Counseling

Recovering from an addiction involves more than just dealing with the physical withdrawal symptoms. After completing the initial detox, your mind and body need to continue healing. The next phase of your treatment needs to include professional counseling to help you figure out why you developed an addiction in the first place along with the best ways to avoid a relapse.

Develop Coping Skills for Life’s Challenges

Addiction recovery should always be an individualized process. The right strategies for helping you to stop using drugs or alcohol will vary according to your personality, past experiences and general lifestyle. For example, someone who started using drugs to cope with a traumatic experience might need to use different techniques from someone who uses substances to cope with work stress.

Every person who enters counseling for addiction comes with a unique background that influences how they respond to treatment. Your professional counselor can use some of these personalized strategies to help you continue through the process of recovery.

• cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• family counseling
• group therapy
• music and art therapy
• trauma therapy

During your first meeting with a professional counselor, they’ll spend time with you talking about your past and current experiences with drugs and alcohol. They might ask you some basic questions to get a better understanding of your life such as whether or not you have a partner or work outside of the home. As you get to know each other, the counselor may ask you deeper questions to help draw out the underlying causes of your addiction. Answering these questions might be hard, but you’ll find that the counselor can help you more when you are honest.

Many people who deal with addiction also have coexisting mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. A professional counselor is prepared to help you identify these disorders and learn how to manage them. Your counselor can help you learn how to manage your anxiety using healthy strategies instead of drugs and alcohol. They can also help you overcome PTSD, depression and bipolar disorder.

Rebuild Relationships for a Stronger Support Network

Counseling is also designed to help you heal with the support of your friends and family. During the course of your addiction, you might have lost some of your most important connections or at least damaged your relationships. It takes time to rebuild trust from people that your actions might have hurt, but it is possible to make amends.

Your individual counseling sessions will include a focus on how you can be a better friend, parent, spouse or coworker. You’ll learn how to develop communication and conflict resolution skills that make it easier to interact with the people in your life. As you begin to heal from your addiction, you’ll experience a greater sense of mental wellbeing that reflects in your relationships.

At times, your counselor might encourage you to include your loved ones in your sessions. Family counseling is an example of how you can begin to address your past issues with your loved ones while learning new ways to make your relationship better in the future. Your therapy sessions can include working through things that happened in the past, and you can also get help dealing with issues that arise in your relationships during the present moment.

Professional counseling gives you a place where you can work with someone who understands all of the factors that influence your recovery. Finding coping strategies that work best for your situation helps you to overcome cravings and learn how to manage stress. Choosing to include your loved ones in your counseling sessions provides you with further support that makes life in recovery easier and more enjoyable.