Addiction impacts all areas of life, and that can make it difficult for individuals who are in recovery to move forward; addiction can weigh people down with shame and guilt, almost stopping them from taking the steps they need to remain fully committed to recovery.
That is why professional treatment focuses so heavily on personal acceptance so that you can find the power within yourself to overcome your addiction, accept all parts of who you are, and start the process of healing.
What is Acceptance in Recovery?
Acceptance is the process of opening yourself up to reality and recognizing things like:
- What choices you have made
- How your choices have impacted your life
It’s important that you take the time to embrace both the good and the bad, all of the choices that have led you to where you are and all of the choices that are yet to come because it allows you to learn from mistakes and even successes. This allows you to grow as an individual and to expand things like emotional resilience or purpose.
Too often, people in recovery try to run from difficult emotions. Without being able to turn to drugs and alcohol, when you feel shame or guilt over things that you have done or you realize that you are currently feeling overwhelmed, you have to learn to accept it for what it is.
You cannot change the past, but when you accept your past, you can learn from it.
Accepting Where You Are
When you are in recovery, your goal is to move forward. However, you cannot move forward until you are able to recognize where you are.
If you are unable to accept who you are, where you are, what impact your choices have made, and the like, then you will continue to face hurdles when trying to move forward.
With the right type of treatment, you can learn to accept who you are and where you are in life. From there, through things like individual and group therapy, you can learn to:
- Set goals
- Reflect on progress
- Organize your time
Life skills taught in therapy can prepare you for the next stages in your life and help you build toward the next chapter along your journey.
Accepting Your Whole Self
One of the aspects of acceptance in recovery is learning to accept your difficult emotions as you continue to make progress in your recovery.
Overcoming addiction is a lifelong journey, which means that you will invariably face challenges and difficult emotions along your path.
However, without drugs and alcohol as a way of numbing or otherwise avoiding difficult emotions, it’s up to you to practice acceptance in recovery by using healthy, alternative measures for:
- Identifying difficult emotions
- Sitting with them
- Learning to process them
Part of your inpatient treatment will typically introduce you to holistic, evidence-based practices that you can use to identify and sit with negative emotions.
Why does this matter?
Instead of drinking feelings away, eating them away, smoking them away, or running from them, you have to sit with your feelings in order to heal from those feelings, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable they are.
And when you accept both the good and the bad from your past, your present, and in your future, you will be able to except your whole self which brings with it great emotional release and support in recovery.
Learn About Acceptance in Recovery with American Detox
At American Detox, clients are given the opportunity to learn about acceptance in recovery in individual and group therapy sessions. Our programs are designed with separate treatment pathways for First Responders and Military veterans, as well as those in need of recovery.
Offering treatment to the communities in South Carolina, we focus on 30-day inpatient programs after a 7-Day detox. Part of our detox center focuses on getting through the aspects of physical addiction in order to focus on the psychological aspects of addiction.
As part of the inpatient treatment, you will have the opportunity to extricate yourself from your daily life and focus entirely on your recovery. This recovery centers on accepting yourself for who you are, who you were, and who you want to be, and accepting help from others when necessary.
Let our team help you start your healing and a journey to a better life. Call 877-834-0775.
