When I'm working as an addiction or spiritual counselor, clients want to climb the ladder of treatment They want to move forward in their lives, which is understandable We all want that direction And that idea of moving forward in treatment--that's a therapeutic issue I don't mean that as an evasion Our conception of what it means to move forward is a therapeutic issue ...
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As I look back over the last several months of working with individuals and families towards recovery, I promise I am terribly understating when I describe interventions as a process versus an event All interventions are a process, I promise you, and I promise you so is recovery Firsthand, I reflect on my nearly 17-year journey of recovery and recognize the years I spent in my addiction l...
Read MoreRead MoreLet’s face it, the media has an impact on our opinions and how we view the world Unfortunately, seeing the world through the eyes of the media isn’t alwayswell, reality Take substance abuse treatment Popular culture believes a person successfully completing treatment will stay away from drugs or alcohol for the rest of his or her life As a result, life gets better Sure this idea o...
Read MoreRead MoreComing to treatment has always been a hard threshold to cross - but more so now… Working in treatment for a long time, I’ve experienced greater consumer wariness People are more hesitant to send their loved ones to treatment and people who are looking for treatment are more hesitant to come I think one of the reasons is the discourse about addiction, treatment and recovery has hit...
Read MoreRead MoreDogma is not actually something I would want to get rid of within Alcoholics Anonymous I would also say dogma is not something that I want to get rid of in alcoholics anonymous On some level, what it means to be a person in recovery, who's engaged in traditional 12 steps is to have some sense of acceptance, that you are not in charge of the world And it's sort of like trus...
Read MoreRead MoreAlcoholics Anonymous Although somewhat known for dogma - actually has gone out of the way to NOT be dogmatic Everything is languaged from a place of suggestion as opposed to declarative statements for how you are supposed to be When you see it in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, you notice that these were people who were not only NOT particularly dogmatic, but the...
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