Blog & Announcements

In a perfect world, once you realize you have a problem with drugs and alcohol and decide to quit, your friends, your family, and especially your significant other would all respect your struggle and quit drinking too, at least around you. However, reality is seldom so obliging. We live in a drinking culture where the majority of Americans and Europeans drink at least occasionally and often regularly.

For people who are capable of drinking moderately, that’s not a big deal but for you, it can be terribly frustrating trying to stay sober when the people around you are drinking. It can be especially challenging if your significant other continues drinking in your presence, especially early on. However, you will often find that in recovery you have to make the best of an imperfect situation and this is no different. If you are trying to stay sober and your partner still drinks, here are some tips for making the best of it.

Communicate

It’s crucial to communicate and not every couple is good or even competent at this. There are several reasons for this. First of all, you can hardly expect your partner to help you out if they don’t know what you need. Maybe you’ve said, “Hey, would you mind not drinking around me for, say, the next six months while I’m just getting started?” And they said, “Sorry, no,” and that was the end of it.

Maybe you just assumed they would quit drinking too but the thought never crossed their mind. Even if you did raise the issue and they said they wouldn’t quit drinking, there may be other ways they are willing to accommodate you but you have to learn to communicate to work these things out. You may even need couples therapy to work on communication in general.

The second reason communication is important is that poor communication leads to more conflicts, and frequently arguing with your significant other is one of the biggest ways to ratchet up your stress--one of the most powerful triggers of cravings. Learning to communicate better reduces stress and reduces cravings.

Know Your Triggers

It’s always important to know your triggers--the people, places, and things that cause drug and alcohol cravings. While there are some general things that tend to trigger cravings for most people--stress, for example--other cravings can be very specific, such as a friend you always used to drink with, a favorite bar, or even a particular holiday or anniversary.

The good news is that the more aware you are of your own specific cravings, the more information you can give your partner and the better you can work out effective compromises. Maybe one particular restaurant triggers cravings but another similar restaurant doesn’t. Maybe the smell of tequila triggers cravings but the smell of gin puts you off entirely. The more you are aware of these things, the more you can work around them.

Maintain Healthy Boundaries

As with communication, maintaining healthy boundaries is always important in a relationship and it’s especially important when you’re recovering from addiction. Simply put, healthy boundaries are when you respect your partner’s values and autonomy and they respect yours. So while it’s important to express your needs and ask them to help, it’s also important to realize that you ultimately can’t control what they do.

It’s also important to assert your own values and independence. It’s fairly common for people with substance use issues to get involved in codependent relationships, in which one person forsakes their own needs and desire to care for the other, which is bad for both partners. If boundaries are a problem for you, you may need couples therapy or you may even need to consider separating. 

Involve Them in Recovery

As noted above, it’s often a good idea to participate in couples therapy when communication or boundaries become a problem. Often, family therapy is even an integral part of addiction treatment programs. However, involving your significant other in recovery goes far beyond that. Many programs offer education sessions to help family members better assist their loved one’s recovery. Just having a better understanding of how addiction works and the roles family play can make them feel more engaged in the process and better able to help. They may also benefit from participating in a group like Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, which can help them better understand what you’re going through while also offering them some emotional support.

Move Things Around

One major challenge in having a partner who still drinks is if they want to keep alcohol in the house. While it’s better to keep alcohol and drugs out of the house entirely, you may be able to reach an acceptable compromise. For example, maybe they can keep their beer in a different fridge, perhaps in a room you don’t go into very often, so you aren’t confronted with a case of beer every time you want to make a sandwich.

Maybe they can drink something you’re not especially fond of, rather than your go-to drink. Perhaps there are other triggering items in the house that you could get rid of, put in storage, or put somewhere you’re less likely to see them. As discussed above, it all comes down to knowing your triggers and being able to communicate.

Make a Plan for Socializing

Home arrangements aren’t the only challenge. If you’re going out, especially with friends, you may have to strategize on how best to avoid triggers and temptations. For example, you might take separate cars, in case you want to leave early. You may prefer certain friends to others. You may decide that for some occasions, it would be better if you stayed home or did something else while your partner goes out. When you do go out together, it may be a good idea to remind your partner that they shouldn’t let you drink. Get them to promise, if necessary.

Remember That You’re Ultimately Responsible 

It would be great if your partner was completely committed to helping you stay sober and willing to do whatever it takes. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and even supportive partners don’t always know the right thing to do in every situation. The important thing to remember is that although support is nice, you are ultimately responsible for your own recovery. 

Life is often messy and sometimes you just have to weigh up all your competing motivations and make the best choice you can. It’s possible that your partner won’t stop drinking but is still, on balance, good for you and good for your recovery. Communicate your needs as well as you can, maintain healthy boundaries, and make strategic compromises, and most of the time, you should be able to stay sober, even if your partner drinks.

At The Foundry, we know that no one recovers from addiction alone. Having a strong sober network as well as a supportive partner are among the greatest assets you can have. Our program aims to involve the family in recovery as much as possible, providing both emotional support and educational opportunities for the people closest to our clients. For more information, call us today at (844) 955-1066. 

Feeling socially connected is one of the most important ways of making recovery from addiction last. Social support improves your mood, reduces stress, provides more resources for dealing with problems, and makes you feel more accountable. However, staying socially connected can often be a challenge for people in recovery. At least 20 percent of people with substance use disorders struggle with major depression, an anxiety disorder, or both. Those conditions typically make you feel inclined to stay home and isolate yourself. 

Unfortunately, isolation only makes them worse, especially depression. The tendency to isolate can cause a downward spiral, turning a bad mood into a full episode of depression. You can often interrupt that spiral by making yourself do things that improve your mood, such as socializing or going to meetings. This is a well-established intervention called behavioral activation. However, socializing when you feel depressed or anxious is not easy and sometimes it’s impossible. The following tips can help.

Accept Invitations

Accepting invitations is a freebie. If people are reaching out to you and asking you to do things, you’re already in a pretty good position and it may be nice to take a moment to appreciate that there are people in your life who want to be around you. Unless there’s some specific reason for declining an invitation such as a scheduling conflict, go ahead and accept, even if you know for certain you won’t feel like going when the time comes.

If you accept the invitation, you will be more likely to actually go out and do something, whereas if you decline, you will almost certainly stay home alone. You can always cancel later, but if you accept now, you will at least have options.

