Getting stuck is a normal part of the addiction recovery process. The trick is to find a way to break through whatever thoughts are limiting your forward progress. Here is a solution:
Reframing thoughts is a very common technique that counselors will go used to help people gain new perspective, and have a paradigm shift, get ‘unstuck’, if you will. There are a couple of common mindsets in addiction and addiction recovery that can stall your forward progress.
1. Having tunnel vision – This is essentially focusing on one narrow point of view, your own. Sometimes it is very difficult to accept that there other possibilities and that you may not be right.
2. Black-and-white thinking - this is simply looking at things in an all or nothing, hot or cold, love it or hate it type of way. Sometimes people active in their addiction or in early recovery have a very difficult time realizing that not everything is black and white sometimes the solution may lie in between in the gray area.
Reframing your thoughts can best be described as looking at a problem from an entirely different point of view. Often, the only way to do this is with the help of a friend, confidant, or counselor.
An example of reframing
that I have used in my capacity as an addictions counselor has to do with people who have relapsed. Often, when they returned to treatment it is difficult for them to see anything else but failure, shame and guilt. This is how they view themselves and the relapse, and that state of mind generates feelings of depression and helplessness.
I would reframe their return to treatment by saying that I can understand and empathize with your feelings, but I take a different point of view. What I see is somebody who is very courageous and who would not let fear stand in their way. Becoming sober must be very important to you to risk those feelings of embarrassment and shame that you feel by returning to treatment. That shows me a great deal strength and courage rather than weakness and failure.
Another example of reframing thoughts is one I will share with you from my experience. I was working with a patient who was so angry at being forced into treatment through a family intervention, he couldn’t let it go and start engaging in treatment. During one of his rants about how his family was so unfair, I simply stated “They must love you very much”. He became very quiet, deflected on that, and from that point onward there was little or no focus on the family he started to engage in addiction treatment.
If you are having difficulties with a situation picture it through another set of eyes. For instance, imagine your mind actually leaving your body behind, entering someone else’s head and then looking at the problem through their point of view. For instance if you are having relationship trouble with your spouse try to visualize entering their mind and seeing the problem through their eyes with their perspective. It may put a whole different slant on things.
We hope you can use this simple yet effective therapeutic tool of reframing your thoughts and add it to your sobriety toolbox.
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One of the biggest skills that I have learned over the years is reframing and it has made such a big difference in my life. I was and still am, but not as much as in the past, a person who would only see things in black and white. Now I can see that there is more gray to life than black and white. It also helps that I can reframe situations and see them from a different perspective and this helps me feel less anxious about certain situations.