When your teen comes home from treatment, they are in the process of healing. Your teen has undergone many changes in treatment, including learning skills that make a significant difference in their life. However, while they have built a foundation of skills, they must continue to practice them at home. When your teen remains self-aware after treatment, they can continue to improve by having a clear understanding of themselves and what they need to heal. Treatment at Sustain Recovery can help your teen build a foundation of self-awareness and help you support your teen when they return home.
Self-Awareness in Treatment
In treatment for mental health challenges, addiction, or trauma, learning self-awareness is important. By improving self-awareness in treatment, your teen can make sustainable changes, build a community, and learn to care for their needs. However, as a parent, you know how challenging self-awareness can be for your teen.
Fortunately, at Sustain Recovery, your teen can learn and improve their self-awareness. Improving self-awareness in treatment occurs via two primary methods. First, with counseling, your teen will be asked to consider how they feel, what they think, and how they act. This can occur with direct questioning, which can help your teen to focus their attention on themselves. Improving self-awareness is part of individual counseling, family therapy, or group therapy.
Additionally, self-awareness can be learned as a part of other types of therapy. Through experiential therapy, for example, your teen will be in situations that help highlight their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Therefore, while they are not asked questions directly, they will improve their self-awareness through alternative therapies.
Helping Your Teen Stay Self-Aware After Treatment
Through treatment, your teen will learn how to be more self-aware. However, when they get home, it is natural to fall back into old patterns. Unfortunately, one of these might be patterns that discourage or inhibit their self-awareness. However, as a parent, you can help your teen to stay on track after treatment. By modeling self-awareness and guiding them through the process of maintaining awareness, you are in the ideal role to help your teen stay self-aware after treatment.
Demonstrating Self-Awareness
As a parent, you play an important role in your teen’s life. While you may not always see it, you are a role model for your teen. Many behaviors, including eating habits, lifestyle, and self-care, are mirrored based on your choices. While this does mean that your teen may struggle with similar related challenges as you, it also means that you can make a significant difference by modeling positive behaviors, including self-awareness.
Demonstrating self-awareness can be challenging, as much of self-awareness is internal. However, there are a few simple ways that you can help your teen see what your internal process is like. For example, try talking through your internal awareness with them. If you are fatigued, angry, or upset and choose not to attend a social event, for example, try explaining to them how you feel and how your self-awareness helped you to make the right choice for you.
Additionally, you can show your self-awareness to your teen in hard conversations. When discussing challenging topics, you are likely to find yourself upset. However, this is an ideal opportunity to show your teen that you are aware of your emotions. Identifying and stating your emotions helps your teen see how it can look for them to do the same.
Guiding Self-Awareness
While showing what self-awareness looks like and its benefits, it can also be helpful to guide your teen to continue to grow and maintain their self-awareness. Guiding self-awareness for your teen will often come in conversation – more specifically, through asking questions. Questions help to direct your teen to themselves. For example, consider a question like, “How does it feel when that happens?” These questions can spur your teen to consider themselves and, in doing so, improve their self-awareness.
Guiding your teen in any direction can be challenging. If you find that asking your teen questions is not helpful, that is okay. Another method of helping your teen is to help them without direct questions. Options could include using worksheets or books that they could do alone. Additionally, group therapy, teen groups, or individual therapy can all be a place where your teen can continue to stay self-aware after treatment. Encouraging them to attend one of these programs can make a significant difference for them.
When Your Teen Can Stay Self-Aware After Treatment
Going through treatment is the first step to healing. However, it is important that your teen continues to stay on the path after treatment. When your teen can stay self-aware after treatment, they are more likely to continue to learn and grow. Their improved self-awareness helps them to process their feelings, grow as an individual, and understand their continually shifting needs as they mature into an adult.
When a teen goes home from treatment, they will have an increased level of self-awareness. However, this can be challenging to maintain. As a parent, it can be challenging to help your teen continue to grow and heal. At Sustain Recovery, we understand this is very difficult. Therefore, we offer family therapy – for the entire family to heal – and a treatment program that will send you and your teen home with a plan after treatment. If your teen is struggling with mental health challenges, addiction, or a history of trauma, we can help. Call us today at (949) 407-9052 to learn more about our treatment programs and how we can help your teen build a foundation for their future.
