Imagine yourself as a cozy human burrito. Softly enveloped in comforting blankets that wash away the fear and anxiety that tug at your soul. It’s warm, and it’s safe. Suddenly, the rain outside doesn’t seem so bad. The heartbreak feels more distant. The craving doesn’t make your skin itch anymore. Now imagine that this safety blanket isn’t a physical object. It’s an inner voice you learned through WRAP therapy that soothes in the same way wrapping up into a human burrito does. Rather than giving into relapse, this mental safety blanket keeps you company and shines some light on your mind’s darkest corners.
WRAP therapy is an approach to mental health that is especially helpful for addicts in recovery. Because while unhealthy thought patterns create destructive behavior, they spiral out of control when substance abuse enters the equation. WRAP is an essential component of treatment in more ways than one. It acts as a safety blanket that can be pulled out in times of need, and it offers structure for the more mundane daily stages of living.
If you feel that your mind isn’t always the safest place, you aren’t alone. But it gets better when WRAP therapy is added to your mental health toolbox.
Christian Butler, M.S., MFTi is New Start Recovery’s program director. In the video above, Christian provides an overview of this therapy technique. Short for Wellness Recovery Action Plan, WRAP is a framework for teaching people how to manage self-destructive behavior. It falls under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a tried and true way for recovering addicts to break old patterns of behavior.
Why does WRAP Therapy help?
Addiction certainly has physical and neurological components that make people feel like they’re not in control of their own life. But WRAP helps lessen the severity of those symptoms through cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. The Wellness Recovery Action Plan offers several key tools: crisis planning, a personalized wellness toolbox, daily sober maintenance, and more. These are all essential components for building long term sobriety.
WRAP Therapy Offers Crisis Planning
Whether you’re in recovery or not, we can all attest to one thing: Life throws curve balls sometimes. No exceptions. We come up against crisis situations like unexpected deaths, divorce, changes at work, and countless other high stress situations. For people in recovery, these types of situations almost always trigger the urge to relapse.
WRAP plans for this inevitability beforehand. By preemptively laying out healthy ways to react to crisis, people in recovery can circumvent relapse by having a list of go-to responses. These are an essential component of the Wellness Recovery Action Plan.
Daily Sober Maintenance with WRAP Therapy
Responding to crisis is important in recovery. But a big part of staying sober is also building day-to-day routines and maintaining a healthy environment. To read more about WRAP and the other types of therapy we offer at New Start, check out our mental health pages.