What are "Lights?" in recoveryBox?

So you are wondering what exactly are these lights?  That's the easy part...they are your daily activities broken into your greens (the activities/habits you want to build), the yellows (umm, these are people, places or things that are putting you at risk for acting out and you want to avoid them), and the reds (activities that are part of your addiction).

The goal of course is to have as many greens as possible.  By taking care of your green events on a daily basis you will see how you are starting to take care of yourself and your yellows and reds will start to lessen.

Next post, I'll explain how to use those greens to track activities.  recoveryBox is extremely flexible with your lights.  It allows you to basically give weight to the green lights for accountability to your sponsor or accountability partner.  But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...you'll have to wait until I
get to that blog post.

Can't wait, check out recoveryBox the site for more info.

Want to download from the Apple App store..thanks.  I'm available for questions anytime.

G2 ~ Treatment Self-Care recoveryBox iPhone Mobile Addiction Recovery App

Being in treatment for addiction recovery, one would think that a G2 - Treatment Self-Care should have been on the top of the list for Daily Lights activities.  The reason it's not is because as I wrote about before, you really need to take care of yourself physically which is why Treatment Self-Care falls into the next category of Green Lights.

G2 Treatment Self-Care lights are activities that we do as an individual as part of our treatment.  Each person will have some basic activities that will look the same but then it will be different due to the reasons that we have an addiction.  

Of course self-care such as counseling is of the upmost importance.  You can't get better from an addiction without knowing the why behind why you act out!  And for myself (and just about everyone else that I've talked too in recovery) will have a counselor and most often he/she will assign homework.  Homework can be from reading something, thinking and journaling, workbooks, creating inventories, asking for forgiveness from someone, offering forgiveness, etc.  In fact, following a traditional 12 Step Program or Celebrate Recovery step is part of treatment self-care.

For others it can be taking medications as part of treatment for a variety of things such as anxiety or depression.  For myself, I can count taking meds as one G2- Treatment Self-Care but there are others who must take them 3 or 4 times a day and in order to be compliant they can count that as 3 or 4 G2 Treatment Self-Care lights.

recoveryBox was built so that you can customize these lights.  You don't have to add comments for any green lights but here is where for some it's vital to keep track of what a day looks like.  When you select the button to add your comments you will see a few already suggested for you BUT please make this list work for you.  Add what you need as part of your treatment self-care.

Later, you will see how you can add a Goal for Treatment Self-Care..make sure anytime you interact with a goal that you add a Green Light for that.  Boost up your confidence by realizing all the wonderful progress you are making in your addiction recovery.

Beginning to see how recoveryBox and the visual of Lights makes it easy to see the Go Go Go aspect of doing positive things for addiction recovery.

Wondering if recoveryBox is right for you?  Download it today from the Apple store and give it a whirl.

Wondering what addictions this will work for?  When you download recoveryBox you will first be prompted to choose one (or more) addictions from the list. There are over 50 to choose from..

~ Adrenaline-Producing Activities ~ Alcohol ~ Anger~ Being Right ~ Caffeine ~ Cocaine ~ CoDependency ~ Collecting "stuff" ~ Cumpulsive Behavior ~ Drug Abuse ~ Eating Disorder ~ Emotional Addiction ~ Escapism/Amusement ~ Exercise ~ Fantasizing ~ Gambling ~ Getting One's Own Way ~ Heroin ~ Hoarding ~ Idolization ~ Isolation ~ Laziness ~ Lust ~ Marijuana ~ Media (TV, Internet, etc) ~ Methadone ~ Opiates ~ OverWorking ~ People Pleasing ~ Perfectionism ~ Pornography ~ Prescription Drugs ~ Risky Behaviors ~ Sadism ~ Self Injurous ~ Self-Judgement ~ Sex Addiction ~ Shopping ~ Smoking ~ Sniffing ~ Social Media ~ Steroids ~ Substance Abuse ~ Theft ~ Tobacco ~ Travel ~ Trivia ~ Vandalism ~ Vicodin (pain killers) ~ Video Games ~ Voyeurism

Building My Personal Lights Comment (activities) List

Adding your lights and customizing activities for yourself is very easy.  And once you have added your Green Light Category activities, entry will be a snap which WILL raise your compliance during your addiction recovery treatment.

