What Is Sustainable Recovery? A Relational and Somatic Approach Beyond Abstinence
Recovery is often spoken about as an end point. A place we “arrive” once we’ve stopped using substances or changed a harmful behavior. But in truth, recovery is not a destination. It’s a living, breathing process of relationship: with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us.
Sustainable recovery is about what happens after abstinence when the focus shifts from not doing something, to learning how to be in a deeper, more connected way.
Beyond Abstinence: What Are We Sustaining?
Abstinence can save lives. It creates the safety and clarity we need to begin healing. But abstinence alone doesn’t necessarily address the underlying pain or the relational patterns that fuel disconnection. Without deeper healing, we often find ourselves substituting one compulsion for another, overworking, controlling, caretaking, or seeking validation; what Gabor Maté calls the hunger for connection that turns sideways.
Sustainable recovery asks:
“How do I live in right relationship with my emotions, my body, my community, and my needs?”
This shift moves the focus from control to connection, from avoidance to integration. It’s not about perfect behavior. It’s about developing a capacity for awareness, repair, and self-compassion.
The Relational Dimension: Healing in Connection
Relational recovery recognizes that addiction and trauma both form in relationship, often in response to disconnection, neglect, or ruptures in early attachment. Healing, then, must also happen in relationship.
That might look like:
Learning to name and communicate your needs safely
Rebuilding trust and intimacy after rupture
Understanding how your partner’s nervous system responds to stress and triggers
Developing mutual accountability and empathy in relationships
In couples therapy, I often see that when one partner is in recovery, the relationship itself also needs tending. It’s not just about managing triggers or avoiding conflict, it’s about learning how to co-regulate, to stay curious, and to witness each other’s humanity even when it’s hard.
This is what makes recovery sustainable: when we’re no longer holding it alone.
The Somatic Dimension: Recovery in the Body
Recovery isn’t just a mental process — it’s embodied. The nervous system holds our history, our trauma, and our patterns of defense. As Jan Winhall describes in Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model, addictive behaviors often emerge as adaptive strategies (attempts to regulate overwhelming states when we lack safer tools).
A somatic approach invites the body back into the conversation.
It might include:
Learning to notice early cues of activation (tight chest, holding breath, tension)
Grounding through breath, movement, or sensory awareness
Releasing shame by softening into embodied self-compassion
Recognizing impulses as signals rather than enemies
In this way, the body becomes a trusted ally rather than something to control or ignore. We begin to rebuild a sense of safety from the inside out. That inner safety makes sustainable recovery possible.
Integration: Wholeness as the Goal
Sustainable recovery is not about perfection, it’s about integration. It’s about making room for all parts of ourselves, including the ones that still struggle. As Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems reminds us, every part of us has a positive intention, even the ones that act out.
When we turn toward these parts with curiosity instead of judgment, something shifts. We start to experience recovery not as a constant battle, but as a relationship with ourselves that deepens over time.
A Living Practice
Sustainable recovery is a living practice: one that includes relapse, repair, growth, and grace. It invites us to slow down, to listen to the body, and to stay in relationship even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s less about staying on the “right” path and more about learning how to come back when we wander.
In the end, sustainable recovery is not simply about staying sober.
It’s about coming home to the body, to relationship, and to the wholeness of who we are.
If You’re Ready to Explore Sustainable Recovery
In my practice, I help individuals and couples integrate relational and somatic approaches to recovery — moving beyond abstinence toward embodied, connected living.
If you’d like support in deepening your recovery journey, I’d love to connect.
