You often hear of people taking me time. While it might sound like a trendy catchphrase, it can be a great way to recharge a person’s batteries. It can be especially useful during recovery.
As many people learn, healing doesn’t just occur during rehab. Healing continues after rehab during aftercare. It’s a lifelong process. Newly sober individuals should make the effort to focus on themselves to continue healing and keep their sobriety.
For the newly sober, taking me time could involve
- learning about themselves and being true to those selves
- being honest about who they are and how they feel
- acknowledging their problems and dealing with them
- living in the present
- taking responsibility for the past
- forgiving themselves
- focusing on what they can control
A lot of these suggestions involve knowing yourself. This can be painful. So many people turn to drugs and alcohol as ways to try to soothe or escape painful feelings. That’s why it can be useful to have help in this process of self-exploration. A good therapist can help people examine these painful feelings and help devise ways to handle these feelings, ways that don’t involve drugs or alcohol.
Therapy, in fact, is often a big part of the healing process during rehab and beyond. Therapy can be a great example of me time. Therapy demonstrates that for addicts, me time is not selfish. Spending this me time in therapy can help people deal with their pasts so they can live more healthy lives in the present. The coping strategies can also prevent problems in the future.
If recovering addicts are healthy, the me time of therapy becomes we time. That’s because no man or woman is an island in isolation from the rest of the world. What we do invariably affects other people. If we’re healthier, there’s a good chance that our relationships and our entire lives will be healthier. That doesn’t make me time selfish at all.
