Recovery Enthusiast/ Recovery for Women

  We all experience stress, but it can be detrimental to our recovery to reduce the overwhelming stress. Here are several ways you can reduce stress in your life. 1.       Practice meditation . All you need is 5 minutes a day to start with your meditation practice. It's all about consistency. It's kind of like going to the gym. It is more beneficial to go to the gym several times a week and work out for half an hour than going once a week and working out for two hours. Meditation practice consists of anything from self-guided meditation to listening to music or listening to Mother Nature. It helps to focus on your breathing and allow yourself just to be. It is perfectly normal for your mind to wander. When it does, just gently and nonjudgmentally bring it back to your breath. That is the exercise. Meditation is the practice of your mind wandering, and you bringing it back to the present moment. When your mind is at ease, it is less likely to be stressed. ...

  R esistance can prevent you from being successful anger quest to live the life you desire. Your challenging circumstances could be attributed to two things: either you're indecisive about what you want or you're too uncomfortable to make it happen.   Use these steps to lessen the level of discomfort associated with an action: Find a place where you won't be disturbed for five to 10 minutes. with practice, you'll likely only need one minute. Close your eyes and think about the action you want to take. imagine yourself participating in the uncomfortable activity make the experience as meaningful and realistic as possible. Notice the feelings in your body. fear, anxiety, stress, and any other feelings are just labels we assign to specific sensations within our bodies. For our purposes, start to recognize where you feel the discomfort. It's usually located in your stomach or chest area but it could be different for you. Imagine a door at the location of the d...

 No matter how hard we may try, there’s just no way to avoid some difficult conversations. However, there are positive things you can say and do to help you handle them better.   Your first response may be to change the subject when faced with a difficult discussion. This won’t solve the problem or heal the hurt that caused the situation in the first place. It’s better to take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, and face the difficulty now rather than later.   Remember it’s not your job to fix the situation unless you were directly involved. People sometimes just need a friend to listen to when they’re going through tough circumstances. They really don’t want you to fix things for them.   Being available to listen is sometimes the best way to show your friend that you care.   If the situation requires you to talk with someone going through difficulties, try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. What would you want a friend to say to you ...

    DBT's TIPP skills Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) uses acronyms for almost every skill. TIPP stands for T emperature, I ntense exercise, P aced breathing and P rogressive relaxation. The theory or the reasoning behind it is when we are feeling intense emotions - whether that be stress, anxiety, fear, overwhelmed, etc., our body goes into fight or flight mode. This is an innate reaction (innate meaning that we have no control over). It happens automatically. It's a survival skill to protect us from danger. So if there's a  woolly mammoth chasing us and we need to either fight or flee, our bodies react very quickly. We automatically respond to this danger by increasing heart rate, breathing more shallow, and digestion actually stops, and so does the part of the brain that problem solves. So the critical part of the brain that, you know, makes decisions based on facts, and all that stuff is put on pause. W e don't need it when we're responding automatica...

  My life is so much more relaxed and pleasurable when I let go of the need to do everything myself. In addition, I actually enjoy more success when I let others handle some of the tasks and responsibilities!   At work, delegating projects and tasks is a skill I continue to practice. I also practice asking for help. I had a limiting belief for the longest time, as many of us do, that asking for help is a weakness. I need to crush that belief! Asking for help is actually a strength. It enables others to feel needed and allows me to focus on projects that I do well at.   Also when I delegate, I refrain from trying to control everything. I am confident that the team around me can do an exceptional job, even if their methods are different from mine.   Fostering a team spirit lets everyone be part of the success. The better I perfect my delegating skills, the less everyone feels the need to turn to me for everything.   At home, delegating chores te...

  The average person avoids challenges like she’s avoiding the plague. Struggling isn’t enjoyable, so it’s natural to avoid it as much as possible. There’s an issue with this strategy: There’s a lot to be gained from struggling .   There are many aspects to humans that are anti-fragile, meaning that stress makes them stronger.   For example:   ●       Exercise is a stressor that delivers positive benefits. ●       Being hot or cold, within reason, is good for your health. ●       Fasting is beneficial. Struggling is similar in that it makes you better than you were before the struggle.   Have you ever noticed that?   You learn a lot about yourself when you struggle . You don’t learn a lot about yourself while you’re watching a movie for the fifth time from your couch. When life is easy, you have a natural tendency to coast. Any struggle is a test of your w...

    I was misinformed by the misinformed. Like many of us, I grew up with family and friends information that they had passed down to me that was not correct. They didn't do it because they were mean or insensitive. They did it because they were loving and caring and wanted the best for me. But the fact of the matter is that its incorrect information. So much of the self-talk that I've had for years went like this; if I say I'm pretty or intelligent, I'm conceited. If I beat myself up for my mistakes or, just in general, get on my butt, I will be more motivated to do things. If I beat myself up for being lazy or beat myself up for procrastinating or for the mistakes that I made, if I didn't do it right the first time or the 100th time, beating myself up would motivate me to do better. And I don't know about you, but that hasn't worked for me too well.  I know the clients that I work with it hasn't worked for them either.  One of the reasons they soug...