Louis D Gonzales Ph D

You are not your thoughts Louis D Gonzales Ph D

This book has been developed with recovery persons in mind who have graduated from treatment and are committed to a life of sobriety. They may be feeling defeated and stuck in a realm of irrational thoughts and beliefs accumulated over months or years of addiction. "You Are Not Your Thoughts" will give you an arsenal of basic tools to help you beat a range of emotional challenges (stinky thinking) faced in early recovery. It will help you come to the realization that lasting change is really possible; the tools needed to endure a commitment to a new lifestyle; how to challenge and defeat personal and mental obstacles and stay on course. Recovery is a life-long endeavor; something that a person will need to continue to work hard on for the rest of their life to guard against relapse. This self-guide serves as a useful jumping off point; a supplement to better understand your particular challenges and how to battle them while in early recovery. Our self-guided five-point approach is simple: it consists of five, time-tested mental strategies for re-aligning or restructuring your faulty thinking and beliefs which have been ingrained in your subconscious: 1. Self-Talk in recovery: Positive inner dialogues are important in the recovery process and can have a great impact on your self-confidence and motivation to stay on track. 2. Cognitive Restructuring techniques: A branch of CBT and a solutions-focused way of challenging our faulty thinking and beliefs. It focuses on the present situation with the goal of problem-solving. It is a way of "talking through" a challenge relating to general anxiety issues in recovery and life. 3. Anger Avoidance While in Recovery: Anger is a major contributor to relapse. People who are recovering from addictive disorders deal with anger issues in more deeper and overt ways. It is important for persons in recovery to learn basic emotional regulation skills. 4. Intentional Inquiry: Challenging our motives and beliefs through solutions-focused self-questioning techniques. It is a useful method for providing yourself direct, reality-oriented feedback about the decisions you are making regarding your feelings, responses, and behaviors while in early recovery. 5. Whole Life Recovery: A practical means of living a self-directed life. Our coaching philosophy surrounds our belief that recovery comes through achieving and maintaining a healthier state of mind, body and spirit and nurturing those life elements so as to achieve a transformation. This small book works because it it easy to understand, practical, and can be done alone.