What is Relapse? How Can IZR Help You to Prevent From It?
Relapse:
Relapse occurs when a person’s medical condition deteriorates after getting treatment. In case of addiction, when a person starts taking drugs after abstaining from them for a significant time period it is referred to as a relapse.
How Common Are Relapses?
Relapse is the hallmark of addiction. It is common, even expected, that people who are attempting to overcome addiction will go through one or even several relapses before successfully quitting. According to NIDA, “Individuals recovering from any kind of addiction often experience at least one relapse”.
Is Relapse Sign of Failure?
Relapse is a normal part of recovery in fact, relapse has been a well-recognized aspect of recovery from addiction. However, many people believed that if they relapsed, they had failed the entire recovery process. They may give up because they believe stopping drugs is too difficult for them.
The Stages of Relapse:
To understand relapse it is important to know that physical relapse doesn’t happen all of a sudden. It happens in series of stages:
- The first stage of relapse is an emotional relapse in which you start to lose control over your emotions and get stuck in addiction recovery.
- The second stage is mental relapse happens when a person starts to become internally dysfunctional and comes back to addictive thinking or addictive people, places, and things.
- The final stage of relapse is a physical relapse in which things go out of the hand and a person takes the drug.
How to prevent relapse?
There are three primary areas of focus to prevent relapse i.e.
- Behavioral techniques/lifestyle changes: To assist people in developing habits that will aid their recovery and prevent relapses, such as proper sleep, exercise, and relaxation techniques.
- Coping skills training: To assist people in dealing with cravings and urges, as well as high-risk scenarios and emotions
- Cognitive therapy interventions: To assist people to reinterpret their perceptions about relapse so that it is seen as an opportunity to learn rather than seeing as a personal failing.
Common relapse triggers:
A trigger is any situation, feeling, or person that inspires you to drink or to use drugs. Some common triggers that lead a person to relapse are:
- Job stress
- Relationship conflicts
- Financial problems
- Negative emotions (sadness, anger, jealousy, and boredom)
- Positive emotions (joy, excitement)
- A feeling of low esteem
How innovative zone rehabilitative helps you to prevent yourself from relapse?
Relapse Prevention is a skills-based, cognitive-behavioral approach. Innovative zone rehabilitation follows a proper plan to execute a Relapse Prevention Program that mainly emphasizes avoiding the following mentioned factors that aggravate the cravings for drugs:
- Hunger
- Anger
- Loneliness
- Tired
Furthermore, IZR follows some below-mentioned steps in relapse prevention planning too:
- Stabilization: taking charge of one’s life
- Self-assessment: finding out what is going on in one’s mind, heart, and life
- Warning signs identification: make a list of a person’s personal relapse warning signs
- Warning signs management: learn how to interrupt warning signs before a person might lose control
- Inventory training: learn how to become consciously aware of signs as they develop and strategies to cope up with them.
Written by: Maryam Iqbal
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