How to Practice Self-Care in Recovery: Advice from a Therapist

What Is Self-Care?

There are a lot of mixed messages about what the term self-care means and what actually ‘counts’ as self-care. According to the World Health Organization, self-care involves “activities that enhance health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability”. From this framework, self-care is any activity that provides a net benefit to your physical or mental health.¹

Doing a cost-benefit analysis is a great way to determine whether an activity ‘counts’ as real self-care. For example, going to the gym costs you time, energy, and possibly a small monthly fee, but could also benefit you by keeping you healthy, lowering stress, and boosting your energy, mood, or confidence. The most effective types of self-care are low-cost and high-benefit and don’t cause other risks or consequences that might endanger your health in other ways.

Why Is Self-Care Important for Recovery?

People who are in recovery from an addiction face many stressors. Addiction-specific stressors include the discomfort of drug or alcohol withdrawal and strong cravings. Simultaneously, many in recovery have stress from parts of their lives that were neglected during their addiction, including damaged careers and relationships. Combined, these factors create a lot of added stress, which can be counteracted with an effective self-care routine.²

Since stress is one of the most common triggers for relapse, self-care is an essential part of success in addiction recovery. Self-care in recovery can involve improving sleep, nutrition, and work-life balance or making more time for regular exercise, meditation, or social interaction. Prioritizing self-care not only helps individuals manage stress but also fosters overall well-being, which is crucial for maintaining a substance-free lifestyle.

Can Self-Care Prevent a Relapse?

According to research, at least 50% of people who get clean or sober end up relapsing. Consistent self-care is a protective factor that decreases the risk of toxic stress, mental illnesses, and addictive disorders. Effective self-care can also improve a person’s ability to regulate emotions and resist urges. Because each of these factors is linked to a higher risk of addiction relapse, it’s reasonable to conclude that self-care significantly lowers the risk of relapse for people in recovery from an addiction.^{2, 4, 5}

Types of Self-Care in Recovery

Because self-care has become a pretty generic umbrella term, it can help to have some specific examples of the various types of self care and what it looks like in practice. This way, you can have some ideas for how to improve your self-care and what kinds of activities to consider adding to your routine. It takes time and a bit of trial and error to create a self-care routine that works for your recovery needs.

Here are seven different kinds of self-care for addiction recovery:^{1, 6}

1. Practical Self-Care

Practical self-care is just what it sounds like – practical ways to meet your basic needs and fulfill your most pressing responsibilities. For example, things you do to make your daily life a little less chaotic probably count as practical self-care, and so do all of the basic chores around your house. Managing your budget and finances also goes under practical self-care since life would get pretty quickly unmanageable if you neglected these tasks.

Here are some examples of practical self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Keeping a calendar of scheduled therapy, recovery, and self-help meetings
• Cleaning up your space and throwing away drugs, alcohol, and paraphernalia
• Making a weekly list of specific errands, tasks, and chores you have to get done
• Each week, making a goal to begin addressing one neglected area of life (i.e. unpaid debts or bills, tidying a messy house, getting insurance quotes, etc.)
• Checking your accounts throughout the week to monitor your spending

2. Physical Self-Care

Physical self-care involves all of the healthy choices and routines that keep you physically strong and healthy. This includes your diet, sleep, and exercise habits, as well as anything you need to do to manage chronic illnesses, injuries, or infections. Physical self-care also involves choices and routines that help your body feel and function better, like stretching, trying to be less sedentary, or blocking out blue light to improve your sleep.

Here are some examples of physical self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Making an appointment with a doctor or medical professional to consult about the safest way to detox from a substance
• Taking time off work when necessary to seek treatment or medical stabilization during the detox and withdrawal process
• Keeping a written log of physical withdrawal symptoms to discuss with your treatment providers at scheduled follow-up appointments
• Drinking more water and eating cleaner, unprocessed foods to help detox
• Taking any prescribed addiction medication and consulting closely with your prescriber before changing or stopping your medicine

3. Emotional Self-Care

Emotional self-care involves all of the things you do to lower stress and anxiety, improve your mood, and become more emotionally stable. Trying hard to avoid or repress difficult emotions usually doesn’t count as emotional self-care since these denial and distraction tactics usually only work in the short term. Real emotional self-care helps you process through and address emotional issues and inner conflicts, providing more lasting benefits to your mood and mindset.

