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Emotional Intelligence in Recovery
emotional intelligence in recovery

Emotional Intelligence in Recovery

Being able to recognize and understand emotions is essential for human communication. Babies use their feelings to communicate before they can speak. As people get older, their experiences can enhance or diminish their emotional intelligence. For many people in recovery, emotional intelligence is a skill that needs to be redeveloped. Focusing on emotional intelligence in recovery helps clients reshape almost every aspect of their lives.
Joshua New, LCSW, Clinical Director
“Renewal Lodge believes in the power of family as a cornerstone of recovery, integrating loved ones into the healing process in dual diagnosis care. Through collaboration and understanding, they foster an environment where both the individual and the family find strength and renewal together.”

~ Joshua New, LCSW, EMDR-Trained, Clinical Director

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is a set of skills that help you understand your emotions as well as those of others. Emotional intelligence allows you to interpret your feelings and process them in a regulated, constructive way. The awareness of other people’s feelings enables you to develop healthy relationships that don’t dissolve when negative emotions are present.

Some people in the addiction treatment community use the term emotional sobriety to refer to emotional intelligence. Without emotional intelligence, managing your feelings can feel a lot like trying to control your substance abuse disorder without help. Your reactions to your feelings can be impulsive; the emotion itself often makes you feel out of control.

Why Is Emotional Intelligence in Recovery so Important?

Emotions are powerful. They are chemical reactions that send messages throughout the body and can affect your thinking, behavior and health. They can even change physiological processes, such as your breathing, heart rate and hormonal response.

The central nervous system reaction that is triggered by an emotion often feels overwhelming. Even an emotion that seems to feel good can activate the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-or-flight response. This is especially true if you have had traumatic experiences surrounding positive emotions, such as being ignored by your parents when you were happy about an achievement or experienced domestic violence peppered with declarations of love.

In other words, even “positive” emotions don’t always feel good. And the emotions that most people label as negative can certainly bring you down.

An emotion can feel like the most important thing in your life as you’re experiencing it. We often react impulsively to our feelings in an effort to calm our nervous systems. We bypass rational thinking and turn to the coping methods that will soothe the discomfort the fastest.

If you’re in recovery, you have probably used substances or other unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage your emotions. This diminishes your emotional intelligence. It also prevents your central nervous system from completing the circuit that begins when you feel a strong emotion. In addition to harming your physical and mental health with drugs or alcohol, you keep the emotion trapped. This creates a dangerous cycle whether you’re in active addiction or recovery.

Benefits of Learning Emotional Intelligence in Recovery

Developing emotional intelligence in recovery is crucial. Your emotions are like the “you are here” label on a map. If you don’t know where you’re starting, you won’t know where to go.

Use Your Tools More Effectively

The other resources that you have access to as part of your addiction treatment won’t be as effective as they could be if your emotional intelligence needs development. You may learn coping skills to get you through difficult times. But how will you know when you use a tool to combat anxiety if you can’t identify that you’re feeling anxious?

If you have been numbing your emotions with substances, putting a name to the way that you’re feeling might seem impossible. But the simple act of identifying your emotions puts you on the map so that you can create a plan for your sobriety journey. This is the first step toward developing your emotional intelligence.

Automate Healthy Responses

Intense emotions often generate rash reactions. You may worry that you will never be able to control your responses to floods of emotion. But emotional intelligence helps you train your brain and body to cooperate with your emotions.

There are hundreds of techniques and strategies for developing this skill. Each one moves you toward a more regulated nervous system. As your emotional intelligence grows, your body relearns how to respond to overwhelming triggers.

By using methods to identify, accept and regulate your emotions, you’ll give your body the chance to complete the circuit and dispel the central nervous system reaction. Your body will also stop reacting to intense emotions as potential threats. With practice, this process will become more automated. You’ll notice that your coping skills come more naturally and you act less impulsively.

Build a Strong Support System

Have you ever ended a relationship with someone because they said something that you took personally? Did you wish that you had handled it with more grace?

We often burn bridges with people who could be our friends, mentors and supporters when we react hastily to their words and actions. When you’re triggered by someone, you might find it hard to control your anger, frustration or sadness. For someone in recovery, these emotions can trigger unhealthy behaviors.

Emotional intelligence provides a gift when it comes to relating with others. It enhances your empathy, or your ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes. When you better understand the emotions behind someone else’s behavior, you can work with it instead of reacting to it.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore your boundaries. If someone behaves in a way that’s unacceptable to you, you can choose to break ties with them. However, with emotional intelligence, you can make the best decision without having it derail your mood or personal life.

