Even if you’re in early treatment, you might start thinking about your life after you complete treatment. It helps to be prepared for the next steps. This article discusses transitioning from treatment to recovery and starting your sobriety journey. This article will cover aftercare and the first steps after treatment.
Thinking About Your Life Direction
During treatment, you’ll spend most of the time looking at where your life is now and thinking about where you want it to go. It’s common for people struggling with addiction to feel lost or stuck in their life. They might be at a loss for what they want to do.
Before you finish treatment and start the early recovery stage, you’ll need to have this figured out. You might not have your life’s purpose figured out immediately, but the goal is to have a direction that inspires you.
Before you leave treatment, think about yourself and your place in the world. What is it that you care about the most? What drives you? If you are disconnected from your identity and beliefs, it might take a little while, but once you have an idea of where you want to go, you’ll be able to do the rest.
Taking Part in Aftercare
Your recovery journey doesn’t end right after treatment. There is still a lot of healing that needs to be done. Once you finish treatment, you’ll need to think about aftercare.
Aftercare programs include sober living homes, group therapy, family therapy, and counseling. Aftercare keeps you connected to the recovery community and ensures you don’t fall off course or relapse.
The period after you graduate from an addiction treatment center can be intimidating. There’s so much that you can do all the time in the world, but it’s hard to know where to start. This can feel overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a plan. You should be thinking about your next steps near the end of treatment.
Coming Up With a Crisis Plan
You’ll want to create a plan for those difficult moments just before the end of treatment. Finishing treatment doesn’t mean that things will be better forever. Life is going to through some curveballs at you, and you need to be prepared.
A crisis plan helps you know what to do when you aren’t emotionally okay. It can help mitigate emotional spiral or potential relapse of drugs or alcohol.
Your crisis plan should include people you can reach out to and healthy coping mechanisms to try to calm down until someone can help you. In addition, those close to you should be aware of the crisis plan and what they are expected to do if you need help.
Taking It a Day at a Time
After treatment, you might feel excited to take on the world, but you must be careful about taking on too much at once. In early recovery, you’re still vulnerable. You aren’t expected to fix every part of your life on day one. Instead, sobriety is about taking it a day at a time. Then, over time it gets easier and easier to take on the larger goals.
Tackling the Larger Issues
When you start taking on larger goals and picking up the pieces, you’ll need to address the pressing issues first. For example, if you have legal or financial problems, you should take care of those as soon as you can. It might be tempting to ignore these problems hoping they will go away, but the more significant issues can worsen over time, adding to the stress that can contribute to relapse.
You’ll feel much better once you’ve taken care of these problems, giving you the freedom to continue the rest of your life unburdened.
Setting Small Goals
Recovery gives you a rare opportunity to try new things. You have a blank slate to work with all the time. What’s important to keep in mind is that while all of this time is exciting, you’ll need to make sure what you strive for is realistic.
For example, if you did receive treatment, you might have realized that you want to run a marathon someday. That’s great! However, you’ve never jogged a day in your life. You aren’t going to run a marathon on day one. Getting where you want to be will take time and practice.
Take this time to break your dreams into smaller, achievable goals. For example, if you want to run a marathon, start by jogging shorter distances for shorter times until you build up endurance and fitness. Eventually, you will reach your goal, but for now, enjoy the journey.
Curating Your Support System
Having a team of people who have your back is the key to staying sober. Early recovery allows you to meet new people, build stronger connections, and create a system of people you can count on. Your support network can include friends, family, sponsors, and mental health professionals. These are people you can lean on when things become difficult.
Addiction Treatment at Villa Oasis in San Diego
Make sure that your plans can adapt to any changes that occur. Some things you want to work on as soon as you leave treatment might present obstacles, and that’s okay. Take the time after treatment a day and focus on your recovery. At Villa Oasis San Diego, we support you and help you develop an aftercare treatment plan.
Call Villa Oasis today to learn about your treatment options and how we can help you at (323) 739-8673.
