How Increasing Self-Awareness Helps People Heal

Healing from substance use disorder (SUD) and mental health disorders takes time and a willingness to embrace change. Self-awareness is essential for addiction recovery. However, many people with SUD struggle with gaining self-awareness and critical insights into their condition. According to Trends in Cognitive Sciences, "Deficits in self-awareness can range from complete denial of the entire illness to more specific metacognitive awareness deficits of individual disease-specific symptoms, impairments, or performance, and may vary between psychopathologies." West Coast Recovery Centers helps clients heal and develop self-awareness surrounding their condition and the realities of addiction recovery. Increasing self-awareness improves the effectiveness of treatment programs and allows clients to more easily recognize areas they must change to heal. 

How Does Increasing Self-Awareness Help People Identify and Address Triggers?

Greater self-awareness allows people to better understand their triggers and how to manage them. Triggers can happen anytime, anywhere, and may involve any internal or external stimuli. Most often, triggers related to relapse include thoughts, feelings, sensations, and people or places related to past substance abuse. 

Increasing self-awareness helps people identify and address triggers by doing the following: 

• Making it easier to recognize specific people, situations, or places that trigger cravings and other symptoms of SUD
• Allowing people to understand their emotional reactions to specific triggers and how it might be related to past substance abuse 
• Making it easier to recognize patterns of behavior and thinking that may trigger symptoms 
• Allowing people in recovery to make better decisions and healthier lifestyle choices 

Identifying and managing triggers is an important part of addiction recovery. People must have the knowledge, insight, and coping tools to recognize potential problems and find ways to address them before they affect sobriety. Unmanaged triggers, including cravings or intrusive thoughts, often cause relapse. Developing methods for identifying maladaptive patterns of behavior allows people to avoid triggers or manage them more effectively. 

Self-Awareness Builds Resilience

Many people use mindfulness-based exercises and increased self-awareness to build resilience. Resilience allows people to manage stress better if they encounter unexpected challenges in recovery. According to Alcohol Research Current Reviews, "[T]he ability to simultaneously experience both positive and negative emotions when confronted with a high-stress situation increases flexibility of thinking and problem solving and can buffer individuals from developing stress-induced adverse consequences." People who learn to be mindful about their thoughts and behaviors build self-confidence and have an easier time maintaining emotional stability. 

Resilience empowers people to overcome setbacks and do the following: 

• Create a strong support system
• Develop a flexible and adaptable mindset
• Embrace positivity 
• Set realistic and achievable goals 

Introspection may be difficult in the first few weeks of recovery due to changes in the body and brain caused by withdrawal. However, West Coast Recovery Centers provides clients with the tools they need to build resilience and begin to look at their condition objectively. Individuals who understand the underlying issues impacting their thoughts and behaviors find it easier to develop healthier lifestyle choices. 

How to Develop Healthy Methods for Increasing Self-Awareness

Self-awareness takes time, a willingness to change personal beliefs, and a lot of practice. To make positive changes, people must accept the parts of themselves they may not like very much. Shame and regret can stop some people from looking closely at areas of their lives that make them uncomfortable. However, introspection and mindfulness are essential to building self-awareness. 

How people improve self-awareness varies depending on many factors, including how they approach treatment and recovery. A few of the ways people improve self-awareness include: 

• Utilizing mindfulness-based practices like meditation
• Journaling or tracking moods, behaviors, symptoms, and other aspects of recovery
• Listening and accepting feedback from others 
• Regularly practicing self-reflection without judgment 
• Identifying personal strengths and weaknesses 
• Objectively cataloging personal beliefs and behaviors
• Identifying personal values and developing routines to support them 
• Speaking with loved ones and friends 
• Practicing self-acceptance 

The experts at West Coast Recovery Centers collaborate with each client to determine the best way to develop essential skills, including self-awareness and self-confidence. Clinicians help people learn and grow through individual and group therapy sessions. By sharing personal opinions and beliefs, clients learn to identify areas they can change to improve their mental health. 

Increasing Self-Awareness at West Coast Recovery Centers

Practicing self-awareness is part of what it means to truly heal. The best way to recognize areas where a person may need to improve self-care is through reflection and enhanced self-awareness. Individuals must be honest with themselves and others to build the foundations for a fulfilling and sober future. According to Europe's Journal of Psychology, "[T]here is a long-standing belief that happiness is the result of identifying one's strengths and virtues and living a life that cultivates and reflects them." West Coast Recovery Centers encourages clients to explore beliefs and develop a mindset that supports happiness and personal growth. 

Self-awareness allows people to make essential connections between thoughts, behaviors, and consequences. Developing healthier routines during recovery is more manageable when people understand why making lifestyle changes improves their long-term outcomes. Mindfulness-based exercises and therapy are a few resources people use to increase self-awareness. West Coast Recovery Centers uses evidence-based and alternative holistic therapies to help clients better understand how their condition may influence thoughts and behaviors. Self-awareness allows people to improve many areas of their lives, including relationships. Rehabilitation programs use individual and group therapy, mindfulness exercises, and other services to help clients navigate recovery. To learn more about our programs and services, call us today at (760) 492-6509.