Don’t Wait Until You Feel Like Socializing

Whether you have already made plans or not, don’t wait until you feel like socializing to actually do it. When you’re feeling down or actually depressed, you’re never going to feel like it. The whole point is that you do something to interrupt your current mental state. The trap we often fall into with socializing is that we expect it to be a pleasant thing that we actively want to do, so when we don’t feel like it, it makes sense just to stay home. 

However, when you’re depressed, anxious, or moving in that direction, the whole matter is different. You don’t feel like socializing because you don’t feel like doing anything. Socializing is something you have to do for your mental health so you have to draw on different resources. It’s more like going to work--perhaps you rarely feel like going to work but you usually go anyway. It may help to remind yourself that your resistance to socializing is mostly inertia and that once you’re with your friends, you will usually feel glad you came.

Do What You Can

You may have some default idea of what socializing looks like--maybe dinner with a group of friends, maybe a family outing, or a party. When you think, “I should socialize,” you immediately think of that default and you feel like you couldn’t possibly manage it. However, you are being subtly undermined by all-or-nothing thinking. When you’re in a funk, any social contact at all is better than none. If all you can manage is texting a friend or relative, then do that. If you can call them and have a chat, even better. 

This is especially important to remember as we’re all dealing with the pandemic and our social interactions are restricted anyway. Texting and FaceTiming might not be perfect but they still help. Often, frequent contact with different people throughout the day is better for your mood than minimal contact throughout the week and then a big gathering on the weekend. Too much alone time with no outside contact only gives you more time to ruminate.

Exert Some Influence Over Plans

When someone asks you to do something, it’s rarely a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. You can usually exert some control over the plan. This is important for two reasons. First, as discussed above, socializing isn’t all-or-nothing. Some socializing is better than none and you should only do what you feel like you can handle, which might mean asking your friends or relatives to modify plans.

For example, maybe your friend invites you out to a restaurant and you don’t feel like you can handle that, so you propose instead that your friend comes over and you order pizza. You get the social interaction and you let your friend know you actually do want to spend time with them but you avoid a supposedly fun thing that you’re just not up for.

Second, exerting influence over plans nurtures a sense of self-efficacy or the feeling that you have some control over your life. A common symptom of depression is helplessness--the feeling that nothing you do matters, that you’re just sort of dragged along by life. Exerting your will over your social plans reinforces that you do actually have some control over your life.

It may be worth making some small change to any plan, even if the plan is broadly acceptable, just to work your self-efficacy “muscle.” For example, bowling sounds fine but you’d rather go to a different place, or you’d rather go at eight instead of seven. Furthermore, having more control over plans makes you feel more engaged and less likely to skip out at the last minute.

Take a Break When You Need It

When you’re depressed or anxious, you may have very short battery life. If you’re already an introvert, then socializing when you’re in a bad mood can really take it out of you. It’s important to give yourself breaks. You can either step away from the group, or just have a way to leave early. As discussed earlier, shorter, more frequent interactions are typically more important than marathon social engagements. There’s no point in burning yourself out and dreading the next engagement even more. 

Staying socially connected is one key to a strong addiction recovery but an episode of depression or anxiety can make you want to isolate yourself from everyone, including your sober network. To combat this, it’s important to do what you can, even if it’s small and even when you don’t feel like it. Think of it like going to work or brushing your teeth. Exert some influence over plans when possible and be willing to give yourself a break.

At The Foundry, we know that no one recovers from addiction alone. We work hard to make sure our clients feel supported and develop bonds with other people in recovery. We also involve families in treatment because we know that a supportive home environment is a huge asset. To learn more about our approach to treatment, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

Neuroticism used to be a fairly broad term used to describe certain kinds of psychological disturbances. These days, it’s mostly limited to one of the big five personality traits, which include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, which you can easily remember with the acronym OCEAN. Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions and more intense emotional reactions to threatening or frustrating situations. 

While research suggests scoring high-ish on the other personality traits tends to result in better outcomes, including better relationships, more positive emotions, and even higher income, higher neuroticism tends to result in greater risk of mental and physical health issues and addiction. This is especially true when high neuroticism is paired with low conscientiousness. Given that high neuroticism increases your risk of addiction and makes you less happy overall, you might wonder if there is anything you can do about it if you happen to have high neuroticism.

As a basic personality trait, neuroticism is hard to change but it can be changed a bit. You are not likely to go from being in the ninetieth percentile to the tenth percentile of neuroticism--a huge change--but with persistent effort, you can probably dial it down a bit. It also helps that neuroticism tends to decline slightly as you age. The following are some ways you can reduce your neuroticism and thereby promote your recovery from addiction.

Go to Therapy

The most direct way to reduce neuroticism is to enter therapy. Your therapist can help you address it in a comprehensive way, including thought patterns, relationships, lifestyle factors, and perhaps medication. There is typically a biological component to neuroticism, meaning that some people are just physiologically more sensitive to stress, so it’s important not to think of neuroticism as a weakness or personal failing. Often, it also has a lot to do with early childhood environment and learned behaviors, and addressing those issues typically requires professional help.

Change How You Talk to Yourself

Although our ideas about neuroticism have changed a lot since Freud’s day, at least one thing is still similar: Negative feelings are, to a large extent, caused by our beliefs and assumptions, many of which we may not even be aware of. Although people who score high on neuroticism are often aware of their self-defeating behaviors, they feel powerless to actually change them. This is why a therapist can be especially helpful. One way of combating neurotic tendencies is to identify your underlying assumptions, challenge them, and replace them with more accurate and helpful thoughts. 

For example, if you’ve had an argument with your spouse, you might think something like, “I’m always ruining my relationships,” a thought which characterizes yourself as comprehensively and permanently inept at relating to other people. This is an example of overgeneralization. 

Instead, focus on the matter at hand. Did you listen to your spouse? Can you see things from their perspective? Were you making unreasonable demands? How might you best resolve the issue in a way that will make you both happy? More broadly, you probably have other relationships that go pretty well or you might even get along with your spouse pretty well most of the time. All of these ways of thinking can help you dismantle the cognitive distortions that worsen your challenging emotions. 

Exercise

As noted above, neuroticism is the tendency to feel more negative emotions and to feel them more intensely. Exercise combats both of these tendencies. First, exercise promotes the release of several neurotransmitters that improve your mood, including serotonin and endorphins. It also increases levels of BDNF, a neurotransmitter that grows neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region involved with memory formation that also helps regulate emotions. 