First, comments for Green Lights (which are the activities that you do daily) are really only there for your own accountability and record keeping.  In other words, your accountability partner is going to know how many green lights you are aiming to get a day but doesn't really need to know all of the details.  From day to day these are going to change as you start to take care of yourself more and more.  So to have them know that you took a shower may not be the most important detail but for you it just might be.

(However, yellow and red lights require comments and can't be selected from a list..so this will only apply to your Green Lights.  And your accountability does need to know the why for a yellow or red light.)

To add a comment (an activity) for a Green Light, just click on the Comment(s) field where the Stop Light is.  From there you will be brought to a screen where you can either type in your comment OR you can click the Select From Comments Button. 

Don't worry, just because you want to select from a list for quick data entry doesn't mean that you can't edit it afterwards.  You'll see.

The comment list that you build is based on which Green Light you selected on the initial screen.  In this case, we are working with the G1 Physical Self Care.  You will only see the associated comments (again think activities) which makes it easier so that you are not searching through a long list. 

Now, you may select just one activity if you are the type of user who is entering Green Lights one by one during the day as they occur.  OR, if you are the type of person who wants to do all entry of lights at once then you can select more than one from the list. 

Don't see what you are looking for??  Want to add another more personal activity?  

No problem. Just select Create Personal Comment for Category. 

OK, add what you would like.  Let's say you want to track that you shower each day.  OK.  Add that.  You only have to add it once and it's in your list forever (or until you decide to delete it!  to delete from the list just swipe like all other Apple apps).

OK, select the new activity that you just created and hit done.

Well, since comments are like a personal journal, it would be a shame to have written thoughts and then get them overwritten. The system will prompt your to either Replace your existing comments with the newly selected activities or to Append it to the end of what you already wrote.  

For kicks and giggles select Replace.

OK, you have the ability to change what the comments look like here.  Remember selecting from the list is just for quick data entry but it needs to be personal to you so feel free to edit if you so desire. Now hit save.

And there they are ready to go.  Since I wanted to add all 3 of my G1's at one time I select 3 from the spinner so I get credit for 3 Green G1 lights.  If you want to edit your comments before you Generate Lights , just click the Comment(s) field again and it will allow you to edit them as you please.

Not everyone is going to want to document green lights to such a degree but it's there if you want to.

The idea behind this is to have a number of Green Lights that you are shooting for each day and let your accountability partner know that number.  When you text/email your Lights they will be able to see how many you had for the day.  Change your goal higher and higher as you progress in your treatment and you will start to see how your life style begins to reflect that of someone taking care of yourself.  Your habits will change.

Don't have recoveryBox yet and want to the latest mobile app for addiction recovery, then visit the iPhone Apple app store.

For more information about recoveryBox and all the features, then visit recoveryBox's website.Personal Lights Comments (activities) List.

New Version 5.1 and A Few Changes

Version 5.1 is soon to be uploaded to the Apple Store for their approval and then release.  It's coming peeps ~ I promise!

What is new?

Background/Logon Privacy Screen
MANY users asked us to blank out the screen when the app goes into the background mode and also for when it's brought back into the foreground.  This visual "hide" was asked for privacy purposes and we felt this was very important.  so - added!!  You will see the difference both when the app goes into the background mode as well as when the app brings you back to the logon screen (if you use the password feature).

Facebook Integration is Removed

Another change that you will also notice is that all "Facebook shares" directly from the app has been removed.  While this might come as a sadness to some, we hope that after this explanation you will understand.  As of iOS9, Facebook requires that all apps register with them to get an ID number.  There needs to be a call back to Facebook that checks to make sure this app is valid by checking the ID number.

What this now does is make a permanant connection between the App and your Facebook ID.  In the PAST you could share directly to Facebook and there was no record of the recoveryBox app - In fact, Facebook didn't even know about the app.

