These strange times offer the recovery community new ways to explore fundamental lessons in acceptance, service, support, and selflessness. 

The challenges we face during the coronavirus pandemic are—in many ways—no different from the challenges we face everyday in recovery. They are just new permutations of the old problems and lessons we must grapple with as people committed to living life free from addiction. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is offering the addiction treatment community new opportunities for growth and novel “teachable moments” to share with our patients and their families. While some of these lessons are difficult to move through, the good news is that these challenges will make our patients stronger and more resilient in their recovery than ever before.  

Today, we’ll look at what the coronavirus can teach us about acceptance and learn how we can incorporate this lesson into any pre-existing addiction treatment program quickly and easily.

Acceptance and the Coronavirus

It’s safe to say that everyone around the globe wishes that the COVID-19 pandemic would just go away. The consequences of the virus and the economic and social fallout that goes along with it are scary, destabilizing, and unpredictable. 

We have seen many people go through phases of denial around the virus, despite overwhelming evidence that the virus is, indeed, real and dangerous. It is natural to resist unpleasant and distressing information. Denial is our brain’s way of protecting us from realities that we’re not prepared to deal with so that we can continue to survive despite being exposed to information that might otherwise incapacitate us. 

Acceptance and Addiction

People with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) always begin their recovery journey in the denial phase, where they are experiencing negative consequences as a result of their substance use but are not yet ready to admit to themselves or others that they have a problem. 

The opposite of denial is acceptance. We place a lot of focus on acceptance in addiction treatment programs—and for good reason. Acceptance as a general concept—and especially as a daily practice—can be very difficult for people in recovery. When addiction feeds an over-reliance of denial and escapism, it takes time and effort to learn how to “just be” with negative and distressing emotions, events, and information.  

During the recovery process, we encounter millions of opportunities to practice our acceptance skills. The COVID-19 pandemic is a great place for addiction treatment patients to practice acceptance.

How to Incorporate Coronavirus-Based Lessons in Acceptance into Your Addiction Treatment Program

Addiction treatment facilities and sober living homes around the country are making big changes to the way they do business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. New rules and protocols are often met with a degree of resistance with new and existing residents. 

If a resident doesn’t want to deal with new changes to safety protocols, it’s a great opportunity to remind them about the nature of acceptance. If residents are upset about limits on visitation, encourage them to think about the change in “recovery-positive” terms. The virus is an unfair, unavoidable, unwelcome disaster—to be sure—but it is also another lesson about how the only thing we can really control is how we choose to respond to uncontrollable things. 

We’re Here to Help During These Uncertain Times 

At BehaveHealth, we’re committed to continuing to serve the addiction treatment community for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic with the best industry-specific, all-in-one, cloud-based software solution available on the market. We know addiction treatment, and our tailor-made EHR, CRM, ERP, and RCM package proves it. 

During these uncertain times, you can use BehaveHealth’s platform to:

• Automatically screen new patients for infectious disease

• Schedule and assign cleaning and disinfection tasks

• Create all-staff incident reports

• Share easy-access test results for all patients 

We are continually updating our software with new features to help your addiction treatment business adapt to the COVID-19 situation. Claim your no-strings-attached free trial today so you can experience the BehaveHealth difference for yourself.