How to Avoid Recovery Burnout
Walt Whitman famously wrote, “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” I want to provide a new generation with that sunshine.” While this is a good message for anyone, it can be especially pertinent for those in recovery. Keeping “face toward the sunshine” and being optimistic is not just a great way to live in recovery, it is also an ideal way to avoid recovery burnout.
A Focus on Long-Term Recovery
Going through the recovery process is about more than getting off of alcohol and substances; it is about having a “psychic change” of perception. It is about adopting a whole new way of life, a positive one.
This is what long-term recovery is all about. Yes, it is about stopping the use of alcohol and substances, but it is also about so much more. It is about taking charge of one’s own life and focusing on constant growth as a person.
There is a bit of a paradox in recovery, which is that one must “live one day at a time” to achieve long-term recovery. While this may seem contradictory, it can be very effective. It is about setting goals and making the right moves at the moment to accomplish those goals. Of course, there will be side steps; everyone is human, but with an eye on long-term recovery, it is much easier to start walking that line back to where one wants to be in the future.
What Is Recovery Burnout?
Recovery burnout is very much what its namesake states. It is when an individual starts to get bored in recovery and starts to stray away from their set recovery goals. This can be very easy to do.
After all, recovery has a lot of repetition to it. There are often regular sessions of psychotherapy; there can be a regular fitness routine, continual healthy eating habits, routine recovery meetings, and morning and nightly meditations. This type of scheduling could make anyone stop and say, “Where’s the spontaneity in life?”
Now, the good news is that this question never needs to arise in recovery. The key is to keep one’s recovery “fresh,” vibrant, and filled with new relationships and experiences.
How to Avoid Recovery Burnout
The best way to avoid recovery burnout is to remember one vital word – variety. Variety is how one is going to learn to live life to its fullest now that treatment is over, and it’s time to build that life that one has always desired and deserved.
As will be mentioned in short order, there are many ways to avoid recovery burnout. One crucial way is to stay connected to recovery professionals. This includes the professionals that one met and worked with while in treatment, as well as the professionals that one will meet as they venture back out into their day-to-day lives.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout by Staying Connected to Recovery Professionals
It is important to never settle for who one works with in recovery. An individual must remember that these professionals “work” for them and not the other way around. So, it is crucial to find the right recovery professionals to build a strong and sacred bond with.
This includes therapists, psychotherapists, counselors, nutritionists, dietitians, recovery coaches, and recovery center administrators. These are the people whose number one priority is helping their clients succeed in their recovery.
It can also be very helpful to establish a variety of relationships with recovery professionals. For example, if it is starting to feel stale in therapy, it may be time to move on to a new therapist or introduce another therapist with a different specialty (a surf, yoga, or nature immersion therapist for example). It is also important to have a variety of relationships with recovery peers.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout by Staying Connected to Recovery Peers
Recovery peers are those individuals who one went through treatment with, or one met after treatment. These are the people with whom strong bonds can be forged because they share similar experiences of being in active addiction, through the treatment process, and living in long-term recovery.
If one is active in their recovery this “sober network” should be continually growing. Establishing this variety of relationships can certainly help to reduce recovery burnout, as well as help individuals avoid a potential relapse, which is actually more common than people may think.
According to the peer-reviewed journal Current Psychiatry Reports, “It has long been known that addictive disorders are chronic and relapsing in nature. Recent estimates from clinical treatment studies suggest that more than two-thirds of individuals relapse within weeks to months of initiating treatment.” Also, “For 1-year outcomes across alcohol, nicotine, weight, and illicit drug abuse, studies show that more than 85% of individuals relapse and return to drug use within 1 year of treatment.” Working with individuals who need help in their own recovery is also a great way to avoid both relapse and recovery burnout.
Roughly 89 years ago, two men got together and determined that they had to do two things to stay sober and recover. One was to adopt a Higher Power greater than themselves. Two was to work with other people in need of addiction help. These two men were Bill Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith, the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Their program has since gone on to help millions of people and their families recover (as well as their offshoots like Narcotics Anonymous).
Working with people in recovery can be crucial. There is a chapter in the primary text of 12-Step recovery (often referred to as the Big Book) entitled “Working With Others.” The chapter states, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking [and using] as intensive work with other [people in need of addiction help]. It works when other activities fail… You can help when no one else can.” Helping other people in recovery can help them avoid their own burnout and thus forget about their negative emotions for a while. After all, it is impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time (no matter how much one believes one can ”multitask”).
Avoiding Recovery Burnout With Nutrition
Another way to avoid recovery burnout is to change the way one eats. The first step to a healthy relationship with nutrition is to engage in nutrition therapy.
Nutrition therapy is not just about taking in the good foods but about leaving out the bad. According to the Journal for Nurse Practitioners, “Nutritional Therapy uses food to prevent and reverse diseases that plague most western societies: diabetes, obesity, heart disease, arthritis, and depression. In order for food to be therapeutic, it must be nutrient-dense, measured in part by the nutrients and anti-nutrients, contained in consumed foods. Nutrients are plant and animal sources providing macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants, probiotics), and fiber,” and “Anti-Nutrients are food products that have no biological necessity.”
By keeping up with one’s nutrition, one can not only remain healthy, they can also avoid recovery burnout. Nutrition must be about variety, and variety is the “spice of life,” and the “spice of recovery.” Yes, food is medicine, but it is also joy and pleasure. This is why all of the food at Exclusive Hawaii rehab is tailored to each client and prepared by world-class chefs. Another great way to avoid recovery burnout is by engaging with nature.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout With Nature
The first step to engaging with nature in recovery is to engage with what is known as nature immersion therapy. This way, an individual can learn that there is a way to engage with nature that is more than merely experiencing it but also growing from interacting with it. These interactions can continue long after treatment and help to avoid recovery burnout.
