The Marchman Act is a law under the Florida Statute that allows for individuals struggling with substance abuse to receive an involuntary assessment and be treated if they are unable or unwilling to seek out voluntary admission to a treatment facility. Unlike the Baker Act, the Marchman act enables family members to seek help for […]
Category: Therapy
Can Writing Help Us Heal?
As we’re working to recover from addiction and mental illness, we want to develop new coping skills to replace all of the destructive, limiting, damaging patterns we’ve been perpetuating over the years. We want to tackle all of the different manifestations of our pain, our addictive patterns and the symptoms of our mental and emotional […]
Witnessing Addiction as Children
Many of us who struggle with addiction witnessed the illness in our families and communities when growing up. We may have watched parents, siblings and other family members drink excessively, use drugs or engage in reckless addictive behaviors. They may have included us in their activities, exposing us to their drugs of choice and addictive […]
Can We Use Self-Hypnosis for Addiction Recovery?
Self-hypnosis might sound complicated, difficult and elusive, but the truth is we’re always hypnotizing ourselves, each and every day, with the thoughts we think repeatedly and the beliefs we give the most energy to. When used consciously and with mindfulness, self-hypnosis can be applied to any challenge in our lives and can help us establish […]
Why We’re Afraid of Treatment
When it comes to addiction recovery, there are many things we fear – the difficult symptoms of withdrawal, having to give up our dependence on our drug of choice, harsh judgments from other people, feeling alone in this new journey we’re taking. One thing many of us fear is entering treatment and getting professional help. […]
Loving All Versions of Ourselves
One of the things that holds us back the most in our recovery are our lingering feelings of self-hatred, insecurity and self-rejection. We’re still feeling down on ourselves for being addicts, for all the mistakes we’ve made and ways in which we’ve hurt ourselves and others. We feel ashamed of ourselves. We don’t love and […]
How Compassion Can Help Us Heal
We might not usually think of compassion in terms of addiction and mental illness, but the more we learn to have compassion for ourselves and others, the more we can help ourselves during the very challenging recovery process. Our addictions are often coping mechanisms for our pain, the pain of our mental health issues, and […]
Determining Our Values
An important part of the recovery process is getting to know ourselves better and therefore getting clearer on our values. When we’re embroiled in our addictions, we tend to lose sight of who we are and what values are important to us. We forget what principles we want to lead our lives by. We’re so […]
Making the Most of Treatment
When we make the decision to get sober, many of us will seek professional help with our recovery program. For many of us, entering treatment is a scary and overwhelming undertaking. We might still be suffering from depression and other mental health issues. We might feel resistance to doing the work, partly because our addictions […]
Examining Our Fears in Therapy
As we’re working to recover from our addictions and mental health issues, examining our fears with a therapist can help us greatly in our healing. We are sometimes so clouded by our toxic thought patterns and so distracted by our life circumstances that we have a hard time looking at what is driving us in […]