There are so many ways in which addiction pushes people further from everyday society. When people suffer from substance abuse, they often retreat further into the haze of their addictions. This means leaving behind the basic life skills that have been a cornerstone of daily life in society.

Life Skills and Addiction

Addiction is something that can affect anyone at any time. The right circumstances, availability, and inclination may all influence how people become addicted. Should this happen, addiction becomes the focus of their entire lives.

When referring to life skills, this can include many different things, such as:

• Problem-solving
• Emotional regulation
• Resilience
• Pride in one’s self

Unfortunately, what may seem like typical day-to-day tasks for everyone else may get lost in addiction. When this happens, people must relearn these skills in a rehab setting so that they can return, unencumbered, to society.

Relearning Life Skills in Recovery

One of the most important parts of relearning life skills comes from talk therapy. This involves both group and individual therapy.

Group Therapy

In groups, residents will begin to discuss their disorders and how their lives have been affected. For some, this will mean finding ways to deal with their emotions. The medical professional leading the group will make sure to facilitate people’s modes of expression. This means that residents will learn how to behave in a group situation, when to allow others to speak, and how to react in a calm, regulated manner.

They will also learn how to accept criticism. This can be hard for most people, but for those in recovery, there is often the issue of low self-esteem. Residents may be prone to acting out verbally and emotionally when this happens. In these cases, they will be shown how to build and maintain their resilience.

Group therapy is important for individuals overcoming substance abuse due to the fact that it is a facilitated interaction. There is also the value of helping each other. When people with similar situations come together, they invariably wish to share advice. This allows for a form of team-guided problem-solving. Each person contributes to the whole, allowing them to think over what they would do in a given situation and talk it out.

These life skills will invariably come up at some point post-recovery. Group therapy allows vulnerable people to test their new skills with each other.

Individual Therapy

Where group therapy excels at giving people confidence and advice around others, individual therapy seeks to rebuild inner life skills. These can be hard to work on in group settings but are just as important for proper functioning.

Something people will learn is how to feel confident and proud of themselves. For those who have been through personal trauma as well as substance abuse, these may feel like foreign concepts. However, as they move through recovery, the goal of their medical professional will be to help them accept and move past these mental roadblocks.

The medical professional will take the one-to-one time to begin the exploration into the resident’s background and what may have brought them to substance abuse. This inspection may bring up a variety of traumas. However, it is important to remember that this is only the beginning of the journey to mental recovery. Once people can see their issues before them, they can begin to learn the life skills necessary to deal with them.

For most people, this will mean realizing that some things are not their fault. That the trauma which brought them to their current predicament was not something they could prevent. This knowledge and understanding will allow room for a person to develop confidence-building skills. These skills form the building blocks of everything that comes next.

Reentering Society

One of the main things to remember is that recovery does not end after rehab. In fact, it is only the beginning. That being said, a recovery program will make sure that its residents are ready to handle themselves before sending them back out into the world.

With the skills they have developed in treatment, residents will find that they are more confident, able to interact with people, and can navigate the basic steps of life. At first, this may mean interaction with family and others in support group situations.

While in treatment, they will learn that this process of reintegrating into society will take time. There can be an initial fear when confronted with a substance-free lifestyle. However, the life skills learned in recovery will be there to help. They are there to lean on in troubling moments. These fundamentals will aid people on their road to a better, sober life.

Twilight Recovery Center and Life Skills

When people arrive at Twilight Recovery Center we take a full inventory of their mental state. This allows us to create individual care plans that will map out the individual’s journey through the recovery process. For some, this will involve learning life skills they may have never utilized before. In other cases, it will be a matter of reestablishing better habits and behaviors.

Regardless of the case, the qualified staff at Twilight Recovery Center is prepared to welcome people with open arms. It is our understanding that those with substance abuse issues need help to build back specific life skills. We can help. Make your visit count and reenter society with the skills you need to succeed.