Second, exercise causes structural changes in the brain that actually make your brain less sensitive to stress. A structure called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is plugged into several areas of the brain that are responsible for identifying and responding to threats. Regular exercise appears to help turn down the volume a bit on the HPA axis. Most studies suggest that at least 20 minutes a day of moderate-intensity aerobic exercises, such as brisk walking, jogging, biking, or swimming, is all you need to get the benefits. 

Eat a Healthy Diet

More and more experts are becoming aware of just how important diet is for mental health. There are now quite a few studies showing that diet plays an especially large role in depression. One large meta-analysis of the research found that participants who adopted healthier diets--typically consisting of more nutrient-rich whole foods--had significantly fewer symptoms of depression. 

This study found no effect of diet on anxiety symptoms--which are at least as common as depressive symptoms among people with high neuroticism. However, other research suggests that magnesium--specifically magnesium deficiency--may play an important role in anxiety disorders, making people more sensitive to stress. You can boost your magnesium levels by eating more magnesium-rich foods, many of which you should be eating anyway. These include nuts, beans, legumes, dark leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, avocados, and dark chocolate. If you decide to take magnesium supplements, consult with your doctor first since excess magnesium can cause problems.

Practice Mindfulness

Finally, you can reduce neuroticism by practicing mindfulness. One study of graduate students found that participating in a seven-week mindfulness course reduced neuroticism over a six-year follow-up period. Participants who completed the mindfulness course reported decreased psychological stress, due at least in part to personality changes. 

There are several ways mindfulness can help reduce neuroticism. Perhaps the most important is that it’s a way of practicing acceptance of challenging emotions. Instead of trying to avoid or suppress them, you learn to sit with them and see they’re only feelings or thoughts and they can’t hurt you. Mindfulness also helps support other healthy lifestyle changes such as reducing emotional eating and improves your relationships by helping you be more attentive to the people around you. There are mindfulness classes available for free in many areas and online and you can practice in just a few minutes a day.

Personality traits change slowly and you should be looking for progress over months or years, not days or weeks. For that reason, it helps to make some of these changes habitual and to enlist the support of positive people. However, with persistent effort, you can reduce the intensity and frequency of negative emotions and make recovery from addiction a little easier.

At The Foundry, we know that recovery from addiction is really about reorienting your life. It’s not just about abstaining from drugs and alcohol, but about feeling more connected, purposeful, and comfortable in your own skin. That’s why we employ a variety of methods, including cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy to help you relate better to challenging emotions. To learn more, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

For many people who struggle with substance use, especially opioids, pain is a major barrier to recovery. Perhaps you’re afraid that without drugs or alcohol, you won’t have a way to manage pain, or perhaps you’ve already gotten sober and the pain is a major challenge to staying sober. Pain is still frustratingly elusive and although it’s the subject of intensive research, there is still a lot we don’t know about what causes pain, especially chronic pain. However, we do know something about managing pain, and that knowledge grows by the year. The following are some ways you can reduce and manage pain in addiction recovery without drugs or alcohol. 

1. Talk to Your Doctor

When it comes to pain management, talking to your doctor is always the place to start. Make sure you are honest about your addiction history. This might feel uncomfortable, especially if you have been in the habit of bamboozling doctors for opioid prescriptions. People with a history of substance use also know that doctors sometimes take them less seriously once they know about their addiction history. However, in this case, you are specifically saying that you need help managing pain without addictive drugs. 

What your doctor suggests will largely depend on your circumstances, specifically whether you’re dealing with acute pain, such as from an injury or medical procedure, or chronic pain, especially if it has no apparent cause. Over-the-counter medications such as NSAIDs are often more effective for acute pain than many people realize--especially in combination--even for pain resulting from surgery. Chronic pain can be trickier. However, one important thing to understand is that opioids are actually not very good for treating chronic pain since long-term use increases your pain sensitivity and may even spontaneously cause new pain.

2. Try Physical Therapy

For some kinds of pain, physical therapy can be a powerful treatment. There are primarily two ways physical therapy helps. First, movement is good for pain. When you have pain, your natural reflex is to limit your movement to prevent pain. This is good in the short term, as it allows an injury to heal, but in the long term, your mobility becomes limited and your pain increases. Physical therapy is a way to improve mobility under the care of an expert. 

Second, chronic pain is often caused by weak or unbalanced muscles. This is especially common in knee pain and lower back pain. Strengthening and balancing the muscles around the affected area reduces stress on the area, which reduces pain. It often takes someone with a detailed understanding of anatomy to help you strengthen the right muscles.

Finally, there are newer methods that rely on electrical stimulation in specific areas that can help reduce pain. This has been shown to be especially effective for neuropathic pain, or pain that’s caused by nerve damage. 

3. See a Therapist

It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but there are several reasons you should see a therapist if you’re struggling with pain. First, and perhaps most importantly for people recovering from addiction, pain is often a symptom of depression--one people typically don’t think of. It may manifest as headaches, muscle aches, chest pain, or joint pain. In fact, pain is one of the primary reasons people seek medical attention leading to a diagnosis of depression. This is especially common among men. Effectively treating depression should also reduce pain.

However, even if you don’t have major depression, your therapist can help you cope with pain. There are cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, techniques that can help you cope with pain. Another form of cognitive therapy is acceptance and commitment therapy that is also helpful for pain. Typically, these help you change your thinking so that the pain isn’t worse than it needs to be and it allows you to better function despite the pain.

4. Exercise

Exercise also seems like a counterintuitive way to cope with pain, however, it can be tremendously helpful. First, it’s important to consult with a doctor to make sure exercise won’t aggravate an injury. It may also be good to consult a physical therapist for the reasons described above. However, exercise is good for reducing pain overall.

It trains your nervous system to be less sensitive to stimuli and to re-categorize the sensations associated with exercise as normal sensations rather than pain. It also helps in a peripheral way by improving your mood and reducing your sensitivity to stress, and perhaps reducing depressive symptoms, as discussed above.

5. Pay Attention to Your Diet

Diet is too often overlooked when it comes to managing pain. An anti-inflammatory diet is particularly important. Inflammation is the redness and swelling that occurs at the site of an injury or infection and the pain associated with inflammation helps immobilize the injured area. Therefore, it only makes sense that if you want to reduce pain, you also want to reduce inflammation.

