Expressing Yourself to Stay Sober: Why Recovering Individuals Feel They Can't Talk
Recovering addicts would have a much easier time of it if they expressed themselves. The only problem is, they rarely do this, or they don’t know how. The support and aftercare a recovering addict receives are vital to their sobriety and their freedom from substance abuse, but all that falls by the wayside if recovering addicts feel like they can’t talk about recovery and the challenges that they face.
When recovering addicts stumble in developing words to describe their feelings and emotions, when they can’t put the thoughts together, when they just can’t quite figure it all out, this hampers their ability to grow and develop a more stable position in recovery. Open communication and engagement are crucial to maintaining sobriety and not relapsing.
Which Came First?
As the American addiction problem of the 21st century bloomed and skyrocketed in just a few years, it did not take long for every aspect and facet of substance abuse to start getting a lot of attention. Doctors and therapists, counselors and concerned parents, addictionologist experts and treatment center staff, nearly everyone involved in the addiction rehabilitation community began to explore why so many struggling addicts and recovering addicts alike suffered from an inability to communicate. Everyone knew that this inability to communicate presented a risk of relapse. No one really knew how to fix it though.
A series of studies into sobriety, relapse, communication, and the “mind of an addict” led many experts to believe that most addicts struggled with communicating and expressing themselves long before they became addicts. In fact, many surveyed individuals admitted that their difficulty in social interaction and communication was what contributed to their substance abuse habits in the first place.
These findings made a fair amount of sense. After all, if it had been the addiction causing the difficulty in communicating, why were recovering addicts having such a hard time communicating? Why were people who had long since put down drugs and walked away from that lifestyle still struggling in their recovery from not being able to get their feelings and emotions across? The communication problem came first, then came the addiction.
The Value of Being Able to Express Yourself
Everyone should be able to express themselves, recovering addicts or not. Recovering addicts absolutely need to be able to express themselves, to communicate, and to get their ideas across, as their sobriety absolutely depends upon it.
Recovering addicts who struggle with emotion and communication but who are participating in aftercare, going to group meetings, getting help from a support group, getting help from their families, or who are seeing a counselor or therapist can try:
- Talking about something they can talk about. The pressure is on in a recovery setting, but it doesn’t have to be. Start by openly discussing topics of one's own choosing until one feels pretty good about that, and then try to dive into a conversation about recovery.
- Get around people who are natural listeners. Some people like to listen. Some people do not. In the addiction recovery sector, people who are good listeners are quite valuable. Recovering addicts who struggle with communicating their emotions and concepts would do well to get around people who are naturally very easy to talk to.
- Take it one step at a time. In addiction recovery, there is often this concept that, “It all has to happen at once. Miracles must occur!” This is not true. An individual who spent years abusing drugs and alcohol will not come out of it overnight. Take the little victories as they come, and don’t expect a full ability to communicate to manifest itself in just a few short weeks.
When starting out, the road to recovery is an uphill hike—until it is not. Take the little victories as they come, notice a better ability to communicate gradually manifest, and before long everything will seem a whole lot easier than it once was.
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