One of the most significant issues people face after they leave drug and alcohol treatment programs is the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Starting over with sobriety is a profound life change, one that often means changing your friends, starting new relationships, picking a new job or educational path, and perhaps even a new living environment.
All of these changes mean individuals are at a high risk of stress, anxiety, and depression from those challenges.
A peer mentoring program can provide actionable support from another individual who can keep you on task when you are setting and achieving goals or help you find clarity when you feel overwhelmed.
Benefits of a Peer Mentoring Program
You can find many benefits from a peer mentoring program depending on where you are in your recovery journey and what it is you are trying to achieve.
Support
At some points in your recovery journey, you might find that there is limited support for the decisions you have made or the changes you are implementing. It can feel very isolating to be in this position, but a peer mentoring program can provide a cornerstone in your recovery through support.
This support can seem inconsequential at first, but it provides many benefits. When you don’t have other people you can turn to for advice, sometimes, you simply need to hear from a trained professional rather than a friend or family member who wants to help but isn’t quite sure how to do so.
Positive Thinking
There are times when a peer mentoring program helps you stay positive when things seem very bleak. This might include focusing on the things that you’re good at and writing down your skills or abilities. During your sessions, you might have someone encourage you to reflect on positive traits such as compassion, patience, or good organization skills, and what parts of the day you feel confident tackling.
Focusing on these positive things can help you set yourself up for better success when dealing with things that might be otherwise overwhelming.
Set Goals
In some cases, you might benefit from a peer mentoring program if you are trying to make significant changes or you are undergoing a challenging circumstance that requires changes you were unprepared to take.
In these situations, peer mentorship and support can help you break down your goals, decide what action you want to take, and use things like cognitive behavioral therapy activities to avoid getting overwhelmed.
Reflect
Sometimes, a peer mentoring program can provide virtual mental health services, offering help by encouraging reflection when times are overwhelming. It’s not uncommon to feel completely overwhelmed at times and to think that you might not get out of this particular situation or be able to overcome certain feelings.
However, a peer mentoring program helps hold you accountable by reminding you to reflect on other difficulties that you have overcome in the past, particularly what things you had to change or how you were able to overcome them by breaking down your goals into manageable chunks.
From there you’ll be able to discuss what lessons you learned from that and how you might be able to apply those previous achievements moving forward.
Starting a Peer Mentoring Program
With Aligned Living, you can participate in personalized remote peer mentoring programs to help you with your addiction recovery and subsequent mental health disorders or daily challenges like stress, anxiety, and depression.
We provide a wide range of services, such as individual addiction recovery coaching, family support, and life skills training. Our online recovery programs are designed as a form of aftercare, something that can be helpful for anyone, no matter where they are in their recovery journey.
You don’t need to have just completed an inpatient program to take advantage of a peer mentoring program. Peer mentoring is something that many people find they are lacking at various points in their recovery journey, something that can suddenly prove supportive or helpful, particularly during difficult times.
We work hard to personalize our peer mentoring programs with a lot of flexibility in terms of the type or length of your outreach, varying from things like 1 hour each week like traditional therapy to a short 15-minute check-in 3 days per week. We work with you to find the plan that is best for your unique needs.
To learn more about our peer mentoring program, call our team today.