Group Sessions

Clients discussed the importance of learning specific life skills to help them deal with difficult times. In the group session, clients had the opportunity to practice coping skills and evaluate their effectiveness.

Clients discuss healthy ways to manage grief in recovery and its adverse impact on sobriety.

The purpose of today’s group was to have clients check in with their mind, body, and spirit to better understand how to treat each client on a day-to-day basis and to help understand where each client is out of alignment to assist them in grounding themselves. Having clients express and explain their immediate emotions assists them in increasing emotional intelligence/regulation and identification, leading to better communication within relationships. Then have the clients set a small/SMART goal to help clients understand the health benefits of feeling accomplished.

Mindfulness therapy is a type of talk therapy that focuses on learning how to be more aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, surroundings, and situations, and how to reduce one’s automatic responses. Mindfulness practice entails strengthening one’s awareness of what they are sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. It also includes breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

SUD Relapse Prevention is a skills-based, cognitive-behavioral approach that assists individuals in identifying situations and circumstances that place the person at greater risk for relapse. Relapse prevention planning entails the identification of goals and action steps, triggers (internal and external), high-risk situations, lapses, coping skills, and support systems. During this group session, clients worked on their relapse prevention plans through the discussion of preventive strategies and tools, including cognitive (related to thinking) and behavioral (related to action), to address those specific high-risk situations.

Wellness refers to complete health, rather than just your physical health, which consists of recognizing the need for physical activity, healthy foods, and sleep. Wellness is not only being free of disease, illness, or stress but also having a purpose in life, being emotionally healthy, taking an active involvement in your work and in your leisure time, having joyful relationships, and being happy. During this group session, clients are presented with various activities to enhance their complete wellness. Clients then are allowed to openly describe their experiences of the activities and to share their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors pertinent to recovery from AOD use, relapse prevention, mental health, and other relevant treatment plan objectives.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy tries to identify and change negative thinking patterns and pushes for positive behavioral changes. DBT focuses on four modules of psychological and emotional function that include mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation. During this group session, clients learned about coping more effectively with intense emotions, addictive behaviors, and/or relationship struggles. The goal was to learn new skills in the hope of reducing self-destructive behaviors and learning more adaptive ways to manage painful emotions.

Motivational Therapy is a collaborative process that involves helping clients identify their level of willingness to change and what resources they have that can support these changes. It also emphasizes identifying specific, measurable, and attainable goals that fit with a particular client’s value system. Its goal is to help clients articulate their understanding of the problem and provide education about the possible consequences as well as how to make manageable, sustainable changes. During this group session, clients participated in a discussion about the reasons for making behavioral changes. The group facilitator focused on empowering clients and motivating them to initiate and maintain behavioral changes that support recovery from addiction.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is based on well-established principles supporting the notion that changing negative thinking patterns and reducing maladaptive behavior can have a beneficial effect in improving a person’s emotions and behavior. CBT is a goal-directed and semi-structured therapy and involves an effective therapeutic alliance. During this group session, clients explored addiction-related negative thinking patterns and strategies to reduce maladaptive behaviors.

Addiction and traumatic events are strongly correlated, i.e., trauma increases the risk of developing substance abuse, and substance abuse increases the likelihood that individuals will experience trauma. The primary goal of trauma-informed groups is to explore preventive measures to prevent inadvertent re-traumatization and relapse. In addition, these groups strengthen clients’ sense of safety and empowerment and improve the therapeutic alliance’s collaborative treatment process. In this group session, the group facilitator helped clients discover and improve coping strategies and skills to better respond to reminders and emotions associated with the traumatic event.

Grief therapy is a form of therapy intended to help one cope with loss, like the death of a partner, family member, friend, colleague, or pet. A grief group provides education on grief and coping mechanisms; in addition, it offers a different quality of support and connection that comes from being with people who have also recently experienced a loss. Grief groups provide emotional support, validation, and education about grief. In this group session, clients explored the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), their effects on their lives, specifically substance use, and coping methods.

Co-Occurring Disorder, aka, dual diagnosis, is the condition of having a mental illness and a comorbid substance use disorder. Co-occurring disorders can include anxiety disorders, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. In this group session, clients are allowed to share their personal experiences of dealing with a dual diagnosis and addiction and then discuss different strategies to combat mental health symptoms and drug urges and cravings.

Process Improvement groups are a form of group therapy that comprises an essential component of addiction treatment therapy. They allow clients to learn the skills needed to navigate social networks and stress and reduce the inducements to use mood-altering substances again. The power of process groups lies in the unique opportunity to receive multiple perspectives, support, encouragement, and feedback from other individuals in a safe and confidential environment. In this group session, clients explored an array of SUD-related topics and shared their thoughts and insights since being in treatment.

SUD Psychoeducation is a therapeutic intervention that involves providing clients, in a structured and specific manner, information about their diagnosis, symptoms, or the method of treatment used. Psychoeducation has been shown to improve client adherence to treatment protocols because it is more likely that clients follow through with clinical and medical recommendations when they understand why specific recommendations are made and how those recommendations may help them achieve their goals. In this group session, clients discussed various treatment options and their application and efficacy.

Life skills groups are designed to allow clients to hone skills that can be used in everyday life. These capabilities will enable them to become more in control over things that might precipitate old behaviors by improving coping skills and knowing how to enhance relationships.
Practicing these life skills will reduce the confusion of life that leads to relapse and enable the patient to stay on a path of sobriety. Although these groups are electives, recovering addicts can benefit from participating in more than one of the groups. Below is a list of our groups and a brief description of the topics approached in each group.
Three major categories of life skills covered in this group are as follows:

Rock to Recovery is a treatment modality that uses music as an active intervention to facilitate symptom management, promote wellness, and provide a relapse prevention tool to participants. By writing and performing music as a group, participants meet specific objectives including increased motivation and compliance in and beyond treatment, improved affect and mood stability, better communication skills, and enhanced emotional expression. The program uses an evidence-based understanding of the influence of music on brain function to elicit desired growth. Improved emotional regulation, ability to communicate, and the building of appropriate interpersonal skills are regular and expected results.