Among addiction’s most insidious abilities is its capacity to come between you and your loved ones. In recovery, you will need to find new ways to rebuild your relationships, including the foundation of trust that healthy relationships rest upon. Adventure therapy has emerged as a leading method for teaching people to trust others and themselves.
What Is Adventure Therapy?
Adventure therapy is a form of experiential therapy that helps people struggling with substance abuse and mental health disorders by allowing them to participate in various supervised “adventures.” Adventure therapy fundamentally relies on perceived risk, which requires participants to venture outside their typical comfort zones and collaborate to solve unique challenges.
Since teamwork helps participants improve their communication and problem-solving skills, these activities represent a significant aspect of adventure therapy. Furthermore, challenging you to do things you’ve never done before can stimulate your brain to form new pathways, boosting your creativity and teaching you that you have the capacity to overcome your perceived limitations.
Benefits of Adventure Therapy
Successfully recovering from a substance use disorder involves a willingness to unlearn harmful habits and replace them with healthy coping mechanisms. Changing your surroundings can be beneficial in sending yourself the unconscious message that you can overcome anything you put your mind to. Here are some of the many ways adventure therapy can improve your overall health.
- Being in nature: While some adventure therapy activities can take place indoors, many of them involve outdoor excursions to camp, hike, kayak, swim, spelunk or canoe. Spending time in nature can decrease your stress level and blood pressure and make you feel more empathetic toward others.
- Forming new memories: For many people, the experiences they have in adventure therapy are unlike anything they’ve ever done before. You can look back on your adventures with fondness years later. You may even wish to reunite with the friends you make in recovery for camping or hiking weekends.
- Enhancing self-esteem: Successfully solving problems with your adventure therapy group can make you a more confident person and empower you to make positive changes in your life. Thinking back to how you tackled challenges in adventure therapy might give you more insight into your thought processes and leadership skills.
- Embrace your vulnerabilities: If you’ve struggled to be open with others in the past, adventure therapy can help by putting you in situations where you must rely on those around you to succeed. Forcing you to trust your teammates and ask them for help will teach you the valuable lesson that you’re never alone in your journey toward recovery.
A Healing Sanctuary for Women
At Rising Roads Recovery, we offer substance abuse programming that addresses women’s unique needs in a compassionate environment. We offer a full continuum of care with individualized treatment planning that will help you address the underlying causes of your mental health challenges with a holistic approach. To learn more about the range of services we provide in our extended aftercare program, please reach out to us today.
