Addiction is a disease that impacts the brain, hijacking the pleasure centers of the brain to drive an individual to continued use of drugs or alcohol. As a result, it is important to recover cognitive processes and rebalance the brain. Cognitive improvement programs at New Creation Recovery support brain health, helping clients manage stress, overcome mental health challenges, and ultimately heal from addiction. The programs for clients at New Creation Recovery incorporate these methods as part of a holistic treatment plan.
Individuals struggling with addiction experience a variety of cognitive issues. These challenges vary depending on the individual, the type of substance use, and the amount of time they have been addicted. However, overall cognition challenges include:
- Lack of cognitive flexibility
- Difficulty with impulse control
- Lack of attention
- Deficits in memory
- Difficulty thinking clearly
Cognitive Improvement Programs
New Creation Recovery offers many different programs that help improve cognition for clients. These programs are aimed at supporting clients’ cognitive processes through a variety of means. Each one is helpful in ways other than cognitive improvement, making them extremely valuable as a part of an addiction treatment plan.
Meditation and Prayer
Both meditation and prayer are practices that help clients to reconnect with themselves. Through mediation or prayer, clients have an opportunity to refill their inner resources – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Meditation and prayer look different for each individual. However, each often includes periods of quiet contemplation and overlap in their benefits for cognitive improvement.
During meditation, clients reconnect with themselves. They focus on their breathing and the sensations that they experience. During prayer, clients refill their spiritual resources, communing with God, and reconnecting with a source of purpose.
Both of these methods of connection are valuable for cognition. They both require mental focus to stay with the practice, helping clients to regain their focus. Additionally, both practices can be effective in the short-term and long-term in assisting clients to manage stress and stay on track with their recovery. Finally, while addiction can make changes to the brain, meditation and prayer can help to repair this through positive structural changes that help improve decision-making, impulsivity, and more.
Socialization
Having a community and socializing is a natural and healthy human practice. However, when an individual is struggling with addiction, they commonly isolate themselves. In treatment for addiction at New Creation Recovery, clients are encouraged to socialize through our programs.
When clients socialize, they are restored in many ways. Maintaining a social network is like a puzzle. Clients need to use their minds to remember other client’s names, make connections, maintain connections, and more. It takes an agile mind to socialize, and, therefore, clients regain mental agility through socialization in addiction treatment.
Healthy Practices
It is common for clients coming from an addiction background to have unhealthy habits in their lives. This includes addiction and substance use. However, it often also includes poor eating and exercise habits. At New Creation Recovery, clients have structured programs that help them learn about how to build healthy habits.
As clients improve their physical health, through learning new habits, this also helps to rebuild their cognitive abilities. Physical exercise helps to rebuild and maintain structures in the brain in a healthy manner. It helps improve memory, thinking, and decision-making. As such, it is an important tool for recovering addicts, but also an important tool for clients as they move toward recovery after treatment.
Mental Management
Addition and mental health issues have a significant amount of crossover, with each making the other worse. When a client is healing from addiction, they need to relearn how to manage their mental state. Doing so helps clients to have better impulse control and allows them to make different decisions that protect them from relapses in the future.
Mental management has an immediate short-term positive impact on clients. However, it also has a long-term benefit. It helps clients to stay on the path to healing. As such, it ultimately provides clients with the chance to continue to grow and change. This includes consistent improvement in cognition and learning other tools that help with long-term recovery.
Rebuilding With Cognitive Improvement Programs
Addiction treatment is a path of rebuilding. Clients have to look at their lives, internally and externally, and see where they need to make changes and reconstruct. Part of this process that supports the individual as a whole is cognitive improvement. This is because, when a client improves cognitively, it helps them to be successful in all other aspects of change and growth.
As a result, clients at New Creation Recovery are encouraged to participate in programs within treatment that help aid them in cognition. Over time, they can heal and grow, learning how to rebuild every part of their lives to support their recovery process.
Addiction is a disease that greatly impacts the brain. As such, a person’s mental processes need to be addressed in treatment. At New Creation Recovery, clients are offered programs including meditation, prayer, socialization, healthy practices like exercise and good nutrition, and mental management. These programs can help you to manage stress, overcome mental health challenges, and heal from addiction. If you are struggling with addiction and all of the challenges that come with it, we can help. Call us today at (877) 868-5730 to learn more about our addiction treatment programs and how we can support you on your journey to heal from addiction and recover in the long term.