With this new change by Facebook, we felt that is intrusive.  We PRIDE ourselves in keeping the data and anything related to recoveryBox completely private.  Because we don't control anything on Facebook's side we decided this was best.

recoveryBox and the developers NEVER see your data as it resides only on your device. We have no backend servers where your data resides - and this is completely for privacy reasons.

And so, while this feature was nice to have, you can accomplish the same thing by taking screen shots and then uploading them to Facebook. Sorry about the extra step - but, well, we hope you understand.

Please note..this does not have any affect on Twitter tweets. They do not have the same requirements as Facebook and so we decided to leave that in the app.

iOS9 Ready
Well, let's just say we did this :)

Bug Fixes 

• We fixed the bug where users could not edit custom triggers.  Opps.  Sorry about that.
• Also, added new logo image that was missing for Twitter Tweets
• Reduced memory footprint

Want to kick the addiction, hurt, habit, or hang-up? Download recoveryBox and be accountable.  

Break Down of a G2 - Emotional Self-Care Green Lights for Accountability

recoveryBox the mobile iPhone app for addiction recovery uses a system called your "Lights" just like a traffic light.  Green Lights are your good lights meaning go!.  Yellow lights aren't necessarily bad activities but they are the ones that can lead you into some sort of temptation either by being with a person, being at a place or possessing an item that could lead to relapse.  And Red lights do mean an instance of relapse.

If you remember, G1 Green Lights focus on Physical Self-Care during addiction recovery.  These are the healthy daily activities that you do to actually take care of your physical body.  I wrote about how you need to take care of those physical needs first in order to even have a chance of thinking straight and making good choices.

Today I want to focus moving past the physical self care into activities that start to become a little more challenging for us to do.  It's the G2 category of the Green Lights.  G2 lights are the second tier of green lights and  focus on the emotional and treatment activities.  These are the activities that we do to start building connection and make us vulnerable.

Today's green light is G2 - Emotional Self Care.

Emotional self-care is a huge part of recovery.  Most addicts will tell you that they can't even name the emotions they feel even if they are letting themselves have that feeling.  This is where a G2 light comes in.  These are activities for treatment that deal with identifying/acting/dealing with emotions and how that relates to our self-care.

There are tons of resources out there for dealing with emotions so I'm not going to actually go into counseling..as I am not qualified to do that.  But as you work out emotional self-care in your treatment for your addiction recovery, this is where you would add a light for that.

Some example include journaling, reading, spending time with others.  Perhaps for you it's as basic as even identifying your emotions each day or being vulnerable with someone and telling them how you feel.  Those are activities that indicate you are taking care of yourself.

Now these emotions might not always be pretty or even easy to identify but I can speak from experience and say that it is freeing to finally be able to label even the ugly emotions.  For me, I do count identifying an emotion as a G2 because during my journey I needed to identify what those emotions were and to expand my vocabulary.

Perhaps you can easily identify the emotion you are feeling (great job..you are ahead of most addicts in that case) but you need to deal with the emotion in a healthy way.  So perhaps your G2 Emotional Self-Care is more advanced and needs to deal with reacting properly to the emotion.

Or perhaps you just don't allow yourself the time to connect with others or yourself.  Go to coffee with friends and just have a conversation..and it doesn't have to be heavy hearted either.  Read that book you have been wanting to but putting off.  Allow time to take care of yourself from a mental perspective.  These are all G2 Emotional Self-Care activities.

Work with your counselor and accountability partner/sponsor to build a list of activities that you need to work on for G2 - Emotional Self-Care.  I believe that this Green Light is such an important part of addiction recovery.  Identifying emotions and taking care of one-self emotionally is very tiring but it's also healthy.  Once we begin to do this as part of our lifestyle, the heaviness begins to fade and it become part of who we are..and that's a good thing.

Don't have recoveryBox yet?  Download it from the app store now and begin your journey to freedom.

