What Are Life Skills?
Life skills are social and behavioral skills one develops at different stages of life as they learn to maintain healthy emotional and physical actions, reactions, and interactions. Through extensive research, the World Health Organization (WHO) has arranged the basics of life skills education into ten core elements:
- Critical thinking
- Creative thinking
- Problem-solving
- Decision making
- Interpersonal relationships
- Effective communication
- Empathy
- Self-awareness
- Forming healthy coping strategies for stress
- Developing healthy coping strategies for emotions
With the ten core elements of basic life skills, women can start forming the strategies and techniques necessary to create healthier behaviors and patterns for the life they want and deserve.
Why Are Life Skills Important?
The core elements of life skills are essential to a persons ability to learn, grow, and change as they engage with the world.
When life feels overwhelming, we rely on your life skills to cope with and grow through life’s stressors.
According to research published by the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, building life skills means effectively coping with internal and external stressors to lead a productive and healthy life. Essential life skills can range from daily habits to lifelong behaviors, values, and beliefs.
Some examples of the role life skills play in a woman’s life include:
- Hygiene routine
- Sleep routine
- Household chores
- Maintaining a job
- Keeping a schedule
- Making appointments
- Knowing how to budget
- Organizing finances
- Listening and communication
- Healthy expressions of emotions
Developing life skills during the transition from adolescence to adulthood is fundamental to a person’s long-term health and stability. There are numerous skills that may carry a person through the best and most difficult moments in life. For example, learning to empathize with others in childhood, managing peer pressure and self-esteem in adolescence, and learning to balance work, finances and relationships in adulthood.
How Can Life Skills Help in Recovery?
The intricate, interconnected relationship between substance use disorder (SUD) and trauma ultimately impacts the whole person – the mind, body, and spirit. As a fundamental part of emotional, mental, and physical health, life skills are an essential part of long-term recovery and healing.
Without the necessary skills to cope with stress, examine emotions, and express thoughts and feelings, it is challenging, if not impossible, to develop healthier behaviors and patterns. Incidentally, without the tools to navigate some of the most basic life experiences, it can be extremely difficult to discover, learn, and grow toward a life in recovery.
Developing life skills in recovery helps with finding ways to cope with and manage stress and emotions in sobriety. By engaging in self-care, building a daily routine, and learning to find healthier ways to work through difficult things, there is less space for unhealthy patterns and behaviors to continue to exist.
To learn more about Grace Recovery’s approach to building skills in aftercare, visit our Aftercare page.
Developing Life Skills at Grace Recovery
At Grace Recovery TX, we understand that developing life skills is crucial to the recovery process. We have seen from experience how taking time to provide women with life skills, from making their beds to scheduling doctor appointments, has positively impacted their healing and recovery. In developing life skills, clients tend to experience more long-term success and overall happiness.
Finding happiness and purpose in day-to-day life makes it easier to have the desire to get out of bed, and to take practice self-care. Through the development of healthier behaviors and habits, women can begin to discover self-love and find the internal motivation to care for themselves in body, mind, and spirit.
Happiness and a sense of purpose can mean committing to:
- Building a sleep schedule
- Eating well and exercising
- Doing meaningful work
- Fulfilling responsibilities
- Pursuing educational goals
- Building healthy relationships
- Achieving short- and long-term goals
At Grace Recovery TX, we believe in taking an individualistic approach to care and support. When a young woman comes to us, we start with an individual coaching intake interview, asking questions to get to know her and connect to where she is on her journey.
Example Intake Questions:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you rate the significance of female friendships?
- How would you define a woman in recovery?
- Do you struggle to be seen in a crowd or are you well-known?
Intake questions such as these, help us understand where a person may need growth and also illuminate areas where they may be doing well, so we can better support and guide each woman on their journey toward recovery.
Case Manager and Recovery Coach
At Grace Recovery, clients will work with a case manager and recovery coach to help them begin to build essential life skills.
Each woman meets with their case manager and recovery coach regularly.
A case manager helps with setting and achieving long-term goals, while a recovery coach will help with setting and achieving short-term goals, to help build life skills and put them into practice.
To learn more about our approach and recovery coaching, visit our Home page.
Building basic life skills is a critical part of the recovery process. Our approach to aftercare at Grace Recovery TX supports healing of your body, mind, and spirit. To learn more about our women’s-only programs and care, call us today at (737) 237-9663.