If you’re like many people, you may find social interaction to be a little anxiety-provoking at times. Perhaps even the thought of going somewhere unknown can cause a feeling of anxiety. This fear may even dissuade you from building new connections in recovery. However, creating healthy relationships is an important key to establishing a strong foundation for recovery.
Why Are New Connections Important in Recovery?
New connections create a sense of completeness and overall well-being. Connections are important in recovery because they hold you accountable to others and provide you with the support you need. According to research published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, love and belonging are among the most important needs of a human.
During recovery, you’ve learned to eliminate people, places, and things that may be a trigger to you and your sobriety. It is beneficial to your recovery if you replace those with new connections with more appropriate people. Finding new people can result in new experiences. Connections can encourage emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual healing. Moreover, maintaining new connections builds community, enhances relationships, and creates stability in recovery.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), sobriety can most successfully be maintained long-term when a person is engaged with a recovery community. Sober connections can encourage you to be your best self in recovery and erase the feeling that you are alone.
How Do I Connect With Myself?
Before creating connections with others, however, you may need to learn how to connect with yourself. This can be a difficult place to be in. After all, building new connections with others can provide encouragement and peace.
Certainly, being by yourself can bring unwanted thoughts and feelings to the surface. However, connecting with yourself enables you to connect more deeply into your heart and mind to uncover parts of yourself that you may not realize are there. Connecting with yourself can also help you learn who you are by acknowledging your core values and belief system. Through self-exploration, you can learn what makes you happy and also what brings unwanted feelings to the surface.
Tips for Connecting With Yourself
Creating healthy habits can help you to explore a new connection to yourself. Some ways that you may demonstrate connecting with yourself can include:
- Journaling: Writing down your thoughts and feelings can cultivate a deeper sense of self and lead you into a place of awareness.
- Being present: By sitting in silence, you can become more mindful of your thoughts and feelings.
- Improving your self-talk: What you are saying to yourself matters! Try saying something positive about yourself daily.
- Being grateful: Choose an attitude of gratitude as a new way to connect with yourself. Take several minutes every day to identify the things you are grateful for.
New Connections, New Year
No matter where you are in your recovery journey, new connections reinforce a sense of community and build relationships. It is essential to have people around you who support you in your recovery. There are many ways to create new connections. You may find this support in 12-Step programs, church, or alumni programs. While not everyone subscribes to the philosophy of 12-Step programs, these groups can provide beneficial opportunities for making new connections with like-minded individuals.
No matter where you find them, new connections can help reduce negative self-talk, which comes from isolation and thought distortions. Humans need to bond with others, which makes it so important to find new connections in recovery.
Connection to a Higher Power
Establishing or strengthening a connection with your higher power can give you a sense of newness as well. In 12-Step programs, you are encouraged to admit powerlessness over your addiction and acknowledge your higher power (whatever that looks like for you). When you connect with a higher power, your thoughts begin to change. You begin to view life events in a new light and see how they have shaped you to be the person you have become.
Connecting to a higher power gives you freedom from your old sense of self and creates a new thought process. Through this connection, you can learn to surrender and release your old patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. A recent article in the journal Religions examined the link between spiritual connection and well-being, concluding that spirituality does enhance overall happiness.
Creating Positive Connections at The Guest House
The Guest House is known for meeting you right where you are in your recovery journey. As you know, it can be difficult to forge new connections in recovery. There are many concerns you may have when inviting someone new into your circle.
You do not have to worry at The Guest House, as we strive to make finding connections as seamless as possible. We offer an alumni program through which you can find people who share similar concerns and goals.
Establishing new connections can be difficult. You have already given so much of yourself to recovery and you may feel that cultivating new connections is too much for you. Also, you may be scared of allowing others into your new world that you have created. However, this is a new year and that means that your previous chapter has closed. A new year equals new changes. At The Guest House, we value your recovery and know that you have put in the work to get to this place. We support you no matter what. If you or someone you know is struggling with cultivating new connections in recovery, please do not hesitate to give us a call at (855) 483-7800.