Acceptance and Commitment Therapy For Addiction

Certain emotions can be difficult to live with and to accept that they are a part of you.

The ugly side of emotions like anger and sadness are difficult to deal with and often don’t have a simple solution. They are so easily triggered but not easily controlled or prevented, and that can make them seem like a bad thing to experience.

But it is important that you know that you are allowed to feel rage and sadness and every emotion on the spectrum because you are feeling it for a reason.

Trying to suppress your emotions only hurts yourself as you either create the root cause of your problem to get bigger and bigger until it is out of control, or it leads to a build-up of pressure until you explode at someone or hurt yourself.

At Ocean Recovery, we want you to know that you are allowed to feel all your emotions and that trying to ignore them or suppress them because of their messy and complicated emotions won’t do you any good in the long run.

Instead, you need to face your emotions head-on.

But we know this can be frightening. It has become an accepted part of adult-life to hide when something is wrong and to respond to ‘are you okay?’ with an automatic ‘I’m fine’, even when you are not.

That is why when you are living with a drug or alcohol addiction, and you feel like you can’t control or express your emotions, that therapy is the best tool at your disposal to help you make real progress.

One type of therapy that is particularly useful for those struggling with expressing and dealing with their emotions is acceptance and commitment therapy.

What To Expect From Acceptance And Commitment Therapy

Through acceptance and commitment therapy, you will learn how to talk to yourself and how to understand and deal with your emotions.

You will especially learn how to talk to yourself about traumatic events in your past that may be the route cause behind your drug or alcohol addiction.

You can then decide if the problem you are facing requires immediate actions and change, such as by removing yourself from a toxic environment or people. Or if you have to accept it as part of life and have to find ways to manage your reaction to it.

For example, if you find yourself anxious talking to other people, it is not healthy to avoid people entirely. Instead, you need to adopt coping mechanisms that allow you to get out of your comfort zone in a safe and controlled way to allow you to ease your anxiety first.

You may be asked to examine your past and find what may have triggered relapses so that you can take precautions in the future to prepare yourself and come up with plans to keep yourself safe and healthy.

Acceptance and commitment therapy aims to develop and expand psychological flexibility, which means teaching you how to be open about your emotions and being able to adapt your thoughts and goals to work around things outside of your control.

The 6 Main Principles Of Psychological Flexibility:

Acceptance

Being able to accept your full range of thoughts and emotions as something natural and as a part of yourself.

Cognitive Defusion

This is being able to distance yourself and change how you react to distressing thoughts and emotions. Some find vocalising the thought or labelling it can help you to control it and mitigate the harmful effects.

Being Present

This involves you being present and aware in the moment and using mindfulness techniques to remain grounded. You must be able to observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment or fear so that you can experience them in the moment safely.

Self as context

This is where you realise that you are more than your thoughts and feelings. You are your experiences, your history and your actions. Having bad thoughts doesn’t make you a bad person. Trying to overcome them through realising you are in control of your actions and what you choose to do with them.

Values

Choosing personal values to help you define a moral compass. This will help you live a good honest life and help you not to give in to your bad thoughts and emotions.

Committed Actions

This involves you taking the necessary steps to incorporate the rest of the principles into your life. At the end of the day, the work is for you to do. If you want to see progress, you have to be willing to put in the work and make the change for yourself.