What is a Therapeutic Community for Addiction Recovery?
When you have a problem, you don’t want to fix part of it; you want to repair all of it. If your house bursts into flames, you wouldn’t merely douse the living room with water and hope the rest of the fire throughout the whole…
How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Helps You Address and Overcome Cognitive Distortions
The human mind can dream of distant worlds and analyze a flood of stimuli every microsecond. But perhaps its most important job is to protect itself. When you encounter distress or doubt, your brain goes into overdrive, rationalizing the situation to generate your ultimate response….
How a Long-Term Recovery Program Increases Your Chances of Sobriety
Recovery is a microcosm of life. How you succeed in sobriety will reflect upon and accentuate how you benefit in general. When you envision your substance-free life, are you thinking in terms of months, years, decades, forever? To achieve long-term recovery, you need a long-term…
5 Recovery Sayings: Are You Talking the Talk or Walking the Walk?
Words are the building blocks of a meaningful life, but if those words are empty, your world can come crumbling down. Many in the recovery community rely on mantras to guide them from substance abuse to sobriety, which prompts the pressing question: what do these…
The Importance of Struggling Your First Year Sober
Everything worthwhile requires effort. You can’t build a home, a career, or a meaningful relationship without putting in some hard work. Sobriety is in the same category. Diligence can help ensure that your road to recovery doesn’t get derailed. You may struggle in your first…
The 7 Most Common Cognitive Distortions That Lead to Relapse
Progress is not always linear. To get from Point A to Point Sobriety, you may travel a twisted route. Relapses affect many individuals in the recovery community, but rather than judge them or fear the worst, it is more beneficial to assess the underlying causes….
The First Step: What Does It Really Mean?
Power is a vague concept. We want to assert control over our lives, we work to achieve influence at work and online, and we strive to manage expectations as they evolve, but how exactly does “power” play into these dynamics? The first step in the…
How to Stop Relying on Your Family for Everything in Early Recovery
When you are a child, you depend on your parents, guardians, and/or older siblings to pick you up when you fall down. It is healthy to trust your loved ones with your welfare, wellness, and well being when you are vulnerable, but the key to…
The Importance of Behavioral Modification Programs for Addiction Recovery
Mistakes are inevitable. You fall down, you get back up, and you look back at the obstacle that made you stumble. Maybe there was no obstacle; it was just your own instability that made you trip and fall. But whatever the reason for past difficulties,…
Why Luxury Treatment May Not Be Right for You
Sober living is worth a million bucks. Fortunately, it’s far more affordable than that. The simple joys in life are often just that: simple. The earth under your feet, the air in your lungs, and the clothes on your back are tactile reminders that you…
Author – Chris Howard
Chris Howard is the Founder and Director of Ethos Recovery. He has a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA and has served as a community advocate/mentor for men and women in recovery since 2010.