That means reducing or eliminating inflammatory foods such as sugar, alcohol, processed flour, processed meats, and vegetable oils, and most fried foods. It also means eating a healthy diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods instead. Research shows that a Mediterranean-style diet is especially good for reducing inflammation. This diet is rich in whole grains, nuts, beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and fatty fish, such as salmon. 

6. Maintain a Healthy Weight

It’s also important to note that excess body fat is highly inflammatory. Fat cells promote the release of inflammatory molecules and the extra weight often contributes to joint pain and lower back pain, while reducing mobility. We’ve already looked at how exercise and a healthy diet can help reduce pain and those benefits are compounded insofar as they also help you maintain a healthy weight. 

Pain is a real concern and chronic pain is one of the few things that reduce your happiness long term. It’s no wonder that some people fear the thought of living without drugs and alcohol if they believe it will leave them vulnerable to pain. However, unless you have a terminal illness, opioids are not a good long-term solution to pain and they will probably make it worse. Instead, work with your doctor and therapist to develop a comprehensive plan to manage and perhaps even eliminate pain.

At The Foundry, we know that both mental and physical pain are the primary drivers of addictive behavior and we help our clients deal with pain in a holistic way, using cutting edge therapeutic methods like CBT, EMDR, and Alpha-Stim as well as healthy lifestyle changes including exercise, mindfulness meditation, yoga, and healthier eating. To learn more about our program, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

One of the most important ideas in modern psychology is that our thoughts are largely responsible for our emotional reactions. This is a central concept in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT, and other cognitive therapies. For example, someone cuts you off in traffic and you become angry.

However, the other driver didn’t directly cause you to be angry. What made you angry were your own beliefs about the situation, perhaps something like, “That guy shouldn’t have done that,” or “That was a deliberate insult.” Most of the time, these things are just accidental, the result of momentary inattention. If you can think about them in that way, they don’t upset you very much. 

A lot of cognitive therapy is focused on identifying and challenging these distorted beliefs. In another post, we looked at how inaccurate thinking can contribute indirectly to addiction by worsening anxiety. Here, we are going to look at some ways that inaccurate thinking can more directly keep you from seeking help for addiction and sticking to your recovery plan.

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking

One of the worst offenders is all-or-nothing or black-and-white thinking. In this way of thinking, something is either a total success or a total failure. The problem is that pretty much everything in life is a mixed bag and if you’re only happy with total victories, you are not going to be very happy and you’re not going to try many things.

There are several ways all-or-nothing thinking can hold back your recovery from addiction. The first is if you’re waiting for the perfect time to act--because there will never be a perfect time. There will always be some excuse--you’re busy with work, you’re not feeling well, you have to feed your cat, and so on. Since addiction is a progressive disease, getting help will always be harder in the future, so it’s better not to wait for the perfect time.

Second, there are a lot of treatment options, all requiring different levels of commitment in terms of time and money. Sometimes you just can’t get the level of treatment you feel you need but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get some kind of help. For example, you may feel like you need inpatient treatment to help you deal with cravings and avoid toxic influences, but it’s just not possible right now for whatever reason. It’s still worth your time to try something, whether it’s an outpatient program, seeing a therapist, or going to 12-step meetings. Look for ways to improve your situation, even if they’re not perfect solutions.

Third, it’s pretty common for people to slip in recovery. It’s also pretty common, when this happens, to think, “Well, I’ve already ruined my recovery, so I might as well go all the way.” In reality, a slip and a full relapse are not even close to the same. A slip is a setback but it’s also easy to fix. If you keep going, you put yourself at risk for an overdose and when you finally do decide to get sober again, you may have to go through withdrawal again. It’s better to limit the damage when you can.

2. Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is another extremely common error. It can take two forms. It’s typically either, “I did badly in this one particular thing, and therefore I’m no good at anything,” or “I failed on my first try and therefore I’ll never succeed.” Both of these are objectively false and they make recovery harder. For the first one, overgeneralizing horizontally, as it were, you will probably find some aspects of recovery harder than others.

Maybe group therapy is a challenge or maybe you’re trying to make some healthy lifestyle changes and they just don’t seem to stick. That can be terribly frustrating but it also doesn’t mean you’re comprehensively screwing up your recovery. There may be other aspects that are going really well, perhaps individual therapy or improving communication with your family. Give yourself credit for those things as you continue to work on the more challenging aspects. 

Similarly, you may have tried to get sober once or twice, slid back into drinking and using drugs, and decided, “I’m just never going to be able to stay sober.” You’re taking that very limited data to be decisive. In reality, plenty of people have to try several times to stay sober. People slip up, they have full relapses, but they keep at it and eventually have a long recovery. Persistence will eventually pay off.

3. Telescoping

Telescoping is when you focus on the bad aspects of a situation to the point where you can’t even see the good. For example, you might enter treatment feeling ambivalent about being there and immediately start looking for reasons to leave. You become laser-focused on every little thing that’s wrong with your treatment program or facility.

Maybe a counselor misspoke and called something by the wrong name, so you decide the staff doesn’t know what they’re doing--also an example of overgeneralization--or maybe your room isn’t quite as nice as you would like it to be so you complain about the facilities being awful, and so on. You may be so focused on these things that you really believe they prove the program is no good. 

However, you may also be missing out on a lot of benefits by being too focused on the negative aspects of your experience. Maybe you’ve met some pretty great people or your therapist is really astute or you discovered that you really love hiking. When you feel like you’re too focused on the negatives, try broadening your scope. See if you identify some positive things too. It will not only improve your treatment experience, but it will make you happier overall.

4. Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error is not typically identified as a cognitive distortion in CBT but it is relevant for anyone in recovery. It’s the belief that your own actions are the result of specific circumstances but other people’s actions are a result of their basic character. Going back to the traffic example, when you cut someone off, it was because you just didn’t see them or you weren’t aware the lane ended, or something, and you’re usually a very courteous driver but when they cut you off, they’re a reckless jerk. In the context of recovery, a very similar thing is common.

You go to a 12-step meeting or you enter a treatment program and talk to other people a little bit and you suddenly feel like you don’t belong there. You’ve just been under a lot of stress at work or your friends have been partying a lot lately so you’ve been drinking or using drugs more than you probably should, but all the other people there are addicts. 

This can be a big impediment to engaging with treatment because you feel like what applies to other people doesn’t apply to you. In AA, they call this “terminal uniqueness.” What’s important is not to yoke yourself with the addict label but rather to realize that everyone around you is also there because of specific circumstances.

