What Is a Recovery Experiential Coach?
A recovery experiential coach works closely with individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) and co-occurring conditions, supporting them as they take steps to build a healthier life.
Recovery coaches typically have personal experience with SUD and mental health conditions. Therefore, these coaches have insight into the recovery process. As a peer, the relationship with a recovery coach is a collaborative one, seeking to develop goals and skills to support a life of long-term recovery.
What Do Recovery Experiential Coaches Do?
A recovery coach is focused on helping their clients build a life they are excited to live. Working together, a recovery coach helps to formulate goals and create plans to achieve them. On a woman’s journey to recovery, a coach serves as a guide to support them in managing their daily life and finding purpose.
Some of the things a recovery coach may help with include:
- Creating a plan of action
- Finding and understanding resources
- Developing healthier behaviors and coping skills
- Understanding and using recovery tools in daily life
- Guidance in developing accountability
- Building healthier relationships with family and friends
- Processing your experiences and emotions
- Self-care and basic life skills
- Discovering a sense of purpose and fulfillment
How Can an Experiential Recovery Coach Help?
Recovering from SUD and mental health conditions can be a difficult and emotional process. When there are setbacks on the journey, it can feel demoralizing and shameful. A recovery coach can help to make that process feel less lonely. Acting as a cheerleader, their role is to support and guide the people they work with on the path toward a better way of life.
Additionally, according to an article from Alcohol Research: Current Reviews, the peer-to-peer element of recovery coaching has shown more positive outcomes for clients. When a recovery coach is able to share their lived experience with mental health or SUD, it builds trust and understanding. These shared experiences support motivation to develop healthier thinking patterns founded on mindfulness, self-reflection, and problem-solving skills.
As noted by an article in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, recovery coaching with a focus on mental health supports a holistic approach to finding balance, joy, and meaning, while also building practical life skills.
The recovery journey is about more than eliminating symptoms and substance use. Rather, the whole process is about finding long-lasting happiness, love, and purpose.
What Makes Recovery Coaching Different from Sponsorship or Friendship?
Although the role of a recovery coach shares similarities with a sponsor, their role is actually quite different.
A sponsor is someone who has been successful in achieving recovery themselves, and is dedicated to sharing their knowledge and supporting others on their journey to live a sober life. Traditionally, a sponsor’s work and guidance is filtered through that of a 12-Step program. Although 12-step programs can be vital for recovery, the role of a recovery coach offers support outside the boundaries of a 12-step fellowship.
Moreover, long-term recovery is a direct result of taking action to build a physically and mentally healthier life. A recovery coach helps those they work with to maintain a level of accountability as they discover and address larger life goals and next steps on their journey.
While a sponsor is dedicated to helping others through the work of a 12-Step program, a recovery coach is invested in helping clients reintegrate and grow in every area of their lives.
Benefits of a Recovery Coach
- Form bonds through community engagement and support
- Develop goals for personal growth
- Rebuild and create healthier relationships
- Assistance with finding and using community services
Grace Recovery TX’s Approach to Recovery Coaching
We believe the key to recovery is purpose and connection. Through professional training and lived experience, our recovery coaches are uniquely qualified to support Grace members as allies and guides through the recovery journey.
Our recovery coaches either were clients at Grace Recovery themselves, or simply have walked the same path as the women they coach. These women understand from personal experience what it feels like to be stuck, defeated, and lost.
Sharing their own knowledge and life experiences, our coaches support Grace members as they discover and set long-term and short-term goals to become the women they aspire to be.
At Grace Recovery, we believe recovery happens when you address every area of life. Grace recovery coaching utilizes a holistic approach, helping women address every area of life in an effort to achieve fulfillment and serenity.
Some of the ten pillars of our approach to recovery coaching include:
- Leisure
- Hobbies
- Nutrition
- Work
- School
- Volunteering
- Relationships
- Legal issues
A recovery coach at Grace Recovery TX supports members with six business-type goals which may include areas such as work, resume building, budgeting, and more. Incidentally, Grace recovery coaches are there to also assist with feel-good goals, like finding hobbies, engaging in leisure activities, and building healthier relationships.
More of What to Expect With a Recovery Experiential Coach at Grace Recovery TX
- Meeting with your recovery coach regularly
- Discovering and building life skills
- Finding simple joys in your life
- Thrift shopping
- Floral arrangements
- Cooking
- Beauty & self-care
- Introducing you to activities and events in Austin, Texas
- Running errands with you
- Supporting you in building a life you are excited to live
- Learning to use recovery principles to process your daily and weekly life
- Developing healthier coping strategies
- Building self-esteem, self-love, and resilience through principled living
To learn more about our recovery coaches and how they can support you, visit our About page.
With their knowledge and experience, a recovery experiential coach can help you discover the person you want to be in recovery. At Grace Recovery, we believe in women supporting women to set goals and find joy in building a life they are obsessed with. Call us today at (737) 237-9663 to start building a purposeful life in long-term recovery.