Our Treatment Philosophy
Treatment
The treatment offered at The Life Healing Center is unique for many reasons. We have
been providing comprehensive, integrative residential treatment for trauma resolution
and addictive disorders for over twelve years. We are known by the work we do; we treat
the whole person, body, mind and spirit. Over the years, we've developed a highly
effective way to treat trauma that we believe is unmatched in any other setting.
Community - Humanizing Ourselves and Others
Trauma often causes a split, a chronic sense of separation from oneself, from others and from the world. Safety is often based on maintaining this profound distance, despite the pain and alienation that it causes. Survival may seem like it depends on disguising, hiding or denying our true human needs.
Our model of treatment utilizes group therapy in several forms; our depth process groups assist clients with exploring past and present patterns in a psychodynamic context. Our skills groups are designed to incorporate DBT and other CBT modalities into a cohesive architecture that encourages clients to practice behavioral choices with more awareness. The afternoon recovery groups address the addictions, and assist clients to identify how their additive patterns may be intertwined, allowing better understanding of the interactive nature of additive disorders.
Specialty groups are scheduled after recovery groups, to allow for reflection and integration, addressing grief, loss, body image, body awareness and gender issues. Our spirituality groups inspire personal exploration, for clients who already have a path and for those who might feel that they want to explore this area of their lives. Community Meetings provide opportunity for clients to enlarge the circle of support and ask for relevant feedback and assistance. We also offer the Roundtable, which allows the client to receive staff input and nurturing during difficult junctures in the treatment process. Through these carefully designed interactions, our clients learn how to create an increased sense of safety within themselves and in their relationships with others.
Expanding the Range of Experience
Central to the task of healing is fully experiencing ourselves as we are. This can only be learned by moving away from old patterns, and practicing being present in the moment. Trauma often leads to rigid or impulsive reactions and repeated self-judgments. Life becomes increasingly more diminished and our true self cannot emerge.
The destructive power of trauma is not primarily that it keeps us locked in the past, but that it teaches us to be terrified of the present. We teach mindfulness-based skills, yoga, and offer massage, body-based psychotherapies and equine assisted therapy, all of which offer ways to access the same result: embodied, here-and-now awareness and an increasingly more expansive sense of self.