Everyone has been feeling stressed, or coping with traumatic memories, or struggling with depression, and so on, and everyone there--including you--needs a bit of help with their substance use. Accepting that everyone there has a story, helps you overcome terminal uniqueness, allowing you to be more engaged in treatment and feel a genuine connection to the people around you.

There are many ways your mind can play tricks on you when it comes to addiction. The thinking mistakes discussed above can apply to pretty much anything but they are particularly relevant for people seeking and engaging with treatment. Being aware of them is the first step in overcoming them.

At The Foundry, we know that everyone has a different story and different needs from treatment. We believe that treatment for addiction should always be individualized but that everyone benefits by making the journey together. We also use evidence-based therapeutic methods including CBT and DBT to help clients untie the knots that are holding them back. To learn more, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as an addictive personality. Substance use disorders afflict the outgoing and the shy, the kind and the mean, the curious and the conservative. However, there is one personality pattern that research shows is more common among people with substance use disorders: high neuroticism and low conscientiousness. These are two of the big five personality traits most commonly used by psychologists, the other traits being extraversion, openness, and agreeableness.

Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions and it’s highly correlated with mental health challenges and substance use issues. 
Conscientiousness involves things like being goal-oriented, organized, responsible, and law-abiding. Even people who are high in neuroticism are less prone to substance use issues if they are also high in conscientiousness.

As fundamental personality traits, these are both slow to change, but since conscientiousness is the trait most directly related to behavior, it’s the trait you have the most control over. The following tips can help you be more conscientious and thus strengthen your recovery from addiction.

Avoid Black-and-White Thinking

If you’re a creative person, a non-conformist who likes to find your own way, you no doubt hear things like “law-abiding, organized, achievement-oriented,” and so on and think, “No thanks.” You may imagine turning into some kind of conformist, validation-seeking automaton. That belief can be a major barrier to positive change.

Don’t worry, no matter how hard you try, that will never be you. In being more conscientious, we’re not talking about overhauling your personality; we’re talking about turning up one particular dial from about two to about four. The idea is to boost your conscientiousness just enough that you’re not so vulnerable to your own destructive impulses.

Get Clear on Your Priorities

One major characteristic of conscientious people is that they’re highly organized. They have a schedule and a to-do list and they stick to them. If you’re currently low on conscientiousness, you probably won’t have much luck trying to jump straight to a schedule broken down into 15 or 30-minute blocks. Instead, start by organizing your day according to your priorities.

Each day, or even the night before, identify the things you must accomplish and then prioritize them. So maybe you have a 12-step meeting, a therapy session, and work as your top three. There are probably some other things you could do, and perhaps some things you want to do and you may get to those or you may not.

Before you do anything else, schedule your priorities and work everything else in around them. That way, you won’t get distracted by “urgent” things that won’t really improve your quality of life.

Set Relevant Goals

Another common characteristic of the highly conscientious is that they are goal-oriented. Setting goals and working toward them consistently is often difficult for the conscientiously challenged. Goals feel constrictive. You have to work on them even when you don’t feel like it and besides that, you may set a goal today that you don’t care about tomorrow. Sometimes just setting a goal ignites a determination deep within you to do the exact opposite. So how do you deal with it? 

One solution is to set process goals. Instead of setting a goal that’s SMART--specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound--identify the direction you want to go and work on developing behaviors that take you in that direction. For example, if you want to be a rockstar, make sure you practice your instrument at least 30 minutes every day. If you want to stay sober, identify the behaviors that will lead to that result, and make them part of your life. 

It’s especially helpful if you can associate your long-term goals with your core values. For example, “I want to stay sober because I care about my family’s happiness.” Then, whenever you have a decision to make, you can ask yourself, “Does this take me closer or farther from my goals and values?” If it takes you closer, then go for it.

Create a Healthy Routine

Related to the points above, creating a healthy routine will significantly boost your conscientiousness. Routines have two major advantages: First, any routine, even a terrible one, will reduce uncertainty. Uncertainty is a major source of stress and anxiety in life and if you kind of know what to expect from day-to-day, you manage those feelings a little more easily.

Second, a healthy routine is an easy way to automate healthy behaviors. Instead of having to decide all the time if you’re going to have a healthy breakfast, if you’re going to exercise, if you’re going to attend your 12-step meeting and so on, you make them regular parts of your day so that you just sort of do them on autopilot. You don’t have to exert much willpower once those routines are set. 

Creating a healthy routine is another challenge altogether. Start with your top priorities for the day, as noted above. If you’re recovering from addiction, these should be elements from your recovery plan. You may already have a head start on some of them if you’ve completed an inpatient treatment program. Otherwise, start with one or two anchor points.

For example, you might get up at the same time every day and you might go to a 12-step meeting at the same time every day. Then you can start building other things around these two. So maybe you get up and exercise right away, perhaps walking for a few minutes until you’ve formed a solid habit. Then start adding other elements directly following previously established anchors. The idea is that you want to go from one thing to the next, like stepping stones. 

Since conscientiousness is a personality trait, it is slow to change. While a low-conscientiousness person will never magically turn into the most goal-oriented, focused, and responsible person around, they can gain more control over their lives. The keys are to keep your values in mind and make consistent efforts. You will also have a bit of a tailwind since conscientiousness tends to increase slightly with age.

At The Foundry, we know that recovery from addiction isn’t just about abstaining from drugs and alcohol, but rather about making the kinds of changes that allow you to take charge of your own life and live in a more connected, meaningful way. That’s why our holistic program focuses on growth in every area of life. To learn more, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

Much of your addiction risk is influenced by your family history. Genes and the environment both play a significant role in how addiction is passed down in families. Research has identified many gene variations that appear to be related to substance use disorders.

These aren’t “addiction genes” per se but rather they affect different aspects of your physiology. For example, genes related to how well you metabolize alcohol and its intermediate products, how your dopamine system responds to alcohol, and how active your brain’s fear centers are may all contribute to your risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. 

However, there is also a saying that genes load the gun but the environment pulls the trigger. In other words, having a genetic predisposition to substance use issues doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll develop an addiction. Your odds are significantly higher if you grow up in an environment where you feel unsafe or neglected, where you’ve experienced trauma, or where your parent or guardian had substance use issues.

Children are especially sensitive to trauma and chaos and they often learn substance use behaviors from their parents. As a result, if you have a parent or sibling with a substance use disorder, you are at much greater risk for developing a substance use issue yourself. The following tips can help limit your risk.

