Recovery is a lifelong commitment, but the holidays may throw a wrench in your plans. With high amounts of stress, busy schedules, and triggering situations, the holiday season can be a difficult time for many people in recovery. While you can do your best to avoid relapse over the holidays, sometimes things happen.
I Relapsed Over the Holidays. Now What?
While relapse is sometimes part of recovery, make sure your sobriety journey doesn’t end there. At Vertava Health, we are sharing a few tips on what to do after a relapse over the holidays so that your recovery journey doesn’t have to end when the new year begins.
Don’t Keep It A Secret
If you relapsed over the holidays, you may feel ashamed or embarrassed, but relapse is a part of the recovery journey for many people. While you may be tempted to try and hide it, don’t. Doing so can isolate you from your support system and make getting back on track harder. Instead, you should be reaching out to others and relying on them during this difficult time. If your loved ones know about your relapse, they will be better equipped to help you. Talk with your sponsor or peers from your addiction treatment program. They likely have their own relapse story that could help you navigate this challenging time.
Learn Your Triggers
Knowing how to recover after a relapse over the holidays and keeping it from happening again is largely about learning from the experience. There are plenty of potential holiday relapse triggers, but it is important to determine what factors contributed to your relapse. Ask yourself the tough questions. Do you have a toxic family? Did buying gifts put a financial burden on you? Was being around alcohol and others drinking too much? How did your relapse begin? Once you have a better understanding of why you relapsed, you can start to learn from it. You can better avoid these triggers in the future and work toward managing them in the future when they are unavoidable to build an even stronger foundation for your recovery.
Make A Change
Along with getting a better understanding of your triggers, the best thing to do when you relapse over the holidays is to use this time to reevaluate your life in recovery. Are you spending time with the right people? Are you still attending your recovery meetings regularly? Have you used the holidays as an excuse to get complacent about your recovery? When you honestly answer these questions, you may find that you have strayed from the healthy lifestyle you led immediately leaving inpatient rehab. When you are able to recognize these problems, you can start to make changes to correct them and help you keep your recovery on track.
Ask for Help
If you relapsed over the holidays, the best thing you can do is get help. While you may feel ashamed or guilty, do not let these feelings get in the way of reaching out for the help you need or you could fall back down the slippery slope of addiction. What type of help you need depends on your situation. While some people may be able to rely on the support of loved ones to get them back on the right path, others may benefit from returning to treatment like a php treatment center. Because relapse and the holidays can sometimes go hand in hand, it is important to know what to do after a relapse over the holidays so that one slip up doesn’t snowball out of control. While you may feel discouraged, recovery is a lifelong journey and relapse can be just a temporary setback. No matter where you are in your recovery journey or if you have yet to begin, we want to help. Contact us today to learn more.
