5 Ways to Have Sane Holidays in Recovery

5 Ways to Have Sane Holidays in Recovery

The 2013 holiday season starts in earnest with Thanksgiving, a time fraught with peril and emotional landmines and triggers for someone in recovery. How can you get through it? Here are some tips for holiday survival that should last you from Thanksgiving through the New Year. 5 Ways to Frame Your 2013 Holiday Season and Stay Sober

• Limit your time. Among all holidays, Thanksgiving is the one that seems to stretch out the longest:  A four-day weekend for many people, with food, football and shopping thrown into the mix with family time. Do not sign on for everything.
• Measure each relationship and how much time you can give to it. Focus on the positive people and spend more time with them. What about the other people—negative, passive aggressive, focusing on faults and dragging others down? Minimize your time there and prepare for it. Start out by saying you are available for X time and X time only. Then stick to that.
• Don’t let yourself get sucked into someone else’s madness. It could be a person still struggling in addiction or not acknowledging it. Or it could be someone who won’t acknowledge what you have been through.  Your key there is detachment. Just accept that there is a truth in your life now, whether others realize it or not. You don’t have to engage them or make them understand. If they are open to learning, sure, use the teachable moment. But for the lost causes, you just have to get through that time and focus on what is best for you.
• If none of these plans work, opt out. There is no rule that you have to follow some cookie-cutter Thanksgiving. You can be grateful in numerous environments and guises. Volunteering to feed the needy is almost too easy, and may even be too crowded on Thanksgiving. The past few years, more stores and other businesses are starting to open on Thanksgiving. If you work at one of them, offer to work that day, to let someone else have the day off.
• Go to a meeting. Be available to support someone else struggling. You can be giving thanks all the time, in your actions and words. Gratitude comes in all shapes and sizes.

It’s not too late to get into rehab and start fresh for the new year. Call stepping Stone Center’s intake coordinators and see how we can work with you to detox and rehab today. Do you have any tips for holiday coping? Share them here or on our Facebook page.