Promise: If you have a clear vision of your super successful future self and believe in your heart that you will achieve our goals, you will find that your present days take on a whole new meaning!
Relapse prevention is usually a big part of any in-patient rehab program. I have done three such programs, so I learned about what NOT to do so I could stay sober.
I can remember the one lady who was leading our relapse prevention class (who was also the intake lady and had no formal experience or education when it came to addiction, much less relapse prevention) taught us to count ceiling tiles and look at colors around the room if we were getting an intense craving to smoke crack or shoot heroin. It was supposed to distract us and somehow, we were going to forget that we had the craving and go on to have an awesome day!
Other methods taught include:
Identifying triggers: This can be a situation, a feeling, a person or anything that adds stress to my life. Okay so I will stay in bed all day, avoid everyone and everything and count ceiling tiles.
Play the tape to the end: This one is awesome. I guess that I am supposed to figure out what the consequences of my actions would be if I would go out and score some cocaine, and that’s going to stop me. Good theory, but consequences never stopped me in the past, so why would they now?
Get the support of other people: Accountability is great, and people are usually willing to help but I found out that I am pretty good and finding ways around accountability if I find myself with the urge to use. My family, bless them, always wanted to believe that I was telling the truth and doing my best so I was able to fool them when I needed to.
What I’m trying to say is that for me, none of these tricks worked to keep me sober.
But I am sober today, so something worked, right? RIGHT!
The only thing that has ever helped me stay sober and get happy was taking action and creating hope in my life.
I finally learned that to quit drugs for good, and live a healthy, productive life, I HAD to have a clear vision of the person that I wanted to be and I had to start taking action to become that person…starting today. For me, success in mandatory if I'm going to stay sober.
If I don't know where I want to go, I can't know how to get there.
Here is your relapse prevention strategy for 2022:
1) Focus on the person you want to be a year from now
2) Write down a detailed description of that person – dream big with this one! The person that we want to become should be far outside of our current comfort level. What is the sense of setting simple goals for ourselves if we don’t really have to change our identity in order to achieve them?
3) Every morning and night, read over the description of your future self and visualize what it’s going to be like when you achieve the success of this person.
4) Eventually you’re going to want to start taking action to become this person but for now this is a great start.
I'd love to chat about your plan for the future. Give me a call: 416-788-6549
www.kellyfrance.com/book-online
Much Love,
Kelly