Addressing and overcoming an addiction to drugs or alcohol is a taxing experience, and the ongoing process will have many ups and downs. It is essential that each person find their own methods of maintaining motivation throughout the process and maintain sobriety after one’s treatment program has ended. Motivation is a critical part of every step of recovery and helps keep each person moving to reach their next goal or milestone in their sobriety.
However, it is also common for an individual to harbor some resentments or reluctance to participate in a recovery program or be less than enthusiastic about many therapeutic approaches. Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) is an approach designed to help an individual become better equipped to move through a recovery program successfully and find a personal stake in recovery and reason for achieving sobriety.
What is Motivational Enhancement Therapy?
MET is a therapeutic approach intended to directly target and address any resentments or reluctance an individual may have about making changes in their lives. The uncertainty of the recovery process and the idea of change as a whole can be paralyzing on its own, and there may be a great deal of ambivalence when it comes to taking the first few steps through the recovery process. This approach is designed to help each individual find their own personal reason to pursue recovery.
While many people may first attend a recovery program at the behest of friends, families, loved ones or may be legally required to enroll in a recovery program, motivational enhancement therapy is intended to help a person see recovery as something more than rigid, outlined steps. This approach seeks to help people realize what they have to gain by helping an individual create their own goals and motivations for chasing these goals.
Recovery is a complicated and personal venture. Simply going through the steps of a recovery program without internalizing personal reasons can lead to complications outside of the recovery sphere. For the best results of change, an individual is going to have to want change for themselves. Without being personally motivated to maintain sober changes in one’s lifestyle, it can become much easier to slip back into previously destructive behaviors. Change is best sustained when an individual is making it for their own betterment, rather than under the notion that they are going through the motions to please another, whether that be family, friends, or a legal obligation.
Addressing Reluctance
Reluctance to wholly engage in a recovery program is common, despite the major hurdle it presents. Some may feel that engaging in active change is an acknowledgment of past mistakes or the negative ramifications of one’s addiction. MET attempts to look at this line of thinking and isn’t intended to convince an individual that they need a change in their lives. Instead, it helps a person explore the various ways in which they may want to make changes for themselves. By prioritizing acceptance and understanding as a part of an individual therapeutic session, each person is free to explore how they conceive recovery and what it may mean for them without feeling pressured to justify their case.
Instead, this approach is intended to help an individual realize their starting place in life and invite the person to further explore how they wish life could be before exploring practical changes that can be implemented. By taking this route and developing personal goals first, an individual can then further break down the idea that there are simple, outlined “rigid” steps that need to be taken, and instead, focus on their own goals and how a program can help reach them.
Seeing Success in Motion
However, it is still common that an individual may know how they would like to make changes in their lives and still not believe that they can achieve these goals. MET is an approach that seeks to showcase the agency an individual has over their change and continues to reinforce one’s agency as a motivational tool. This creates the image that they are the catalyst for their own transformation and that the goals they set for themselves are not just possible but personally achievable.
Seeing this success in motion can be a significant contributing factor to one’s continued success through the recovery process and ultimately creates a drive for one to better themselves regardless of their participation in a recovery program. Instilling the desire and proof of change on a personal level can continue to breed potent recovery tools both inside and outside of the recovery sphere. This motivated mentality can continue to carry one through any other goals they may set for themselves.
Finding your own motivation through the recovery process is essential for creating a healthy and profound experience that can stretch far beyond the confines of the recovery sphere. At Avalon Malibu, we prioritize the use of Motivational Enhancement Therapy and interviewing in order to help you uncover your own goals for recovery and beyond. We can work with you to create a program that is right for your needs and sober future. We offer an array of programs that can all be personalized to fit your needs while practicing life skills that are pertinent to your unique goals, including yoga, meditation, and massage therapy, as well as physically active therapeutic approaches such as our seasonal ropes course. Finding your own reason for recovery can open the gates for a profound transformative experience. For more information on how we can help you, or to speak to a caring, trained staff member about your unique situation, call us today at (844) 857-5992.
