Addiction recovery is a life-long journey filled with many ups and downs. While addiction recovery isn’t easy, practicing self-care in recovery can significantly help support your recovery journey and overall improve your mental and physical health. There are several important ways self-care can help support your addiction recovery journey. Keep reading to learn more about why you should be prioritizing self-care.
At Seven Arrows Recovery, we are a top-rated drug rehab in Arizona that provides patients with an individualized approach to best overcome their addiction and thrive. We offer a wide range of treatment services to help as many patients as possible safely and effectively achieve long-term sobriety. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you break free of addiction once and for all.
What Is Self-Care?
Before diving into the importance of self-care for addiction recovery, it’s first critical to understand what self-care is (and what self-care isn’t). Self-care is the process of doing certain healthy behaviors that are positive to your overall health and well-being. This can include physical activities like biking or walking that improve your physical health. Or, this could be journaling or reading that improves your mental and emotional health and well-being.
Self-care isn’t selfish; rather self-care is an opportunity to focus on healthy habits and behaviors you can implement into your daily life to improve your overall life while also supporting your recovery journey. Keep reading to learn the 4 top reasons why self-care for addiction recovery is so important!
4 Reasons Why Self-Care for Addiction Recovery Is Important
Overcoming addiction is difficult. That’s why it’s so important to practice self-care to boost your mental and physical health so you are being your best self to support your recovery journey. Below are 4 top reasons why practicing consistent self-care is so important in your addiction recovery journey.
Improve Your Mental Health and Well-being
Self-care is a great way to take time for yourself and improve your mental health. Regardless of if you are struggling with addiction or not, prioritizing self-care is critical for improving your overall well-being. Your mental wellness is an important aspect of your addiction recovery journey because in order to heal and maintain long-term sobriety, you need to learn healthy coping strategies to ultimately reduce your risk of relapsing.
Improve Your Physical Health
Self-care can also help improve your physical health, especially if you do more physical practices like walking, exercising, yoga, etc. As you are overcoming your addiction, your body is also healing from the abuse it endured at the hands of addiction. Therefore, by improving your physical health, you are helping to heal your physical strength and well-being so you can become your best self.
Increase Self-Love and Compassion
Setting aside time for self-care also increases the compassion and self-love you have for yourself. This can not only build your self-confidence but your trust in yourself to maintain long-term sobriety. While self-care can look different for everyone, focusing on healthy self-care practices that light you up, whether that be exercising or journaling, can not only make you feel good but also serve as a healthy coping strategy when you face urges/ triggers to abuse drugs or alcohol.
Better Support Your Recovery Journey
As briefly discussed above, self-care practices can serve as healthy coping strategies you can turn to when you are struggling with old triggers or urges to abuse drugs or alcohol. Therefore, self-care is important in addiction recovery because it can support your recovery journey and reduce your risk of relapsing.
Relapsing is your greatest threat to achieving life-long sobriety. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 40-60% of individuals treated for substance use disorders relapse. However, if you have certain self-care practices you can turn to when you are experiencing triggers; this can significantly support your recovery journey and reduce your risk of relapsing.Â
Ready to Start Your Road to Recovery
Whether you are recovering from addiction or not, self-care for addiction recovery is vital to take care of your physical and mental health along your recovery journey. From taking time each day to exercise to practicing yoga, journaling, or whatever you’re preferred self-care practice, without question, consistently prioritizing your self-care can significantly help support your addiction recovery journey.
At Seven Arrows Recovery, we offer an extensive range of addiction treatment programs to help as many patients as possible break free of addiction. Using a holistic approach, we help patients not just achieve sobriety but heal their mind, body, and spirit to live their life to the fullest. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you on your road to recovery.
