If you know someone who has struggled with addiction, or you have struggled with it yourself you may already know how stress can affect the person prone to drug or alcohol abuse. You may know the way stress can lead back to the substance that so easily controls an addict, especially when they are vulnerable, even after treatment and rehab, if the addict doesn’t have a plan.
In this society stress is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere you go. From our minds and bodies being constantly under attack by the surrounding stimulus, to the outlandish expectation of perfection and productivity. When you get home from rehab the most useful thing you can do is begin to work on setting up your plan for managing stress relief regularly as well as in a difficult moment. Here are some strategies you can employ to help you reduce stress.
Just Breathe
When you are feeling stressed allow yourself to close your eyes and concentrate on taking one deep breath in, and a couple of seconds after, letting out that breath slowly. Do this two or three times before continuing to problem solve, deescalate a situation, or just moving on with your day when you feel a general sense of stress.
Count Your Fingers
Sometimes when you’re feeling stressed just touching each finger to another and counting can help calm some people down. The process is finite. It doesn’t take long. It’s concrete. You can touch each finger and you’ve done something tangible. And the act of counting helps to let go of the deep feeling of stress you may be trying to deal with, by giving it a countdown. Some people like to imagine the stress or anxiety as a tangible thing leaving the body–like a plume of smoke out the mouth or finger tips.
Pay Attention To Your Body
Closing your eyes and just doing a quick scan of the body, paying a brief amount of concentrated attention to each appendage, each part, can bring you into closer relationship with your body and can relax your physical being, thereby allowing you to more seamlessly process your stressors. Just close your eyes, control your breathing, and think about every part from toes to hair. You can decide how micro to be in your scan based on how long you want to spend on the activity. A good quick scan can go like this: toes, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips, waist, core, chest, shoulders and arms, neck, ears, eyes, mouth. Think of them briefly, acknowledge whatever current state they are in. Don’t think about how you wish they would function, just acknowledge them in this moment.
Remove Stimulus
Finally, because sometimes outside stimulus can cause stress just by being too much, it is beneficial to cut off some senses and give them a rest. You can do this by sitting in a dark room, or lying on a bed with headphones on so you cannot hear the outside world for a little while.
If you are suffering from addiction, and are seeking out medical detox centers in Florida, call us now at (833) 596-3502 to learn more about intensive inpatient treatment or our outpatient detox center.
