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Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

By: The Recovery VillageEditor: Melissa CarmonaMedically Reviewed By: Nanci Stockwell, LCSW, MBALast Updated: October 8, 2024

Relapse Workshop: Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

Estimated watch time: 4 mins 40 secs

Summary:

Relapse isn’t inevitable, but it is common. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease. If you do slip or relapse, what’s most important is that you use it as a learning experience going forward. Look at your relapse as a way to gain insight that can help you prevent a similar situation in the future.

This video offers questions you can ask yourself.

Video Materials:

Transcript:

u003ch3u003eRelapse Workshop: Relapse as a Learning Opportunityu003c/h3u003ernu003cemu003eHi everybody, We are going to be talking about relapse prevention and how you could recover from having a slip or even a full on relapse and what you might be able to do differently to put in some safety nets and make it less likely for you to repeat a relapse.u003c/emu003ernrnu003cstrongu003eSo in this lesson, we’re going to talk about how relapse is actually a learning opportunity.u003c/strongu003ernrnAddiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, which means that relapse is very common. It doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. You certainly don’t want to use that phrase as a justification to relapse. But it does happen and it can happen. And so what’s most important is that you use relapse as an opportunity to learn about your recovery program and maybe what you can do differently to decrease your chances of another relapse.rnrnSo you may hear people talking about a lapse or a slip. This is when you have a single incident of using maybe you’re just used for one day as opposed to a relapse, which is considered a full blown episode of using. You keep using over a period of time.rnrnNow, relapses or lapses can happen due to an emotional or an environmental trigger. So could be due to stress, a major life event, something traumatic that happens, feeling irritable, being bored, feeling overwhelmed, being hungry, angry, lonely, tired, which is often put together with feeling depleted in some way.rnrnSo lapses or relapses can start in the mind and the body days or weeks before using actually start. So it’s a good idea to learn to get to know when that relapse actually started to happen.rnrnAnd lapses are important opportunities for you to develop insight into what you are feeling, where you were or who was there.rnrnLearning to be mindful about our thoughts and feelings can help us restrain from acting in unmindful ways or acting impulsively without thinking, where the relapse just happens automatically. When we regularly practice paying attention to our thoughts and feelings, we can become more relaxed about them, become more curious about them, and get to know them, which reduces reacting to them.rnrnSo in the exercise after this lesson, think back to a recent lapse or relapse and answer these questions: when did you first have the urge to use? What specific day and time? Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? And what were the people around you doing?rnrnWhat was your mood earlier that day? What was your mood earlier that week? How long had you experienced urges to relapse before you did use? Did you tell anyone about the urges? If so, who and if not, how come? Did you consider doing anything else to cope with your urges? And if so, what?rnrnLooking back, what do you think you could have done differently? What thoughts did you have that you think contributed to the lapse? Which of these thoughts could you label unhelpful? And what thoughts did you have that you would say was your inner critic? What feelings do you think contributed to the lapse? What pleasurable feelings were you trying to create or what difficult feelings were you trying to get rid of?rnrnThink about what might have helped you to respond to the thoughts and feelings you were having at that time without using drugs or alcohol. Would it have been easier to access a support person? Did you need an obvious in your face reminder of distraction techniques for riding out urges? Did you need to practice more healthy coping skills? Did you need more support in your daily life or better boundaries with people who pressure you to use or treat you in ways that lead you to want to use? Did you need a safe place to go when you started to feel urges? or did you need a chance to talk to a therapist to find out what keeps driving you to use?rnrnIs there anything else you can think of? What would it take to do things differently next time?rnrnu003cstrongu003eIn our next lesson, we’re going to talk about self-forgiveness.u003c/strongu003ernrnThank you for choosing The Recovery Village. If you or a loved one are struggling with mental health or substance abuse and would like to find out more about the programs we offer, please reach out to us directly atu003ca href=u0022tel:855-387-3291u0022u003e 855-387-3291u003c/au003e.

