Living life on life’s terms can be a huge minefield for people in recovery, with stressors, triggers, and so much potential for falling off track. Staying clean and sober depends upon your commitment to your recovery program, but also, to your commitment to self-care.
Yet for many people in recovery, self-care is a foreign concept. When you’re not living for the next drug or drink, how do you feed your body and soul?
Sure, you can run a bubble bath, but how do you build a meaningful and enriching program of self-care? One method of building a self-care system starts with focusing on these areas: Mental/ emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial.
At any given time, you can check in with yourself and see if there’s anything you can do to improve your health in one of those areas.
Maybe one day, you will focus on your physical health, and go for a brisk hike.
Spiritual self-care, through meditation or service work, is another way to feel enriched.
Even just cleaning your room or paying your bills can be a way of nourishing your mental and financial health.
Breaking down the entire concept of self-care into these areas may make an overwhelming concept more manageable and achievable for you – one day at a time.