What is the best approach to tackling an addiction?
To help you find the best approach to tackle addiction, we asked business leaders and healthcare experts this question for their best advice. From adjusting your lifestyle to finding the right support, there are several ways you can approach tackling an addiction that may help you or others.
Here are six approaches to tackling an addiction:
- Meet Their Needs Individually
- Lifestyle Vs. Addiction
- Treat Willpower As Finite
- Find The Source
- Support Your Employees
- Fix The Environment
Meet Their Needs Individually
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to tackling addiction. Too often, people do not recognize addiction for what it is—a disease. Just like any other disease, no one treatment plan works for everyone. At our clinic, we believe in a medication assisted treatment approach along with a variety of licensed and accredited counseling services to meet the needs of our patients.
Dan Reck, MATClinics
Lifestyle Vs. Addiction
Tackling addiction often starts with the simple changes of how we spend each and every day, who we spend our time with, and what we want for ourselves. Professional help is often needed. Our company promotes a lifestyle to live in empowering beliefs through connection, authenticity, self-love, emotional integrity, and service to others. We strive to create legions of self-empowered individuals who are completely in control of their lives and destinies, enabling them to get what they desire from this life, experiencing it to their fullest, most liberating potential. Through these hosts of self-empowered and self-aware individuals, we will see families that communicate with more love, trust, and caring for one another.
Logan Rae, We Level Up
Treat Willpower As Finite
One of the most important steps in tackling any addiction is admitting that willpower is a limited resource. Many folks make the mistake of trying to prove they can overcome temptation instead of removing the temptation altogether. Even the most disciplined individuals experience decision fatigue and lapses in good judgment. People who regularly manage distress with coping mechanisms like shopping, overeating, or substance use have not yet developed the resilience needed to withstand impulses. Folks set themselves up for failure and discouragement by attempting to overcome cravings instead of eliminating the causes of the urges. There is no shame in removing triggers, especially when first facing down an addiction. Skip the snack food aisle, cancel your credit card, stop going to bars, remove the battery from your phone. The most important factor is that you give up the harmful behavior, not how you resist the vice.
Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding
Find The Source
Having battled with addiction myself, the biggest paradigm shift for me was getting to the root issue of what caused my temptation. Personally, I arrived there by using therapy, which I highly recommend to anyone who feels that there might be some unresolved issues behind the curtains. Along the same vein, I’ve found journaling to be a wonderful supplement where the process of writing can be quite eye-opening and cathartic.
There are a lot of negative feelings caused by our past as well as present circumstances we all have to deal with on a daily basis. However, once you can identify the underlying triggers that lead you towards addictive behavior, you can then address the issue from the bottom up. The transformation can be truly profound. Once the skeletons in the closet are dealt with, the temptation simply evaporates on its own. While this approach is far from a quick fix, I’m convinced that the positive long-term effects are more than worth the initial effort.
Jagoda Wieczorek, ResumeLab
Support Your Employees
Professionals today use a combination of medications, abstinence, and cognitive therapy (or “talk therapy”) to treat addiction, either in-patient or on an out-patient basis. Don’t encourage an employee to suddenly quit drugs or alcohol themselves “cold turkey. That can actually cause physical reactions that result in death. Every addiction recovery plan should also include talk therapy to address the underlying issues that caused the addiction in the first place. Be prepared for the employee to relapse occasionally—this is a routine feature of addiction recovery, not a failure.
Joni Holderman, Thrive! Resumes
Fix The Environment
Change the environment to a better one, and stay away from the sources of addiction. For example, if you are an alcoholic, make sure to empty all of your wine and beer bottles at home. Secondly, take up a good habit to replace your addiction. From my experience, exercise is the best method, as it helps generate energy, takes up time, and frees up your mind to not think of your addiction. Make a commitment by signing up to a gym near your place, and claim your motivation on social media for everyone to follow and cheer you on.
Jill Sandy, Constant Delights
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