Healing
The Whole Person

Individual therapy is an essential tool in recovering from addiction and transforming an individual’s life.

Addiction robs us of us of our sense of self, our ability to process emotions, have meaningful relationships, manage our day-to-day lives or have a sense of meaning and purpose. Additionally, while living in active addiction, addicts and alcoholics are consistently anesthetizing their emotions — sometimes for decades. It is common for individuals who are just getting sober to suddenly feel flooded by the emotions they have stuffed for years. These emotions can date all the way back to childhood traumas. This flood of emotions can often blindside someone just getting sober. And without healthy coping mechanisms and tools to process them, these emotions can be a trigger for relapse. Untreated wounds from the past are often the stumbling blocks that trip up an individual’s ability to stay clean and sober long term.

Individual therapy helps individuals begin to explore their lives — their unhealed wounds, unhealthy behavior patterns, shame, grief, sorrow — whatever might hinder them from experiencing the freedom sobriety has to offer. Therapy helps get down to the roots of why an individual may have been drawn to substances in the first place. It also teaches individuals tools for processing their emotions, for challenging the negative stories they tell themselves and for building better relationships. The importance of individual therapy cannot be overstated.

Benefits of Therapy

• Individual therapy allows Plymouth House guests the opportunity to discuss life events or challenges they might not feel comfortable discussing in a group setting.
• Individuals delve deep into underlying issues and unresolved trauma, which is often part of the reason they begin abusing chemical substances in the first place.
• Individuals work on honing communication skills and they learn how to express their feelings and emotions effectively.
• Over time, individuals begin to build self-confidence and a sense of self-worth as they continuously tackle recovery-related challenges and discuss their triumphs in one-on-one therapy sessions.

Root Causes of Addiction

Addiction is known as a “chronic, relapsing brain disease” because of its uncanny and baffling way of resurfacing, over and over again, until the roots are deeply treated. What do we mean by this?

To draw an analogy — you can pick off the top leaves of a weed in your garden, but until you dig out the root, the weed will keep resurfacing. Individual therapy allows individuals to get down to the roots of their maladies and truly change. Real recovery involves a real transformation. And real transformation takes time, help and continuous effort.

The root causes of addiction include:

• Unresolved trauma that occurred during childhood or later on in life.
• Genetic predisposition (addiction is a hereditary disease), which also often means a history of familial dysfunction.
• Underlying mental health conditions, like anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder.
• Repetitive negative reinforcement. Chemical substances themselves sometimes lead to addiction, though it is more common for clients to enter into treatment with a range of underlying factors.

Our Therapists

The therapists that work at The Plymouth House collectively have decades of experience in working with addicts and alcoholics. The therapeutic methods they use have been well-researched and are designed to jumpstart the transformation needed to stay sober for the long-haul.

Therapeutic methods we use include:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – Also known as CBT, this is one of the most effective and widely used therapeutic methods. CBT focuses on helping clients recognize certain thoughts, feelings and behaviors that might trigger alcohol or drug use. A licensed therapist helps the client replace negative and self-destructive thought patterns with healthy and productive ones.
• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy – Also known as DBT, this is a form of CBT that focuses on living in the present moment and successfully working through high stress situations. DBT was originally developed to help people struggling with bipolar disorder, but it has also proven effective for the treatment of substance dependence.
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – More commonly referred to as EMDR, this therapeutic method uses eye movements to help clients reprocess painful and destructive memories. It is a non-invasive technique that has proven very beneficial in treating the underlying causes of substance abuse.
• Motivational Interviewing – Therapists motivate their clients to maintain total abstinence from mood and mind altering substances by helping them focus on the benefits of sobriety. If a client is motivated by mending broken relationships with loved ones or improving performance at work, for example, these might be motivating factors when it comes to long-term treatment.

Therapy & The 12 Steps

The Plymouth House has a long-standing legacy for taking individuals through the 12 steps of recovery. While the 12 steps absolutely transform an individual, combining our 12 step process with individual therapy is a strategy that really works.

The 12 steps in and of themselves could be considered a form of therapy — in particular the fourth and fifth step when an individual takes an inventory of their past and begins to look at their part in each situation. Working the steps has a tendency to bring up a lot of stored emotions. Seeing an individual therapist at the same time as working the 12 steps with a 12 step contact helps individuals to process emotions as they surface. Having an added level of professional support while going through the steps ins extremely beneficial.

The Time is Now
Start Living

To learn more about how The Plymouth House combines therapy with working the 12 steps, contact us today. There is no better time than now to start re-claiming your life, or the life of someone you love. Addiction robs individuals of the abundant, joyous life they were meant for, and negatively affects everyone around them. But there is hope. We are here to help.