Addiction Recovery Meditation | How Good Can It Get?

This meditation uses a practice from my PhD dissertation that seeks to prevent relapse and inspire hope for the future. It can be used at any stage of the recovery process, and I hope it provides a sense of self-compassion. It is called Episodic Retrospection-Episodic Future Thinking (ER-EFT).

Transcript

Okay, Welcome to a new type of meditation. This is a sort of addiction recovery focused meditation, And it's actually something that I'm developing for my PhD dissertation, Which seeks to understand and also prevent relapse into whatever sort of addiction people might be struggling with. So for starters, If you just want to arrive all at once, Let's just make a commitment for the next, I don't know, 10 minutes or so. We're just gonna be here and let everything else go. The hardest part of meditation or reflection is simply or reflection is simply getting here with your butt in the seat ready to go. So I want you to sit up straight, Comfortable but alert at the same time. I want you to begin with some deep intentional breathing. You don't need to count in your breath or do any fancy breathing tricks. I just want you to sort of breathe deeply until you feel your chest is comfortably full, A little deeper than you might normally breathe. And I want you to just let it fall out of you until it feels like there's nothing left to push out. Maybe focus on the sensation of the rising and the falling of your chest as you breathe. And let's just keep that deep breathing sort of central to the rest of the practice. Rest of the practice. As you continue to breathe, Feeling your butt on the seat, Feel those sensations, Feeling your feet on the ground, Feeling your hands and your arms, Your shoulders, Whatever sensory perception is alive for you and your body right now. Okay, Now as you continue to breathe, Feeling the rising and the falling of your chest, Just take a moment here to highlight what we're doing. Now this practice is best for people that are early on in their life. This is best for people that are early on in their addiction recovery journeys. But you could also do this if you've been in recovery for a while. Maybe this is too much information, But the name of this is something called EREFT. It stands for episodic retrospection and episodic future thinking. That sounds really fancy, I know, But I promise it's not. So just keep breathing, Arriving in your seat, And I'm just going to walk you through a guided reflection. Now the first part of this is I want you to call to mind the last month or so of your struggle with addiction. It could be any kind of addiction, Different substances, It could be a process addiction like gambling or sex addiction or whatever. And I want you to call to mind the feelings of frustration or difficulty or self-judgment that you had just in that last month. What was it like in that last month? Now I understand that recalling this can be difficult, So I want to point you in the right direction here. We're going to recall these memories of that last month of use or addiction. We're going to recall that last month with a sense of compassion for that person that you were when you were going through that. What did it feel like? Did that person want to be doing that, Or was there some part of you that wanted to transcend that suffering? I want you to look back towards that person that you were in that final month of using. This could have been a while ago, It could have been last week. I want you to sort of reflect back on that person and look towards them with a sense of care and understanding, Compassion. Understanding that that person was doing the best that they could at the time with the tools that they had. This is not an opportunity or an invocation for self-judgment. I think we do that enough. If you want to place your hand on your heart, Maybe send that person that you were, Send them a prayer of warmth, Of forgiveness, Of understanding. Maybe send them understanding and forgiveness and compassion. That maybe they didn't receive at the time that they really needed. I want you to keep breathing into this sense of sort of being with that person, Forgiving that person even. And continue to let your chest rise and fall organically as you reflect that understanding and love and forgiveness back at that person. You're here now. Now you're here. Regardless of how far in your journey into recovery, Regardless of how far you are, You're here now and something has awakened you enough. There's some part of you that wants to recover and heal enough that brought you here now doing this meditation. That is a gift. And receive that gift. Feel and be with and recognize the gift of being here now, Having made some sort of decision to move towards repair. Like I said, Sometimes for me, I like to place a hand on my heart to demonstrate my intention to be with myself. Now we're gonna slowly sort of shift our perception from the past out into the future now. Now, Regardless of how far you are in your recovery process, You're here now. Now, Regardless of how far you are in your recovery process, I want you to imagine the future self that you might be in two years time or three years time or even 10 years time. I want you to project out into the future and maybe answer a question. The question is, How good could it get for me? How far towards self-actualization and personal growth could I get? What is the best possible outcome for me in the next two or five or even 10 years? Where would you be? Who would you be with? What would you be doing? Maybe there's relationships that would be repaired. Maybe there's a skill that you have that you could hone now that you're focused on recovery. Maybe there's a vocation or a hobby or a job that you've always wanted to do, Has always called to you and you could never do it before. How good could it get? I want you to breathe into this question of how good can it get? Somewhere inside of you, There's likely an answer to that question. I want you to walk yourself through that. Be specific. Where are you? What does it smell like? What does it look like? How are you spending your days? How might you have changed? Just continue to breathe into that for a minute. We're going to wrap up here soon. We're going to wrap up here soon. Now, In closing, What we're trying to accomplish today is to expand the temporal window, Meaning we want to have an honest and compassionate reflection of the past. But we also want to have an honest and inspiring projection towards the future while also honoring the gift of today. Being here today, Being in recovery today, Making a commitment to ourselves and to our future selves today. Lastly, As you come sort of back to your senses, As this practice ends, We're going to move forward into our day behaving in such a way that that future self that we imagine might be, I don't know, A little closer, A little more possible. We conduct ourselves today in such a way that we know that we're moving toward that North Star. And what is that going to look like for you today? In your relationships, At work, In recovery, Whatever. Make a commitment to yourself to just try to realize your highest self today. Okay, Well that was a interesting experiment. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for stopping by my channel. We'll see you next time.

Reviews

One of the best recovery meditations I've heard in a while.