Maintaining awareness of one’s self and surroundings is important during the recovery process. Often awareness is connected with holistic care, such as yoga therapy, mindfulness, or nature-based services. However, awareness can be achieved through clinical practices as well. Becoming more aware of one’s behaviors, thoughts, and emotions is part of different psychotherapies (otherwise known as talk therapies). Keeping track of these personal patterns helps clients improve and maintain awareness.
At First Steps Recovery, clinical and holistic services are meant to work together. In holistic care, clients learn how to connect with their inner selves on a deeper level. This type of care also helps clients become comfortable with their thoughts, emotions, and feelings and embrace vulnerability in recovery. When paired with clinical services, holistic care can help clients bring their self-discovery and self-understanding to a new level.
The Importance of Maintaining Awareness in Recovery
Maintaining awareness while in recovery is vital. With adequate self-awareness and awareness of one’s surroundings, clients can take better control of their recovery. Self-directed recovery is important, allowing clients who complete their treatment programs to re-enter their normal routines with more ease.
Being aware of one’s feelings and thoughts helps clients restructure their behaviors to be more constructive and hold themselves more accountable. Maintaining awareness also improves emotional well-being, emotional regulation, and relapse prevention.
Methods for Maintaining Awareness
This level of introspection can be difficult. Spending time with oneself and fostering vulnerability can be overwhelming. However, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Practicing awareness can be done in different ways. For instance, clients may benefit from writing, art, music, or physical activity to engage with their inner selves. These are more holistic options for clients looking to improve their awareness.
Often clients who are coping with addiction act impulsively. However, by maintaining awareness, they can develop more self-control and engage in increasingly constructive behaviors. Clients are then able to recognize when their emotions or thoughts are too overwhelming and act accordingly. They can ground themselves in the present rather than using drugs or alcohol impulsively.
How Does First Steps Recovery Offer Clinical and Holistic Care Together?
Maintaining awareness can be done in different ways. As said before, holistic care is the most common way to develop awareness. However, in addiction recovery, it can sometimes be difficult to develop awareness solely through holistic therapies. Having various methods for increasing awareness is important. First Steps Recovery encourages clients to use clinical talk therapies to their advantage in this way. Talk therapies allow clients to gain a significant amount of self-awareness, especially when specific techniques are used.
For maximum awareness, pairing holistic and clinical treatments can be useful. Some clients may benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) paired with sessions of art therapy and wilderness therapy. Other clients may benefit from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) alongside yoga therapy. Each client is different. However, First Steps Recovery works to create the most beneficial treatment plan possible to yield the best recovery results.
Clinical care can be used to track behaviors, thoughts, and emotions as well. Clients often feel like they are not progressing enough in the recovery journey. Through tracking, though, clients can see how their thoughts and emotions are slowly becoming more constructive, even if the progress is not linear. Seeing that better days are becoming more frequent while bad days are starting to subside helps clients recognize their progress. This recognition can provide hope, motivating clients to persevere in the journey.
What Types of Clinical Care Encourage Maintaining Awareness?
CBT is one of the clinical therapies at First Steps Recovery that can help clients maintain awareness of themselves, their thoughts, their emotions, and their behaviors. This talk therapy encourages clients to discuss their thoughts and emotions in a safe space with a therapist. Clients learn to identify and counter unproductive habits that may stem from early experiences.
From there, clients and their therapists can track the progress from negative to positive thoughts. Thoughts and emotions are linked to behaviors as well. Being aware of one’s thoughts helps clients maintain awareness of their behaviors, helping them actively choose constructive behaviors that promote recovery.
How Individual Therapy and Progress-Tracking Can Foster Awareness
Tracking and maintaining awareness can also come out of individual therapy. In individual therapy, clients can privately discuss their treatment progress and receive tools to further promote their recovery. These sessions happen on a regular basis with First Steps Recovery in order to remain consistent with the tracking process. This process assists clients in being aware of their progress. They can privately discuss their results with their therapist and ground themselves in the recovery journey fully.
In general, measuring recovery progress and keeping awareness of oneself and one’s journey strong can act as motivation. Having both clinical and holistic options for developing and maintaining awareness can strengthen this process.
Here at First Steps Recovery, we offer both clinical and holistic therapies that can help people develop and maintain awareness in addiction recovery. Clients coping with addiction often struggle with awareness of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In clinical therapies, like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), clients can openly discuss these three things while tracking their progress in all three areas. This helps clients maintain awareness of their recovery, their progress, and themselves. It becomes even easier to cultivate awareness when pairing clinical therapies with holistic care. Awareness helps clients ground themselves in the present moment and make decisions that actively improve their recovery. To learn more about awareness and clinical therapies, please call us at (844) 489-0836.
Dr. Curl is the Medical Director and primary on-site provider for First Steps Recovery. He is a Board Certified Internist and Addiction Medicine Specialist having attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completing his residency at Mount Auburn Hospital with Harvard Medical School. Following several years work as an internist and physiatrist (physical medicine and rehabilitation). Dr. Curl completed the Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Howard University in Washington DC and participated as a RAM Scholar (Research in Addiction Medicine). While part of the fellowship, Dr. Curl pursued research investigating the barriers to expanding and improving medication for opioid use disorder. Following his fellowship, Dr. Curl spearheaded the Opiate Use Disorder outpatient clinic and worked in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences within the Howard University Hospital. In 2023, Dr. Curl completed his Board Certification in Addiction Medicine.
