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Writer's pictureNikki White

What is a recovery coach?

Updated: Jul 30




NEW TO PROFESSIONAL RECOVERY COACHING


A recovery coach is an individual who provides mentoring and support services to someone early in recovery from addiction or to a person who has a particular obstacle they are struggling to overcome at any point in their recovery.









These coaches offer valuable assistance in several ways:


  1. Relapse Prevention: They help identify relapse triggers and work to prevent relapses. If relapse occurs, the coach provides accountability to shorten its duration.

  2. Harm Reduction: Coaches support various recovery goals, including harm reduction, not just abstinence-based plans.

  3. Accountability: Regular check-ins with a recovery coach ensure accountability and progress tracking.

  4. Experience: Most coaches have faced similar challenges and can provide insights based on their own recovery journeys.

  5. Tools and Skills: Coaches assist in decision-making, prioritizing recovery, and achieving personal goals.


Remember, recovery coaches don’t diagnose or treat addiction; instead, they focus on positive change and helping individuals build a healthier life.


What is a recovery coach?


Recovery coaches use their lived experience to help those they serve to navigate the ups and downs of recovery by providing emotional and informational support, delivering access to critical resources, and creating connections to community networks.


Recovery coaches do things like:


  • Inspire hope and motivate

  • Hold space and listen

  • Provide accountability

  • Aid in harm reduction and the prevention of recurrence of the substance use, trauma, and/or mental health issues faced by their clients

  • Help to identify recovery strengths and opportunities

  • Work in deep partnership with their clients

  • Co-create recovery plans with identified goals, personal growth, and self-actualization

  • Support clients to build their recovery capital

  • Guide those they serve to create highly personalized recovery patchworks


The coach-client relationship is a partnership that focuses on the personal expansion of the client. Using a highly individualized, solution-focused, and client-led approach, together the coach and client invoke positive changes in service of the client and their needs. A recovery coach serves as a strengths-based collaborator, fellow traveler, deep listener, motivator, and mirror that can provide resources, accountability, and mentorship.


To become a recovery coach, you can follow these steps:


  1. Education and Training:

  1. Skills and Qualities:

  • Lived Experience: Having personal experience with addiction and recovery is valuable.

  • Communication: Effective listening, empathy, and communication skills are essential.

  • Patience and Compassion: You’ll work with vulnerable individuals, so compassion is crucial.

  • Background Check: Be prepared to pass a background check.

  1. Experience and Practice:

  • Gain practical experience by volunteering or working in related roles.

  • Supervision: Seek supervision from experienced coaches to enhance your skills.

Remember, recovery coaching is about supporting individuals on their journey to wellness. Your empathy and understanding can make a significant impact!


The typical responsibilities of a recovery coach include:


  1. Support and Guidance: Coaches offer emotional support, encouragement, and guidance to individuals in recovery.

  2. Goal Setting: They help clients set realistic recovery goals and create action plans.

  3. Accountability: Coaches hold clients accountable for their commitments and progress.

  4. Relapse Prevention: Identifying triggers and developing strategies to prevent relapse.

  5. Resource Referral: Connecting clients to community resources (therapy, support groups, etc.).

  6. Advocacy: Coaches advocate for clients’ needs within the recovery system.

  7. Empowerment: Encouraging self-empowerment and resilience.


Remember, each coaching relationship is unique, and coaches adapt to the individual’s specific needs.


Want to learn more contact us: Life Conversation, LLC


Need a FREE Sobriety Community Join Us. Life in Recovery Community



 

ARE YOU LOOKING TO DIVE DEEPER INTO SELF-CARE?


I Can Help in Developing A Plan For Self Care


Do you want help developing a self-care plan that works for your own busy schedule? Do you want accountability in implementing a self-care plan? If you or someone you love is struggling to maintain optimal mental and emotional health, consider reaching out to Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. We are a Metro Atlanta, Conyers Georgia area. We are a coaching and counseling practice with empathetic, skilled counselors and recovery coaches who can help you set goals, develop a self-care routine, and move forward to build a more fulfilling life. Our team would be happy to work with you either just for a couple of sessions to develop and implement a Self-care plan or longer term to work toward overall better mental health within our membership site or other programs.



Dr. Nikki LeToya White
Dr. Nikki LeToya White

About The Author:


Dr. Nikki LeToya White MSEd-TL, Ph.D. RHN is the founder, director, and full-time board-certified trauma-informed nutritionist, folk herbalist, and wellness consultant at Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. She created Spiced Life Conversation, LLC Art Wellness Studio, and Botanica to provide the Metro Atlanta area with counseling and coaching services where clients are carefully matched with the right program for healing abandonment and childhood emotional neglect trauma that cause codependency, emotional eating, financial stress, and imposter syndrome as it relates to the fear of success and being abandon. We help you begin your emotional healing journey with ease. Recently, we have expanded to include an online membership site so we now provide support to people living all over the world. All of our recovery coaches provide at least one evidence-based treatment to assist in your recovery. Dr. White is a big proponent of self-care and helping people live a fulfilling life! She has been in full remission with both codependency and emotional binge eating disorder since 2016. In living a life in recovery from sugar addiction. I love my low-sugar balanced lifestyle.


Best Regard


Dr. Nikki LeToya White

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