Other Addiction & Mental Health Resources

The Recovery Village has several, free resources for those living with addiction or mental health conditions and their loved ones. From videos, to clinically-hosted webinars and recovery meetings, to helpful, medically-reviewed articles, there is something for everyone. If you need more direct help, please reach out to one of our representatives.

Worksheets/Lessons:

During this workshop, there will be a series of lessons with accompanying exercises that you will be able to access through our recovery portal, Swell.

Articles:

Videos/Webinars:

Transcript:

Understanding Post-Traumatic Growth

In this lesson, we’re going to review the concept of post-traumatic growth.

Now that we’ve experienced a trauma, let’s look at ways that we can actually find growth and to prosper after such difficult experiences.

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus. I offer this quote in part to help illustrate just what we can find in ourselves once we have experienced a traumatic event.

Trauma can be devastating. It can be scary. It is definitely intense. However, there is more beyond that one event. There is life past that trauma, and this lesson is focusing mainly on how we can find that growth.

Let’s talk about what post-traumatic growth is. Post-traumatic growth is considered positive psychological changes that develop following the experience of trauma. So that’s essentially where we grow after we face adversity. That’s how we transform ourselves in a positive way after experiencing something that’s difficult and traumatic.

Within the field of psychology on the topic of post-traumatic growth. There have been five different realms in which we measure post-traumatic growth. Appreciation for life, relationships with others, new possibilities in life, personal strength, and spiritual change. We’ll go over each of these briefly.

Appreciation for life……So when we are experiencing a traumatic event, basically what that means is that we’ve been exposed to a situation in which our immediate safety or the immediate safety of someone else that we care for deeply has come under threat. When we’re faced with these dire circumstances or when we deal with these losses that can come from trauma, what can happen is that we actually become more appreciative of the life around us. We can see the things around us that we may have taken for granted in the past.

You may go for a walk and notice how blue the sky is when you may previously not have looked up.
You may put your phone down and spend more time speaking with other people that you care about. When we lose things, sometimes that helps us appreciate things more.

Relationships with others……. In previous lessons we discussed how trauma can be not only an event that happens to us, but it also can be us learning that someone we hold dear has experienced a trauma that was life threatening or may have resulted in severe injury.

If we can be traumatized by having something threaten or destroy the safety of those we hold dear, then it stands to reason that we could also be reconciled in our trauma by our social supports. As I stated before, humans are social creatures. The connections we make with others can help us move past or grow from difficult situations. When we experience trauma, we may afterwards find that we feel more closely connected with those important to us and that we value our time with them more.

New possibilities…..So when we’ve had our safety compromised, we may find that we rethink our priorities and life goals. The things that we thought were more important at the time before the trauma are now no longer as important. Maybe it’s a relationship that doesn’t serve us. Maybe it’s not spending money in the moment and instead saving it up. Now, maybe we are more likely to do something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Knowing that we’ve survived as difficult an experience as a trauma, maybe this provides us with the courage to try things we had previously been too scared to try.

Or it takes away some of the importance of what we thought was important, say, having a beautiful house and instead taking those resources and allocating them to something that feels more meaningful to us. Going out on a trip with somebody that we care for, doing that hobby that we’ve never done.

Personal strength…..One of the things that often becomes a complicated part of the post-traumatic stress experience is that we start identifying ourselves as victims. Why didn’t we stop something from happening? How did this happen to me? It can be easy for us to forget that we are not just victims of this experience. We’ve actually survived the experience and we have moved past that and gone onto better and better things.

When you cultivate this trait of post-traumatic growth, you may understand that though coming out of a traumatic experience is difficult, the trauma does not ultimately control you. You may realize that you’re stronger than you had previously believed and you may realize that you have skills to survive that maybe you had not noticed before.

And I provide this quote, because I think it really catches some of those aspects of personal strength after trauma.

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”

It’s a nice way to think about how we’ve come out on the other end.