Here are some examples of emotional self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Using mindfulness to practice observing negative thoughts without getting overly involved in them
• Tracking your mood and emotions with a daily log or app, such as Reframe
• Practicing urge surfing to track urges and cravings without acting on them
• Attending group therapy sessions or online support groups such as WeConnect Recovery to learn new ways to cope with stress and difficult emotions (besides using substances)
• Practicing self-compassion by talking to yourself in a kinder way and interrupting self-critical thoughts that make you feel bad about yourself
• Journaling about recovery and how an addiction-free life benefits you

4. Mental Self-Care

While some people lump emotional and mental self-care together, they could be understood as slightly different types of self-care. While emotional self-care helps you process and deal with your feelings, mental self-care focuses on stimulating your mind in ways that promote learning and growth. This includes things you do to keep your mind sharp, reduce brain fog, and expand your knowledge, skills, or perspective on things.

Here are some examples of mental self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Listening to a recovery podcast that broadens your perspective or understanding of your addiction, triggers, and patterns
• Attending a workshop, lecture or seminar to learn more about the way addiction affects your brain and how to promote healing
• Using brain games like puzzles, riddles, sudoku, or word searches to help aid your brain’s healing process
• Practicing ‘hyperfocusing’ on a single task by reducing distractions and setting a timer for focused blocks of work
• Subscribing to Substack to read recovery-related articles and get tips from addiction experts, therapists, or others in recovery

5. Spiritual Self-Care

Spiritual self-care involves any activity that helps you feel more connected to your spiritual beliefs, closer to God or the universe, or nurtures your soul or spirit. For some, spiritual self-care stems from religion and involves traditional forms of worship, prayer, religious texts and services. For others, spiritual self-care has more to do with nature, how they treat others, or ways they stand up for what they believe in.

Here are some examples of spiritual self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Practicing Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or meditation to feel more connected to the energy in and around your body
• Making time to volunteer or help people who are earlier in the process of addiction recovery
• Reading books on spirituality to see if any have ideas or recommendations that resonate with you
• Attending church, temple, or other religious ceremonies to learn, explore, or connect more deeply with your faith
• Repeating prayers or recovery mantras each morning or throughout your day to help you stay focused on recovery goals
• Attending spiritual group meetings or Bible studies with peers who you connect with

6. Social Self-Care

Humans are instinctively social animals, which is why social self-care earns its own spot on this list. Social self-care is any action, choice, or activity that helps you meet your needs for connection, intimacy, and social stimulation. Things that help you build, foster, and maintain important relationships with close friends and family also count as social self-care. Communication, boundary setting, and saying ‘no’ can also count as social self-care since these are often necessary to preserve positive relationships with others.

Here are some examples of social self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Designating a regular sober date night with partners, friends, or family to rebuild relationships that became strained or distant during active addiction
• Writing a letter to estranged friends or family members to apologize or make amends for things you did or didn’t do while you were using
• Cutting ties or contact with people who are still actively using drugs or alcohol and making sober friends
• Attending regular 12 step or recovery meetings to connect with other people who are in recovery for more social support
• Leaving the house more often to avoid long stretches of social isolation

7. Professional Self-Care

Professional self-care involves all of the ways you make your career, job, or work life more rewarding and fulfilling, as well as things you do to mitigate work-related stress. For example, addressing workplace conflicts or advocating for policy changes that would make your job less stressful all count as professional self-care. Setting better boundaries at work and aiming for a better work-life balance are also important forms of professional self-care.

Here are some examples of professional self-care to try during addiction recovery:

• Considering taking FMLA or paid time off from work to complete an inpatient rehab, drug detox, or an intensive outpatient addiction treatment program
• Seeking help from a service that helps people in recovery or with criminal records find jobs or receive additional vocational training or support
• Setting better boundaries at work to reduce work-related stress, like not checking work emails after-hours, taking regular breaks, and not taking on extra work
• Requesting that your treatment provider complete ADA paperwork for any accommodations you need at school or work
• Talking 1:1 with your supervisor to make a plan to return to work gradually if you had to take time off in early recovery

How to Practice Self-Care in Recovery

Recovery is a great time to begin a self-care routine because many people struggle with increased urges when they have too much unstructured downtime. Start off with a few small changes to your routine and gradually add to them as you get accustomed. This way, you can avoid setting yourself up for failure.

