How Mindfulness Can Stop Addiction Relapses

Mindfulness is a state of mind where you are aware of what is happening around you and within you. Mindfulness is a traditional practice that helps you find your focus. Recently, it has become very popular as specialists use it as a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy. 

To understand the idea of mindfulness, you must practice mindfulness yourself. There are some things that you can't just read about to grasp fully. When you become mindful, you become more aware of your external surroundings. Moreover, you become more aware of your inner experiences, including the proper responses to the things happening to you.

The practice of mindfulness comes with its own specific goal: awareness. Awareness will give you a full picture of what your life is like at the moment. The purpose of mindfulness practice is for you to know what is happening without any emotional attachment.

The practice of mindfulness itself is not difficult. However, it requires a certain level of discipline to help you focus only on the present moment. With all the things happening around you and all the responsibilities you have to go through, you can easily get caught up in thoughts about the past and the future.

It becomes easy to overlook what is happening now, thinking that the present will always remind you of what you are doing. However, if you are too preoccupied with the past and too busy worrying about the future, it would really be impossible to live in the moment. 

How Does Mindfulness Help Deal With Addiction?

All recovery processes, especially those of addiction, come with their own challenges. Whenever people are introduced to mindfulness practices, the very question that they have in mind is, "How is mindfulness going to help me quit?" While people think that mindfulness will help them feel better about themselves, the practice, more importantly, helps them become knowledgeable of the early signs of relapse.

Mindfulness helps you slow down 

Meditation and mindfulness practices are often seen as too simple to be effectively therapeutic. But very few people know that allowing the human mind to slow down from its usual fast pace helps people feel better. You can deal with your real emotions when you are not rushing from one thought to another or worry about what's going to happen next. 

Mindfulness helps you experience the world

Meditation allows you to quiet the mind to achieve a sense of tranquility within yourself. This is the very reason why people turn to the things they are addicted to, like alcohol or drugs. Ingestion of such substances, including marijuana and cocaine, put them in a state of oblivion. Their mind goes black, and all of a sudden, in a snap of a finger, all their worries fade away. 

Luckily, the practice of mindfulness has the same effect on the human brain. Allowing yourself to have that quiet time when you can sort your thoughts or assess your feelings will help you turn yourself away from the substances you're addicted to. 

Mindfulness will allow you to feel better

You will be able to enjoy the sensory experiences that occur in your everyday life, often which you do not even notice. When you allow yourself to witness the world's beauty, the world won't seem like a terrible place to be.

You will become less likely to seek the escape that these substances seem to give you. You will stop giving in to addictive behaviors and practices. For your own sake, you will gain a better understanding of the world. 

When you understand the world better and see the bigger picture, you will be able to teach yourself to let go of the things that trigger your unwanted behavior. You can prepare yourself to respond differently in the future. 

How Can Mindfulness Prevent Addiction Relapse?

A mindfulness-based addiction relapse prevention has recently been developed to help recovering addicts to start a new life without the risk of going back to their unwanted behavior. It is a combination of various cognitive-behavioral approaches designed to help an individual understand his situation better. A thorough understanding of what he feels from within will help get to the root cause of what led him to get addicted. 

How does mindfulness therapy help?

Awareness of the triggers helps control the addiction

One's awareness of the cravings helps control a possible relapse from occurring. When a person knows he has a strong urge to give in to the temptation of using the substance, he will be able to get help as a form of intervention. This may be a bold move, but it could possibly save them from falling off the wagon again. 

Mindfulness saves a person from high-risk situations

Being knowledgeable of how a person feels and what is happening around him allows him to respond appropriately without turning to any substance for escape. Being mindful has allowed him to sort his thoughts and emotions. When he knows where he is in the different stages of relapse, he will know what to do. Through this, he will be able to determine high-risk situations and save himself from all the trouble. 

Mindfulness practice helps identify the role of thoughts in a possible relapse. 

Thoughts can trigger the urge to give in to the substance the person may be addicted to. Although alcohol recovery stages may have its own challenges, mindfulness allows an individual to control his negative thoughts, deal with them properly, and free himself from the need to drink again.

Mindfulness practices can help any recovering addict prevent a relapse from occurring. More importantly, the practice allows the person to see beyond their addiction. They don't need to succumb to the urges anymore. They can overcome their addiction and live a normal healthy life.

With regular meditation and mindfulness practice, anyone can get over their addiction and start their lives anew.