There are also many other benefits to nature immersion therapy. According to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “Besides improvements to physical and psychological well-being, exposure to natural environments has been shown to bring about positive impacts on cognitive functioning. Also, While cognitive restoration and physiological well-being are the prominent and renowned benefits of nature exposure, there is one important construct that is often overlooked in environmental psychology research studies – that is, the human-nature relationship; also known as connectedness to nature (CN).”
This “connectedness to nature” does not have to evaporate after treatment. It can remain to keep recovery exciting and engaging. The same is true about staying active with physical activities like surfing.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout by Staying Active
Many people would argue that it is hard to get bored and feel burnt out while riding an epic wave on Hawaii’s Big Island. This is just one of the reasons why we offer surf therapy at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab.
The other reason is that it offers a myriad of benefits that can help anyone in their recovery journey. According to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “Carefully planned water activities tailored to the needs of the individual can contribute to correct psychosocial and cognitive development. The International Surf Therapy Organization summarizes the benefits of adequately indicated surf therapy as follows: improved physical health and mobility; improved mental health, including reduction of specific symptoms, such as posttraumatic stress and depression; improved well-being (strengthening of trust and confidence, encouragement of independence, resilience and protective coping strategies) and improved social skills.”
Then, when one is done avoiding recovery burnout on the beautiful blue ocean, one can turn to cultivating the amazing land on Hawaii’s Big Island. They can engage in what is known as horticulture therapy.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout by Gardening
People have been utilizing horticulture to find balance in their lives and center themselves for thousands of years. It has only recently been introduced into the recovery realm. Now, the reason for this is that it has been shown to be particularly helpful in people’s recovery.
The benefits of horticulture therapy are vast and varied. According to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “People’s interactions with plants, through goal-orientated horticultural activities in the form of active gardening, as well as the passive appreciation of nature, could be therapeutic to people with mental disorders in many ways. First, horticulture could have emotional benefits, such as reducing stress, reducing psychiatric symptoms, stabilizing mood, and increasing the sense of tranquility, spirituality, and enjoyment. Second, it could help people to reduce fatigue and restore attention and cognitive ability.”
At Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, it is hard to burn out, when there are such amazing fruit trees and vegetable gardens to get one’s hands dirty and become one with the Earth in. Some say it is a spiritual experience. Another way to have a spiritual experience is via meditation.
Avoiding Recovery Burnout by Meditating
One of the best ways to avoid recovery burnout is to take a moment to breathe and remember why one chose recovery in the first place – to live a better life. Taking a moment to breathe and center oneself is an ideal way to make this happen. Meditation is a great opportunity to take these moments.
The renowned Buddhist monk and philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.” It is hard to feel burnt out when engaged in this type of embrace.
Meditation also offers many benefits aside from a reprieve from recovery burnout. According to the International Quarterly Journal of Research in Ayurveda (AYU), “Research has confirmed a myriad of health benefits associated with the practice of meditation. These include stress reduction, decreased anxiety, decreased depression, reduction in pain (both physical and psychological), improved memory, and increased efficiency. Physiological benefits include reduced blood pressure, heart rate, lactate, cortisol, and epinephrine; decreased metabolism, breathing pattern, oxygen utilization, and carbon dioxide elimination; and increased melatonin, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S), skin resistance, and relative blood flow to the brain.”
Another way to add some serenity and aid one’s meditation is to incorporate yoga, which offers its own set of benefits. According to the International Journal of Yoga (IJOY), “Regular practice of yoga promotes strength, endurance, flexibility and facilitates characteristics of friendliness, compassion, and greater self-control, while cultivating a sense of calmness and well-being. Sustained practice also leads to important outcomes such as changes in life perspective, self-awareness, and an improved sense of energy to live life fully and with genuine enjoyment. The practice of yoga produces a physiological state opposite to that of the flight-or-fight stress response and with that interruption in the stress response, a sense of balance and union between the mind and body can be achieved.”
When all of the therapies, dietary choices, and holistic healing practices are utilized, recovery burnout can be greatly reduced. Then a focus on what matters most can take place – long-term happiness and joy.
A Focus on Long-Term Recovery and Healing at the Cellular Level With Exclusive Hawaii Rehab
Here at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, we focus on long-term success to help all of our clients avoid recovery burnout. This includes only using individualized and comprehensive treatment plans.
Walt Whitman also famously wrote, “I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.” This is emblematic of what we aim to do here at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab. We help our clients wake up their inner spirit and start moving toward their ultimate goals of a better life for themselves and their families.
Burnout does not have to be inevitable. There are solutions. Recovery is just over the Hawaiin horizon. We can help make it happen.
It is important to be able to recognize the signs of “recovery burnout” and how feeling burnt out can actually lead to relapse. The best way to avoid this feeling is to keep one’s recovery fresh and exciting by utilizing many different types of therapies and healing options, such as surf therapy, horticulture therapy, and Ho’oponopono (to name just a few). If you feel like you or a loved one are struggling with issues of addiction, mental illness, or both, we can help get you on the right road to long-term recovery right away. You don’t have to do this alone. For more information on how to avoid recovery burnout, reach out to Exclusive Hawaii Rehab today at (808) 775-0200.