We are providing in person and telehealth counseling services for substance use
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Welcome
Connecting you with your personal recovery journey is our goal. Will power and motivation are important, but many people need professional aid to achieve abstinence and make other life changes.
Groups Conducted in Intensive Outpatient Treatment
Psychoeducational groups
These groups provide a supportive environment in which clients learn about substance dependence and its consequences. These time-limited groups may be initiated at the beginning of treatment. They feature:
- Low-key rather than emotionally intense environment.
- Rational problem-solving mechanisms to alter dysfunctional beliefs and thinking patterns.
- Various forms of relapse prevention and skills training. Didactic components often are supplemented by videos or slides to accommodate different learning styles.
Skills-development groups
These groups offer clients the opportunity to practice specific behaviors in the safety of the treatment setting. Common types of skills training include
- Drug or alcohol refusal training. Clients act out scenarios in which they are invited to use substances and role play their responses.
- Relapse prevention techniques. Using relapse prevention materials, clients analyze one another's personal triggers and high-risk situations for substance use and determine ways to manage or avoid them.
- Assertiveness training. Clients learn the differences among assertive, aggressive, and passive behaviors and practice being assertive in different situations.
- Stress management. Clients identify situations that cause stress and learn a variety of techniques to respond to stress.
Support groups (e.g., process-oriented recovery groups)
These groups include clients in the same recovery stage—usually a middle to late phase of treatment—who are working on similar problems. Members focus on immediate issues and on :
- Pragmatic ways to change negative thinking, emotions, and behavior
- Learning and trying new ways of relating to others
- Tolerating or resolving conflict without resorting to violence or substance use
- Looking at how members' actions affect others and the function of the group
Interpersonal process groups
- Single-interest groups. These groups—usually organized at a later stage of treatment—focus on an issue of particular significance to and sensitivity for group members. The issues include gender issues, sexual orientation, criminal offense, and histories of physical and sexual abuse.
- Family or couples groups. These groups assist clients' relatives and other significant individuals in learning about the detrimental effects of substance use on relationships and how these effects can be ameliorated or resolved.
Topics Addressed in Psychoeducational Groups
Treatment engagement
- Understanding motivation and committing to treatment
- Counteracting ambivalence and denial
- Determining the seriousness of the drug or alcohol problem
- Conducting self-assessment, setting goals, and self-monitoring progress
- Overcoming common barriers to treatment
Early recovery
- Learning about biopsychosocial disease and recovery processes
- Understanding the effect of specific drugs and alcohol on the brain and body
- Placing symptoms of substance use disorders in the context of other behavioral health problems
- Learning about early and protracted withdrawal symptoms for specific drugs and alcohol
- Knowing the stages of recovery and the client's place in the continuum of care
- Learning strategies for quitting and finding the motivation to stop
- Minimizing risks of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
- Identifying high-risk situations that are cues or triggers to substance use: people, places, and things
- Identifying peer pressures and compulsive sexual behavior as triggers
- Understanding cravings and urges, learning to extinguish thoughts about substance use, and coping with cravings
- Structuring personal time
- Coping with high-risk situations
- Understanding abstinence and the use of prescription and over-the-counter medications
- Understanding the goals and practices of various 12-Step or other mutual-help groups
- Identifying and using positive support networks
Maintenance and continuing care
- Understanding the relapse process and common warning signs
- Identifying tools to prevent relapse
- Developing personal relapse plans
- Counteracting euphoria and the desire to test control
- Improving coping and stress management skills
- Learning anger management and relaxation techniques
- Enhancing self-efficacy for handling risky situations
- Responding safely to slips and avoiding escalation
- Finding recovery resources
- Structuring leisure time and finding recreational activities
- Knowing the importance of personal health: diet, exercise, hygiene, and checkups
- Taking a personal inventory
- Handling shame, guilt, depression, and anxiety
- Understanding family dynamics: enabling and sabotaging behaviors
- Rebuilding personal relationships
- Understanding sexual dysfunction and healthy sexual behavior
- Developing educational and vocational skills
- Learning daily living skills: money management, housing, and legal assistance
- Embracing spirituality and recovery and finding meaning in life
- Recognizing grief and loss and the relationship to substance use
- Learning about parenting: basic needs of children and their developmental stages and developmental tasks
- Maintaining balance in life