Mental Health Archives - Page 13 of 15

Why Drugs and Alcohol Block the “Sunlight of the Spirit”

Written by enlightened solutions on September 26, 2017. Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction, Drugs & Alcohol. Leave a Comment

The expression ‘Sunlight of the Spirit’ comes from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and refers to a state of being that occurs when we are free from our resentments. Resentments are sometimes referred to as the re-feeling of an experience. Put another way, it is when we continue to have feelings about situations or people that are not occurring in the present moment. The process of writing an inventory is a wonderful opportunity to get present to all the ways that you are not fully living in the present! It is through this process that we become the sunlight of the spirit.

When we are living life in resentments, we are not living life in the present moment. If we are to live a recovered life, in a state free from being beholden to our addiction, then we must do the daily work necessary to live in the present moment. This state is accessible through the 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, particularly the inventory steps 4-9 in combination with Step 10. Steps 4-9 allow us to become clear of the past and Step 10 allows to stay clear as we live our life forward from our initial clearing.

It is this process of becoming clear and staying clear that allows us to become the Sunlight of the Spirit. It allows us to become a channel of the divine as we are now clear to listen for the guidance of our Higher Power and to serve as this power directs us. As we live in this essence of being fully present and being a channel of the divine, it is then that we are able to carry the message to others and to remain free from our addiction.

The expression, Sunlight of the Spirit, is a tremendously accurate metaphor for the ongoing work of a successful recovery model. As the sun must rise and set each day, so must we both be connected internally to our source of inspiration and also share outwardly with others. So to fully embrace the sunlight of the spirit in our lives, we must find this daily flow of spiritual connection and service to others.

Enlightened Recovery Solutions offers a harmonious approach to holistic treatment, bringing together the best of evidence-based, alternative, and 12-step therapies. Call us today for information on our transformation programs of treatment for addiction and alcoholism: 833-801-5483.

Coping Skills

Written by enlightened solutions on September 25, 2017. Posted in Addiction Recovery, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Addiction is the process of finding external substances to resolve internal conflicts. Commonly, when hearing an addict share the story of how addiction was born in their life, one will hear a story of someone who was uncomfortable within themselves. Then, they discovered an external substance that mask these feelings of discomfort and allow them the delusion of being connected in their communities in spite of this internal dis-ease. At some point, the coping ceased being effective and their lives became a vicious cycle of self-destructive behaviors. Then, the addict will hit some kind of bottom and an awakening, sometimes immediate, other times gradual, will occur. Recovery begins.

The natural orientation for many addicts during this early phase of recovery is self-loathing for all of the time and opportunity lost. Yet, there is another perspective available. The addict survived to the point of finding recovery due to the engagement of unhealthy coping. They made it to the point in life that new possibilities opened for their life. Without the unhealthy coping of addiction, who can know how these intense internal experiences of self may have been dealt with. One can look at this survival as a beautiful gift of opportunity to live a life that may not have been otherwise available.

Beyond celebrating the miracle of making it to the point of recovery, it can also be honored that coping is a mastered skill. Now, it is simply the journey of learning how to apply the coping techniques to healthy behaviors. For many people in recovery, there is a period of transferring very unhealthy coping to less unhealthy coping before arriving at healthy coping. For example, cocaine and whiskey may be exchanged for coffee and cigarettes. A great step in the healthy direction but then, these are exchanged for excessive exercise and a vigilant focus on healthy foods. All of these are stages of the coping release journey and each transition can be celebrated as progress.

Eventually, we hope that the addict will come to the place where they live each day, fully present, engaging recovery tools and a full vital life. The goal is for all of this to manifest without the need to mask the life experience with an obsessive focus on anything, whether a mind-altering substance or a health-promoting substance. The addict has arrived at the recovery mecca, a state of balance.

How Anxiety Can be a Motivating Force Instead of a Debilitating One

Written by enlightened solutions on September 21, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Anxiety is often discussed in terms of being one side of a two-sided coin. The other side is excitement. It a short journey to harness the power that is accessible to a person in recovery through the experience of anxiety. There is tremendous opportunity in learning how to transmute anxiety into excitement.

The first opportunity in this journey is by beginning to use anxiety as a cue. This is a pathway to increasing your awareness about your emotional presence throughout your day. Anxiety is more manageable when you can observe it in its beginning stages. As you move beyond the beginning stages, it gains momentum and power. So, beginning to learn the signals as to when it has begun will be a great tool.

In order to be able to identify anxiety, you will first need to cultivate awareness about how it shows up in your life.

What are the body signals? Some possibilities are stomach pain, neck tension, or headaches.
What are the mental signals? Perhaps you begin to have a repetitive thought pattern or begin to excessively think abou the past or future.
What are the emotional signals? Do you detach? Or do become excessively angry?

