Tips 3-5 to Repairing Relationships after Rehab

Tip #3: Be Active and Intentional

Relationships suffer when people are not active within them. When you were using, family and friends became secondary to your drug of choice, and you were not as active in your relationships. If your marriage was damaged because of your absence or neglect, take the opportunity to spend more time with your spouse. If your relationship with your kids was minimized, take time to get involved in their lives and their interests. Show up for the baseball practice. Make surprise dinner reservations. Leave a handwritten card on the countertop. Be intentional.

Tip #4: Attend Meetings

Getting involved in 12-Step groups and outpatient treatment after rehab shows that you are serious about your sobriety – which you should be. Attending meetings will also help you to connect with others going through the same process of repairing relationships after addiction. Support or advice from others in the same situation can go a long way – and keep you on track.

Tip #5: Don’t Expect an Immediate Change – and Be Prepared for Resistance

It’s important to remember your friends, family, and colleagues didn’t go to rehab and didn’t have the same opportunity you had to heal themselves. While you were in treatment and recovering, they continued living the same way they did when you left. Just as healing at rehab took time for you, repairing relationships will take time for them. Don’t be surprised or offended when you are met with hesitation or resistance, and those around you don’t believe what you say, or don’t trust your actions. Be patient and realize that it will take time to earn their trust again. This patience and your ability to stay humble throughout the process will make it easier.

Unfortunately, not every relationship will fully recover. In some circumstances, the resentment held towards you may run too deep, and the friendship, marriage or relationship may not be salvageable. While this is a hard truth, it shouldn’t discourage you. Repairing the connection with those you love and care for will take hard work and time – and in the end will help you stay on your path to recovery and committed to your new, sober life.

I hope these tips were on-time for you. We never said change was easy, but we did say it was necessary. Fear itself is the toughest obstacle in our path to change, with willingness and some solid guidance we can overcome fearful set-backs and actually recover!

Come back next Sunday evening for my blog post on "The Five Ways Gratitude Can Change Your Life"!

Be well,

-Coach