Recovery is about much more than overcoming substance abuse or disordered eating, it’s about changing your lifestyle and shifting your focus to healthier things. It’s about learning to live a different way. Support in recovery is important, but self-care is also essential to long-term success in your recovery path/program.
Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately to take care of our physical, spiritual, mental and emotional health. Although it’s a simple concept, in theory, it’s something that very often gets overlooked. Self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety and also key to a good relationship with oneself and others.
Self-care is not a selfish act. It is not only about considering our own needs but about knowing what you need to do in order to take care of yourself and be successful in recovery. It’s not something that you should force yourself to do or something you don’t enjoy doing. It should be something that fills you up, rather than depleting you.
No two people are alike and it’s important to create a self-care plan that works for you; however, there are aspects of self-care that are applicable to almost everyone. With an app like CaredFor, treatment programs can provide self-care tips and routines to enhance the patient or alumni experience, that touch on every aspect of self-care. Through the month of October CaredFor is helping to curate content for app users that are centered around self-care tips.
Over the next couple of months, we will be sharing tips on different aspects of self-care. The holiday season can be a stressful or trying time for many individuals in recovery so we hope these self-care plans and ideas will be helpful during the upcoming season.
