The work of overcoming a substance addiction doesn’t end once rehab is over. That’s because addiction is a lifelong illness that individuals must actively work on while in recovery. One way to maintain sobriety in addiction recovery is to always be honest. That’s because honesty in recovery is the foundation upon which all other aspects of recovery are built upon.
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What Does Honesty In Recovery Mean?
Honesty in recovery refers to the conscious decision to always be honest with oneself and others about where one is in recovery. This means being honest about when you are struggling to maintain sobriety and need extra assistance or support.
Honesty in recovery also means being transparent about the measures that you’re taking to ensure that you maintain sobriety. This transparency needs to be with yourself, your support team, your therapists, and your loved ones. In other words, you should always be transparent and honest with everyone about where you are in your addiction recovery journey. By being honest in recovery, you’ll feel empowered to be your best, most authentic self.
Why Is Honesty in Recovery Important?
There are many specific reasons why honesty in recovery is so important. Some of the top reasons why honesty in recovery is important are:
It Helps Prevent Relapse
One of the most important reasons why honesty in recovery is important is that it helps prevent relapse. Honesty in recovery helps prevent relapse in a number of ways. One way that honesty in recovery prevents relapse is by preventing the habit of lying and hiding things.
It’s important to not develop the habit of lying and hiding things that are connected to your addiction recovery journey. This is because those are the habits of an addict. Therefore, developing the habit of lying and hiding things by not being honest in recovery can reignite other addictive behaviors.
Once you’re exhibiting such addictive behaviors, it’s only a matter of time before you start to re-engage with your addiction. Therefore, if the goal is to not relapse, it’s important to be honest in recovery.
A lack of honesty in recovery, especially to others, can also cause you to feel guilt and shame. Such continued guilt and shame could become unproductive. Unproductive guilt and shame could then trigger poor mental health. This, in turn, could trigger your desire to use substances again to cope.
It Helps People Progress in Recovery
Honesty is vital for progress to occur in addiction recovery. This is because a lack of honesty in recovery can cause you to have to spend all your time upkeeping the lies of where you are in your recovery rather than progressing from where you actually are in your recovery.
Being dishonest with yourself about where you are in your addiction recovery journey especially halts any progress from occurring. This is because there is no way to progress in recovery if you yourself are in denial and unaware of where you are in your recovery journey. That’s equivalent to completing a race without knowing where the starting point for the race is.
Thus, while in recovery, it’s important to periodically take the time out to be honest with yourself about where you are in your addiction recovery journey and the challenges that you’re currently facing. That way, you can properly gauge what you need to do to progress in your addiction recovery journey.
It Makes It Easier to Build Relationships
When there is honesty in recovery with the people around you, it makes it easier to build authentic bonds with those people. Through these authentic bonds, the relationships that you have with your support team, therapists, and loved ones can flourish in a genuine way. That way, your therapists, support team, and loved ones will already have a good understanding of where you are in your recovery journey. They’ll also have a good understanding of what they need to do to help you progress to the next stage.
On the flip side, a lack of honesty in recovery can destroy relationships. This is because dishonesty builds distrust and distrust builds a lack of desire to maintain a relationship. This is especially the case when you’ve already broken trust in the past while struggling with addiction.
No one can maintain sobriety long-term on their own. Therefore, if you want to maintain your sobriety, it’s vital that you rebuild authentic bonds and relationships with the family, friends, and addiction therapists that are close to you. Once you do, these individuals can help you progress in your addiction recovery journey.
Reasons Why People Are Often Dishonest in Recovery
People are often dishonest in recovery for a number of reasons. Some common reasons for dishonesty in recovery include:
Fear of Consequences of Past Actions and Failures
One of these reasons is that they fear the consequences of their past actions and failures. Thus, lying is a form of self-protection.
It Protects Them
While lying about where one stands in addiction recovery may feel like it’s protecting you at first, in the long run it will only hurt you more. This is because being dishonest in recovery will cause people to not want to help you when you need it.
It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The more that you lie about where you are in your addiction recovery journey, the less likely that people will believe you when you’re telling the truth.
Lying Is a Habit
Another reason why people are often dishonest in recovery is that they’ve developed a habit of lying. Thus, it becomes hard to quit the habit of lying and tell the truth.
It’s Produced Desirable Outcomes in the Past
Some individuals choose to be dishonest in recovery because dishonesty has allowed them to get things in the past. For example, being dishonest in recovery in the past may have allowed people in addiction recovery to maintain a positive relationship with others. Being dishonest in recovery in the past may have also allowed people to access economic assistance.
Although lying may have served you in the past, it’s important to remember that lies always catch up with you. Therefore, it’s best to just tell the truth.
The Lies Are Small and Protect Others
Some people are dishonest in recovery because they feel as if the lies that they are telling are small and harmless and help protect others. Even the smallest lie as it pertains to someone’s recovery from addiction can cause distrust, though.
People in addiction recovery that are self-deluded may even be dishonest in recovery unintentionally. This shows a lack of self-awareness.
How to Increase Honesty in Recovery
Honesty is honesty. Thus it may not appear to make sense for a person to be able to increase honesty in recovery. Yet still, there are ways to do so.
One way to increase honesty in recovery is to admit when dishonesty has taken place. Take a personal inventory of the things that you weren’t honest about when it came to addiction recovery in the past and the things that you are dishonest about now. Then take the proper measures to now be honest about those things. That way, the amount of honesty in recovery increases.
Another great way to increase honesty in recovery is to track past behavior in a journal. This will help you in your inventory of past dishonest moments that you can change.
Ultimately, the more that you’re honest in recovery, the more you’re likely to be honest in recovery overall. So, if you’re trying to increase honesty in recovery and you don’t know where to start, simply start by being honest and true to yourself and your recovery journey.
Honesty in Recovery At Phoenix Rising Recovery
Phoenix Rising Recovery is an addiction treatment center that strives to provide its patients with recovery options that revitalize their minds and bodies. That way, it’s easier to sustain honesty in recovery with them.
Here at Phoenix Rising Recovery, one of our main goals is to help addiction treatment patients build a strong foundation of recovery through optimal wellness of the mind, body, and spirit. We achieve this goal through our social detox and withdrawal management recovery model. We use this alongside our residential therapeutic treatment approach with the inclusion of evidence-based treatment.
To ensure that the proper foundation in recovery is set during detox and addiction treatment at Phoenix Rising Recovery, we make sure that all of our patients are exhibiting honesty in recovery from the moment that they enter our door.
To learn more about Phoenix Rising Recovery and the different ways that we exhibit honesty in recovery through our addiction treatment programs, therapies, and services, contact us today! We are here to help you learn about the necessary tools and skills that you need to thrive without the use of substances.
We are also here to help manage the co-occurring disorders of our patients. In this way, Phoenix Rising Recovery patients are physically and mentally prepared to sustain addiction recovery and the level of honesty that it requires.
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