addiction's cycle. This involves acknowledging and accepting your wrongdoings while acknowledging you can change. While this process may be challenging, it's necessary for proper recovery.
Aimee Cabo focuses on the fact that forgiveness of others is also crucial in learning to forgive oneself. For instance, if your actions caused harm to someone, make amends and restore trust as soon as possible - this is part of forgiveness, which you can practice through various activities such as mediation.
Self-love also fosters self-compassion or treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would extend to a friend. Doing this helps to avoid harsh self-criticism that may trigger relapse and develops a positive self-image and mental health benefits; this creates resilience to overcome any challenges presented during recovery, leading to a healthier lifestyle overall.
5. Practice Self-Love
Aimee Cabo conveys that self-love may appear like an excessively self-important concept at first glance. Self-love is much more vital than you may realize.
Love yourself genuinely; you need to recognize and acknowledge your feelings--even those that make you uncomfortable or unhappy. Mindfulness practices like writing, meditating, and using journal prompts as tools for self-awareness may help facilitate this.
Accept and show compassion toward yourself just as you would another loved one, practicing good self-care like a healthy diet, exercise, restful sleep, and intimacy. Set boundaries for situations and people that drain your energy before accepting invitations that might endanger or exhaust you.
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