Therapies: How Therapy Helps You Heal
Talking it out really helps. Therapy, whether delivered one-on-one or in a group, is one of the most useful tools for treating substance use disorders and mental health.
Safe, confidential and effective, therapy has multiple benefits. Certain forms of therapy can help you master your emotions or help you stop unhealthy thought patterns. Others allow you to share your struggles, helping you connect with others as you work toward the shared goal of recovery.
Discovery Addiction Centers makes extensive use of various therapies, helping our patients heal and grow.
What Therapies are Used at Discovery Addiction Centers?
There are many different kinds of therapy that can help you overcome substance use disorders and more. Everybody’s approach to recovery is a little different, so most people under our care participate in several forms of therapy.
Here’s a brief explanation of the forms of therapy we make use of. NOTE: Therapies can vary per location.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of talk therapy that helps you recognize – and change – harmful thought patterns. CBT is used to treat substance abuse and many other mental health conditions.
In general, CBT teaches you how to examine your behaviors and thought patterns and reevaluate them. It also teaches you ways to:
Handle difficult situations
Face your fears
Become more confident about your abilities
Understand how others behave and more
Substance use can both increase the likelihood of you developing a mental health disorder…and make the symptoms of mental disorders worse. Meanwhile, mental health disorders often drive people to self-medicate for relief. Also, some mental health conditions can impair your judgement, making substance use (and abuse) more likely.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, is a form of talk therapy that’s designed to help people who feel extremely intense emotions. If it sounds similar to CBT, it’s because it is – DBT is based on CBT.
DBT helps people accept difficult realities in their lives, manage unhelpful behaviors and master their emotions. While it was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD), it’s also very useful in treating other conditions, such as substance use disorders.
Here’s why: substance use is often used to self-medicate for difficult, intense emotions. Essentially, DBT teaches you healthy coping mechanisms that actually work…without hurting yourself.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT helps individuals understand the necessity to live with their negative emotions instead of attempting to push them away. ACT focuses on what values you have, and it provides a guide to help with moving toward your values instead of staying in the problem. ACT is known to have helped many individuals struggling with substance use disorder achieve sobriety.
ACT works well with 12-step approaches to drug and alcohol treatment, especially because it links to core ideology of accepting things that aren’t in your control. It is an action-based therapy where you feel more in control of how you perceive life situations. This can be helpful as a coping strategy throughout the recovery process, as well as for conditions such as chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational interviewing is a talk therapy or counseling strategy that works to move individuals away from a state of indecisiveness or uncertainty and towards seeking motivation to make positive decisions and accomplish established goals. An individual may be struggling with a substance disorder and is completely ambivalent about it. They may not care to seek therapy to change their life for the better.
Motivational interviewing motivates these individuals to change for the better and to step onto the path of recovery. The primary role of the therapist is to listen to the patient and repeat back what they are saying. This reflection-type exercise is generally a short-term therapeutic approach and sets the patient up for other psychotherapy approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy.
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR was developed in the late 1980s by Francine Shapiro, growing out of her experience that eye movement was beneficial to her own ability to deal with stressful past experiences.
EMDR uses your own physical eye movements in very specific ways directed by your therapist, to alter your body and mind’s response to your past trauma. The combination of eye movement techniques, as well as other physical and therapeutic techniques used by your therapist, can help shift your old patterns into different, healthy associations.
Somatic Experiencing ®
Rather than therapy which has you express stressful emotional responses in an attempt to move beyond past traumas, Somatic Experiencing helps you progress toward establishing your own physical and mental response patterns.
This allows you to dissipate the distressing emotional reactions in a measured, step-by-step response. The technique has also proven to assist in helping you heal more rapidly than many conventional therapies.
Group Therapy
Therapy is usually thought of as a one-on-one situation, but that’s not always the case. Group therapy is a proven, effective way of helping people address the roadblocks in their lives.
Speaking about your problems in public isn’t easy. However, group therapy is a safe, confidential space. Led by a healthcare professional, it allows you the chance to share your struggles with people who are experiencing the same issues. Group therapy also helps you feel less isolated, driving home the fact that you’re not the only person who’s struggling.
Group therapy sessions are highly structured, confidential and safety is a priority. While many people feel nervous before their first session, most find group therapy to be a very positive experience.
Experiential Therapy
Experiential therapy is a form of therapy that uses music, art, role-playing, and more as a way to help people express difficult thoughts and emotions. It also helps people safely re-enact situations and experiences from their past that may be causing them difficulty in their present. Like other forms of therapy, experiential therapy sessions are guided by a healthcare professional.
This form of therapy can take several different forms:
Our Therapies Help You Heal
Treating substance use disorders isn’t just about treating the physical symptoms of addiction – effective substance abuse treatment takes a holistic approach, healing you in mind and body.
Discovery Addiction Centers uses therapy because it works. Through therapy, our patients are able to safely explore their issues and confront them at the root, helping to better understand themselves and their problems. With our help, you’ll use therapy to build a powerful foundation for the rest of your life.
If you’d like to learn more about our therapeutic programs, reach out to us today.
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