In treatment, you have been taught the value of a strong support system. However, a strong support system does not start and end with your treatment program. It is important for long-term recovery to continue building on those close interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and peers. Living a fulfilling life in recovery is a lifelong journey filled with ups and downs. Recovery is a beautiful thing, but much like other parts of life, it is not a perfect process. There will be moments in your recovery that challenge you and all the work you have put into healing.
In those difficult recovery moments, it is easier to forget recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. The process of learning and healing in recovery is an ever-evolving process of growth and personal development. Therefore, building and maintaining a strong support system and tools in an alumni program is vital to long-term recovery. You can find the fellowship and support system you need for recovery with a flexible and engaged alumni community. In your recovery journey, an alumni program gives you access to a strong support system to overcome challenges and thrive.
At The Guest House, we know recovery is a process, not a destination. Finding a support system in others is vital to building a purposeful life in recovery post-treatment. While independence in recovery is valuable to leading a full life, independence does not mean being alone. There will always be challenges and stressors in life that you have to learn how to adapt to. A support system can make navigating those challenges and stressors less difficult.
Yet, there are a variety of unique personal reasons that can influence challenges with reaching out to your support system. At The Guest House, we have a dedicated recovery community where you can enrich your life in recovery. Your ability to live a fulfilling life in recovery does not start and end with treatment. Rather a fulfilling life in recovery is built on a wide range of tools, services, and resources. Through our commitment to holistic care, you can find the guidance and support you need to lead a fulfilling life.
However, you may understandably question what more an alumni program can offer you. Why is an alumni program right for you and your life in recovery? What makes an alumni program an invaluable part of lifelong healing? Expanding your understanding of the impact substance use disorder (SUD) has had on your well-being can highlight the significance of a support system at every stage of recovery.
Understanding the Impact of SUD on Well-Being
You are likely well aware of the physical consequences and psychological challenges that accompany addiction. As the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) states, addiction is often associated with one or more health issues. Some of the health issues associated with addiction include:
- Heart disease
- Lung disease
- Stroke
- Cancer
- Nerve damage
- Infectious diseases
Moreover, SUD and other mental health disorders share a bidirectional relationship with trauma and mental health disorders. SUD increases your risk of developing or exacerbating a mental health disorder, whereas unaddressed mental health challenges increase your risk of SUD. Some of the mental health disorders that often co-occur with SUD include depression and anxiety disorders. Further, you have experienced the challenges of life, work, and relationship difficulties that come with SUD and mental health disorders.
In recovery, you may be unaware of the emotional impact SUD can continue to have on well-being. Even without substance misuse, there has been an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, which is intrinsically tied to social connection and disconnection. As the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes, social connection is both a continuum and dynamic. Everyone experiences different levels of social connection over time. The growing presence of loneliness and isolation is particularly prevalent for people with SUD and those in recovery. Although there are countless reasons why you may gravitate toward isolation in recovery, some reasons can include:
- Putting yourself out there to connect with others can feel uncomfortable and scary
- This is especially true in adulthood, when many of your previous relationships had been tied to substance use
- Fear of being judged or not understood by others for your challenges with SUD
- SUD and other mental health stigma can make you feel unwanted or disconnected from society
A lack of social connection with others in recovery can further contribute to poor health outcomes and impair well-being. Listed below are some of the ways social disconnection can impede your health and well-being:
- Cardiovascular disease
- Hypertension
- Type 2 diabetes
- Impaired cognitive functioning
- Increased risk for dementia
- Exasperate or contribute to the development of mental health disorders
- Depression and anxiety
- Increases risk for other difficulties related to psychological distress
- Self-harm
- Suicidal ideation
- Suicide
The increased risk for poor health and well-being in loneliness and isolation highlights the importance of social connection for well-being. Moreover, developing and maintaining social connections are often tied to your relationships and, thus, your overall support system.
What Is a Support System?
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a social support system is a network of family, friends, neighbors, and community members. Your social support system provides psychological, physical, and financial support. Furthermore, as Jorunn Drageset notes in “Chapter 11: Social Support” of the book Health Promotion in Health Care, social support is multidimensional. Thus, social support and social support networks are incorporated into the larger context of social capital. Your social capital typically encompasses the resources available to you in your relationships like family ties and supportive peer networks.
