How to Build Skills to Support Success in Recovery
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Many of us grow up with too few coping skills to manage emotions, stressors, and difficult situations healthily. If you do not have the healthy coping skills you need, you might turn to other unhealthy ways of coping–like using substances, avoidance, denial, negative self-talk, self-harm, or something else.
With that in mind, it’s critical to build skills that support your success in recovery. Changes Healing Center emphasizes the development of coping skills to support recovery success in our addiction treatment programs. So, what should you know?
First, let’s define coping skills and their role in addiction treatment or recovery. Then, we’ll review a thorough list of coping skills you can use in your personal recovery journey.
What Are Coping Skills?
Coping skills are tactics, strategies, or practices that help you effectively navigate challenging or stressful situations. When you don’t have the tools or life skills you need to deal with something difficult, it can lead to unhealthy behaviors, unmanageable or intolerable emotional distress, and other negative consequences.
Technically, coping skills can be healthy or unhealthy. When we talk about the importance of coping skills, we are referring to healthy coping skills.
The Role of Healthy Coping Skills in Addiction Treatment
Why are healthy skills so strongly emphasized in addiction treatment? In treatment, medical and mental health providers strive to help clients build a strong set of healthy coping skills that will help them get through circumstances that could emerge throughout long-term addiction recovery and daily life.
Here are some of the ways coping skills can help people like you or your loved one overcome drug and alcohol abuse.
Trade Positive Coping Skills for Unhealthy Coping Skills
While people use drugs and alcohol for different reasons, drug and alcohol use is a prime example of an unhealthy coping mechanism. Addiction treatment can help you find healthy ways to cope instead of using drugs and alcohol. In other words, healthy coping skills can replace unhealthy coping methods that no longer serve you.
Overcome Urges to Use Substances
Coping skills can help you prevent relapse by overcoming urges to use substances. If you do not have healthy coping skills, you may be more prone to act on impulses, drug and alcohol cravings, or use drugs and alcohol to deal with something like stress.
When you have healthy coping skills for addiction, you learn to step back when you experience an urge or trigger to use and get through it without using drugs and alcohol.
Address Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders
Many people enduring alcohol or drug addiction also have at least one other mental health disorder or a related concern, like trauma or grief. Mental health conditions can raise your risk of substance abuse, and they share some of the same risk factors as drug or alcohol use disorders.
If you live with mental health issues like anxiety, depression, struggles with anger management, or something else, healthy coping skills give you ways to navigate these symptoms without drugs and alcohol.
Manage Life Stressors
Addiction or not, it’s crucial that all of us learn ways to manage stress. Not only can stress be a trigger for substance abuse and worsened mental health issues, but it can take a toll on your physical body as well—with some effects of long-term stress being incredibly detrimental and scary, like an increased risk of heart problems.
Healthy coping mechanisms let you self-regulate and relieve stress. This can promote overall well-being and quality of life.
Effective Coping Skills to Support Addiction Recovery
Effective or positive coping skills can take a multitude of different forms, and it may take time to discover which ones work for you. Ideally, you should work to develop a toolkit of multiple coping skills that can help you steer yourself through diverse situations.
Here are some common coping skills mental health and addiction treatment providers might work with you on.
Cognitive Reframing (Thought Reframe)
Commonly taught in behavioral therapies, cognitive reframing involves challenging negative or unhelpful thoughts. Usually, negative or unhelpful thoughts can be described as some form of cognitive distortion – for example, all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, discounting the positive, labeling, or comparison.
Once you notice cognitive distortions or negative thoughts, you can reframe them and look at things in a way that supports your recovery more.
Let’s say that you use a negative behavior, like alcohol or drug use, at some point in your recovery journey. Rather than decide that this is “the end” of your recovery (all-or-nothing thinking), cognitive reframing is a form of ‘playing the tape through‘ that lets you say, “Using one time does not need to mean that I have to use drugs and alcohol again, and it does not undo my progress in addiction recovery. I can get through this moment.”
Problem-Solving Skills
Problem-solving skills refer to skills that help you navigate problems in your life. In therapy, a provider might help you come up with a realistic example of a problem you might face in your everyday life. Then, they might help you brainstorm ways to address the problem, like breaking it down into smaller steps and positive self-talk or self-compassion.
Interpersonal and Communication Skills
Interpersonal and communication skills can strengthen relationships, help you have productive conversations, and get through various situations in life. Things like setting boundaries, active listening, or conflict resolution skills are examples of interpersonal communication skills.
Urge Surfing for Addiction Recovery
Urge surfing is a technique where you acknowledge and accept an urge without acting on it. Some people visualize a wave in the ocean when they use this technique, with the wave getting bigger when the trigger peaks and smaller as it becomes less powerful.
Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques
Mindfulness and relaxation techniques can take various forms. Examples of mindfulness and relaxation techniques a provider might teach you include but aren’t limited to the following.
- Progressive muscle relaxation.
- The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise.
- Deep breathing exercises.
- Meditation.
- Body scan.
One of the benefits of exercises like these is that many of them can be used anywhere. You can engage in deep breathing in your car before work while stepping away from an argument, or in any other everyday situation where other tools might not be easily accessible.
