Continuing my series of daily posts, today’s Step is # 5 of 11 basic but powerful strategies for achieving addiction recovery. Look for a Recovery Step and Strategy every day through September 17th. Use these steps and strategies to help guide you to a solid recovery.
Step 5 – Be on the alert for denial, minimizing, overconfidence and other forms of addictive thinking. Once you have some recovery time and start to feel better, you may be vulnerable to taking your recovery for granted. Beware of complacent habits and thoughts such as “I’m better now, so I don’t need to work on recovery any more”; and “I’m in control again, so I can just do it once”, etc. This kind of rationalizing can pave the way to relapse.
Recovery Strategy: If you find yourself becoming over confident, refer back to Steps 1 and 4. Use reality based thinking. For example “Wait a minute, have I ever been able to gamble/drink/binge eat/do cocaine etc. just a little bit? If I give into this way of thinking, before I know it I’ll be gambling/drinking/binge eating/doing cocaine, etc. compulsively, and my life will rapidly start to go down hill all over again”.
Stay Tuned Tomorrow For Step 6!
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Glynis Sherwood – MEd, CAC, CCC, RCC, is a Certified Addictions Counselor working online and based in Halifax Canada
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