Ask About Your Family History

Addiction, even now, is a largely invisible disease. Families want to protect their loved ones’ reputations and people with substance use are often very good at hiding it. However, if your relatives have struggled with substance use, you need to know about it. Ask your relatives about your family history. Be curious about that aunt that no one ever seems to hear from, what your parents were like before you came along, or that grandparent who died at a suspiciously young age. 

Limit Your Exposure to Drugs and Alcohol

If you’re concerned about your own addiction risk, the safest bet is just not to drink or use drugs. If you do drink, set strict limits for yourself. What those limits are, depends on your situation and how worried you are about your risk.

If both of your parents had an alcohol use disorder, you might not want to drink at all but if you had an uncle with a drinking problem and your other risk factors are low, perhaps you’ll feel safe having a drink with dinner now and then. When in doubt, err on the side of caution. It’s much easier to avoid addiction than to recover from it.

Know the Red Flags

It’s also important to know the red flags of addiction. This is true even if you have decided to abstain completely. Depending on your risk factors, you may also be vulnerable to process addictions, such as gambling, shopping, sex, or eating, so being aware of addiction red flags, in general, is a good idea. The trouble is that really clear signs tend to come too late. These are things like getting a DUI, losing your job, having serious relationship issues as a result of addiction, and so on. 

Addiction typically creeps up on you slowly and by the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already hard to get clear of it. If you pay attention, you might notice addictive behavior before it becomes very hard to change course. For example, you might notice that you’re drinking every day, even if you’re only having one or two drinks.

That might be fine for most people but if you have an elevated risk, it might be time to take a break. If you feel like you need drugs or alcohol to relax, that’s another pretty clear sign because it indicates you may have begun to develop a physical dependence. 

Needing more to feel any effect is another sign of dependence, as is feeling achy, jittery, shaky, or irritable when you go for a few days without drugs or alcohol. Also, beware if you find yourself lying or being deceptive about your drug or alcohol use. If you notice any of these signs, take action immediately, whether it’s talking to a therapist, addiction counselor, or doctor, or going to a 12-step meeting.

Talk to a Therapist

One of the best ways to preempt a substance use disorder is to talk to a therapist, even if you’re not sure if you need therapy. As noted above, genes are only part of the equation. Most people seeking help for addiction also have a co-occurring mental health issue, such as major depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and others.

Substance use often begins as a way of self-medicating these conditions. If you did grow up in a house with addiction, it’s likely that you have some issues stemming from that experience and it’s better to address them on your own terms rather than wait for addiction to derail your life. If you don’t know what to tell your therapist, just say that your parents struggled with addiction and you don’t want to fall into the same trap. You certainly won’t be the first.

Make Your Doctor Aware of Your Concerns

Unfortunately, much of the opioid crisis in the US is a result of people using prescriptions as directed by their doctors. They would get these prescriptions for chronic pain or pain following a medical procedure, use them for far too long, and end up addicted, often switching to street drugs like heroin.

Doctors are typically far more cautious about prescribing opioids these days but it’s still important to make your doctor aware of any family history of addiction, just as you would make your doctor aware of any family history of cancer or heart disease. There are often non-addictive treatment alternatives and at the very least, you can take precautions against overusing potentially addictive medication. 

Talk to Your Kids When They’re Ready

Finally, make sure your own kids know about the family history of addiction when they’re ready. This should be part of an overall approach to teaching your kids about drugs and alcohol from a young age. For example, when you give a young child cold medicine, you can remind them that they should only take medicine from you or a doctor, and scale up the lessons as they age.

At a certain point, they will need to know if they have a genetic vulnerability to addiction. This point may come much sooner than you realize since early experimentation with drugs and alcohol is another major factor in addiction risk.

Genes, epigenetics, and early environment play a major role in our lives, but they aren’t destiny. By taking sensible precautions, keeping an eye out for warning signs, addressing problems early, and taking care of your mental health, you can avoid the trap of addiction. If you do end up developing a substance use issue, help is available.

At The Foundry, we know that the roots of addiction are complex. We involve the entire family in treatment to create a supportive home environment through healthy boundaries and better communication. We also use evidence-based methods to treat co-occurring conditions and help you live a happier, more fulfilling life free of drugs and alcohol. For more information, call us at (844) 955-1066.

Exercise is one of the most important lifestyle habits to adopt when you’re recovering from addiction. There’s a lot of research showing that regular exercise reduces stress and anxiety, improves mood, and reduces relapse risk. Exercise also helps reduce some of the physical health risks of excessive drinking and drug use. Adopting even a moderate exercise regimen, such as walking for 20 minutes a day should definitely be part of your recovery plan.

However, some people find that exercise makes them feel worse--typically more anxious but sometimes depressed as well. If you’ve tried adopting an exercise habit and find that you feel worse, here are some possible reasons.

You’re Relying Only on Exercise

With all the media coverage of the wonderful ways exercise benefits your mental health, a lot of people get the idea that exercise is all you need to deal with a mental health issue. However, mental health is about more than mood. Your thinking, your external circumstances, and even your brain chemistry all play a role as well.

You’re not likely to have any kind of strong recovery if you don’t look at the whole picture. That’s why exercise should be just one part of a recovery plan that includes therapy and possibly medication and other lifestyle changes.

You’re Prone to Panic Attacks

If you have a panic disorder, exercise is a bit of a gambit. On the one hand, exercise is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. It reduces your reactivity to stress and improves your mood. It’s also a great way to desensitize yourself to the physical sensations of panic.

When you exercise, you feel physiological stress similar to anxiety, but you know it’s just a normal response to exertion. However, if you push too hard, you may actually trigger a panic attack because your heart is beating too fast, you’re having trouble catching your breath, and so on. Typically, the best thing to do is back off and just push yourself a little bit at a time.

Get your heart rate up for a few minutes, then take a break for a few minutes. Remind yourself that what you’re feeling is normal. It might help to have some soothing music handy to calm you down during the rest intervals. Gradually build the challenge by pushing yourself a little bit, then resting and calming down. 

You’re Going Too Hard

Most people getting into exercise for the first time tend to overdo it. They’ve seen too many training montages and Nike commercials and they think they have to exhaust themselves during every workout. Excessively-long endurance workouts are especially bad for raising the stress hormone cortisol and they may actually disrupt your sleep, further compounding your anxiety.

