Recovery is full of questions for us to explore and answer for ourselves as part of the healing work we’re doing. One of the questions that many of us ask ourselves at some point in our recovery is whether or not we should relocate. Should we remove ourselves from triggering environments, communities, and relationships, or should we power through and make important life changes regardless of where we are? Will relocating be the catalyst for a new beginning for us or are we trapped not by our location, but by our mentality? Keep reading to learn how to evaluate and make the best decision for ourselves.
Contributing Factors
For many of us recovering from addiction, we come to discover that our home environments were huge contributing factors to our addictions. Our homes might be where our addictive patterns first emerged, where we were first introduced to our drug of choice by a family member or partner, or where we first experimented with addictive substances and behaviors. Our households may have been full of destructive patterns, unhealthy behaviors, and dysfunctional relationship dynamics – all of which may have contributed to our addictions. The people we lived with may have enabled our addictions or facilitated them, by supplying us with our drug of choice or by using with us. They might have turned a blind eye to our problem or downplayed it when we came to them for help. Many of us find that these people – who are often addicts themselves – played a role in the emergence and development of our addictions.
Persistent Problems
When we’re deciding whether or not to relocate, we have to ask ourselves if these same home environments and relationships are just as triggering and problematic as they were for us in the past, or if they’ve changed for the better. Would we be living with the same people, and are they still struggling with addiction? Would our homes be supportive of our sobriety, or detrimental to it? Would we be surrounded by people who understand our need for sobriety, or are they too entrenched in their own addictive patterns to support our recovery?
Our decision to relocate depends on whether or not we feel the relationships and households that initially contributed to our addictions have changed enough to be able to support our recovery. If the same contributing factors are just as potentially destructive as they’ve always been, relocating might be helpful. If we stay, we might find that the people who were coercing us to use are still pressuring us – that they don’t take our sobriety seriously, or they don’t respect it. We might decide that relocating is in our best interest, and we learn in recovery that we have to prioritize our needs to ensure we’re able to stay sober.
New Beginnings
Relocating to a new household or town can be the new beginning for us that we needed. It can help us to remove ourselves from the triggering places and relationships that fed our addictions and emotional challenges. We can feel invigorated by the change. We can feel as though the move is a step forward – a way to help ourselves create change in our lives. Relocating can make us feel as though we have put the past behind us, that we can move on instead of staying entrenched in the same painful memories and problematic circumstances. We can feel as though we’re embarking on a new chapter in our lives. For many of us, relocating empowers us to open that chapter and follow through on our recovery.
Tuning Out Distractions
On the other hand, we can also decide to make big changes for ourselves without relocating. We can make the conscious choice to implement changes in our lives without being in a new setting. The work we’re doing is internal, after all. We’re changing our thought patterns and shedding limiting beliefs. We’re practicing new emotional responses and developing new behaviors. We can do all of this work regardless of where we’re physically located. We can, in a sense, tune out everything around us and focus exclusively and wholeheartedly on ourselves and our recovery. We can become so internally resilient and so determined in our recovery that external circumstances no longer have the same effects on us.
Relationship Transformations
Sometimes the relationships and circumstances that were problematic for us have undergone their own massive transformations. The people in our lives who were struggling with addiction might be in recovery as well. They might not be pressuring us to use anymore. They might have discovered the importance of sobriety in their own lives.
It is also possible to form entirely new relationship dynamics and find that the same triggering elements are no longer there. We can feel that our former lives – our past habits, routines, and lifestyles – have changed for the better, and we’re no longer being negatively impacted by the people around us or by the communities we’re a part of. We might have recovered enough to make these relationship dynamics not only more peaceful, but also more conducive to our sobriety.
The Guest House Ocala’s recovery programs offer many experiential modalities, including traditional therapy, conscious connected breathwork, equine therapy, somatic experiencing, art in healing, grief therapy, mindfulness, and other forms of therapy. Call 855-483-7800 or visit www.theguesthouseocala.com to begin your recovery today.