How nature helps you coping with Addiction
Mother Nature is powerful enough to heal wounded souls. Most people who have spent time outdoors with nature have noticed a positive change in their body, mind, and soul. It can help people with mental health issues addiction as well. Below are six ways elaborated by eco-psychologist to help you cope up with addiction and enhance your immunity.
Supports Mental Health
Studies prove that people suffering from mental issues like anxiety and depression get easily addicted. Engaging in outdoor activities, people experience fewer depressive symptoms. Patients abuse drugs and alcohol unintentionally to self-medicate themselves because most of them are underdiagnosed or undiagnosed.
The underlying cause of mental issues fuel addiction can be addressed long term sobriety. People are stressed by their challenges, issues, pressures, and they cannot see beyond their struggles. Nature can ease those mental illnesses and addictions. When we are in stress, it’s really had to get out it from our heads. However, the beauty of nature supports the process. Nature gives the advantage of a broader perspective of thoughts than a narrow horizon which looms in our stress mode.
Accessible Medicine
Nature is the medicine that is free to offer and accessible to everyone. There are countless ways to get the love and blessings of Mother Nature. It’s all about developing a connection with your soul there. You can even explore the mortality and life cycle via changing forms of plants and animals. People can relax in such a manner that gives freedom to their imaginations. The peace can be achieved by activities including; finding a stone of an unusual shape or leaves of rare markings and use them to meditate.
Encourage others to try to include nature into your routine lives in every aspect you can to help them. Find a restful image, view a photo of nature, and pull over a ride to the river bank, a journal for gratitude, sit at a side and stare to the ocean, all of the above exercises are great for meditation. Moreover, pay attention to the aromas and textures of the mesmerizing beauties. By this, if Mother Nature may not cure your addiction, at least it can provide you with an absolute transformative and quality benefit that may immerse in the journey f your recovery.
Soothes Troubled Souls
Factually, most of the successful and productive rehabilitation centers are located near beaches, rivers, forests, or mountains. The reason is, sprawling greens, cascading mountains, flowing water and tree-lined acres serve as a soothing medium. Many pieces of research show that spending short stints of nature can reduce stress and calms our mind and body.
Especially for people with addiction and dependence, waking up to the inspiring view of nature serves better than a city view to overcoming drug and alcohol addiction. Eco-psychology blends the impact of psychological principles with ecological benefits to improve the healing mechanism of humans by connecting them to nature. This can help patients suffering not just from addiction, but from trauma, loss, abuse, anxiety, and depression.
“People naturally feel a peak experience of calmness when they connect themselves to nature by viewing it or spending time in it. When patients are taken to natural settings, they can get their minds and souls balanced.” (Dr. Ana Samson, Counseling Expert at Academist Help
Hence, troubles and stresses may not go away, but they can enjoy without thinking of them for a little longer. And this emotional balance helps them to rethink with a broader perspective; big things don’t just happen quickly; however, they do happen if you open the doorway to nature.
Connects to Something Bigger
Addiction can get you isolated because alcohol and drugs become your priority. Addiction can disconnect a person from its surroundings, and they often feel disconnected later on. Connecting with nature helps them to feel a more extensive existence and let them transcend words.
Mother Nature helps to make us realize that we are an essential color of the big picture of life. We are a necessary part of the great process going on. We are not just an individual in our lives; we are much more to the world. Walking in a park, hiking on a cliff or swimming to the chaos help them to open up to nature and communicate with ourselves.
Beyond just filling up our souls, nature incorporated some indigenous aspects to get us stable and sustained in our goals. From thousands of years, medicinal healing systems in alternative medicines have made us get out through many traumas. We can make ourselves more profound and balanced within touch to the environment, and it helps us to get through the issues in our life.
Undoubtedly, nature is nurturing. It’s like a relationship of true love. If we don’t pay attention, it may hurt us, and if we nurture it with life and care, it gives us more than taken. Humans must have mutual respect for nature. With this approach, reconnecting ourselves with nature can help us with a greater sense of purpose and offers a ground to cope up with every type of addiction. Hence, if you feel a need or urge to take care of nature, it will nurture you to promote your survival in a similar manner.
Teaches Coping Skills
To maintain the sobriety of life, addicts need to learn healthy habits to cope up with their dependencies. Meditation and mindfulness are the most successful methods that are used at most of the rehab centers to replace destructive behaviors. It can serve as the most critical skill for addicts.
For patients recovering from addiction, sobriety serves as an additional benefit that grounds them in a present moment. Spending time in nature with mindfulness can decrease stress on brains by elevating mood-lifting hormones. Being in nature can let us connect with the basics of a life cycle that circulates in every living thing and breaths in every living soul. Hence, get inspired by the movement of leaves, fragrance of flowers, sound of woods, and pay attention to the music they play.
Provides Natural High
Feeling HIGH naturally is proven to replace destructive behaviors and abusive habits. Outdoor activities and adventures give us a feeling of accomplishment, exhilaration, motivation, and trust. Self-defeating patterns encourage us to control our minds and help us to cope up with addictions effectively.
Hence, investing time in outdoor activities, not just liberate physical benefits but creates a spiritual connection with ourselves and others. Also, expose to healthy microbes that are present in soil boosts immunity and stimulate serotonin production in our brain, which is considered as a feel-good neurotransmitter.
Bottom Line
Lastly, the above benefits may be few to the vast advantages provided by Mother Nature. However, if connected with honest intention, it can give wonders to our mind, body, and soul.
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About The Author
Stella Lincoln is qualified in psychology and nutrition. She loves to travel and write. She owns a blog named Educator House. Currently, she is working as a Health & Psychology Expert at KingEssay UK.
