You may have heard the term life skills before and wondered about what are life skills after addiction? Life skills are abilities and behaviors that allow you to deal with everyday life. When you are in addiction, these skills fall by the wayside as the focus becomes centered on your drug of choice. In addition, you will use your drug of choice as a coping mechanism. When you get clean, you have to learn how to deal with life sober. That’s where the life skills training program in Lakewood, CO comes in.

What are Life Skills After Addiction?

Life skills after addiction can be broken down into three basic categories: cognitive skills, personal skills, and interpersonal skills. You can easily classify them by thinking of them as different types of relationships. Cognitive skills are about your relationship with thinking. Personal skills relate to your relationship with yourself. Interpersonal relationships are about your relationship with others. Each of these has value for your life and is essential to being a happy, productive member of society.

Why are Life Skills After Addiction Important?

Are life skills after addiction an essential part of recovery? Yes. These skills affect every area of your life. Your ability to make good choices, understand and control your thoughts and emotions, and having healthy relationships with others all come down to life skills. Anyone can benefit from life skills because no person is perfect. We all have areas that we struggle in. Life skills are crucial to building a better life and a better you during addiction treatment programs in CO.

Cognitive Life Skills

Life skills for cognitive abilities are mostly your thinking skills. Unfortunately, drug use impairs cognitive ability. You have likely lost some of the cognitive skills you once possessed. However, these skills can be relearned. One of the most vital cognitive skills is problem-solving and decision making. You use these skills every day.

Realizing your car is running low on gas and stopping to fill up your tank is a simple example of problem-solving. You recognize the problem, think of a solution, and then implement it. Decision making can be deciding what outfit to wear or what career path to take. You’ll begin by weighing your options and considering the pros and cons of each option. Then you choose the one that makes the most sense.

The key is getting good at the processes involved. Simple or complex, problems and decisions all have the same necessary components and steps. Life skills after addiction allow you to practice these steps, so when the big problems or decisions arise, you are prepared to deal with them.

Personal Life Skills

Personal life skills after addiction consist of self-control, self-awareness, self-confidence, and stress management. Mainly, personal life skills relate to the way that you feel, treat, and think about yourself.
You can improve your personal life skills by:

• Making time for things you enjoy
• Finding healthy ways to manage stress
• Spending time each day reflecting on your thoughts and feelings
• Having a positive inner dialogue
• Learning more about yourself and your personality

Interpersonal Life Skills

Interpersonal life skills after addiction are about the way you relate to others. The chances are that you became less social when in active addiction. You may have avoided people because your focus was on getting high. Now it’s time to rebuild relationships and polish up those social skills.

The most important interpersonal skills are communication, perspective-taking, and emotional intelligence. Communication allows you to communicate with others effectively. Perspective-taking is being able to see different perspectives. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and being able to identify ways they see the issue differently than you do. Emotional intelligence means paying attention to the emotions of yourself and others, and knowing how to respond appropriately.

Life Skills Training at AspenRidge Recovery Centers

If you are struggling with addiction or find your life skills need improvement, contact AspenRidge Recovery Center today at (855) 281-5588. The skills you learn will help you for the rest of your life.