Groups

Soon after intake, clients will be participating in our outpatient group therapy program. Group therapy provides a safe, trusting environment to gain support with the help of peers. Many feel they are alone because of their problems, and it is comforting to hear others share similar difficulties. In the climate of trust provided by the group, individuals are encouraged to share their struggles and help each other.Group therapy involves active participation, persistence, self-reflection, accepting help, making mistakes and learning from them, and building inner strength.


Healthy Sexuality in Sobriety

This gender-specific group is designed to integrate concepts of sexual health, dysfunctional relationship patterns, and impulsive decision-making with current sex research, and recent developments in relapse prevention research. Participants will be offered a positive and safe forum within to understand and change their sex/drug-linked behaviors.

Feeding the Hunger Within

Feeding the hunger within is a curriculum designed to address substance abuse and other addictive behaviors. It outlines ways to connect with, self, a higher power and a community. Feeding the Hunger Within teaches concrete tools and exciting steps to a richer and more meaningful life.

Boundary Power

PowerBoundary Power group discusses setting healthy boundaries with friends, relatives, lovers, and exes. Participants examine the ways in which they violate their own boundaries or let other people breach them, and will learn to make choices that balance one's own needs with the needs of others.

Empowerment It's An Inside Job

This group is an introduction to the proven benefits of mindfulness meditation practice. Participants will enrich their everyday experience by learning how to be fully present in each moment; reduce stress by responding creatively rather than reacting mindlessly; and bring greater clarity and understanding to everything they do.

Staying Motivated While Staying Sober

This group inspires participants to use challenges and adversity as sources of motivation. Participants will break through the emotional barriers and limited beliefs that contribute to self-sabotage, so they can move forward in their lives with confidence.

Anger Management

Anger Management group focuses on defusing anger before it strikes. Participants learn to express feelings calmly; respond rather than react; release healthy anger in a healthy way, and get beyond old anger through forgiveness

Early Recovery Skills

Early Recovery Skills group is designed to teach and enforce key recovery concepts such as: utilizing the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous; why seven days without a meeting makes one weak; selecting a sponsor; the importance of service commitments; using the phone to stay connected; etc. Participants will learn skills such as identification of triggers, how to manage urges, and stress-reduction.

Authentic Empowerment

Authentic Empowerment group focuses on several of the following topics: What is power? Empowerment versus victimhood, how thought determines experience, the use of mind-body bridging, how mindfulness can be used to support emotional regulation, conditioning and the subconscious, and many more.

Relapse Prevention

Relapse prevention group focuses on individuals in early recovery. Client's are encouraged to examine their own personal self-defeating behaviors and replace them with constructive behavior. By identifying the warning signs it empowers the individual to monitor triggers and stay away from high-risk situations. Education and insight increases their chances of staying sober and each patient is given methods designed to meet these needs.

Money Management in Recovery

Money management in recovery group focuses on financial issues individuals encounter in early recovery. Topics covered in this group include: lending and borrowing money, developing a style of living that promotes saving over spending, understanding that money does not dictate self-worth, determining and understanding the value of a dollar, developing healthy financial boundaries, learning to be self-sufficient through ones own contributions, and many others.

CBT Group

Cognitive behavior therapy is based on the idea thatfeelings and behaviors are caused by a person's thoughts, not on outside stimuli like people, situations and events. People may not be able to change their circumstances, but they can change how they think about them and therefore change how they feel and behave. In CBT: Healing the Soul, participants will learn to recognize situations in which they are most likely to drink or use drugs, avoid these circumstances if possible, and cope withother problems and behaviors which may lead to their substance abuse (i.e. depressed mood, low self-esteem, and/or anxiety). They will explore comfortable ways to be with their feelings instead of numbing them.

Emotionally Self-Awareness Process Group

The primary goal of the Emotionally Self-Awareness Process Group is to provide a safe and supportive environment where clients can begin to reconnect with their emotions. By developing a vocabulary that best describes feelings, group members begin to learn how to more effectively identify, express and experience those feelings they were once led to believe were unimportant, unacceptable or too shameful to share with others.

