The Importance of Mindfulness in Recovery from Co-Occurring Disorders
By Arielle Bethel, Guest Contributor
Recovering from co-occurring disorders can pose many challenges. Co-occurring disorders are defined as a mental health disorder coupled with a substance use disorder. As a result, the individual diagnosed will need therapy and tools meant to properly address both disorders simultaneously. While there are many facets of the recovery from a co-occurring disorder, the practice of mindfulness has proven to be vital.
Mindfulness is defined as the act of being aware of the present and your feelings in regard to your situation. Additionally, an individual should refrain from criticism or judgement, accepting their situation and feelings for what they are. Practicing mindfulness allows an individual to make a neutral inventory of what they are experiencing. In doing so, this will allow the individual to learn to regulate their emotions whilst making rational decisions.
Core Values of Mindfulness
Mindfulness incorporates values and ideals that work to create an overall better mental and physical health for the individual practicing. These core values include:
Observation- Paying attention to your surroundings and the present moment.
Description- Being able to describe what happened and exactly how you felt about it.
Participation- Being involved in an activity without self-consciousness
Having a Non-Judgemental Stance- Instead of judging things, accept them as they are.
Focusing- Fully focus on the present activities without distraction of the past or future.
Effectiveness- Doing what works for you without second-guessing yourself.
Utilizing Mindfulness in Addiction Recovery
Mindfulness has become a popular tool within the addiction treatment community, especially within dual-diagnosis treatment. As a result, it has begun to help patients to slow down the racing thoughts that recovering addicts often suffer from. Often times, recovering addicts have a lot of anxiety and shame in association to their addictions. This can cause recovery to be more difficult than it needs to be. Through utilizing mindfulness techniques, individuals can begin to gradually relieve these feelings of stress and shame.
In addition, mindfulness also allows an individual to begin to appreciate the things around them. This can allow a recovering addict to appreciate the little things during their recovery. As a direct result, they will begin to focus on the positive aspects of recovery rather than the difficult parts. When patients start to enjoy everyday life, they are less likely to seek out instant gratification through addictive behaviors.
Benefits of Using Mindfulness in Mental Health Treatment
Mindfulness techniques are not only used in addiction treatment. In fact, the mental health industry utilizes these techniques as well. Mindfulness has been found to improve both physical and psychological symptoms in patients. Additionally, patients have discovered an overall improvement upon their attitudes, behaviors, and overall mental health after applying mindfulness into their everyday lives.
Stress Management
Especially important for patients suffering from anxiety disorders, mindfulness can relieve everyday stressors naturally. This is possible due to mindfulness creating emotional flexibility within a patient. This emotional flexibility allows a patient to remain relatively calm throughout stressful situations, enabling them to work through a crisis effectively. Additionally, stress can affect an individual physically. Mindfulness techniques help to lower an individual’s blood pressure, heart rate, breath patterns, and stress hormones. In doing so, the physical relief from the symptoms of stress will allow a person to self-regulate their emotions more effectively.
Negative Thinking Patterns and Anger Management
Mindfulness techniques work to help patients identify their feelings in a neutral manner. In doing so, patients are able to identify negative thinking patterns before they result in negative actions. As a direct result, patients often find that their level of anger has naturally reduced. When an individual is able to recognize their feelings for what they are and work through them in a healthy manner, they are less likely to experience frequent outbursts of anger.
Boost of Confidence and Self-Esteem
Individuals suffering from mental health disorders often have self-esteem and confidence issues. Once a person applies mindfulness into their everyday life, they will begin to appreciate aspects of their lives, families, and even of themselves that they may not have even noticed before. Mindfulness expands on the importance of being appreciative of the here and now, rather than becoming consumed with the past or future. In doing so, patients can begin to love themselves and where they are currently at physically and mentally. Therefore, boosting their overall confidence and self-esteem.
Recovery Through Mindfulness
When recovering from a co-occurring disorder, utilizing mindfulness will boost both your physical and mental health overall. However, mindfulness techniques should be used in concurrence with other forms of addiction and mental health therapies. Most patients recovering from a dual-diagnosis will enroll into a treatment center that provides individual and group therapy. Often times, within these therapy sessions, mindfulness techniques will be introduced. With the combination of therapy, medical treatment, support, and mindfulness, recovery is possible for individuals with a co-occurring disorder.
Arielle Bethel is a writer with personal experience in recovering from a dual-diagnosis. Because of this, she is passionate about breaking the stigmas in relation to addiction and mental health disorders.