At the other end, you may be overdoing high-intensity exercise such as heavy lifting or high-intensity interval training--HIIT--by cramming too many workouts into a week. These kinds of workouts take more time to recover from and you may end up feeling worn down, depressed, or anxious. There is a saying in fitness circles: Volume, frequency, intensity--pick one. 

More to the point, you don’t have to exhaust yourself every workout. In fact, when you’re first starting out, it’s far more important to create the habit, which means making your workout as easy as possible. Once you’re in the habit of exercising most days, you can gradually make it harder.

Also, you can get a lot of benefits from even moderate exercise, such as walking 20 or 30 minutes a day. Instead of trying to train like a pro, take the opposite approach and ask yourself how little you can do and still get some benefit. As you get in better shape, that minimum will gradually increase.

You Need to Give It More Time

A lot of people, especially in January, start exercising, then give up after a week or two. They don’t see results and they just feel tired all the time. As discussed above, the first thing is to make sure you’re not going too hard, but rather focusing on establishing a regular and sustainable habit. The second thing is to give it a bit of time. Every change is uncomfortable at first.

You have to squeeze a new activity into your day, you have to use more energy than you’re used to, and you’ll probably feel a bit sore for the first week or so. Many people notice an improvement in their mood and sleep pretty quickly, but if you don’t, try to stick with exercising for at least a month before you give it up.

You’re Exercising at the Wrong Time of Day

Time of day can make a big difference. For example, if your body doesn’t regulate blood sugar well, working out before breakfast may be especially miserable. At the other end, exercising too close to bedtime may increase your cortisol and make it harder to sleep, which increases your anxiety. Everyone is different so the important thing is to try some different things and figure out what time of day works best for you. 

You’re Doing the Wrong Exercise

Most research on exercise and mental health has focused on moderate aerobic exercise. The typical recommendation is at least 20 minutes of moderately intense aerobic exercise, such as running, biking, or swimming. Weightlifting typically doesn’t have quite as strong an effect on mental health, although several studies show it does help.

However, as noted, we’re all different and we all respond differently to different kinds of exercise. Research may show that aerobic exercise is best, but plenty of people have put many miles on their running shoes to no avail. Then they give it up and start lifting instead and feel like someone flipped a switch on their mood. Listen to your body. If one kind of exercise makes you feel more anxious and another kind calms you down, do the latter. There’s no right or wrong here.

You’re Exercising in the Wrong Environment

Finally, consider the environment where you exercise. If you run along a busy and dangerous street, you’re going to feel more anxious about it than if you run on a treadmill or in a nice park. If you feel like people are staring at you and judging you every time you walk into the gym, you are likely to feel self-conscious and anxious.

Typically, no one in the gym is worried about what you’re doing so make sure you don’t have distorted beliefs about the situation but it is important that you’re exercising in an environment where you feel safe and accepted.

Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your physical and mental health and some level of regular exercise should be part of every addiction recovery plan. When exercise makes you anxious or depressed, the most common issue is overdoing it. It’s also important to listen to your body and make exercise decisions based on your own needs.

At The Foundry, we know that exercise is one of the most important lifestyle changes you can make when you’re recovering from a substance use disorder. We help you make exercise a regular part of your life in a way that’s fun and promotes social connection. To learn more, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

Inflammation has been getting a lot of attention in recent years, as research has connected it to a lengthening list of physical and mental health issues. As it turns out, inflammation is relevant to addiction in several ways.

It can worsen medical issues associated with excessive drug and alcohol use, it can worsen mental health issues associated with addiction and relapse risk, and some research even suggests that inflammation can directly increase addiction risk. The following is a brief look at inflammation and how it affects addiction and recovery.

What Is Inflammation?

First, it may help to understand a bit about inflammation, since it’s often used in a vague way. Inflammation is your body’s natural reaction to injury or infection. If you’ve ever had a sore throat or cut your finger, you’ve experienced inflammation. The body’s healing process is complex, but basically what you experience when something becomes inflamed is that your blood vessels expand, allowing more blood to reach the affected tissue. This allows the blood to carry more immune cells to the tissue and facilitate healing. 

When you have an injury or an infection, this process is helpful. Not only does it speed antibodies to the site of an infection, but it also causes pain to make you protect the area, and it causes you to feel lethargic in order to save energy for healing. The problem is that we sometimes have an inflammatory response without an infection or injury, such as when we have an autoimmune disorder or we’re exposed to certain other conditions. Then, the result is chronic inflammation, which serves no purpose and causes other problems.

How Does Inflammation Affect Recovery?

As noted above, inflammation may directly increase your risk of addiction and relapse. However, it can also exacerbate medical issues related to addiction and mental health issues that commonly occur with addiction.

Medical Issues

Excessive drug and alcohol use can lead to a number of medical problems, depending on which substances you use most frequently. For example, excessive drinking increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and several kinds of cancer. Research suggests that inflammation plays a significant role in all of those diseases, and since alcohol itself is an inflammatory substance, chronic inflammation may even be one way alcohol causes these health problems. If you’re recovering from addiction, especially early on, your risk is higher for these conditions, and inflammation will only make them worse.

Depression

The link between inflammation and mental health has only come to light in the past few years. Before then, it was thought that the brain and the immune system didn’t interact much. However, now we know that inflammation is associated with a number of mental health issues including major depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. 

Of these, the link between depression and inflammation seems to be the strongest. Various studies have subjected participants to pro-inflammatory compounds and found behavioral effects very similar to depression. These effects included decreased motivation, anxiety, anhedonia, and suicidal thoughts.

Other research has found that an anti-inflammatory diet can help reduce the symptoms of depression. It’s important to note, however, that inflammation is only one possible cause of depression and about half of people with depression don’t have markers of increased inflammation. 

The link between depression and inflammation is significant because depression is a major risk factor for addiction and relapse. One study found that 16.5% of people with major depression had an alcohol use disorder and 18% had a drug use disorder--both significantly higher than the average for the general population. 

How to Reduce Inflammation

See Your Doctor

If you are experiencing the symptoms of inflammation, which may include pain, swelling, heat, or loss of function--or depressive symptoms, as discussed above--the first thing to do is see your doctor. If you do have depression, a blood test can determine whether inflammation is a factor. Also, inflammation is a symptom of a number of other conditions, including some serious autoimmune diseases so you’ll want to find out what you’re dealing with as soon as possible.

Diet

An anti-inflammatory diet is both about what you eat and what you don’t eat and, in fact, what you don’t eat may be more important. Inflammatory foods include sugar, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and seed oils, fried foods, processed meats, refined grains, and alcohol. Eliminating these foods should go a long way toward reducing inflammation.

