Relapse prevention strategies to manage an addiction to drugs or alcohol include working with adult counseling services to give you professional support in your journey. While you may have friends or family you can count on, a therapist is there to offer you professional guidance as you work through your addiction triggers and learn more about yourself. Counseling services will be recommended throughout your recovery as part of a strong relapse prevention program. While relapse in recovery may be common, preventing a relapse helps keep you sober for longer. When you work with a counselor, you get the help you need to work through tough situations and potentially avoid a relapse.

Learn Your Addiction Triggers

Addiction triggers are the things that lead you to abuse drugs or alcohol. When you don't understand what your triggers are, you are setting yourself up for a relapse. Once you work with adult counseling services, you will be able to identify what your triggers are and be able to avoid these triggers whenever possible. 

Discover Productive Coping Skills

Coping skills are learned over time and can make a big difference in your sobriety. When you drink or abuse drugs to cope with stress, this is a negative coping skill. When you learn more productive ways to deal with the hurdles you have in your life, it becomes easier for you to remain sober. To overcome an addiction, you must learn positive coping skills that allow you to heal from your addiction and improve your life.

Understand Why Counseling Matters

You might go to support groups in the community and talk to friends every day to get help. While this is a great way to manage your addiction, professional counseling is still important. You get the opportunity to focus only on your needs in therapy. Your counselor will work with you to uncover negative thought patterns and to establish more positive ways to think about your life. Counseling gives you the opportunity to look closely at your behavior and the reasons behind it. When you address your addiction and recovery through counseling, your chances of long term sobriety significantly increase.

Counseling is one of the top ways you can prevent a relapse when you are working on your sobriety. You can learn relapse prevention strategies from your counselor, and address old thought patterns that led to your addiction in the first place. Through support from your counselor, you can heal from an addiction.