Drug and alcohol use can lead to addiction. Addiction can have a negative effect on all aspects of an individual's life. Addicts have a hard time fulfilling responsibilities or maintaining personal relationships with ease.
Recovery from a drug or alcohol addiction can require professional help. Counseling often proves a beneficial tool in the recovery process. You can benefit from the personalized assistance a professional drug addiction counselor, like Sharon O'Connell, MA, can offer.
1. Counseling uncovers unhealthy patterns.
Many addicts don't realize that they are caught up in unhealthy cycles that fuel their addiction. A counselor can provide an objective opinion on an individual's behavior. Unhealthy behaviors and patterns that contribute to drug or alcohol abuse can be uncovered. Altering these patterns is critical when it comes to the success of any addiction recovery program in the long-run.
Working with a counselor allows you to examine your own life to identify the patterns of behavior that are causing your addictions to worsen. Together, you can devise a plan to help you alter your behaviors so that you can better manage your addictions in a healthy and rational way.
2. Counseling offers guidance for family members.
Friends and family members can become enablers without even realizing that they are contributing to a loved one's addiction issues. Counseling for family members can provide the guidance needed to help them become valuable assets in a loved one's recovery.
An experienced drug and alcohol addiction counselor will be able to offer guidance for family members in helping them recognize their enabling ways. These enabling behaviors can be changed to help disrupt the unhealthy patterns in an addict's life.
Every addict needs a strong support system, and counseling can improve the quality of any support system.
3. Counseling can help prevent a relapse.
The lure of drug and alcohol use is strong for addicts. Temptation exists all around, and being able to resist these temptations is essential in any successful recovery plan. Relapse prevention plays an important role in helping addicts recover.
An experienced counselor will be able to help an addict identify the emotions or situations that might trigger a relapse so that these scenarios can be avoided. A relapse prevention program can also give an addict the tools needed to cope with stress. disappointment, or other strong emotions without turning to drugs or alcohol.
Counseling is an avenue through which any recovering addict can develop an effective relapse prevention program.
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