Mindfulness doesn’t have to be a crutch for difficult moments. Use mindfulness during a break at work or a lull in your day to give yourself an extra boost of serenity.
- Visualization: Inhale Calm, Exhale Tension. Visualization is not meant for everyone. Some people’s brains are incapable of creating visual images in their mind. Most minds are full of running memories and images all day. Visualization practices help focus those images to a single place, coupled with a focus on the breath. As you breathe in through your nose, imagine you are breathing in calmness. Calm can look however you want it to look. You don’t have to turn calm into an object. Instead, visualize yourself, sitting there taking deep breaths, and becoming calm, feeling more at peace, As you exhale through your mouth, make a small audible “Ahh” sound and visualize yourself releasing all of your tension. For tension, it is better to visualize it. Imagine the dark, toxic energy releasing out of your body.
- Mindful Discovery: What Do You Need? Mindfulness is not always set on a goal of “no-mind” an eastern term for emptying the mind. In early recovery especially, it is easy to get caught in a crossfire of signals from the brain, not knowing exactly what it is trying to tell you. During those early days of recovering from addiction, alcoholism, and other mental health disorders, the brain is still trying to get settled in how it communicates. Take a few deep breaths. Examine where you’re feeling stressed and confused. Is it noise in your head or is it stress in your body? As you breathe, focus on the single question of what do I need right now? Let the thoughts come and go without creating judgments about whether or not you should need what is coming up. You’ll know when the right thing hits- you’ll feel suddenly calm and aware.
- Self-Talk Works With Positivity: Say Something Nice: Research has shown that talking to yourself can be beneficial to your self-esteem and to your brain. Positive affirmations are a common practice during treatment for recovery because the brain has to learn how to believe nice things about itself. It’s a proven science. Should you start feeling out of control and fall into that familiar negative self-talk cycle (like, why am I feeling this way, why does this always happen, why can’t I be normal, I’ll never get better) try to coo and soothe yourself as would a loving parent. Remind yourself of the incredible feat you’re taking on by going to treatment and choosing a lifestyle of recovery. Let yourself know that these thoughts will pass and you’re doing a great job at learning how to let them.
Learning to live clean and sober in a lifestyle of recovery means learning to live in serenity. Our goal at Avalon By The Sea is to help restore health, create balance, and inspire a lifetime of serene recovery. Healing mind, body, and spirit, our trusted programs provide trusted results, treating both mental health and substance use disorders as primary conditions. For a confidential assessment and more information, call us today at 1 888-958-7511.
