Psychologists say that making new friends who don't feed negative perceptions key to recovering from (political) addictions
Mental health professionals suggest that finding a healthy "treatment community" raises the chances of reclaiming a past, upbeat identity--or forming a new one. Psychology Today explores.
Understanding the unique social factors that both trigger and treat addiction for each person may be an undervalued and crucial part of recovery. Psychologist Erik Erikson focused on the importance of identity for the well-lived life. If the forces that inhibit our capacious, curious, and loving self can be recognized and faced, things can change.
The researchers were interested in:
What social identities and relationships did participants have before their addiction?
What social factors foster addiction and the initiation of treatment?
How do participants’ social identities and relationships change during treatment in a therapeutic community
What social identity and relationships do participants aspire to after leaving treatment?
Addiction can turn an early "socially isolative" identity to a "user identity" and create a sense of belonging. In this sense, there is a gain but it has diminishing returns.
Whatever the etiology, angst, or influence that caused the turn to substances, addiction and its sequelae become the pressing problem. After managing urgencies, from physical safety to preserving relationships, the process of getting better begins. Identity shift involves honesty, openness, reckoning, and perhaps most importantly, attentive others.
Those who had an early "positive identity" find a way to conjure it and reclaim it. Those with an early "social isolation" identity, perhaps due to an adverse childhood, can create a new self, or an "aspirational" identity.
As psychiatrist Robert Waldinger said, good relationships are the crux of the well-lived life. Engaging with others, from staff who had positive recovery journeys to peers with similar concerns, builds strength. Bonding via commonalities satisfies the basic human need for connection and seeds motivation. Brief, warm, surface interactions and deeper conversations both have impact. Kind gestures, helping hands, and lighthearted comments, however fleeting, create a fuel for staying the course. Sharing one's story can be cathartic. A culture of honesty, acceptance and non-judgment breeds authenticity and allows for emotional risk.
The Dingle study showed that recovery, informed by an understanding of who one once was and how addiction changed that, is important. In a treatment community, people can uncover buried capacities or build new ones. Maintaining a positive identity involves maintaining positive habits, and the daily effort is probably worth it.
Read the whole thing here.
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