What are life skills in addiction therapy?

Learning life skills is an essential part of recovery.

Those recovering from addiction must submit to significant control over their lives, and find the constant strength required to resist urges and temptation. Life skills can help them through this.

Life skills for addiction therapy offer an essential foundation and lifeline as part of recovery. They help the person recovering to regain control, confidence and self-belief. We have compiled a list of life skills for addicts that can support an addict on their road to recovery.

Life skills for addiction

Developing life skills for addiction enables those in recovery to function without reliance on substances, in society, as part of a community.

Examples covered within ANA’s life skills programme include:

• Practical living skills
• Sexual health
• Health and hygiene
• Education
• Self esteem
• Budgeting, shopping and cooking
• Housing and resettlement

Life skills are crucial, as they unlock a host of benefits to improve the following:

Self-sufficiency

Being addicted to substances can prevent someone from taking care of themselves. The life skills learnt as part of addiction recovery relate to self-sufficiency and independence, including:

• Personal hygiene
• Maintaining a healthy diet
• Financial management
• Daily essential skills

Emotional stability

While the use of substances could have, in the past, been used to self-medicate and control emotions, life skills can be taught that stabilise emotions without the need for substances.

Learning how to deal with stress practically and effectively is one of the many elements that are addressed as part of life skills during addiction recovery. This is an essential life skill which will help those in recovery not to cause any future harm to themselves.

Social interaction skills

Sometimes, while under the influence of substances, it is difficult to interact with others effectively, and hard to control negative emotions and talk to others in a positive, constructive way.

Therefore, re-learning how to socially interact is a key life skill as part of addiction recovery. This could include:

• Learning how to socially interact in groups or one to one
• Working on improving communication
• Mending broken relationships through healthy change

Discover more about the various types of life skills available at ANA here.

Contact ANA today

At ANA, we work closely with our clients to help rebuild their lives, to gain confidence and self-worth and to believe that they can live a healthy, responsible and productive life, free of addictive substances.

Contact ANA today, our friendly team is on hand and ready to help.