Living with addiction and mental health issues means we’re often confronted with things and people that challenge our serenity and sense of peace. We’re presented with things that make us feel uncomfortable, stressed, anxious, angry, even depressed. Addiction creates all kinds of challenging situations in our lives, frustrating daily life circumstances, inner turmoil, recurring issues and patterns, interpersonal conflict. It’s up to us to figure out how to maintain our own sense of balance and calm when we’re faced with these things. It can be quite a challenge, but we can develop tools that we can have at our disposal to use any time our serenity is being threatened. We can learn to move through the difficult situations with more ease and grace.
Because the vast majority of our thoughts are governed by our subconscious minds, our emotional reactions are as well. We’ve trained our minds to respond to things in certain ways. Perhaps traffic makes you anxious, or conflict makes you feel afraid and overreact. We can reprogram our minds to respond differently. The more we tell our subconscious minds to react with calm and peace, the more we can redirect our emotional responses to help us move through the situation gracefully rather than making it worse. One of the easiest and most effective ways we can reprogram the subconscious is through the use of affirmations that we can repeat and/or write. The repetition of these positive statements solidifies them into our consciousness.
The next time you feel your sense of serenity slipping, try repeating phrases such as “I am calm. I am at peace. I can respond to this calmly and gracefully. Things are always working out for me. I am manifesting smooth sailing. I will get through this easily. What can I learn from this?” In the moment, repeating these things to yourself may help you calm yourself down. Over time, they can start to change the fundamental ways in which you think. You might find that the same things that once brought you anxiety, stress or discomfort might start to feel harmless to you. You may start to move through difficult situations feeling much less affected or bothered.
We have more control over our thoughts, and therefore our feelings of wellbeing and serenity, than we often think we do. We can consciously make the choice to focus on peace and serenity whenever we feel ourselves being challenged. We can choose to take a deep breath before reacting, to think carefully before we speak, to choose resolution as our goal when dealing with conflict.
At Vista Taos, we offer a variety of complementary therapies to support your treatment and recovery. Our commitment to help heal the mind, body, and spirit allows you the foundation you need to truly recover. Call (575) 613-4810 for more information.