These are just two possibilities. Learn what your mind, body and emotions do at the beginning of an anxiety cycle and begin to use these as guides to develop tools to harness the power of anxiety. Once you have cultivated awareness of your early stages of anxiety, you can begin to develop tools to harness this energy and transform it into excitement about your life!

There’s a bit of a bridge between being spun out on anxiety and arriving to a place of excitement. Remember to be kind and compassionate with yourself. You can begin to develop some tools using the following suggestions and guidelines:

Perspective: the bridge between anxiety and excitement is mostly built upon bricks of opportunity. Begin to train yourself to look for the opportunity with that causing your anxiety.
Medicine: once you are aware of your cues, you can use these to build tools by taking opposite actions. For example, if your pattern is to become angry when anxious, teach yourself how to release anger with more ease.

Remember, this is a journey. Allow yourself to blossom within it!

Enlightened Recovery Solutions offers a harmonious approach to holistic treatment, bringing together the best of evidence-based, alternative, and 12-step therapies. Contact us today for information on our transformation programs of treatment for addiction and alcoholism.

5 Critical Reasons for Taking a Holistic Approach to Treatment

Written by enlightened solutions on September 19, 2017. Posted in Alternative Therapy, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

In many ways, the journey from the prison of addiction to the authentic self is inherently holistic. Addicts have lost their internal sense of belonging because they have become excessively focused on self. The pathway to recovery is paved with methods for returning as an integrated member of their communities, our families, circles of friends and professional associations. They heal by getting out of the cycle of physical dependencies and taking actions to be reunited with others. Holistic approaches can support these challenges with greater success by bolstering the recovery process.

Recovery is really hard, so why not do it once.
Getting clean and sober is one of life’s greatest challenges. Holistic treatment can support greater success in staying clean and sober at the first attempt.
Getting beyond survival and into thriving.
When the whole person is not considered, recovery can sometimes become about getting back to grind. With holistic approaches, the patients are given access to the wholeness of their internal self. They can engage with their creative and visionary self, creating a more fulfilling life for their recovered self.
Every person is here for a reason, so live it.
Fundamentally, every person is born to live out some certain societal contribution. When we get lost in an addictive cycle, we lose touch our purpose. A holistic model can support you in getting free from the addictive cycle. It can also support reconnection to this deeper sense of purpose that lives in the union of body, mind and spirit.
There’s a lot to make up for, so go for the greatest vitality.
Many people in recovery have lived in their addictive cycles for a long time. Holistic models of treatment offer the opportunity to elevate the health and well-being to previously unknown levels. In many ways, this part of recovery, as we make amends to all aspects of ourselves.
There’s one life, that we know of, so live it as fully as possible.
In many cases, when someone enters recovery, they are not only discovering freedom from addiction, they are also on the journey of breaking intergenerational cycles. Holistic models offer opportunities to re-learn some of the core behaviors that have been learned in our families, facilitating new possibilities for future generations as those in recovery teach what they learned.

Bringing Meditation to Every Area of Life

Written by enlightened solutions on September 15, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Meditation is a powerful and accessible tool for someone in recovery. It transforms their state of presence and creates space to make an intentional choice in every moment. With choice, recovery begins.

Meditation is many things. To beginners, it is commonly thought to be a period of time sitting on a meditation pillow. Meditation is much more and can express in many other ways. It can be explored in the following the realms: physical body, mental body and emotional body.

Physical body: the body as a moving meditation, for example, when walking down the street. You can engage the following focal points:

Notice when your heel is in contact with the ground and when the ball of your foot is in contact with the ground.
Play with making big movements with your body – exaggerate your steps or swinging of your arms, or exploring the full core length as you move.

Mental body: engage the mind to cultivate ‘the witness’ which is to create space between you and your mind. You are not your thoughts. This awareness is the bridge to resisting cravings which can save lives.

Throughout the day, write down your thoughts as you notice them.
In a seated-meditation, notice your thoughts, explore the space between ‘you’ and your thoughts, allowing your thoughts to be clouds drifting by without attaching to them.

Emotional body: one challenge is the habituated avoidance of emotions. The emotions are a great playground for taking contrary actions to our habits:

When you notice an impulse to avoid, pause, and simply do the thing that you desire to avoid, even in the smallest measure. For example, if you typically avoid eye contact, make eye contact intentionally, even if only for a few seconds. Small changes lead to bigger changes, so celebrate the smallest contrary actions!
Remember emotions are simply energy that needs to move in order to be released. As you feel an emotion, allow yourself to connect to the image of a wave, washing in and out. As with waves, emotions will always change.

With these simple focuses, you can bring more attention to many areas of your life. You can begin to live with more intention by taking these small, tangible ways of being more fully with yourself in every moment of your precious life.

