Mental blocks can stop you in your tracks and eliminate any progress you planned to make. They leave you feeling stuck, unmotivated, and less engaged. This can hurt your relationships, work, and self-esteem. We at Spero Recovery want to teach you ways to work through these blocks and help prevent them in the future.
What Is a Mental Block?
A mental block stops you from being productive, motivated, and present in your day-to-day life. They can make you less engaged at work, at home, and in your recovery journey. This can prevent you from making progress in your recovery and potentially lead to setbacks if left unresolved.
Reasons Behind Mental Blocks
Multiple factors can cause mental blocks. This can include things like:
Clutter
Working in a cluttered environment can increase stress levels and leave you feeling unorganized and scattered. These negative feelings can lead you to feel overwhelmed and unable to move through the tasks you need to.
This can also include mental clutter. Mental clutter is when you think about too many different things simultaneously. For example, creating a mental grocery list while thinking about what you need to do for your upcoming work project and when you will find time to sleep, exercise, cook, and socialize. Not focusing on one thing at a time can lead to mental fatigue and mental blocks.
Sleep Problems
Difficulty falling and staying asleep can lead to feelings of fatigue and exhaustion. These feelings can make it harder for you to concentrate and be present. It can also lead to mood swings which can hurt your work, family, friend, and romantic relationships.
Eating Habits
Poor eating habits can prevent you from getting the necessary nutrients your body needs to function. This includes vitamins like B12, which decreased levels can result in feelings of depression, fogginess, and memory loss. Having a balanced diet ensures that you are getting what your body needs to function and thrive.
Substance Use
Alcohol and drug use can have harmful effects on your health and wellness. These effects can include mental blocks, fogginess, and feeling stuck in your body. Substance use can also have negative consequences in other aspects of your life, increasing feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression. The negative emotions can start a dangerous cycle of substance use being used as a coping mechanism.
How Can Mental Blocks Hurt My Recovery?
Mental blocks can hurt your recovery because they stop you from being productive and can leave you stuck in the same place. They make it harder for you to stay motivated to continue, which can lead to relapse. Your recovery journey takes a lot of time, effort, and accountability. Suffering from mental blocks prevents you from being able to do what you need to.
Techniques to Work Through Mental Blocks
You don’t have to stay stuck. There are different techniques you can try to work through your mental blocks. Some ways include:
Journaling
Making a record of your thoughts and emotions can help you visualize what you are trying to work through. You can use journaling to process how events are making you feel if you are putting too much on your plate and help you refocus on what is essential.
It can also be used as a way to get the negative and false thoughts out of your head so that you can adequately dissect them. This helps you see them for what they are and can prevent you from focusing on them. You won’t feel overwhelmed by the negativity, which can stop a mental block from happening. Recognizing these negativities and the situations you experience them in can help you avoid those situations that could act as triggers for relapse.
Mindfulness
A form of meditation that helps you focus on the present in an unbiased open-minded way is mindfulness. This technique can help you break down your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to see how they all coincide. Breaking down your thought processes and behaviors this way can help you understand why others are responding to you a certain way and help you determine an appropriate response to the situation.
The practice of mindfulness can help you destress, recenter yourself, and give you a new way to view an obstacle. This view can help you work through the problem and break through your mental block. It can help you move on to the next step of your recovery journey and back to the path of long-term sobriety.
Get Organized
Organizing your thoughts, tasks, and workspace can all help you break through mental blocks. Breaking more significant projects up into smaller ones can help you have small attainable goals to reach, giving you a sense of accomplishment and motivation to complete the next task. 12-Step based recovery programs, like the one Spero Recovery runs, can help you start and continue your recovery journey because they break the process down into separate tasks.
Mental blocks can be a significant hindrance in many aspects of your life, especially your recovery. They prevent you from making progress and working through the steps of your recovery journey. You can hurt your work life, relationships, and self-image. They do this by distancing you from the things you care about and negatively impacting the way you think and feel. If you feel like you are struggling to work through mental blocks during your recovery journey, reach out to Spero Recovery at (303) 351-7888 for more information today. We understand the difficulty that can come from experiencing mental blocks and want to help you get back on track to where you want to be.