Here are some general tips on how to begin a new self-care routine in recovery:^{1, 3, 4}

• Identify problems and set a goal: Identify the specific benefits you want to see from your self-care routine (i.e. less stress, more energy, feeling more in control of your life, etc.)
• Brainstorm self-care solutions and remedies for your problem: Make a list of any/all self-care activities you think might provide you with these specific benefits
• Pick one or two activities from your list to start: Be selective and choose one or two self-care activities (ideally the lowest cost and highest reward options)
• Commit to a consistent self-care routine: Commit to doing these self-care activities consistently for at least a week (everyday if possible) so you can see whether they’re providing the benefits you want
• Track self-care benefits and assess progress towards your goal: Keep a simple daily log or journal to track any benefits you notice and after you have a week’s worth of data, set aside time to evaluate whether this self-care activity is providing you with the benefits you need or not
• Adjust your self-care routine as needed: After evaluating your new self-care routine, you will have the data you need to determine what adjustments to make (what parts of your self-care routine to keep and which to ditch or change). This is also the time when you can add one or two more routines to test out for a week.

Over time, following this process of trial and error helps you identify an effective self-care plan that’s specifically tailored to your recovery needs and goals. Remember that being consistent with your new routines is the most important part, as you’re unlikely to see substantial benefits from sporadic and occasional self-care. Finding ways to keep yourself motivated and on track is important. Over time, these self-care routines will become habits that take less effort and energy to stick to.

How Self-Care Changes in the Different Stages of Recovery

Recovery from addiction is a long-term process. At each stage of recovery, you might find that you have different issues and needs that require different kinds of self-care. For example, early remission from addiction tends to be a stressful phase, and it’s also a time with a high risk of relapse.^{2, 3, 4, 7} Because of this, you might need more intensive and structured self-care routines to support you.

After the 90-day mark, you pass into a more stable phase of recovery. In this phase, you can often relax some of your self-care routines, step down to less intensive kinds of treatment, and resume a more normal routine. Your risk of relapse remains moderate in this period, so it’s still important to make time for regular self-care. After about 1 year of sobriety, you reach the stage of ‘sustained remission’ from addiction and will probably need less structure and support to maintain your recovery.^{2, 7}

What to Do When Self-Care Isn’t Enough

Because addiction isn’t just a stress-related disease (i.e. genetics, neurological factors, and childhood trauma can predispose you), self-care usually isn’t sufficient to treat or cure an addictive disorder.³ Luckily, a number of effective treatments for addiction exist and can help to address the underlying causes and complications of substance use disorders.

According to research, people who seek out professional treatment for their addiction are more likely to remain drug and alcohol free, especially if they stay in treatment for a year or longer.^{2, 3, 4}

Seeking Professional Support & Addiction Treatment

There are a number of different addiction treatments that can help people struggling with different kinds of addiction. Depending on the type and severity of addiction you have, certain treatments may be more effective than others.³ Often, people begin the recovery process at a more intensive level of addiction treatment (like inpatient rehab or intensive outpatient addiction treatment centers) and then step down to lower levels of care as they make progress.

Here are some effective addiction treatments to explore:⁸

• Medically monitored detox: 24 hour medical facilities or hospitals that provide medical monitoring and interventions to help people safely detox and withdraw from substances
• Inpatient rehab: Inpatient rehab facilities offer 24 hour overnight treatment that provide intensive treatment, group therapy, recovery skills groups, and individual and family therapy for a 30-90 day period
• Intensive outpatient treatment (IOP): IOP involves going to a clinic 3-5 days per week for group and individual therapy appointments that focus on addiction recovery
• Outpatient treatment: Outpatient treatment for addiction includes individual, group, or family therapy appointments that happen 1-2 times per week in an office setting
• Medication-assisted treatment: Medication assisted treatment is an outpatient treatment that includes psychiatric or addiction medicine that can help reduce withdrawals and drug cravings (i.e. Suboxone, Antabuse, etc.)
• Recovery and self-help groups: Free or low-cost support groups for people recovering from an addiction (i.e. 12 step meetings like Alcoholics Anonymous or SMART recovery groups)

The best way to determine which treatment option will best suit your recovery needs is to make an intake appointment with a licensed therapist or provider who specializes in addiction treatment. During this initial appointment, it’s likely that your provider will conduct a substance use evaluation, clarify your diagnosis, and recommend individualized treatment options.³ Most people begin their search for a provider online by using an online therapist directory and setting up an appointment with a licensed addiction specialist.

In My Experience

In my experience, addiction is always possible to overcome, but the process does demand a lot of time, resources, and dedicated effort. Having an effective self-care routine is essential because it helps the process of recovery feel more manageable and provides them with motivation, hope, and the emotional bandwidth needed to heal from addiction.

For most people, recovery gets easier over time. Eventually, you will not have to battle your cravings and urges daily, which means you can dedicate yourself to the process of rebuilding a life you want to stay sober for. Until you reach this point, staying diligent and consistent with your self-care can help strengthen your recovery and prevent a relapse.