Respect: Community, systems, and societal acceptance and appreciation of people in recovery —including protecting their rights and eliminating discrimination and stigma—are crucial in achieving recovery. Self-acceptance and regaining belief in one's self are particularly vital.
An important factor in the recovery process is the presence and involvement of people who believe in the person's ability to recover; who offer hope, support, and encouragement; and who also suggest strategies and resources for change.
Recovery identifies four dimensions to support a healthy life. These include health, home, purpose, and community. An important foundation for all these dimensions is HOPE.
Being able to recover from addiction isn't about willpower, or trying hard enough. It's about changing your life and behaviors. The Big Book notes three major elements to that change: self-searching, leveling of pride, and confession of shortcomings, all of which are also part of the 12-step process.
Recovery embraces all aspects of life, including housing, employment, education, mental health and healthcare treatment and services, complementary and naturalistic services, addictions treatment, spirituality, creativity, social networks, community participation, and family supports as determined by the person.
Some research suggests that key factors on the road to recovery include: good relationships. satisfying work. personal growth. the right living environment.
To that end, they will often use one or more tactics from what I call the 7 Rs For Recovering From A Crisis: Renounce, Reinvent, Restructure, Rebuild, Rename, Rebrand and Reset.
Purpose, Practice, Perseverance, Pray, and Praise—these Five P's, along with other tools you may develop and discover throughout your own journey, can provide a powerful framework for recovery.
Recovery pathways are highly personalized. Recovery is non-linear, characterized by continual growth, and occasional setbacks. Recovery encompasses an individual's whole life, including mind, body, spirit, and community. The array of services and supports available should be integrated and coordinated.
The Fourth Step is to make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Another word for “moral” is truth. By reviewing our lives — the people, situations, beliefs and fears we have engaged with in our past — we can begin to see the truth about ourselves and the role we've played in our troubles.
Change is a word we hear often, especially here at SMART Recovery®. To change something in one's life—no matter what it may be—requires awareness, motivation, commitment and WORK. (You can throw in the 3 Ps as well… Practice, Patience, and Persistence.)
Rule 1: Change Your Life
The most important rule of recovery is that a person does not achieve recovery by just not using. Recovery involves creating a new life in which it is easier to not use.
From the perspective of the individual with mental illness, recovery means gaining and retaining hope, understanding of ones abilities and disabilities, engagement in an active life, personal autonomy, social identity, meaning and purpose in life, and a positive sense of self.
Step 7 encourages people to practice humility by asking a higher power to remove shortcomings and replace these imperfections and replace them with spiritual practices. This step emphasizes acceptance of flaws and the need for personal change.
Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.” The pathway toward renewal and personal growth in recovery is a gradual one. The 12 Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous provides the framework to slowly but surely attain this new mindset.
Holistic: Recovery focuses on people's entire lives, including mind, body, spirit and community. Nonlinear: Recovery isn't a step-by-step process but one based on continual growth, occasional setbacks and learning from experience. Strengths-based: Recovery builds on people's strengths.
Step Eleven in Alcoholics Anonymous. Step 11: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
Step 11 of Alcoholics Anonymous encourages people to reach out to a source of inspiration, whether it be a God or some other spiritual or inspirational force, and work to achieve the strength to find recovery. One of the underlying principles of the Alcoholics Anonymous program is that nothing happens by mistake.
Step 8 is mostly about identifying the damage you have done to others and listing those names. It doesn't matter if the harm you caused was from selfishness, carelessness, anger, arrogance, dishonesty or any other character defect… it doesn't even matter if you didn't intend to cause harm.