Emotions drive people’s thoughts and feelings every day. With addiction, this is even more pronounced as the brain and bodywork to sort out what is going on with drugs in the system. Babies are not born with regulation systems in place. Management of emotional responses takes practice and is a skill that is learned. People who struggle with addiction may not know how to cope effectively with their thoughts and feelings in a healthy way, so they turn to substances as a means of coping. Dealing with negative emotions can be challenging. Successful recovery involves learning to manage emotions better and paying close attention as to how to make it better.
Emotional Regulation in Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) includes elements of CBT, another form of therapeutic work that focuses on mindfulness, stress tolerance, and emotional regulation. The way people think and act can sometimes surprise them. In recovery, people with addiction are learning to cope, sometimes for the first time, with their emotions. A healthy way to deal with thoughts and mindfulness includes responding well to challenging situations and learning from the experience.
Watching Negative Thoughts
Negative thinking patterns keep people looped and locked into their negative energy issues for awhile. This stress response can lead to anxiety, depression, and challenges with coping in life. Therapeutic work focuses on seeing those negative thinking patterns, identifying how they operate, and how to deal better with them as they pop up. Even people with serious mental illness can learn to work better with their emotions to mitigate some of their symptoms, along with medication and other forms of therapy. Thinking and thoughts can have a considerable role in people’s lives.
Suppression of Emotions
It may seem like a person is doing a great service to themselves and others with emotional suppression. Maybe that person feels rage, frustration, or fear and is trying to hide it to ‘be strong’ for someone. This coping mechanism may work short-term but is not effective over time. There is a downside to the development of emotional regulation skills. Improving this can help but also be healthier overall.
Learning the Skills
Recovery is a time to discover tools that will help a person deal more effectively with life and its ups and downs. Substance use disorders, mood disorders, and just addiction, in general, take a toll on people’s relationships with themselves and others. If they can learn to live healthier lives, these small steps make a big difference and they begin to deal more effectively with friends, co-workers, and loved ones by navigating emotional swings in their mind with the help of medication, therapy, and lots of hard work. This may look like going to different types of therapy, including family in therapeutic work, managing medications, and seeking healthy ways to deal with the challenges and stressors of life in a productive way. It is possible to learn how to manage emotions but it means being willing to face difficult circumstances and decisions to come away with a healthier sense of one’s goals in recovery.
The Guest House Ocala teaches people in recovery tools like social-emotional learning, regulation of emotions, how to listen better, and be a better person in recovery. We also provide proven therapeutic techniques that are individualized for each person. Call us to find out how to get started: 1-855-483-7800