Spiritual change…..Let’s look at this quote from Victor Frankl. “In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning.” This quote, I think, is a good illustration of the general principles behind the post-traumatic growth trade of spiritual change.

Just as we’re open to new possibilities, we may re-evaluate our priorities in life and seek more meaningful ways to live our lives after a trauma. And as we talked about before, we may come to value quality connections with others more following a trauma, we may connect to our understanding of a higher power and or the world around us in a more meaningful way after a trauma.

Now that we’ve reviewed all of those aspects that we’ve been measuring for post-traumatic growth, let’s talk about how you have grown.

When you look at the difficult experiences you’ve been through, how would you say you’ve grown from them?

These are some things that I want you to take into consideration as you evaluate these things about yourself. We said this before, but trauma is experienced on a very personal level. Your recovery and your growth is going to be a very personal path that you follow. No two people will face the same trauma in the exact same way. So when you evaluate these aspects of growth in your own life, don’t think that you have to be doing great in all of these areas for you to be where you need to be.

Additionally, effective growth takes time. So you may not see immediate benefits after your time. And this is appropriate. Good growth in this sense, is growth that we don’t rush in to, but rather cultivate mindfully.

And if you find that you’re struggling to identify where you’ve grown, there are ways that you can cultivate that lens. I’m going to do two things in supplement to this lesson. I have provided a post traumatic growth inventory for you to take and for you to score for your own reference.

Additionally, I’m going to provide an activity for gratitude. Practicing gratitude is one of the most basic and frequently evidence based interventions to use to help us identify the positive from negative situations and to feel better about facing the difficulties that we’ve faced.

Thank you for choosing The Recovery Village. If you or a loved one are struggling with mental health or substance abuse and would like to find out more about the programs we offer, please reach out to us directly at 855-387-3291.

Medical Disclaimer

The Recovery Village aims to improve the quality of life for people struggling with substance use or mental health disorder with fact-based content about the nature of behavioral health conditions, treatment options and their related outcomes. We publish material that is researched, cited, edited and reviewed by licensed medical professionals. The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers.

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Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

Relapse Workshop: Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

Summary:

Video Materials:

Other Videos in Series:

Related Content:

Transcript:

Other Addiction & Mental Health Resources

Worksheets/Lessons:

Articles:

Videos/Webinars:

Understanding Post-Traumatic Growth

Medical Disclaimer

Related Articles

How to Reduce Relapse Risks

Physical Effects of Alcohol & Withdrawal

Treatment Options for Alcohol Use Disorder

Medical Disclaimer

About

Locations

What We Treat

Admissions

Paying for Treatment

Insurance Providers

Getting Admitted

Admissions Resources

For Loved Ones

Addiction Treatment

Mental Health Treatment

Addictions We Treat

About

Reviews & Testimonials

Get in Touch

Assessments

Specific Guides

Mental Health Resources

Other

State Rehab Guides

Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

Relapse Workshop: Relapse as a Learning Opportunity

Summary:

Video Materials:

Other Videos in Series: Toggle Other Videos in Series: +

Related Content: Toggle Related Content: +

Transcript: Toggle Transcript: +

Other Addiction & Mental Health Resources

Worksheets/Lessons:

Articles:

Videos/Webinars:

Understanding Post-Traumatic Growth

Medical Disclaimer

Related Articles

How to Reduce Relapse Risks

Physical Effects of Alcohol & Withdrawal

Treatment Options for Alcohol Use Disorder

Medical Disclaimer

About

Locations

What We Treat

Admissions

Menu

Paying for Treatment

Insurance Providers

Getting Admitted

Admissions Resources

For Loved Ones

Addiction Treatment

Mental Health Treatment

Addictions We Treat

About

Reviews & Testimonials

Get in Touch

Assessments

Specific Guides

Mental Health Resources

Other

State Rehab Guides

Explore Topics

Other Videos in Series:

Related Content:

Transcript: