Sobriety is a journey, not a destination. For many, the threat of relapse frequently looms large, even after an outpatient treatment program. This is a normal part of recovery, but it does not mean that relapse is inevitable.
Understanding how you approach challenging situations and building a supportive network to help you through difficult times are two of the most important facets of finding success during this stage of your life.
In order to prevent relapse, patients should gain a firm grasp of their own triggers and how their support network can help. Triggers come in a variety of forms, from specific situations to spending time around certain people.
Developing the skills necessary to cope with triggers can set you up to overcome these temptations or difficulties and maintain your sobriety, even long past your departure from an outpatient rehabilitation program.
Understanding Triggers
Before anyone can identify the triggers that impact their life the most, they must understand what triggers are. A trigger is a situation, such as a visit with a specific person or an emotional event, that causes someone to stir up old memories of the time when they used to use.
While hindsight is a powerful tool for making new decisions in the future, a trigger can lead to a heightened emotional response that can make relapse tempting.
How Triggers Contribute to Relapse
Triggers come in many forms, and they are different for everyone. Perhaps you had a specific friend who would always use with you. Maybe you only felt the desire to return to the substance when your boss was in the office because they were always cruel and degrading.
Seeing this friend or this boss could develop into a trigger, causing the brain to draw an association between that person or event and substance use. In this way, triggers can contribute to relapse for a number of reasons.
Emotional response
When a person is engaged in a heightened emotional situation, their brain’s rational systems may be suppressed. In other words, a trigger that causes someone to feel a powerful emotion can make it more difficult for that individual to make smart choices about avoiding the temptation to use again.
Puts someone in a challenging situation
Encountering a trigger puts someone in a difficult context. They are face to face with either a direct situation or a memory that may encourage them to turn to their preferred substance once again to cope.
Because this situation is unfolding in the present, there is less time to develop a strategy for managing it absent the current stressors. Thus, it is often more difficult to stick to previously determined sobriety strategies.
Isolation
Being triggered can be isolating. No one else is experiencing what the individual feels, so they cannot truly redirect the situation. Isolation can lead a person to cope on their own, and an easy way to cope is often to turn to the substance again.
How to Cope with Triggers in Outpatient Treatment
Triggers are a fact of life; they will happen from time to time. The important thing is understanding how to cope with them.
Identify triggers honestly
Before anyone can develop strategies to handle triggers, they must honestly identify their own triggers. There is no shame in fully admitting which situations, emotions, and people are difficult to encounter. Knowing this information ahead of time is the first step in developing a toolkit for success.
Avoid high-risk situations
While triggers can come out of nowhere, it is important for those in recovery to think ahead to scenarios that could intentionally put them directly in contact with a trigger.
If an individual knows that a problematic person will be attending an office party, they can consider avoiding the party altogether, visiting with a friend who will turn the unwanted individual away from the conversation, or inviting other office friends to a separate gathering later. Avoiding such situations can spare the person in recovery from enduring a high-risk event.
Never stop learning
Setbacks happen! An individual may not get what they want to do done in a day because they spent that day fighting their temptations. That is a valuable way to spend time, and it provides an opportunity for continued learning. Examine the situation: what caused the temptation, and can it be avoided or handled better in the future?
Reach Out to Our Outpatient Treatment Program in Washington D.C.
Relapse may be the shadow that looms over recovery, but it does not have to have any effect on a person who has achieved sobriety. Whether you are currently struggling with triggers that make relapse more appealing or you have gone through relapses before and want to make this recovery last, outpatient help is available. Contact Aquila Recovery Clinic to get help from the professionals!