Group members come to learn that their self worth is like a reservoir that needs to be replenished on a daily basis and that attending to their feelings plays a major part in fulfilling that essential goal. Group members also gain a better understanding of how their thoughts and emotions interact and affect each other and how misleading that can be at times.

The Emotionally Self-Awareness Process Group is designed to provide a relaxed, and often playful, atmosphere where clients become more comfortable at revealing their emotions to themselves and others, and in doing so, build upon the belief that "they deserve better" which, in-turn, enables them to better maintain their sobriety and a healthier way of life life.

Cycle of Addiction

When dealing with relapse an individual isn't suddenly struck drunk. There are often signs long before that lead up to the incident. When the client is launching into his or her recovery it is helpful to know their own personal self-defeating behaviors and replace them with constructive behavior. By identifying the warning signs it empowers the individual to monitor triggers and stay away from high-risk situations. Education and insight increases their chances of staying sober and each patient is given methods designed to meet these needs.

Week 1- Education on the cycle of addiction

Week 2- Self-defeating behaviors vs. Constructive Behaviors

Week 3- Relapse triggers and solutions

Week 4- Inventory and self-regulation

Managing Moods

Managing Moods Group focuses on discussing and developing new coping mechanisms and strategies for the management of moods such as anxiety, depression and anger. Managing moods puts emphasis on the importance of being able to identify our thoughts, feelings, moods, behaviors, and our physical reactions that are often triggered by everyday life situations and major life events. Group members will be encouraged to identify problems in their daily experiences and work within the group to generate more adaptive responses. The group will work towards identifying strategies to change the thinking patterns that keep us locked into dysfunctional moods, behaviors, and relationship patterns.

The New Normal

The New Normal support Group focuses on empowering group members to resist drug or alcohol abuse by acquiring a new lifestyle and developing a new set of life skills. Group members will support each other in learning to better cope with stresses and challenges of daily life, develop skills in communication, decision-making, problem solving, time management and planning. Such topics will also include self-esteem, sense of self, how to have fun in sobriety and transitioning from aftercare into community.

Hypnotherapy Group

Facilitated by Nancy Scanlon, C.Ht.

Therapeutic Hypnosis and Guided Imagery is used to help those in recovery to release stress and anxiety. Each weekly session includes a hypnosis induction and visualization to relax the body, calm the mind, and balance the emotions to cultivate a feeling of wellbeing.

This group also explores the power of thought, as the newer sciences of Neuroplasticity has found that all emotion is preceded by thought. Research has shown that therapeutic hypnosis can offer significant psychological benefits, including learning to observe one's experience in a nonreactive manner, a increased sense of control over one's life and environment, and to embrace one's experiences as meaningful and worthwhile.

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. - Albert Einstein

Friends and Family Support Group

Led by our family specialist with over 25 years of experience in the field, the goal of this psycho-educational therapy group is to educate parents on addiction and how it impacts the entire family. This group helps parents develop new coping skills to use when interacting with their children and the new challenges that will be presented in sobriety. We see the family as a system and the entire family is seen as being in recovery. This group provides a safe outlet for parents to address specific issues that have come up at home and encourages them to share and process with others. This group meets on a weekly basis and all families are invited and encouraged to come whether the client is currently in our program or in our aftercare.

Sober Socialization/Experiential Groups

Sober activities are planned on a regular basis to teach clients that sobriety really can be fun. Group activities includes sporting events, gym memberships and personalized bootcamps, barbeques, movies, amusement parks, bowling, hiking, and trips to museums. Clients are also taught the importance of giving back and being of service and are encouraged to particpate in charitable and community service activities.

12 Step Groups

CAST Recovery is an abstinence based, 12 step oriented program, and the purpose of the 12 Step group is to introduce clients to the program and discuss the principles and objectives of it. We encourage clients to work with a sponsor and we hold in-house meetings which are supported by various group topics. Participating in AA is not a requirement of our program, but is recommended.