Connect with others on Facebook and "Like" the app page.  Feel free to tell others about how recoveryBox app is part of your journey for your addiction recovery.  And don't forget to count that as a G2 - Emotional Self-Care activity too!

What makes up a "Green Light"??

Since recoveryBox iPhone addiction recovery app is build for the purpose of being accountable to yourself and to others, it would help to understand well what does it mean to be accountable?  I mean what does accountability really mean?

Not getting too fancy, I'll say that being accountable means taking responsibility for your actions.

For starters, there are all levels of being accountable to both yourself and to your sponsor/partner.

Today I'm just going to talk about what a G1 Lights are.  It's called "Physical Self-Care" but what that looks like for everyone is different.  The premise behind Physical Self-Care is simple..you MUST first take care of yourself physically before you can even think about the "next stuff".

And these taking care of yourself activities are good things..hence why they are green..meaning go go go and go some more. See, it's really simple, green lights are good.  You want to fill your day with lots of green lights all day long and as many as you can get.

Think about it, ever notice how when we are sleep deprived or hungry our judgement goes out the door.  I am not going to even pretend to be a medical doctor and tell you all about it..I don't think I need to.  I think you already know what I'm talking about because your yourself have experienced it.  Right?!?  I have.

So each day we need to be responsible for taking care of ourself physically by doing certain activities. And yes these basic activities make up our G1 Green Lights.  Yes the app does have some pre-canned examples that you can use right out of the box such as eating meals, sleeping, exercising, etc.  BUT, you can customize that list by adding what is important to you. Perhaps taking a shower needs to be on your list?  Or putting on makeup?  Dunno...because  only you can decide with the help of your counselor.  (want a hint?? to access the list hit the comments field...it will allow you to select from a list)

So start thinking about what should your G1's look like!  Make a list and work with those who are keeping you accountable and see if they make sense.

Next post is going to be about how to actually enter those comments to begin building your list for each Green category.  Then I'm thinking we will touch upon how flexible the app is for entering your lights...stay tuned for lots more to come.

Feel free to download recoveryBox iPhone addiction recovery app from the iTunes store.

Musical Monday Devotionals

If you are like me and music speaks volumes to you..check out the Daily Devotions in the recoveryBox app.  Monday's devotions are now Musical Monday's where we bring a song whose lyrics are to be pondered. The Holy Spirit works in us in many different ways.

Have you downloaded recoveryBox? Want to know more about how this app can help on your journey to Addiction Recovery?

Visit www.recoveryboxapp.com and download it today!

Y3 Yellow Light :: Intentionally Possess Object of Risk

Having an object that is contrary to staying sober seems to be an obvious yellow.  Some would argue a Red Light, But I say it's just  a Yellow.

Just because you possess the item doesn't mean that you are going to use the item! It's a choice! And because it's a choice, it's why I have it as a Yellow Light!!

Y3 : Intentionally Possess and Item of Risk.

But let's be clear here.  It's a recipe for disaster.  I mean why do you even have it?  You know that by using the item or looking at it then you will be having to start your sobriety from square one, feel ashamed besides other emotions and all that goes along with using again.

So, it's a no brainer.  Get rid of it!

• Get rid of the alcohol in your house!
• Get rid of that pornographic video in the attic!
• Drugs lingering around the house? Trash them now!

Clean out!

And yes we live in a fallen world and there are temptations everywhere, but (and I feel like a cliche when I write this), but Just Say No!

Don't make it possible so that when the urge is there and you need that rush to easily grab that magazine or drink and fulfill that need.  Fill that need with something else - go for a walk. For visit a friend. Do something other than grab that item.

Yes, I understand that "things" don't do bad things.  It's when people use those things.  But why have the temptation? Why allow a trigger cause you to run to the very vice you are trying to cut off.

I really don't have much to say on this topic except GET RID OF IT ALL!

I completely understand that this doesn't apply to all addictions.  I mean you can't get rid of food.  But you can get rid of junk food. And you can't get of the internet (OK I couldn't) but you can use something like opendns.com or Covenant Eyes.  There are always things you can do to help yourself.  It's about making a choice.

