Alcohol can affect people in a variety of ways. For many, it can change how they think and feel about themselves. Alcohol can have a variety of effects on a person’s self-awareness. With proper addiction treatment, self-awareness can be re-established in an individual. If you or a loved one is currently struggling with alcohol addiction, our team is ready to help.
At Bonfire Behavioral Health, our alcohol addiction treatment program provides comprehensive care for people ready to make a positive change in their lives. Learn more about how we can help you or someone you care about get back on the right track when you call 603.617.4815 or complete our online form.
Understanding Self-Awareness
Defining self-awareness can be challenging. The easiest way to consider self-awareness of alcohol addiction is to recognize what it is not. The opposite of being self-aware is often characterized as denial. Many people in active addiction are in denial about their condition, especially with a legal and normalized substance such as alcohol.
Having low levels of self-esteem is often characterized by:
- Bullying others or frequent teasing
- Making excuses
- Acting defensive
- Being controlling
- Changing behaviors suddenly
- Behaving passive-aggressively
- Displaying egotism or arrogance
While lacking self-awareness can affect your relationships and career, it can also make recovery incredibly difficult. When alcohol addiction and a lack of self-awareness are combined, it becomes easier for an individual to get lost in their addiction.
Self-Awareness and Addiction
People who are notably self-aware often have somewhat control over their well-being within specific parameters such as their emotions, thoughts, sensations, and behavioral patterns. Being self-aware can make a person aware of situations in which they may be either triggered or motivated. When somebody has self-awareness of their alcohol addiction, they are more likely to recover quickly. Alcohol tends to either heighten or dull a person’s emotions or feelings, meaning they may not be able to accurately assess their behaviors or emotions.
When somebody is suffering from an addiction, they experience dysfunction within the part of their brain that controls their self-awareness. As a result, drug and alcohol addictions can reduce self-awareness of alcohol abuse.
Responding to Treatment
An extremely critical component of alcohol addiction recovery involves working to rebuild an individual’s self-awareness. This can be done by identifying certain behavioral patterns, negative thoughts, and false assumptions that would lead to alcohol use. Once these issues are detected in treatments and therapies, a person can begin working on developing coping mechanisms to change their behavior. Self-awareness often helps prevent the recurrence of the use of alcohol.
Increasing Self-Awareness
Individuals in recovery are encouraged to work on their self-awareness in several different ways. Both individual and group therapy allow patients to generate ideas on how they can make positive changes in their lives. Many patients keep journals, practice self-talk conditioning, or engage in programs such as music therapy to connect them to their feelings and thoughts.
Boosting self-awareness can take time, but there are small steps you can add to your routine to help:
- The first step toward identifying undesirable behavior is making time for self-reflection. Try and spend a couple of minutes at the end of the day reflecting on your decisions and conversations.
- Attempt to understand your own emotions and where they come from. Why are you reacting this way? Does it have to do with alcohol?
- Pay attention to your responses or reactions throughout situations.
- Notice your thoughts so you can pause and plan appropriate responses instead of letting your thoughts speak for you.
- Ask those close to you for feedback. Our loved ones often notice things about ourselves that we do not.
If somebody you know is struggling with alcohol abuse, lecturing them will not do any good. Only when they can see alcohol’s effects on self-awareness at Bonfire Behavioral Health will they start to understand the changes they need to make.
Become Aware of Alcohol Effects on Self-Awareness at Bonfire Behavioral Health
Recognizing the alcohol effects on self-awareness is the first step on your road to recovery. Reach out to one of our healthcare professionals online or at 603.617.4815 to discuss alcohol treatment options with Bonfire Behavioral Health.