The Mental Cost of Eating Disorders

Written by enlightened solutions on September 7, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Eating disorders can express in a variety of ways: anorexia, bulimia, overeating, just to name a few of the expressions that this condition can take on. The manifestation of eating disorders will typically involve obsessions about food, about the body and being able to become free from these obsessions.

Culturally, it can be easy to minimize eating disorders as less serious addictions than those struggling with substance abuse addictions. However, the deeper truth is that individuals struggling with eating disorders are living with the same loss of authentic self as those struggling with other addictions. The vacillation between obsession and compulsion is a loss of choice which can lead to profound health consequences, even including the loss of the physical life. At its heart, the loss of the spirit is present in this loss of choice, regardless of what substance or behavior the choice is related to.

The natural rhythm of providing our bodies with food is an opportunity to discern at each interval what nutrients will provide us with the stamina needed to live our life purpose. When these intervals become cycles of feeding an obsession, we have lost our authentic selves to an eating disorder. Whether it is focused on consuming specific foods, performing ritual practices around foods, or a focus on how to mitigate the harmful choices through exercise or purging, the intervals have become about checking out rather than checking in.

Commonly, individuals struggling with eating disorders are aware that these behaviors are considered ‘not normal’ and hide these patterns. The result is that they become isolated from their social communities to conceal their behaviors. Becoming a divided person, they , show only parts of themselves to the people who love them while hiding the most vulnerable parts of themselves, the parts that most need to be seen and accepted.

We can all look at our relationship to food to discover where it is serving the life that we were born to live and where it has taken over our life to block our spiritual purpose. The more that we can become transparent about our journey, moving our relationship to one of positivity and contribution, the more we can support others in doing the same.

8 Ways Addiction Hurts The Body

Written by enlightened solutions on September 5, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Recovery. Leave a Comment

Addiction is known to be a complex medical issue which causes suffering on the physical, emotional and spiritual planes. There are many different types of addiction and they all have an impact on all three of these aspects of the human life. It is valuable to recognize that while the forms of addiction may have different consequences on the body, they all require that the physical healing occur before the internal resources become available for the depth recovery that is necessary on the emotional and spiritual planes.

The following are some possible harms that the body may experience as an outcome of addictive behaviors. There is some variance according to substance but these impacts are generally present in the early stages of recovery. .

Brain: there are many impacts by addiction, including memory, the natural chemical balances and communications of the brain with the rest of the body, and the brain’s role in motivating the person to healthy self-preservation activities.
Central Nervous system: the addictive ingestion of toxins causes a continuous state of fight-or-flight, causing the rest of the body to operate as if it is in a continuous state of danger.
Weight fluctuations: fluctuations may be up or down, but both changes can have serious long-term effects on the quality of health and life expectancy.
Liver: the role of this organ is to filter and metabolize toxins. When an excessive amount of toxins are present, it becomes over-used and susceptible to disease. It also plays a role with digestion and impacts to its optimal function also impact nutrient intake.
Kidneys: play a critical role in removing toxins from the body and the cleansing of blood. These functions are impacted by addictive substances.
Mental health issues: sometimes people are using addiction as a coping for existing mental health issues and other times, the use of substances actives mental health issues that they were predisposed to.
Accelerated aging: in many cases, addiction of all kinds simply accelerates the aging process by speeding up the process of cell death. This process is a natural process yet, our addiction will speed up the timeline and take our vitality sooner than would naturally occur.
Digestion issues: addictions impact the ability of this system to uptake nutrients and can result in malnutrition.

Is There A Spiritual Side To Depression?

Written by enlightened solutions on September 4, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Recovery. Leave a Comment

Living with depression is a challenging life experience. The experience of depression can feel like the attempt to run through waist-deep tar. Even though you long to sprint through the day, every breath, every step, every thought is moving through the sticky toxicity of depression. The dualism of depression is that there is a deep longing to be released from it, yet its very nature can block an individual from taking actions that will shift it.

As we consider how to work with this dualism, it is important to acknowledge that two basic kinds of depression exist. These are depression that is contextually induced and depression that is clinical or chemical in nature. In the following discussion, we are exploring actions that may influence change with contextual depression.

The definition of the word ‘depress’ is to be in a lower state and when speaking in spiritual terms, the spiritual life can sometimes be discussed as the pursuit of the ‘higher’ self. In these terms, the remedy for being relieved of depress-ion is to pursuit elevation of the self. The self can be elevated by pursuing higher expressions of it self.

Becoming elevated can be accessible by simply choosing to look at our depression differently. When an individual is dealing with depression, it may be natural and comfortable to look at the circumstances of life as happening to you. Whether the context is a job loss, relationship ending or the bottom of an addiction, it can be easy to feel like a victim for those circumstances. However, one can begin to choose our higher self when they pause and ask themselves what actions they might take to create a new situation for their lives.

