How To Use The Senses To Ground Yourself In Recovery

Recovering addicts tend to struggle to stay grounded and present. We obsess over the mistakes of the past and the potential catastrophes in the future. During recovery, one of the most important lessons is to live “just for today.”

Living in the present is so important because it is impossible to recover in anything but the present. All too often, we try to find a way to recover with the assurance that we will never relapse. It is as if a future relapse would negate whatever we do in the present.

But knowing the future is impossible, and so is erasing the past, which is why it is so important to learn to ground yourself in the present when recovering.

The good news is that, at any time, you can use your five main senses to ground yourself in the present.

Circumventing your mind’s brilliance

The human mind is truly brilliant. It provides us with the power of abstract thought, complex reasoning, and language. But its brilliance is not only cognitive. It also does the job of organizing all of the sensory input.

At every moment, your senses are receiving a huge amount of data. Your mind needs to take this data and make sense of it, using shortcuts that help you differentiate the sound of a bird from the sound of the wind it floats upon, the image of a person from the image of the room they stand in.

We could not function without this. Unfortunately, this also makes it difficult for us to experience the moment without preconceived judgements.

This is why we need to tune into the senses as they are in order to ground ourselves in the present moment.

Using the senses

Using the senses is really very simple. All you have to do is focus on any one of the five main senses. Take a moment to feel the air on your skin or to listen to the sounds around you. But while it is simple, it is far from easy. We are so used to interpreting the input of the senses that we don’t take the time to appreciate it for what it is.

Using the senses to ground yourself can be done at any time, but it requires practice. Set aside some time to simply experience the input of one of your senses. Put some music on and listen to a song in its entirety, simply hearing rather than thinking about it. Eat a snack and focus on the taste rather than thinking about the next bite.

With some practice, using the senses to ground yourself can become one of the most effective tools in living “just for today.”

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5 Ways To Prevent Bad Dreams As A Recovering Addict

Many recovering addicts struggle every night with bad dreams and nightmares. There are a number of reasons for this. Some of us are battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dream about the traumas we went through. For others, including me, bad dreams are a side effect of psychiatric medication.

The dreams that I have every single night can be more complex than any twisted TV show or movie I’ve ever seen. They are troubling in various ways, whether because they bring up childhood issues or because I’m being chased by a monster. They can really affect my day.

One of the biggest problems with dreams is that, because you are sleeping, you cannot implement the strategies you have learned for dealing with triggers. However, there are ways to soften or prevent bad dreams as a recovering addict.

1. Rewrite the narrative

If you have relatively straightforward dreams, you can use this strategy to dull their blow. Take the narrative of your dream and rewrite it. For example, maybe you dreamed about starting an important exam and realizing you knew none of the answers. Rewrite the dream with a positive ending and visualize it this way. This may help you leave the difficult emotions connected to the dream behind.

Of course, more complex dreams cannot be rewritten this easily. Try to prevent the dreams by doing the following.

2. Use herbal remedies

There are certain herbal remedies that help people sleep more peacefully and prevent bad dreams. Try the following:

• use a lavender-scented cream on your skin
• drink chamomile tea at night
• take valerian root supplements

3. Listen to sleep sounds

Apps like Headspace and Calm have sleep sounds or music that can play as you fall asleep or through the whole night. Anecdotal evidence indicates that these sounds can improve your sleep quality by preventing bad dreams.

4. Discuss it in therapy

Bad dreams don’t come from nowhere. Although you may feel calm during the day, bad dreams are often triggered by stress and anxiety that you avoid consciously thinking about. For this reason, discussing your bad dreams in therapy can help in more ways than one. Externalizing your dreams this way can help you disconnect from them. It can also help you figure out what is really causing you stress and anxiety, adding to the therapeutic process and giving you the chance to work on it during your waking hours.

5. Take a break

If you wake up in the middle of the night, disturbed by a dream or series of dreams, take a short “break” from sleep. Move from your bed to the couch for a few minutes or listen to soothing sounds. This can help you disconnect from your bad dreams and go back to sleep with a clear head.

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Why You Need To Leave Your Narratives Behind

When I started my addiction recovery, I was enamored by everything I was learning about myself. I learned that my parents’ own addictions had led to my abandonment issues. I learned that in becoming a parentified child, I had developed the need to control everything. There was so much more. It was like reading a very interesting book about myself.

This led me to believe that I needed to address all these narratives. If I wanted to live life differently, I needed to work through them and replace them with new narratives. And while this exercise did help in some ways, it was ultimately a red herring.

It is important to understand your narratives to give context to your addiction. You need to be able to recognize your narratives so that you don’t get caught up in them over and over again. But while working with your narratives might help you avoid past mistakes, it won’t help you move forward all that much.

Behind the narratives

One of Albert Einstein’s most famous quotes states that “you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” When it comes to addiction, this is so poignant and relevant.

We create narratives for one major reason: to deal with feelings that seem unmanageable. Changing the narratives will not get rid of the feelings. Nor should it.

Feelings are part of a healthy existence. Even the ones that seem unhealthy – guilt, shame, anxiety – only become problematic when we try to get rid of them.

The key to moving on is recognizing that those emotions are both par for the course and only temporary. If we feel them and let them go, they will disappear. They will come around again, and we will manage them again in the same way.

It is for this reason that the 12 Steps don’t mention those narratives. The 12 Steps are about breaking the cycle of your past, and starting a practice that will take you into a healthy future.

Moving on

Many recovering addicts struggle with this idea that they are broken. They have suffered through so many trials and have done so much they want to forget. It seems like they can never work through it all.

But no person is broken. You are as whole as anyone else in this world. No matter what you have been through, you are a feeling human being, living a life that is inherently meaningful.

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