Dealing with Difficult Emotions

How Depression, Anxiety, and Anger relate to alcoholism and drug addiction.

Emotions are the feelings that we experience every day – happiness, sadness, relief, anger, joy, and fear.  Many addicts often turn to their drug of choice to enhance their pleasant emotions and cope with the painful ones.  Once in recovery, addicts find themselves out of practice in dealing with emotions; they may have trouble even naming the emotions they feel.  Instead of identifying the feeling as an every day, “normal” emotion, addicts often interpret it as a craving to drink or use.

Depression, anxiety, and anger are all natural, and even healthy, reactions to life’s challenges.  However, for alcoholics and addicts, they are also a leading cause for relapse.  Learning to deal with and manage these difficult emotions is one of the key strategies to sustaining a long-term, satisfying recovery.

Managing Depression

 1.  Increase your awareness.

• Pay attention to mood changes.
• Own your feelings.
• Be alert to your body language.
• Label your avoidance.
• Watch for times when your confidence disappears.
• Look for activities that take great effort.
• Become aware of times when you have trouble concentrating or making decision.

 2.  Change your way of thinking about yourself and the world.

 3.  Use problem-solving techniques.

 4.  Change your activity level.

 5.  Make a plan.

• Become task-oriented.
• Stick with the plan, but stay flexible.
• Schedule activities in half-hour to one-hour increments.
• Don’t get too specific or too general.
• Plan for quantity, not quality.
• Pat yourself on the back.

 6.  Interact with others.

 7.  Be optimistic yet realistic. 

Breaking the Anxiety Cycle

Whether working with a therapist or on your own, you can take steps to break the anxiety cycle by doing the following:

 1.  Increase your awareness of what’s causing your anxiety.

• Keep a journal.
• Write in your journal several times a day.
• Assess the control factor.

 2.  Challenge and change negative thinking.

 3.  Manage stress.

• Exercise.
• Practice relaxation techniques.
• Simplify your life.
• Take care of your body.
• Utilize your support system.
• Enjoy yourself!

Anger Management

The five major techniques that help manage anger are:

 1.  Change your thinking about the situation.

• Keep a journal.
• Write in your journal several times a day.
• Assess the control factor.

 2.  Look at the situation from the other person’s perspective.

 3.  Ask yourself if your thoughts are accurate.

Accurate Thought Form (ATF)

Situation	Emotion(s)	Inaccurate Thought(s)	Accurate Thought	Outcome
1.  Acutal event leading to unpleasant emotion	1.  Specify sad/anxious/angry, etc.	1.  Write inaccurate thought(s) that preceded emotion(s)	1.  Write accurate thought to counter inaccurate thought	1.  Re-rate belief in inaccurate thought(s), 0-100%
2.  Stream of thoughts, daydream, or recollection leading to unpleasant emotion	2.  Rate degree of emotion, 1-100	2.  Rate belief in inaccurate thought(s), 0-100%	2.  Rate belief in accurate thought, 0-100%	2.  Specify and rate
Click here to download a PDF of this chart:

 4.  Think of happy or pleasant times in the past.

 5.  Think first, speak carefully.

• Exercise.
• Practice relaxation techniques.
• Simplify your life.
• Take care of your body.
• Utilize your support system.
• Enjoy yourself!

Choose to feel better, Now!

You are in control of yourself.  You always choose your actions and reactions to circumstances or other people’s behavior. 

Recovery requires a series of hard choices over a long period of time.  Fortunately, you can choose to shift your attention away from negative thoughts and toward neutral or even positive ones. 

Enterhealth creates individualized alcohol addiction treatment and drug addiction rehabilitation plans because we know your unique situation calls for an effective one-of-a-kind solution. 

Contact Enterhealth today at 800.388.4601 to schedule an admission or email us at info@enterhealth.com for more information.