Residential living is often a core step of the recovery process. While addiction may uniquely affect each individual, this phase of recovery is a powerful tool that can be utilized across many different journeys. Residential treatment can offer a new perspective on one’s recovery journey. Having access to this form of care can provide a plethora of benefits that may not be otherwise available on other recovery paths. While residential treatment is not the only path to sustained sobriety, it may be one of the best options available depending on one’s unique experiences, needs, and goals in recovery.
What Is Residential Treatment?
Residential treatment can help address one’s mental health or addiction and involves living on-site at a recovery facility in on-campus lodging. While the change in living environment can be difficult to adjust to, these residential facilities are focused on providing homelike comfort where a person can stabilize in a safe atmosphere with professional support.
The length of one’s stay can vary depending on their unique situation. While the average residential program can last between 30 and 90 days, an individual’s stay can vary depending on their goals, success, or struggles during this time. This personalized approach helps each person address the ways in which their mental health or addiction struggles have impacted their daily routine.
What to Expect in Residential Treatment
One’s experiences in a residential facility can vary depending on the program and one’s goals. However, there are some common aspects that an individual should expect during their stay.
First, one’s day will become tightly scheduled with various therapies that work to instill a sense of consistency and predictability in one’s routine. Things such as having dedicated bedtimes, morning alarms, essential mealtimes, and regimenting one’s self-care practices, therapeutic exercises, and individual and group therapy are examples of the things that will be experienced. Implementing these activities can help the passing days be a great source of new experiences and outlets to shape one’s new identity in recovery.
However, one may not be able to bring their entire lives with them into a residential program, and often people may only bring the necessities. Clothes, toiletries, and essential supportive items or pets may be allowed into the recovery facility, but many non-essential items will be left at home.
It is common that personal items may go through an inspection before entering a facility in order to ensure that an individual is not bringing anything that may hinder their recovery or the recovery of anyone else already in residential care. However, even without many of these personal items, one’s time will still be filled with activities and new therapeutic approaches, helping to create a new routine and hobbies separate from their previous lifestyle.
The Benefits of Residential Living
While the shift to residential living can feel jarring at first, there are plenty of benefits to this approach to recovery. Living at a recovery facility can be instrumental in stabilizing and managing one’s symptoms as an individual begins developing their own coping strategies. Withdrawal symptoms and a tumultuous emotional state can all drastically impact one’s day. However, the around-the-clock monitoring available at a residential facility can provide the aid needed to begin stabilizing and grounding oneself in their recovery journey.
This approach can be especially beneficial when dealing with dual-diagnosis. It helps an individual manage a myriad of different symptoms while discovering new coping strategies and better understanding the unique interplay between addiction and mental health through education and monitoring.
Getting a New Start Through Distance
Creating distance between one’s previous lifestyle and their new sobriety can be essential for ingratiating new strategies and routines into one’s daily life. By separating oneself wholly from their previous lifestyle and putting distance between high-risk environments or toxic relationships, an individual can begin to take pride in their ability to pursue a transformative recovery. Overcoming addiction and tackling mental health disorders can be incredibly difficult if the stressors of one’s life are not removed, making the distance provided by residential treatment essential in creating a new approach to one’s lifestyle.
Access to a Supportive Community
Communities of peers and professionals can be indispensable throughout recovery, and residential care can provide constant access to these supportive and understanding individuals. Not only can these people provide important perspectives through this quintessential time in one’s journey, but this constant access also allows an individual to explore their vulnerabilities and goals at all hours of the day. This can create a profound base from which to build a personalized recovery plan.
Coping with symptoms and incorporating transformative recovery strategies into one’s day can be difficult. However, this access to constant support and education can help each individual keep looking forward to the next important step to one’s healthy future.
Residential living can be the catalyst to a new lifestyle and daily routine, backed by support from understanding and sympathetic peers as well as trained professionals. At Everlast Recovery Centers, we understand the importance of this phase in your recovery, and we are prepared to help you transition to this crucial part of your sober journey. Your time with us can be personalized to fit your unique needs and goals, with a homelike and comfortable atmosphere supporting you with individual and group therapy sessions backed by personalized therapeutic techniques. From art and music therapy to yoga, mindfulness, and even parenting and smoking cessation programs, your time with us is curated to fit your needs. For more information on how we can individualize your time with us during your stay or to speak to a caring, trained staff member to discuss if a residential program is right for you, call us today at (866) 338-6925.