Even better, things like breathing exercises may relieve physiological symptoms of anxiety or stress, like increased heart rate. These exercises can help you bring your nervous system back into a relaxed state.
Turning to Your Support System
Having a support system is vital for those in recovery. Your support system will be unique to you but may include friends, family members, romantic partners, or others in recovery. When you need support at any point during the recovery process, you might:
- Go to free support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (aka: AA meetings), SMART Recovery, or Narcotics Anonymous (NA).
- Talk to a friend or family member on the phone
- Spend time with loved ones in person.
Changes Healing Center helps you build a support system in treatment.
Healthy and Positive Activities
Healthy and positive activities are important for those in addiction recovery for many different reasons. Activities such as the following can act as an outlet, a way of relieving tension or stress, as a distraction, or as a way of finding joy.
- Creative expression. For example, journaling, writing songs or poetry, collaging, painting, drawing, or woodworking.
- Physical activity. For example, walking, running, swimming, lifting weights, biking, or dancing.
- Nature activities, like gardening or hiking.
- Volunteer work.
All of these hobbies can aid both mental and physical health. In addition to other benefits, having activities you enjoy can give you something to look forward to, help you stay engaged in recovery, and potentially give you a chance to meet new people.
Maintaining Motivation to Utilize Recovery Skills
Treatment can help you find motivation to use recovery skills and stay sober. At Changes Healing Center, we will help you find your personal sources of motivation, set goals, and work toward those goals.
Often, part of addiction recovery is finding or increasing the confidence you feel in yourself and your abilities. Even if you don’t feel motivated or think recovery is possible right now, it very much so is.
How Our Arizona Addiction Treatment Programs Teach Coping Skills
Our addiction treatment programs in Arizona teach coping or related skills in individual, family, and group therapy sessions. Each therapy format can provide valuable information to people in recovery, which may involve coping skills and related strategies.
Individual Therapy Sessions
Individual therapy is an essential part of treatment because it provides one-on-one support and helps you meet your specific or personal goals. In individual therapy sessions, you might discuss a specific problem you have with a therapist, like impulsivity, and they can brainstorm coping methods with you to help you combat that problem.
Group Therapy Sessions
In group therapy sessions, a mental health professional may guide you and other group members through how and when to use certain coping skills. For example, in a dialectical behavior therapy group, you might practice mindfulness exercises together with guidance from a therapist.
Or, you might discuss skills like distress tolerance and radical acceptance. You may also go over examples of when they might help you.
Family Therapy Sessions
Changes Healing Center offers family sessions (and sessions with other loved ones, like romantic partners). By including these sessions in your treatment plan, we can help you and your family members work together and find ways to cope with or navigate issues that emerge in your family unit.
For example, if you have a recurring argument or unhealthy communication patterns, we can help.
Call Changes Healing Center to Discover Healthy Coping Skills for Addiction Recovery
Changes Healing Center is a respected treatment center in Arizona that works with substance use disorders and mental health concerns. Our team is here to help you build a toolkit of positive coping strategies for a prolonged and successful recovery.
We offer a full continuum of care for substance abuse and dual-diagnosis disorders.
Please call Changes Healing Center confidentially to learn more about our treatment programs or to verify your insurance coverage today.
FAQs Regarding Coping Skills for Addiction Recovery
What are coping skills for recovery?
Coping skills for recovery can take many different forms. Common examples of coping skills include deep breathing exercises, cognitive reframing, physical activity, and reaching out to other people for support.
What are the four main types of coping skills?
The four main types of coping skills are:
- Problem-focused: Addressing the problem through planning (problem-solving).
- Emotion-focused: Reducing or managing emotions associated with the problem (this can be through radical acceptance, cognitive reframing, healthy activities that promote positive feelings, or something else).
- Meaning-focused: Using cognitive strategies to understand and manage the meaning of a situation.
- Social coping or support seeking: Reducing distress by seeking support from others.
While this does not necessarily encompass every way of coping, many coping strategies will fall into one of these categories.
What are the five rules of recovery?
Although the five rules of recovery aren’t necessarily coping skills, they can act as somewhat of a guide for those in addiction recovery. The five rules of recovery include:
- Change your life (create a life that makes it easier, or more possible, not to use).
- Be completely honest (with yourself and others, like professionals).
- Ask for help (get support – don’t try to face recovery alone).
- Practice self-care (take care of your mental, physical, and social needs).
- Don’t bend the rules (e.g., don’t bend the rules about not using substances).
Reviewing the five rules of recovery can help you understand how to support yourself in recovery, not just now but in the long term.
What are the 5 Ps of recovery?
The 5 P’s are a framework that helps providers look at a person’s substance abuse from a whole-person perspective. Developed in 2012, the 5 P’s include:
- Presenting problem.
- Predisposing factors.
- Precipitating factors.
- Perpetuating factors.
- Protective factors.
When providers look at these factors, it can help them understand how to help a client most as an individual. Examples of predisposing factors for addiction could be a mental health condition or family history, and an example of a protective factor could be a strong network of social support.
What are the four C’s in recovery?
The “four C’s” of recovery are compulsions, cravings, consequences, and control. This mnemonic describes common key elements of substance use disorders or addiction.
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