Addiction
8 Helpful Tips to Get A Handle on Addiction -You Can Do This!
Addiction is a mental disorder that greatly affects the brain and behavior of a person. It is a condition in which the satisfying effects make the person pursue the behavior repeatedly despite the adverse consequences.
It is something we can’t control but there are ways to deal with it whether it is an addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, smoking, sex, internet or lying. At first, It is not easy to overcome but taking a step would make a difference. So prepare yourself to learn, below are some helpful tips that will guide you to handle your addiction.
- Decide to Change
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The addiction hooked you so deeply. You can’t control yourself from doing it repeatedly despite the harmful effects you’ve been experiencing. Do you want to quit? you should decide and made up your mind to change.
- Identify the harmful effects of the addiction
- Think about important people in your life and how the effects of addiction will affect your relationship with them
- Determine your reasons why you want to change
- If you have past attempts in recovery, Think about what didn’t work and what works.
- 2. Commit yourself to quit
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List reasons why you want to quit the addiction. It will help you stay focused on the track of changing yourself and moving away from your addicted life. Below are some examples of reasons you may want to include on your list:
- Decide to quit because you want to have a healthy and long life
- Decide to quit because you want to save money and become financially stable.
- Decide to quit because you want to be a competitive employee in your workplace.
- Decide to quit to become a faithful husband/wife and a better parent to your children.
- 3. Determine how addiction affected your life
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Addiction negatively affects your life. It can only give you stressful situations in every aspect of your life that will lead you to depression plus other psychological problems.
- Addiction can affect your performance negatively in your job
- Addiction can lower your self-esteem and self-worth
- You can be financially unstable because some addictions take a big financial toll-like gambling.
- Your relationship with your family and friends will have a negative impact especially with your children who look up to you as their parent.
4. Remove any reminders of your addiction
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Predict where the temptation coming from. Make sure to keep away from any of it. At home, workplace or at school there’s a temptation that will trigger your addiction.
- Keep away from your peers who have influenced you
- Keep temptation out of your sight such as alcohol, tobacco, pornography and etc.
- Avoid bars, clubs, casino or gambling station
5. Find support for the recovery of your addiction
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We can’t change ourselves alone. The most essential part of your recovery from addiction is the positive influences and solid support. The more encouragement, advice, guidance or a listening ear you receive the more you recover better and faster.
- Get in touch with your family and friends.
- Consider moving to a positive environment where you can live in.
- Join a recovery organization or support group of people.
6. Coping up with stress
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Emotions are part of our life. Finding a way to address these feelings is an essential factor in dealing with your addiction Learn healthy ways to cope up with your stress through learning stress management without falling back to your addiction. Below are the stress relief strategies that will help you out from addiction.
- Learn meditation techniques or pray to relieve stress and find balance
- Go outside and Breathe some fresh air
- Imagine a peaceful place while closing your eyes
- Develop new hobbies such as playing board games, playing instruments, sports and anything that will distract you from stress.
- Listen and watch motivational videos on youtube or podcast
- Try to do exercise or workout every morning
- Explore, you can travel to different places in your hometown or out of town for you to wind down.
- Involve yourself to learn some crafts and arts such as painting, drawing, or even photography.
- Set realistic and meaningful goals
7. Take treatments for your addiction
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There are effective and helpful treatments you can undergo for your recovery from your addiction, especially on drugs. It is not easy and quick to respond to your need for recovery depending on the level of your addiction. The more intense the addiction is, the longer and harder the treatment should be.
- First, seek advice from professionals personally.
- Undergo behavioral counseling with an expert.
- Commitment and consistency through the process of the treatment is required.
- Don’t try to self-medicate, wait and listen to what the professionals instructed to do.
8. Dealing with addiction relapse
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Relapse is truly disappointing and discouraging but don’t let it keep you down. It is a normal part of the process of recovery. Use it as your opportunity to learn from your mistakes and improve the course of your treatment for the better.
- Don’t condemn yourself just keep going when you slip.
- Gradually decrease your habit of addiction instead of immediately quitting from it.
- Choose to live a new and better lifestyle every day.
- Identify the “triggers” that tempts you to relapse and keep it controlled as possible as always.
You can do this! It is one step at a time, it’s a marathon, not a sprint and it takes patience and honesty with yourself to walk this road of Recovery.