Sometimes, depression can begin the process of shifting even by simply asking ourselves this question, even if we do not yet have the next right action to take. The question allows an individual to embrace the possibility that they have access to the internal resources to change their experience and this is an un-depressed perspective. Once one is willing to ask the question, the higher self will begin to emerge leading the lower part of you to the actions necessary to change the context of your life.

Does Mindfulness Work For Reducing Anxiety?

Written by enlightened solutions on May 23, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Anxiety has little to do with being in the present moment other than spending that present moment worrying about the future. Getting caught up in anxious thoughts feels like getting lost in an uncontrollable stream of worry, concern, and fear over things which might not even be real. Millions of people live with anxiety and co-occurring disorders like addiction or alcoholism but do not receive treatment. Each day, they live under the rule of their anxiety, which takes a toll physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Recently, Brigham Young University conducted a study on anxiety and the effect of mindfulness in reducing anxiety. Mindfulness helps those with anxiety accomplish three important states. First, it helps them focus on the present moment. Second, it returns them to their breath. Third, it helps them get in touch with their true emotions. “People who are not aware of ‘moment-to-moment experience’ many times void difficult emotions,” the article explains, “This behavior leads to negative thoughts.” It can also lead to a heightened heart rate, rapid thinking mind, and muscle tension.

20 minutes of mindfulness a day can effectively reduce the symptoms of anxiety before, during, and after an anxiety attack or an episode of anxious thinking. Mindfulness practices tend to include focus on the breath. Practicing breathing exercises for anxiety helps increase mindfulness and reduce activity in the brain. Deep and controlled breaths are like a reset button for the brain, especially during anxiety. When we think of being anxious, worried, or afraid, we might notice our heart rate increasing. Anxiety typically does not come with long, deep breaths, but short rapid ones. The cross-signals of the rapid heart rate and short breathing actually trigger the brain’s anxiety further and vice versa.

Breathing For Anxiety

Start by identifying five things in each of your senses while trying to slow down your breath. After you have slowed your mind down with focus, turn your focus to your breath. Try breathing in through your nose for five full seconds, holding it for five full seconds, then letting it out for five full seconds. Repeat this breathing process. You will find that your body is systematically relaxing and your brain is starting to slow down. Soon, your anxious moment will be over and you will be in a clam state of mind.

Anxiety can be a trigger for relapse on drugs and alcohol. Recovery starts with holistic treatment of dual diagnosis issues, targeting mind, body, and spirit for transformative change. Our integrative programs at Enlightened Solutions bring together the best of both worlds, helping our clients find freedom in recovery. For more information, call us today at 833-801-5483.

Sleep And Mental Health: There’s More To The Relationship

Written by enlightened solutions on May 8, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Healthy Living, Mental Health, Recovery, Sober Living. Leave a Comment

Sleep is a vital part of the recovery process. Rest is essential for the body, mind, and spirit to heal effectively. Without rest, clients run the risk of exhaustion and fatigue which can interfere with their ability to receive the information, participate ing groups, and make the most out of their treatment experience. Getting enough sleep is a practice which begins in early recovery and and must be carried out regularly throughout one’s lifetime for ongoing recovery.

Not getting enough sleep, struggling with restlessness, and even having to cope with night terrors or nightmares can be symptoms of poor mental health. Likewise, poor mental health can be caused by a lack of sleep. Anyone who has gone days on end with poor sleep feels the effect of mental and physical exhaustion symptomized by moodiness, irritability, and general discontent. For the addict or alcoholic in recovery this can have a devastating effect.

Huffington Post reports that sleep and mental health are intimately connected. “Nearly one in five Americans suffers from some kind of mental illness,” the website cites from the NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health. “Even more surprising, a whopping 50 to 80 percent of people living with typical psychiatric illnesses also report chronic sleep problems, compared to less than 20 percent of the general population.”

According to the article, post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety can all interfere with sleep. In contrast, depression and anxiety can be triggered by a lack of sleep.

In early recovery treatment days, your loved one will likely be prescribed a sleep additive which is either pharmaceutical or natural. Non-narcotic sleep medications can be used to help reset the sleep cycle and make sure each client is getting enough rest. Natural remedies like melatonin, tryptophan, and/or valerian root could be used as well. Many other practices can contribute to better sleep, such as:

- - Limiting the use of social media before bed time
  - Limiting the use of technological devices before bed time
  - Not taking a nap after 4p.m.
  - Cutting off intake of caffeine or high amounts of sugar after 5p.m.
  - Practicing mindfulness meditation before bed

Balance, health, and wellness are invaluable components of recovery. At Enlightened solutions, we provide integrative partial care programs for addiction and dual diagnosis mental health issues. Bringing together twelve step philosophy, clinically proven care, and spiritual holistic healing, we strive to help clients start their recovery the right way. For more information, call 833-801-5483.

Tag: Mental Health