Replace them with anti-inflammatory foods including green leafy vegetables, whole grains, fruit, especially berries and cherries, nuts, beans, olive oil, and fatty fish. In general, whole foods are better than packaged and processed foods.

Exercise

Exercise is good for your mental and physical health for many reasons, and one of those appears to be that it helps reduce inflammation. We don’t understand exactly how this happens but it may be that your body releases anti-inflammatory compounds in response to the mild physiological stress caused by exercise.

We also know that mental health and inflammation can go both ways; in other words, just as inflammation can cause depression, depression can cause inflammation. Therefore, the reduced stress and improved mood from exercise may also have a secondary effect of reducing inflammation.

Maintain a Healthy Weight

If you’re eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise, you should be moving in the direction of a healthier body weight. This is also important for reducing inflammation because a number of studies have connected excess body fat to increased inflammation, as fat tissue produces inflammatory cytokines.

This may be one reason exercise helps reduce inflammation. It also appears likely that increased inflammation is one reason obesity increases your risk for a number of health issues, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. 

Inflammation appears to be a major player in many different physical and mental health problems, including those related to substance use disorders. Reducing inflammation through diet, exercise, therapy, and possible medical treatment will make you healthier, make you feel better, and increase your chances of a strong recovery from addiction.

At The Foundry, we understand that living a better life free from drugs and alcohol is about holistic change. It means living a healthier, more active lifestyle, feeling connected to supportive people, and having a sense of purpose in life. To learn more about our approach to treatment, call us today at (844) 955-1066.

Anxiety is a common problem for people with substance use disorders. Research shows that nearly 18 percent of people with substance use disorders also have an anxiety disorder. And that doesn’t include PTSD, which other research suggests may affect up to half of people with substance use issues. Often, substance use begins as a way to cope with anxiety, and learning to cope with anxiety will be a top priority for anyone recovering from addiction. 

Even if you don’t have a particular problem with anxiety, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by ruminating over past mistakes or getting too caught up in worries about the future. There’s a good reason “One day at a time” is so often repeated in AA meetings. Whether you are prone to anxiety or just feeling overwhelmed by the idea of staying sober forever, the following grounding techniques can bring you back into the present moment and help you calm down. They aren’t a replacement for therapy but they can help you out in a pinch.

5-4-3-2-1

The crux of any grounding technique is that it takes your attention away from the thoughts and sensations that are causing anxiety and focuses it on something immediate and positive, or at least neutral. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is a systematic way of bringing your attention to sensory input. You start by naming five things you can see around you, then four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

Take a moment and fully experience each item. This isn’t just a checklist; it’s also a mindfulness exercise, so try to make the most of it. If you don’t have time for the whole exercise, you can pick one of the senses and briefly bring your attention to that.

Deep Breathing

Deep breathing is an excellent way to calm down. First, it’s something that’s always happening in the present moment and you can bring your attention to the sensations of breathing. Second, you can actually slow your heart rate by slowing your breathing.

When you’re anxious, your sympathetic nervous system is overactive, which often creates a positive feedback loop, making you even more anxious. You can interrupt that by activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

When you breathe deeply, and particularly when you exhale slowly, you stimulate your vagus nerve, which activates your parasympathetic system. Any regular deep breathing with a focus on a long exhale will calm you down but research suggests that about six breaths a minute is the ideal pace to promote a sense of wellbeing.

Body Scan

A body scan is like an expanded version of “things you can feel” from the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Close your eyes and put your attention at the top of your head, noticing any sensations there--an itch, tension, a slight breeze, warmth from the sun, and so on. Next, move down to your face and do the same thing.

Systematically move downward, feeling both internal and external sensations in every part of your body until you reach the bottoms of your feet. Again, this brings you into the present moment and it also serves as a mindfulness exercise.

You will probably feel physical sensations related to anxiety, such as tension in your face or neck, constriction in your chest, or a lump in your stomach. See if you can observe these sensations without judgment. Just be with them for a moment before moving on.

Think About Your Feet

If you don’t have time to do a whole-body scan, a short cut you can use is to just bring your attention to your feet. There are two main reasons this works. First, your feet have a density of neurons similar to your hands and face but we typically don’t think about them unless they hurt.

Therefore, they can be a source of new sensations--weight, heat, shoes, and so on. Second, they are at the far end of your body, so you will peripherally notice more body sensations by noticing your feet. 

Count Down or Up

Another way to divert your attention from anxiety-inducing thoughts and sensations is to give yourself a mental task that demands a bit of focus. It can really be anything--remembering the US presidents in order, retracing your route home from school in your mind, reciting a favorite poem from memory, and so on.

One handy task that anyone can do is to count down or up by some awkward number. Seven typically works pretty well. So, for example, you might count down from 100 by sevens. That’s usually challenging enough that you have to focus on it but not so challenging that you’ll give up quickly.

Imagine a Safe Place

Another way to occupy your attention is to use visualization. Visualizing something clearly is both cognitively demanding and it can have a powerful effect on your state of mind. If you’re prone to anxiety, visualizing a safe, calming place can be a powerful way to ground yourself.

What you imagine depends on you. You might think of your childhood room, a warm beach, a cozy cabin with a fire, anywhere that makes you feel safe. If it’s a real place that you know well, you can mentally look around the place and involve your other senses to make the experience more real.

Go for a Walk

Finally, getting a bit of exercise is a great way to ground yourself and boost your mood. You don’t have to do a serious workout; usually, just walking for a while is enough. The great thing about exercise is that you don’t really have to try to change your thoughts or your focus. You can continue worrying as you walk, but eventually, you will just start to feel better and worry less. Whereas other grounding techniques work by changing your focus, exercise works mostly by changing your physiology and a bit by changing your focus too. 

Grounding techniques are a great way to deal with anxiety in the moment. As noted, it’s not a replacement for therapy. Anxiety disorders are serious mental health issues and shouldn’t be dismissed as just worrying too much. If you try to recover from addiction without treating anxiety, you’re in for an uphill battle. However, finding one or two grounding techniques that work for you and practicing them regularly can go a long way.

At The Foundry, we know that addiction is often just one part of a larger issue. We use a variety of proven methods to help clients overcome common co-occurring mental health issues, including anxiety disorders, trauma, depression, and others. To learn more, call us today at (844) 955-1066.