For many people who are struggling to recover from addictions, whether process addictions or substance addictions such as drugs or alcohol, rebuilding their lives and in many cases relearning skills that have been destroyed through their addiction is one of the most important elements to success.

The most successful former addicts are often those who have successfully learned (or relearned) the important life skills that will enable them to manage and overcome the various temptations and difficulties that a former addict can face on a day-to-day basis.

It may be that they were not successfully taught various life skills when they were younger or that the sheer strength of their addiction overwhelmed their capacity to cope, and so restoring the person’s ability to manage their day-to-day life through the application of life skills is vital.

What Are Life Skills?

Life skills can best be defined as the soft skills that we use in our everyday life. They are the skills that we most often use in order to interact with other people and to manage our own temptations, desires, and impulses on a regular basis.

The most common life skills are our communication and our interpersonal skills. These can include writing, speaking, conversation, listening, the ability to empathize and sympathize with others. This will include our emotional intelligence and our ability to reasonably persuade and negotiate with people.

These soft skills help us to navigate our interpersonal relationships, maximising the impact and fruitfulness of our friendships and relationships whilst also minimising stress and conflict in our lives, both of which can be major triggers for negative emotions and addiction.

Addicts can find that the chemical changes in their bodies as a result of their addictions can make it very difficult to engage in critical thinking and decision-making that can make positive impacts. This imbalance can be restored over time with hard work, although many addicts will find that it takes some years to restore their critical thinking and decision-making skills to the same levels as they were before their addiction.

Addicts will also find their journey from addiction to be one of a journey towards self-awareness, and many addicts will find that as they recover from their addiction that they are likely to have greater self-awareness and greater understanding of themselves than they did prior to their addiction, giving them greater knowledge and agency in their lives.

Coaching for Addiction Recovery

One of the complications for developing and improving life skills for addicts is that, along with many of the other treatments required to recover from addiction, attempting to learn these life skills on their own is extremely unlikely to be unsuccessful.

This is where like skills coaching programs fulfill an important role as part of post-addiction treatment.

The very best coaching for life skills for addicts will combine high quality coaching and coaches with an extensive knowledge of the needs of addicts and their requirements in order to proceed and improve.

Life skills coaching programs for addicts can be presented in a number of different ways:

Inpatient Treatment
Outpatient Treatment
Online Treatment

Inpatient treatment will often be part of a longer period of treatment for recovering addicts who are undergoing a short-term stay in a residential facility in order to beat their addiction and to prepare for the outside world. At this stage of the process, exactly what life coaching the addict will receive will depend on where there are in their recovery process. An addict who has recently entered residential treatment and is at the beginning of their recovery process may receive life coaching on the day-to-day nature of social interactions and how to rebuild trust and friendships. However, a recovering addict who is at the end of their residential stay is more likely to be receiving life coaching which is preparing them specifically for the outside world, perhaps around sensible shopping habits, resume writing, or interview preparation.

Similarly, outpatient treatment and online treatment programs will often focus on where the recovering addict is within their treatment, with life coaching options personalized to where they are in their recovery.

It is also the case that life coaching will need to be personalized to the needs of the individual, in that the needs of a young recovering addict in their 20s with no children will have very different requirements from someone in their 40s with a partner and children, who may need to relearn vital relationship and parenting skills in order to succeed in the next stage of their life.

However, life skills coaching for recovering addicts is delivered, its aim is to restore the normal pattern of growth that was severed by the addiction process.

Finding Life Skills Coaching Programs

Life skills coaching programs for addicts can go by different names, including recovery coaching, so it can be useful to search for different terms when looking for help. Your local medical practitioner is usually a good first port of call when looking for information about treatment and recovery programs.

Most areas are likely to have a support group for recovering addicts of all types, and they will often have direct links to life coaching and recovery programs, or at the very least will have knowledge and recommendations that can help a recovering addict on their journey back to wellness, and the Internet is a valuable resource for potential treatment programs and recommendations.

Summary

Recovery from addiction is a multi-faceted, holistic journey with many different requirements. Life skills coaching fulfills part of that role by helping recovering addicts to focus on the skills and knowledge that they need in order to integrate back into the world of friendships and relationships, as well as preparing for getting back into employment. Such recovery coaching programs will help individuals to start their post-addiction life in the best and most organised way possible, ready to carry on with their new, improved life with the skills that they need to succeed.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.