Moreover, social support and your support system are intertwined as social support happens in the presence of your support system. The social relationships within your support system are typically made of six major elements:
- Attachment: Your sense of emotional closeness and security with individuals in your support system
- Closeness and security are often provided by romantic partners
- Social integration: Your sense of belonging to a group who share common interests and activities with you
- Close relationships often provide a sense of belonging with friends
- Opportunity for nurturance: Your sense of responsibility for the well-being of another person
- A sense of responsibility is often obtained from children, significant others, and other close family relationships
- Reassurance of worth: Your acknowledgment of your competence and skill in different areas like work, school, and hobbies
- Recognition of your competence and skills is often obtained from co-workers, teachers, and teammates
- Guidance: You seek and receive advice, information, and guidance from close trusted people in your support system
- Finding advice and guidance in your close relationships is usually obtained from teachers, mentors, and parents
- Reliable alliance: The assurance that you can count on individuals in your support system for assistance under any circumstances
- You usually obtain assurance of support in your close relationships with family members and friends
Deficits in the six elements of close relationships can contribute to feelings of loneliness, boredom, low self-esteem, and anxiety. Thus, deficits in the relationships in your support system can be detrimental to lasting recovery. By reaching out for support post-treatment, you support the tools you have learned to cope with and adapt to stressors.
A support system in the form of your loved ones and sober peer community can be an important piece to your success in recovery. However, the thought of reaching out to your support system is understandably easier said than done. On one hand, it can feel like you are alone post-treatment, especially when family and friends have difficulty understanding what you are going through. Your loved ones’ lack of experience can make the idea of sharing your experiences feel daunting.
Moreover, fractures in your relationships with your family and friends from your addiction in particular can feel impossible to overcome. You may still feel guilt and even shame over the impact your addiction has had on those relationships. Thus, you may convince yourself that leaning on your support system in your loved ones is impossible or that you do not deserve their support. On the other hand, you may also avoid reaching out to your peers in the recovery community in both early and long-term recovery for different reasons.
In early recovery and long-term recovery, you may feel overconfident in your ability to do things on your own. Further, some of your challenges with reaching out for support from your support system can be tied to how you perceive and receive social support. There are a variety of types of social support that can exist within your support system that can impact your well-being and recovery:
- Emotional support: Typically involves physical and emotional comfort
- Listen without judgment and empathize
- Provide physical comfort with hugs and pats on the back, shoulder, or hand
- Offer emotional comfort with words of comfort and reassurance
- Acknowledge and validate feelings and experiences
- Provide a sense of security in your presence
- Regular check-ins
- Informational support: Typically involves individuals in your support system providing advice or gathering and sharing information to support you
- Provide advice through facts or other relevant information
- Can include relationships, health, career, legal, and financial advice
- They teach you about a topic that can support your well-being
- Help direct you to resources that can help you
- Provide step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task or challenge
- Offer guidance on how to solve a problem or overcome challenges
- Able to share your lived experiences to better understand each other’s perspectives
- Provide advice through facts or other relevant information
- Esteem support: Typically focuses on expressing confidence in you or provides encouragement
- Gives compliments without an agenda
- They remind you of your strengths to increase your sense of competence
- Provides affirmations to boost your confidence
- They offer encouragement in good and bad times
- Help you challenge negative self-talk
- They celebrate your success and are your biggest cheerleader
- Regularly acknowledge and recognize your accomplishments
- Tangible support or instrumental support: Typically involves being an active source of support through actionable assistance by taking on responsibilities for you or offering direct help
- Provides financial assistance
- Lend or gift you money
- They offer transportation assistance
- Drive you to work, school, the grocery store, or doctor’s appointments
- Lets you borrow their car
- Provide childcare support by babysitting and or pick-ups and drop-offs from school
- Do chores and other housework for you when you are unable to
- Offer to help you move
- Provide meals when you are unable to prepare food or get food yourself
- Offer you a place to stay in times of need
- Help you run errands or other tasks
- Picking up prescriptions
- Mailing packages
- Picking up dry cleaning
- Going to the bank
- Provides financial assistance
The way you perceive the social support you receive is integral to your health and well-being. Thus, the less social support you perceive yourself to have, the more likely you are to experience negative health effects following stressful events. Feelings of guilt and shame about your substance use and its impact on your relationships can negatively impact your perception of social support and your support system. However, improved perception of social support can act as a buffer against relapse, poor physical health, and mental health impairments. Thus, understanding the value of social connection in your support system can support early and long-term recovery.
