With increasingly less human interaction due to more screen time and increased social distance, empathy and compassion are at an increased deficit among teens. This is particularly true of teens with substance use and mental health disorders. The benefits of teaching teens skills like empathy and compassion are significant to their recovery. Helping teens develop an understanding of others can have a ripple effect not only on their healing process but also on others in their lives.
Maintaining Compassion in Sobriety
As screen time has increased, human interaction has decreased significantly for adolescents. When COVID-19 hit and social distancing became a harsh reality, the impact on face-to-face social interactions for teens was devastating. These factors have significantly impacted an already serious deficit of empathy and compassion among teens. Notably, those with substance use disorder (SUD), as well as many mental health diagnoses, have even greater deficits in empathy for others.
Research has demonstrated the deficits of empathy across the board for those with SUD. To combat these deficits, studies are looking at empathy as a potential preventative measure against substance abuse. Data suggests that those who show empathy and consideration for others are significantly less likely to use drugs or alcohol. In other words, teaching teens to have empathy and compassion for others could help maintain recovery and prevent relapse.
Healthcare workers have been increasingly encouraged to treat patients with compassion over the years. Research has shown that compassion greatly improves the outcome of both patient satisfaction and quality of care, improving the healing process. Within the mental healthcare industry, compassion has also been emphasized as a significant factor in the healing process. Patients respond drastically better to compassionate care.
Modeling compassion for clients is important in the healing process, as well. Teens in treatment for substance use or mental health disorders can learn empathy for others and to treat others with compassion as part of their healing process. However, learning self-compassion is also an essential tool for healing.
Self-compassion has many healing benefits in recovery. Compassion is essential in healing self-esteem and improving overall mental health and well-being. Within the recovery process, self-compassion also helps overcome self-criticism and negative thoughts and fight against stress, anxiety, and depression. This, in turn, leads to improved success in sustaining recovery and can even help to protect against future substance use.
Compassion focused therapy (CFT) has become more commonly used to help counteract the shame and guilt so commonly associated with substance abuse and trauma. By helping teens focus on self-compassion, they learn to counteract their negative thought processes. They can then replace negative thoughts with positive, compassionate, self-soothing thoughts to improve emotional regulation. By offering treatment that is compassion-based, teens learn skills that help them not only in the present but in their future as well. As they learn compassion for themselves, they can then learn empathy and consideration for others.
Teens often struggle to see outside of their own myopic perspective. Helping teens relate to and understand how others are feeling and then exercising compassion toward them may seem impossible. However, teens can learn from positive role models what it looks like to be empathetic and compassionate. They can learn to be present and listen to others and learn what it means to actually hear what people say. Having empathy and compassion modeled to them and being heard will help them understand the value of learning these skills.
When teens witness or experience empathy and compassion themselves, they are far more likely to extend compassion to others. Understanding the value that empathy and compassion can bring to the recovery process can help inspire teens to work harder to learn compassion for both themselves and others. As they learn to understand the value that extending compassion to others has, they will work harder to initiate the chain reaction of compassion in their lives.
As teens in recovery learn empathy and compassion, they may also learn to enjoy giving compassion and empathy to others. Practicing compassion is the best way to understand the power it has and the strength it can give to teens while in recovery. As the body heals physically, compassion can help heal mentally.
Teaching teens empathy and compassion in recovery can help in their healing process. Learning compassion and empathy can also serve as a proactive relapse prevention technique. In addition, helping teens discover empathy and compassion for others can create a ripple effect of compassion in the lives of those around them. Sustain Recovery is an extended residential treatment program for adolescents with addiction or co-occurring mental health diagnoses. We help teens discover and heal from the deep-rooted problems that lead to the outward behaviors of addiction. Our Irvine, California, facility helps to connect teens to resources in their area to promote sustained recovery. Contact us at (949) 407-9052 to learn more about our program.
The people at Sustain Recovery are truly passionate about their work. They put all their love, energy and spiritual strength in to it. They continue to support me today as I continue my ongoing journey in my personal recovery. I now have over a year of sobriety, my own apartment, a job, true friends and a support network that is always available to me. Although all that stuff is great, what matters most today is that I love myself and have the ability to love others. Thank you to all who had a hand and heart in Sustain Recovery
Feelings of Common Humanity: Much of self-compassion is rooted in Buddhist philosophy. This mindset encourages us to remember that suffering is a common feature of humanity. We will all lose a loved one, and many of us will struggle with addiction or other problems. This is a part of life. Adopting a broader perspective helps to lessen feelings of loneliness when times are tough.
Mindfulness: Many treatment centers provide lessons about mindfulness to those in early recovery. This approach can be helpful for those seeking to find their center, calm down, and change their mindset in the midst of a crisis. We recommend practicing a self-compassion meditation whenever you need some distance from overwhelming emotions.
Just as it is important to identify your triggers, it is also essential to avoid the people or places that used to enable your past substance abuse habits. Enablers are typically people who do not support your sobriety or recovery journey. They might be individuals who sell or still use heroin themselves or those who do not take your recovery seriously.
Conclusions: The internal process of self-to-self relating contributed to 2 maintenance cycles: self-criticism maintained distressing experiences of psychosis and compassionate self-acceptance resulted in empowered action and promoted recovery and growth. The dual process of acceptance and change in relationship to self was central to recovery.
Self-compassion helps us better understand ourselves and our suffering. This awareness has proven to reduce anxiety and depression. This is why self-compassionate people know they need to take extra care of themselves in difficult times.
Whether you keep an affirmation journal or listen to a guided self-compassion meditation you should make yourself a priority. Next time something goes wrong, pause before letting your inner critic take control and think about how you can show yourself loving kindness.
Tolerance, compassion, and giving back to the recovery community will help you on your path toward progress. At this point in your addiction recovery, you probably know that you cannot make the journey alone; this is especially true if you have completed an addiction treatment program.
If you are attending meetings, then you have seen men and women working together to keep their diseases at bay. You have probably also seen countless acts of compassion like people with more time extending their hand to the newcomer. Making those with short lengths of sobriety feel welcome and safe increases the likelihood that they will stick around.
Men and women working a program learn the value of compassion and tolerance towards others. They also understand that they must show the same to themselves; people who beat up on themselves for making mistakes or the wreckage of their past have trouble staying the course.
There is a saying in the rooms, look for similarities, not differences between you and your peers. It is exponentially more comfortable to be compassionate and tolerant of others if you adhere to the above principle.
If you struggle to show yourself compassion, you have come to the right place. In this piece, we will provide several excellent resources, helpful exercises, and information-packed worksheets to help you develop, maintain, and regularly practice self-compassion.
Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our 3 Self-Compassion Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself, but also give you the tools to help your clients, students, or employees show more compassion to themselves.
These self-compassion exercises come from the brilliant mind of the leading expert on self-compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff (n.d.). Read on to learn about six of her best exercises for enhancing your self-compassion.
Note how you feel when you think about it. Notice the emotions that come up, and let yourself experience them. We are so often desperate to avoid feeling anything negative, but negative feelings are an inherent part of life. Additionally, negative feelings can often provoke positive outcomes, like self-compassion. 2ff7e9595c
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