SMART Recovery Delray
The Delray Center for Healing hosts SMART Recovery Delray, with meetings Monday through Friday that are free and open to the public. The Delray Center has several SMART-certified facilitators on staff, making it the home of SMART Recovery in Delray Beach and in South Florida.
What is SMART Recovery?
SMART stands for Self Management And Recovery Training, and is a not-for-profit organization that provides free support groups to those who need help with addictive behaviors. In SMART Recovery, participants are taught practical skills designed to help them abstain from drinking, using drugs, or other process addictions like gambling, sex, or self-harm. The tools provided in SMART also help people to develop healthy and positive lifestyle choices and habits.
Although SMART is a self-help support group, it is not a 12-step recovery program like Alcoholics Anonymous. Unlike 12-step groups, SMART avoids the use of labels (e.g. “addict” or “alcoholic”) instead focusing on ineffective behaviors, which can include both substance abuse as well as process addictions. SMART also does not require its members to hold a religious or spiritual beliefs in order to engage in the program. This support group can best be described as a mental health and educational program where the emphasis is on changing self-destructive human behaviors.
How SMART Works
Self Management And Recovery Training Recovery is unique because meetings / groups are led by a trained facilitator, who may be in recovery themselves or may be a mental health professional; In the case of SMART Recovery Delray at The Delray Center for Healing, meetings are facilitated by one of the SMART-trained therapists on our clinical team. During meetings, attendees are welcome to present their struggles with addiction or any difficulties they are facing in recovery. The goal in every SMART meeting is to focus on present problem-solving and future growth, and not to dredge up past events that may reaffirm damaging belief systems.
The Principles Behind SMART Recovery Delray
The foundation of SMART Recovery is based upon cognitive behavioral therapy. In the 1950s, the psychologist Albert Ellis developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, or REBT, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy which is now widely accepted as an effective therapeutic modality. REBT is based upon the idea that thoughts create feelings, and then feelings lead to action, so by managing beliefs and emotions individuals can prevent self-destructive actions like drinking or drug use. Using this model, participants in SMART learn to manage their emotions and beliefs through different skills, in order to empower themselves to quit addictive behaviors.
Smart Recovery includes a 4-point program of key areas for change:
- Enhancing Motivation: Increasing and maintaining the motivation to abstain from addictive behaviors
- Refusing to act on urges to use: Learning how to cope with urges and cravings
- Managing life’s problems in a sensible & effective way without substances: Using rational ways of problem-solving to manage thoughts, feelings and behaviors
- Developing a positive, balanced, and healthy lifestyle: Balancing short-term and long-term pleasures and satisfactions in life
