Recovering from an addiction is not an endpoint to target or some final destination, but a journey. This journey will be filled with both challenging and exciting changes. Keep in mind, just because you get clean and sober, life continues.
An important part of recovery is the relationships you foster along your journey. Because of the need to identify with shared experiences and the ability to understand, it’s strongly suggested you surround yourself with likeminded individuals. Here is why this simple idea can be so important to your recovery.
Likeminded Individuals Can Identify
An important aspect of solid recovery is identifying with others who have experienced similar struggles. One of the most refreshing joys found along the road of recovery are friends for life who can relate to you.
- Share Experience – It’s commonly accepted within the recovery community that individuals who do not suffer from addictive personality traits find it nearly impossible to relate to those who do. Being able to share experiences, even if they are baffling to you as an addict, are critical for recovery.
- Strength – With the support of the experiences of like-minded individuals, you will be able to feed off their strength. Seeing someone else change gives many, just enough strength to get through the day without finding an excuse for a drink or a drug.
- Hope – Likewise, these experiences and the strength from having made it through them clean and sober, will give others hope. As you travel your own journey of recovery, you’ll gain your own strength from experience. You will be able to share your own hope with other like-minded individuals in recovery.
Likeminded Individuals Understand
A frequent misconception by those in various stages of recovery is thinking that non-addicts or alcoholics will understand your feelings. Understanding and empathy are two different feelings. While someone who does not suffer from addiction may well empathize with your problem, they simply do not have the capacity to truly understand.
However, individuals who have experienced the same unexplained mental obsessions and cravings will understand. The can relate to the baffling nature of an addictive personality unlike someone who does not suffer from the disease of addiction.
Surrounding yourself with like-minded people in recovery will give you a support group of people who truly understand. You will be able to share ideas with a person who has often felt exactly the way you do at any given moment in your life. It is not only refreshing but can provide the support you need during any given situation going forward in recovery.
Sharing space with such likeminded individuals in recovery is one of the strongest reasons for inpatient treatment settings. In a residential setting with likeminded people in recovery, you will have the support you so vitally need, especially in early recovery.
Surrounding yourself with this same type of like-minded support is why many addicts continue to live in recovery-focused housing after they successfully complete a treatment program. It is also a motivating factor that compels those in recovery to continue in fellowships of like-minded people for the rest of their lives.
