Life Skills

“Life Skills” is a term we hear often and sometimes question, “What does it mean?”  The two words imply skills one would learn to help navigate more effectively through life. When young people starting using and abusing alcohol and drugs, they frequently miss out on some of life’s most important lessons. It is generally believed within the addiction recovery field and 12 Step community that early substance abuse stunts emotional maturity. When chemical dependency and addiction take the center stage, parents, educators, mentors and other significant role models lose their authority and ability to influence in positive, nurturing ways.

Without recovery, addicts and alcoholics may get older, but they don’t “grow up”.

Goal Setting and Accountability

Being accountable for our actions is a critical part of maturity and navigating life. Setting and reaching attainable goals requires discipline. The BRC Recovery Program helps residents to understand the importance of these concepts throughout their extended program, starting in the residential program with daily schedules, maintaining an orderly space, and assisting with meal preparation and clean-up.

It is our intent that these practices be firmly entrenched and new healthy habits established as our residents transition into our sober living and aftercare programs.

We teach important strategies about setting and attaining realistic goals:

• Why it is so important to recreate our lives using goals and intent
• How to be organized and stay focused
• Understanding time management so stress does not overwhelm us
• What attitudes and beliefs we hold about work and career, and how they need to be changed
• Are we waiting for somebody to take care of us, or are we going to assert ourselves?

 Financial Responsibility

Recovering addicts and alcoholics frequently struggle with their finances, and by the time they come into recovery, may have acquired sizable debt, bad credit and legal problems. It is possible to repair the financial damage that happened as a result of bad choices, immaturity and a lack of financial responsibility.

We help our residents learn new concepts and skills about managing money, covering areas such as:

• What does financial sobriety look like?
• How do we learn to be responsible for money management?
• How do we incorporate good money management into our daily lives?

Physical Health and Wellness

Health and wellness covers a wide spectrum of our lives including mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Our goal at BRC Recovery is to help our residents to understand the importance of taking care of ourselves and the daily habits necessary to maintain health and wellness. Long-term recovery requires healthy habits.

We teach our residents how to get and stay sober and to develop skills they may have no knowledge of or have forgotten:

• Nutrition and healthy eating habits
• Cooking, planning and meal preparation
• Household cleaning and maintenance
• Personal hygiene and essential self-care
• CPR and first aid certification
• Understanding the body and importance of physical fitness

Relationship Sanity

Many of our residents have severely damaged their personal relationships while active in their disease. At times, they have blamed or labeled those who are trying to help them as the reason they drink or use drugs. This mentality—that other people are to blame—is part of denial and prevents us from looking at our own behavior.

Our work in this area begins with the families of our residents. We will work with them to improve the support system of our resident from one of enabling to one of supporting life choices that are conducive to his or her recovery. Next, we work with the resident to identify and eliminate the unrealistic expectations he has placed on the people in his life. Our residents will come to see that their anger and resentment are a product of their own fears. Once the resident internalizes that their troubles have been of his own making, he or she has then begun to free themselves of the repetitive ways that harmed those in their life. We teach each resident how to apply spiritual principles in every relationship, including intimate ones.

At BRC Recovery, we help you in every way possible to set you on the path to leading an addiction-free life. If you or a loved one is struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction or substance abuse, contact us at (866) 905-4550.

“All of these life skills are essential and vital in early recovery, and the more I internalize them, the greater my chance of permanent recovery.”– Mark Houston