Reduce Your Chances of Relapse

Emotional intelligence is associated with lower rates of substance use. People with strong emotional intelligence don’t necessarily feel happy all the time. They still experience powerful emotions, including anger and pain. However, emotional intelligence raises their awareness of what they’re feeling and allows them to use available tools to regulate their feelings. What’s more is that this process happens somewhat automatically when your emotional intelligence is strong.

Emotional Intelligence Development at Renewal Lodge

Emotional intelligence helps you lead a fulfilling life no matter what comes your way. Boosting your emotional intelligence will also improve the following skills and abilities:
  • Communication
  • Acceptance
  • Setting realistic expectations
  • Learning from difficult situations
  • Self-understanding and self-compassion
  • Positive outlook
  • Receptivity to enjoyment and pleasure
  • Listening
  • Conflict resolution
  • Motivation

Strengthening emotional intelligence skills leads to improved self-confidence and resilience, which supports a lasting recovery. Contact us to learn more about how Renewal Lodge incorporates emotional intelligence development in all of our programs.

Emotional Intelligence at Renewal Lodge

Clients at RL learn how to recognize emotions that they are experiencing, learn how to allow those emotions to be present, learn how to investigate why the emotions are present, and learn how to not identify with the emotions. Clients at RL learn that they are not the emotions, rather they experience emotions.

Mindfulness and EQ are skills that are fundamentally linked. The practice of mindfulness inevitably leads to emotional insight and therefore EQ. Mindfulness is an awareness and attention focusing skill that allows clients at RL to be able to recognize and identify the emotions that they are experiencing.
Addiction is a pathological disease where our clients have been using substances to try to change or avoid the emotions that they have been experiencing in the hopes of finding some form of comfort or relief from what they are experiencing. EQ is important to the development of a client at RL because if a client isn’t aware of what they are experiencing emotionally and that they can allow their emotions to be present without changing them, then there is a minimal chance of establishing and maintaining long term recovery.
Awareness of the underlying emotional and mental causes of one’s behavior, increases their chances of establishing and maintaining a life of recovery.
To help them gain awareness into the emotional and mental roots of their dissatisfaction, fear, and justifications for using substances and engaging in behaviors that don’t align with their values.
They would learn that emotions are neither good nor bad, they just are mental and physical phenomena they you experience. They would also learn that it is alright to have and experience emotions; they don’t have to avoid experiencing emotions.
They would begin to be aware that they are less rigid in their interactions with themselves and others. They would notice that they are beginning to show themselves and others more compassion and loving kindness when they are less than perfect.
EQ supports the clinical approach at Renewal Lodge because our main focus as a clinical team is to help our clients identify where they are and have been psychologically inflexible and engaging in experiential avoidance. We help our clients become more psychologically flexible by teaching them how to be aware and accept whatever it is that they are experiencing emotionally and mentally, and begin to take committed action to behave in ways that support their values. Improved EQ, enables clients to begin to engage in this type of introspective practice and begin to live more mindfully.

Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.

~Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
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Dear Renewal Lodge Visitors,

My name is John Bruna, co-founder of the Mindfulness in Recovery® Institute, and more importantly, a grateful member of the recovery community. I am incredibly fortunate to have found my recovery in 1984. Of course, I did not achieve continuous recovery through willpower or my own efforts, but through the guidance and caring support of countless others that selflessly taught me how to live through the 12 Steps.

My journey of recovery brought this once homeless, shame-based, traumatized, insecure young man to a life far beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I discovered self-worth, the joy of helping others, the gifts of parenting and grandparenting, and most importantly the ability to live a meaningful and purposeful life with integrity.

One of the greatest gifts of recovery is that I have the opportunity to give back and help others discover their self-worth, dignity, and the skills to fully live lives that they find truly meaningful. This is the inspiration for developing the skills of Mindfulness in Recovery® (MIR) to meet the needs of new generations struggling with alcohol and other substance use disorders. MIR is a set of evidence-based skills designed to help people fully integrate their tools of recovery in ways that are personalized, practical, and in alignment with their deepest values.

While we train counselors and therapists throughout the United States and abroad, I personally have chosen to work directly with the amazing team and clients at Renewal Lodge to develop the model MIR 12-step program for the nation. I choose Renewal Lodge because of the vision of its mission and the dedication of its team. Renewal Lodge is an extremely rare environment in which the staff embodies the very mindfulness and 12-step practices and skills they offer their clients. The results have been beyond my expectations. It is an honor to be here and I treasure my personal time with every client I meet.

With Gratitude,

John Bruna
John_Bruna_Sig
John Bruna
Director of Mindfulness
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