Have a great day!  Now go clean out!


PS. If you need help cleaning out but just can't seem to get started - perhaps it's time to talk with your counselor or accountability partner on what is making it so hard to let go.


Wanting to download recoveryBox and see how it can help you?  Visit the Apple App store.

recoveryBox and the Ratings

OK, yes I am going to ask that if you downloaded recoveryBox from the Apple App Store to use during your Addiction Recovery, that if you have a favorable review please post it so that others who are searching for help can also find it.

If you have a negative review, please email me at support@recoveryboxapp.com before posting it so that perhaps it's something I can easily fix.  Remember I am not a counselor, etc. I am just a person who has created recoveryBox to help others and others in addiction recovery.

Together, let's help others conquer their addictions.

How do I rate recoveryBox?

1. You can go to the iTunes store directly from this link.

2. Anytime you achieve a badge, under the frame there is a "Cool, rate this in the App Store".

3. You can get there from the More Tools in the App.

Choose More Tools -> Rate In the App Store

Then rate in the app store from this screen.  

Support Beyond an Accountability Partner - Twitter and Facebook Integration IS HERE

UPDATE:: It's HERE!!

 Facebook and Twitter integration with recoveryBox. We all know support and encouragement are a huge part of addiction recovery. Infact, I believe it goes well beyond the notion of an accountability partner.

Recovery is not going to be achieved by having "will power".  Good grief if that's all it took life would be so much easier wouldn't it?  No, recovery is going to be achieved by making life adjustments in how you think, what you do, who you interact with, what you think is important and more.  Being sober is not a quick and easy thing to achieve.  It takes work.

Part of your recovery system is going to include peers, allies, friends, family, therapy members, meeting members, counselors, sponsors, and in today's day even social networks.  We need to be encouraged and supported in order to maintain sobriety.  Interacting with such individuals will eventually bring us back into the community as a healthy individual who will be ready to give back.

The more I interact with Twitter and Facebook the more I realize there are others who want to support by offering information, words of encouragement and more.  The stigma of having an addiction is slowly being chipped away and I TRULY believe social media is part of that.  

I want to make something very clear.  If you are in recovery for an addiction, you are an "individual who has an addiction".  You are not an "addict".  Dealing with an addiction does NOT define who you are.  As a person you have so much more to offer and focusing on those talents and skills and purposes will be part of you.  Allowing others to love you is part of who you are.  Offering love back is part of who you are. 

With social media outlets, it's easy to connect with others who have the same battles.  And I also believe those who are reaching sobriety milestones want to celebrate.  

And so, coming very soon (the updates are in the app store awaiting approval) is the ability to tweet on Twitter or post on Facebook the accomplishments earned in recoveryBox for being Sober as well as sticking with a treatment plan (entering lights, texting a sponsor, creating goals, working the steps).  

Not everyone is at the stage in their recovery that they want to blast to the world about their addiction, but when you are ready to share, recoveryBox will be there to help.

Choose from Twitter or Facebook if running iOS6.

 iOS 5 users can Twitter to tweet their successes.

The badge you earned will appear in the Twitter screen as well as the accomplishment that defines the badge you earned.  

And below you see Twitter.  Pops up for all your followers to see and congratulate you.  The additional feature for Facebook is the ability to post to certain groups or individuals to give you more control as to who sees it.

I really want to see badges flying all around Twitter.  

Post away on Facebook.  

Make sure to find recoveryBoxApp on Twitter so I can follow and be part of your support system. 

"Like" the Facebook" page so you can join the system of support there.

~ Be Engaged In Your Recovery  ~ Be Accountable To Yourself & Others  ~ Be Rewarded For Your Hard Work  ~ Be Supported By Many Others

recoveryBox iPhone app is LIVE in apple store!!

WOW!! The app went live in a record time of 3 hours.  What does that mean..well, Apple (in their review process) thought it was a well put together app worthy of being in the app store.
recoveryBox in the Apple App Store!