Self-Compassion is Essential for Pregnant Women to Heal From Addiction
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Addiction is a disease that is overwhelming and can cause a variety of challenges. Paired with pregnancy makes the experience even more difficult. As a result, when pregnant women are addicted to drugs or alcohol, they often feel confused and overloaded. However, recovering is vital for both themselves and their child. Treatment at Reviving You Recovery incorporates self-compassion. For pregnant women to heal from addiction, they need to learn self-compassion. Self-compassion serves as an essential tool for pregnant women to get through the shame and embarrassment surrounding addiction and truly make changes that give them a chance to change moving forward.
Addiction and Pregnancy: Negative Emotions
Pregnant women struggling with addiction experience many emotions. These emotions are a result of the hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy. However, they are also a result of the changes in the brain that are a result of addiction. In addition, pregnant women with addiction experience a significant amount of stigma. The stigma surrounding addiction and pregnancy creates negative emotions such as shame or embarrassment.
While pregnant women struggling with addiction may know they need to change, shame and embarrassment are two emotions that can lead them to not admit they have a problem and that they need help. This is due to the reluctance to accept that they are struggling and the scope of the problems they are having. These negative emotions are normal and often are a part of the healing process. However, when left unprocessed, they can become a serious challenge for pregnant women.
Awareness Helps Pregnant Women Heal
Fortunately, awareness helps pregnant women heal. Therefore, treatment at Reviving You Recovery for pregnant women includes modalities that improve awareness. These include mindfulness, breathwork, and more. All of these help pregnant women to get in touch with themselves. They learn to identify and allow themselves to feel how they feel, including negative emotions and thought patterns.
Self-awareness helps pregnant women be successful in treatment. When a pregnant woman improves her self-awareness, she learns about her feelings, thoughts, and patterns. With this level of self-understanding, she learns what has played a role in her challenges with addiction. In addition, this knowledge helps her make changes that are effective and long-lasting.
Developing Self-Compassion
Building awareness is important for pregnant women to make changes and learn new skills. One of these skills is self-compassion. Self-compassion is the ability of a person to forgive themselves. This includes being compassionate to themselves regarding perceived failures, suffering, and challenges that they have had. For pregnant women, this often includes being kind to themselves regarding their challenges with addiction before and during pregnancy.
Self-compassion is a pattern of how a person interacts with themselves. Therefore, it is highly internal. When a pregnant woman is developing self-compassion, they are learning a new internal process. This process involves many steps that they repeat continuously: awareness, understanding, and kindness.
The concept of self-compassion is not complex. However, the process of developing self-compassion is not easy. For pregnant women to develop self-compassion, they must first see where they lack self-compassion. This may include thoughts and feelings such as shame or guilt. Then, with awareness and guidance from a treatment center, pregnant women begin to learn how they can be kind to themselves.
Self-Compassion Helps Pregnant Women Heal
Shame and embarrassment foster negative thoughts and feelings about the self. They are patterns of self-blame and anger directed at the self. For pregnant women struggling with addiction, these patterns are common. However, self-blame and anger do not help pregnant women change and heal. Instead, it often keeps them in a cycle of negative emotions and substance abuse. When a pregnant woman feels these negative emotions, she is less likely to admit to her challenges, face them, and truly make changes in her life.
Fortunately, self-compassion can help pregnant women heal from addiction. Self-compassion provides pregnant women with an internal process that is forgiving, kind, and open to changes in the future. When a pregnant woman develops self-compassion, she can face herself. As a result, she can truly look at what has been a part of developing and maintaining her challenges with addiction. When she does this, she has the opportunity to make changes in herself and her life that will make a long-term difference in her life.
While self-compassion helps pregnant women make changes in their lives, it also helps them heal from their past struggles with addiction. This is because healing requires individuals to move forward. When pregnant women cannot forgive themselves and be compassionate to themselves, they can not truly move on. They will always be stuck with the sinking guilt or shame regarding their addiction. However, through self-compassion, pregnant women can take steps into a new life. As a result, they can build a new and better life that helps both themselves and their child thrive.
When a woman is pregnant and struggling with addiction, she commonly feels shame and embarrassment. While this is normal, it is not helpful in the healing process. At Reviving You Recovery, women are taught to improve their self-awareness, which helps them build self-compassion. As a result, pregnant women at Reviving You Recovery not only receive top-of-line physical care through detox but also mental and emotional care that sets them up for success after treatment. With self-compassion, pregnant women can learn to build a new and improved life for themselves and their children. To learn more about our treatment program for pregnant women struggling with addiction at Reviving You Recovery, call us today at (951) 723-7598.