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If you are struggling with addiction, you are not alone. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 48.5 million people suffered from a substance use disorder in 2023.[1]
Addiction can be difficult to recover from. Even after you complete a substance abuse treatment program, you have to participate in recovery maintenance techniques daily to stay sober. Without the proper tools and skills, this can seem like an impossible task.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to prevent relapse while living a happy and normal life. When you use healthy coping mechanisms, they often work quickly, allowing you to get back to your daily activities without much distraction from your day.
If you are wondering what coping skills you should be using in addiction recovery, you’ve come to the right place. You can use grounding techniques to combat stress, take time to respond instead of acting impulsively, use a method called “playing the tape through”, and more.
What are Six Coping Skills to Prevent Relapse?
The recovery process is a lifelong journey that includes ups and downs. When you are experiencing negative emotions or stressful situations, you experience an increased risk of relapsing. Thankfully, using healthy coping mechanisms can help you avoid relapse and live a fulfilling life.
The top 6 coping skills for avoiding relapse include:
1. Grounding Techniques for Stress Relief
Stress can affect your ability to concentrate, elevate your blood pressure, and cause you to crave drugs and alcohol. If you are trying to maintain long-term recovery, you need tools to help you deal with stress.
Learning how to relax in stressful situations is paramount to maintaining sobriety. Using grounding techniques can lessen your stress and help you stay focused.
Examples of grounding techniques you can use include:
- Deep breathing exercises
- Walking, stretching, or light exercises
- Using positive affirmations
- Journaling
- Identifying sight, sound, and touch
- Taking a warm bath
- Listening to music
- Spending time in nature
2. Taking Time to Respond
Substance use disorders often cause impulsivity. When someone causes you to feel upset, you might be tempted to respond immediately. While it is good to let someone know your feelings are hurt, you should take some time to ensure your response isn’t clouded by negative emotions.
When you feel angry, irritable, or triggered, take deep breaths and wait to respond until you’ve calmed down. This can prevent you from exacerbating the confrontation with intense emotions and allow a constructive conversation to take place later on.
3. Play the Tape Through
“Playing the tape through” is an addiction recovery technique that can help you prevent relapses. When you are experiencing negative thoughts or emotions, you might begin to think about the way drugs and alcohol benefitted you. Instead of seeing the harm substances cause, you are thinking about the ways they helped you numb your emotions.
When this occurs, you should “play the tape through” by thinking about all of the ways drugs and alcohol harmed your life and prevented you from reaching your goals. When you do this, you’ll find that your desire to abuse substances decreases substantially.
4. Pay Attention to HALT Symptoms
HALT is an acronym that stands for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. These are emotions that often lead people in addiction treatment to relapse.
When you are experiencing drug and alcohol cravings, use HALT to determine if you are experiencing one of these emotions. If so, do your best to work through the emotion and take care of yourself instead of succumbing to your cravings. For example, if you find that you are hungry, eat something.
5. Manage Your Triggers
Hunger, loneliness, anger, and tiredness are not the only triggers for relapse. You might experience stress at work, get into an argument with a family member, or smell something that reminds you of substance abuse.
Other common triggers for relapse include:
- Being around people, places, or things that remind you of addiction
- Seeing your drug of choice
- Attending celebrations like holiday parties or birthdays
You need to manage your triggers by coming up with a plan of action in case you experience one. For example, your plan could include a list of coping mechanisms to use, support systems to call, or a last-minute meeting to attend.
6. Build a Support Network
The best coping mechanism is having a social support network to rely on during times of need. If you attend support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, you could use your friends from these meetings for support.
If you are experiencing triggers or cravings, call one of your friends and tell them what you are dealing with. They will likely know of coping mechanisms you can use, offer to meet up with you to support you, or have other advice on how to overcome your situation.
In addition to having someone there for you in times of need, you can use your support network to help others. Oftentimes, helping others provides you with a sense of purpose that overcomes your desire to use drugs and alcohol.
Get Connected to a Top-Rated Drug and Alcohol Rehab Center
If you are dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, it’s time to seek professional help. At the Mandala Healing Center, we provide our clients with individualized and evidence-based care. In other words, you’ll receive all of the tools and support you need to achieve long-term recovery.
Why Choose The Mandala Healing Center? Clients are taken on a journey of healing through complete immersion into evidence-based clinical modalities, multifaceted alternative therapies, and expert medical management, allowing them to fully detox and recover from drug and alcohol addictions. Through a program of care designed to encourage change, a foundation is created that allows clients to find their higher purpose and reclaim their lives.
Contact us today for more information on our highly-rated addiction treatment program.
References:
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA): Highlights for the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
