Unlock Emotional Freedom: EFT for Addiction Recovery at Hawaii Island Recovery

Addiction recovery at Hawaii Island Recovery is a holistic healing journey that addresses the symptoms and effects of addiction as well as the emotional, social, and spiritual needs beneath the surface. Finding the right combination of techniques and strategies for your healing is a personal journey. The emotional freedom technique, or EFT, is just one option that can support your transformed healing journey. 

EFT is a form of holistic therapy that can alleviate some of the stress and challenges of difficult emotions in your healing journey. While it is commonly used to address mental health disorders, it has also had success in managing the emotions of those overcoming substance abuse for a more resilient approach to sobriety. Emotional freedom techniques are practices that focus on negative feelings or stresses while tapping on specific points on the body while repeating positive affirmations to challenge stressful thoughts, memories, and their effects on the brain for improved emotional regulation, stress reduction, and improved agency in your daily life. 

Directed use of EFT can be a powerful resource for those overcoming addiction to drugs, alcohol, or any kind of addictive substance or addictive behavior. While EFT is not a replacement for other forms of therapy or education, it can still be an important element of effective treatment and supplement other strategies to create a more robust approach to your sober life, improve emotional resilience, and reduce stress. 

Emotional triggers can be difficult to navigate. For many, feelings of anxiety, fear, depression, stress, and anger can all be closely tied to the use of drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism. Experiences or stresses that bring these feelings, whether certain places, things, or even times of day, environment, or people, can all bring back these difficult emotions. With them can also come urges and cravings to reengage with addictive substances. EFT can help lessen the intensity of these emotional triggers while exploring your sobriety, helping navigate urges, and improving emotional resilience and agency in response to such challenges. 

Your history with substance abuse may also be tied to past traumatic experiences or PTSD affecting your mental health and behavior. EFT can empower you to process and release negative emotions to prevent them from building in the back of your mind. This approach can also be used alongside effective mindfulness practices to address trauma, flashbacks, and their emotional impact, and even address feelings of guilt, regret, or shame that may be related to past traumas in your healing journey. 

Relapse is a constant challenge in your sober journey. Hawaii Island Recovery begins each program by establishing a relapse prevention plan and continually making adjustments for sustainable sobriety throughout your healing journey from detox to residential, outpatient care, and beyond. EFT can provide a safe way to process difficult emotions that may otherwise affect your return to drugs or alcohol by improving emotional regulation and preventing you from reacting rashly to intense stresses.

EFT can be an effective, holistic part of your comprehensive treatment plan. Knowing not just how EFT can benefit your healing journey but also what to expect when engaging in EFT at Hawaii Island Recovery can empower you to deconstruct barriers and make the most of your healing efforts. EFT helps you identify personal stresses and then uses tapping strategies to process these stresses by releasing the energies that become blocked on the body’s meridian lines. It shares many goals similar to acupuncture, which is also available at Hawaii Island Recovery. Still, it is less invasive and can be implemented by yourself to address stress at any time in your recovery journey. 

EFT involves tapping on specified points on the body while focusing on distressing thoughts or stresses in a safe place. During EFT, practitioners are prompted to focus on a particular distressing thought, identifying the source of stress in their minds. Then, each person expresses a positive affirmation to challenge these stresses, both to accept the stress itself and also to process, contextualize, and relieve stress. 

Tapping specific points on the body to address stress, urges, cravings, and other emotional challenges in addiction recovery can seem or feel odd at first. However, it can have many benefits for those overcoming these challenges. First, focus on the meridian points of the body. These points include the top of the head, under the eye, under the nose, chin, collarbone, and the side of the hand, lightly tapping at a consistent tempo while focusing on stressful feelings and positive affirmations.

Using rhythmic taps can provide stress relief, giving the body something to focus on while the mind confronts feelings of stress. After tapping these key points, reaffirming positive thoughts and reassessing your emotional state is conducted, repeating the tapping process as necessary to release stress and reach a state of emotional calm. 

Specified points across the body are key tapping points and can serve as typical energy blockages as a result of stress or distressing or negative thoughts and experiences. Tapping these points while expressing positive affirmations can release blocked emotional energy, creating a feeling of stability and control and sending calming signals to the brain by releasing negative energies. 

At Hawaii Island Recovery, we embrace EFT as an option to empower you to create your own best practices, which can be explored during detox as well as a part of your long-term relapse prevention plan. Exploring EFT alongside other therapeutic options can create a truly holistic and sustainable approach to sobriety. 

While EFT can be effective in processing stress, urges, cravings, traumatic thoughts and experiences, and much more, it is not a replacement for other forms of therapy. It is best used as a supplementary strategy for an even more robust approach to holistic care. Continuing to engage in other evidence-based therapies, experiential therapies, or individual and group therapy options is still necessary.

However, combining EFT with other practices can further effective mindfulness practices, improving your awareness of body and mind by identifying changes in physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual distress, informing other coping strategies while providing effective support. Continuing to engage in other therapeutic options throughout your recovery journey alongside practicing EFT can be the best approach to sustainable and effective sobriety. 

Effective use of EFT at Hawaii Island Recovery can have a host of benefits in your recovery journey. While it may not be a technique that will be equally effective for everyone, it has had success in many areas throughout addiction treatment, including: 

EFT can also help address feelings of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain as they relate to substance use disorder (SUD). Releasing blocked energies and relieving these feelings of stress can also improve focus and energy levels, promoting effective engagement in other treatments and self-care and empowering you to pursue personal and professional goals beyond sobriety in your daily life. 

EFT is an effective approach to healing, blending proven strategies and calm with emotional and spiritual healing opportunities. Healing on the big island of Hawaii furthers these benefits of EFT, creating a place of serene calm and spiritual healing for those overcoming addiction. Engaging in nature-based healing opportunities, oceanic healing strategies, and local community outreach programs can all help you explore the natural and spiritual healing energies of Hawaii, furthering your spiritual healing and creating an environment that can reduce stress and promote self-exploration and calm throughout your healing journey. 

Research has suggested EFT can be an effective way of processing stress of many different kinds. However, your experiences can vary. Trained addiction and mental health professionals and dedicated peers are available to help you explore this option for yourself as a part of your effective healing journey. Hawaii Island Recovery is ready to personalize your healing journey from detox and residential care through continued outpatient and aftercare support, with EFT being just one option for effectively overcoming the disease. EFT, evidence-based care, and a myriad of experiential healing options make Hawaii Island Recovery the last call you have to make to begin your healing journey. 

EFT can be a great addition to your effective treatment plan for overcoming addiction, mental health disorders, and other challenges. Learn how we can incorporate EFT into your treatment plan by calling (866) 390-5070.