Value of Social Connection and Your Support System in Recovery
A well-rounded social support system can include family, friends, support groups, and other forms like employers and alumni programs. Through social support, you can reap the benefits of social connection to build healthy interpersonal relationships and enhance your psychological well-being. Listed below are some of the many ways social connection in a mutually supportive support system can help you heal in long-term recovery:
- Decreases addiction relapse following treatment
- Increases treatment retention rates
- Supports your belief in your ability to abstain from misusing and abusing substances
- Increases motivation to maintain sobriety
- Decreases stress
- Improves quality of life
- Fosters adaptive coping skills
- Decreases mental health symptoms
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Fosters supportive relationships with like-minded peers
- Encourages community building
- Increases sense of belonging
- Improves self-esteem
- Increases family cohesion
- Improves social functioning
- Supports engaging in healthy choices and behaviors
- Builds and strengthens social connections
Despite the benefits of social connection and engaging with alumni, building a support system can feel daunting. Although relationships take work and a mutual commitment to support, building a strong support system is not impossible.
Ways to Build a Strong Support System in Recovery
There are a variety of ways you can build a mutually supportive support system with your loved ones in recovery. Listed below are some of the ways you can strengthen your relationships and support system:
- Make a list of family and friends who have been positive and supportive in your life
- Include who listens to you, who you reach out to for advice, and who appreciates every part of you
- Stay connected to them with phone calls, email, video calls, or plan social outings
- Include who listens to you, who you reach out to for advice, and who appreciates every part of you
- Give back to your community with volunteer work
- Join a group with shared interests or hobbies
- Writers group, crochet group, book club, or hiking group
- Try learning something new
- Take an in-person or virtual class with someone in your support system
- Attend local events in your community
- Be a source of support for others
- Family, friends, and peers
- Engage in physical activities together
- Walking, hiking, dancing, or biking
- Join a support group
- Attend alumni programming and sober community events
With support from a strong alumni program, you can start fostering healthy social connections with others to thrive in recovery.
Fostering Social Support With Alumni at The Guest House
At The Guest House, we know addiction thrives in isolation, thus we are committed to creating a supportive and thriving community for recovery. We know how important connection is to the work of recovery. When you feel disconnected from others, you can start to believe you are not worthy of love, belonging, healing, and recovery. Therefore, we are committed to providing a holistic trauma-specific alumni program that supports building a community in which you know you are worthy of connection.
Whether you are in early recovery or have been in recovery for a while, you are still learning and growing as a sober person. Every day you are taking steps to set and achieve your recovery and life goals as you face new stressors, experiences, and responsibilities in your daily life. Although an independent life in recovery can feel daunting, independence in recovery does not mean being alone. With our alumni program, you are surrounded by peers who are here to help you overcome obstacles and celebrate your successes.
No matter where you are on your recovery journey, with a holistic continuum of care, you can find the support you need to thrive. Whether you need help building social connections with peers, community resources, or reconnecting with loved ones, there is a right path for you. At The Guest House, you will never be alone in meeting the challenges and joys of life in every stage of recovery.
Completing treatment is an incredible accomplishment that can be filled with excitement and anxiety. However, it is important to remember that maintaining long-term recovery is a process of continual learning and personal growth. Whether you are in early or long-term recovery, it can be easy to get caught up in overconfidence or even guilt or shame that leads to isolation. Isolating yourself and disconnecting from others can put you at risk for relapse. Thus, engaging in a strong support system can be vital to maintaining recovery and well-being. With a commitment to holistic support at The Guest House, you can foster social connections through a dedicated alumni program. Call us at (855) 483-7800.