How to Build Life Skills in Recovery

When a woman seeks out treatment for addiction, she may not realize what she has gotten into. Unless she has been down that road before, she will have to relearn her whole life as someone who is sober and clean.

This means giving up some old friends and even family members who are not able to journey into recovery with her. When a woman seeks treatment, she is sacrificing a lot to be there, but she is also gaining a lot of other things in the meantime.

One area women can struggle with is how to handle their life after rehab. Their lifestyle is now free of substances, but they may need to rethink how they eat, where they live, how they sleep, and who they hang out with.

All these components can be challenging to tackle, along with being in recovery. What women need are some tools to help them move forward and community support to make it possible.  

Components of Treatment

Life skills are very important to recovery. The environment and lifestyle play a role, along with people in a person’s life.

The four main dimensions of a healthy recovery focus on health, home, support, and goals. Someone who makes healthy life choices and stays sober or clean is more likely to maintain that lifestyle for the foreseeable future.

Living an unhealthy lifestyle is going to put a woman at higher risk of relapse. Homelife should be as stable as possible.

When that is in flux, or people and partners struggle with addiction or enabling behaviors, they may increase anxiety and stress that make it harder to engage with recovery principles in a positive way. Having life goals and purpose is important.

Volunteering, working and having hobbies are important elements of healthy goals. Community support can build bridges in these areas of life. With a healthy focus building loving relationships, a woman can expect to be more successful in recovery than she ever dreamed possible. 

Life Skills and Life Management

The most important elements of a recovery program, post detox, are to learn how to manage life after treatment. Treatment ends and real life begins again. Only, this time, it begins with everything feeling upside down and completely different than before.

People may treat the person the same or different, but everything has changed whether those people embrace the change or not. Family, friends, and loved ones are not always on board with recovery right away because they have come to expect things to be a certain way and respond accordingly.

If they do the work alongside their loved ones, they will begin to notice everyone shifting into healthier roles and ways of being in the world. This is important for long-term healthy recovery. 

Meal Prep

One of the hardest things about cooking meals is making good choices. Buying healthy food is not cheap but treatment programs can provide support to buy healthy produce and develop a system that works. Women in recovery can learn how to shop and budget, which provides an opportunity to make a meal plan, shop, and cook instead of doing it all alone. 

Goal Setting

Personal goal development and setting can be difficult after years of substance abuse. Some people may feel hopeless like they don’t have goals or aspirations.

Goals help women find reasons to keep going forward and stay away from poor habits. The perfect time to start is now, pursuing important life goals with support.

Some goals might be to save money for something big, submitting job applications, or going back to school and finally submitting applications. Every goal met should have a reward attached to better offer women a sense of accomplishment. 

Cleaning and Laundry

Addiction takes away a person’s will and determination to do things they should do. They procrastinate, put things off, and may not participate in doing the things they should.

This can include laundry and cleaning their space. Cleanliness and organization help keep a person accountable to themselves and others in sobriety.

If they share space in transitional living, they will need to keep the space clean and tidy. Learning how to put whites and colors in separate wash cycles, what type of detergent to use and how to dry clothes and hang or fold them are important skills to learn in maintaining a more stress-free lifestyle at home.

Budgeting

This is probably the most dreaded of all topics. Either people don’t have enough money or they don’t know how to manage it well.

Whatever the case, a woman doesn’t need to have a lot of money to know how to use it properly. It is how the money is allocated that matters.

People need to purchase their own products, pay rent, and buy other things in transitional housing. This gives them the opportunity to budget, save, and plan for the future.

When they get into the real world, they have to do this, so why not practice now. If they are in the real world after rehab, they should expect to use the skills they learn to better manage finances, balance a checkbook, and live within their means available to them right now. 

Finding Hope

Rebuilding life in recovery is not easy by any stretch. Rebuilding relationships, creating new ones, learning better hygiene practices, and how to communicate clearly with boundaries are all good skills to have. Coping with life in recovery will not be easy because triggers are everywhere but it can be done with the help of supporters and loved ones.

Reach out and ask for help in making plans for aftercare. Make it the most important part of the conversation in treatment before leaving. A carefully laid out aftercare plan can make a huge difference in a woman’s recovery. 

Casa Capri is designed for women who are struggling with addiction to find hope and a purpose. Our holistic practices support women wherever they find themselves in the recovery journey. We are here to help you navigate healing. Call Casa Capri today: 844-593-8020