Tag: family-treatment

Categories
Family Recovery

Visions’ Three-Day Family Intensive Program

Beginning in June of 2014, Visions will launch our Three-Day Family Intensive program. latigo-fenceIt is a small, intimate program, which will facilitate therapeutic and clinically supported opportunities to help parents view their current roles and reactions within their family systems. To heal, all pieces of the familial puzzle need to come together.

 

Terra Hollbrook, MSW, LCSW, CADC and her husband, Jeff Hollbrook, BRI-III, have been working closely with our clinical staff to review and expand our family program. Their experience ranges from personal to professional, and as a result, their contribution to the Family Program has added experiential depth and weight. Within the context of the Three-Day Family weekend, families, with the help of clinical staff, will address:

 

  • Dis-Ease;
  • Shame;
  • Trauma, and;
  • Powerlessness

 

The Three-Day Family Intensive will provide experiential learning meant to facilitate the recognition of similarities while adeptly addressing differences within the family dynamic. Visions’ Three-Day Family Intensive program will also provide the family with the experience of being the identified patient, a necessary tool when one is doing this kind of work. Understanding what it’s like to be in someone’s shoes can create a profound paradigm shift.

 

Day one is designed to be purely educational in which participants will gain a more salient understanding of their own powerlessness.

 

Day two will allow for a deeper divulgence into that powerlessness as families are broken up into small groups facilitated by clinicians guiding them through the emotional process of looking inward.  On days one and two, parents are without their teens.

 

On day three, families come back together so parents and teens can reconnect in a therapeutic and supportive environment. Families will do group work together, which will include sculpting a more therapeutic and functional family environment from that point forward. In addition, families will participate in group activities together. Finally, the weekend will culminate in a closing circle and a therapeutic process facilitated by a clinician where families are able to discharge from the emotional stimulation.

 

Family work takes time and dedication. There are no magical buttons that will make everything suddenly line up the way we want them to. However, with practice, and consistent work unpeeling the layers of internal stories and traumas, healing will happen. Families do find their way back together.

 

The heart is an amazing thing: it heals even when we believe it’s broken beyond compare. Our goal with the Three-Day Family Intensive Program is to teach families that they can heal and that they can create new, healthier root systems from here on out—that their hearts can, in fact, heal.

Categories
Recovery Service Treatment

Visions Hits Double-Digits: Celebrating a Decade of Adolescent Treatment

This past decade, Visions has set a mission to provide a treatment plan that truly caters to youth and their families. We’ve coexisted alongside a myriad of recovery centers, working hand in hand with them to bring a sense of healing to the entirety of the family dynamic. As we celebrate 10 years of providing treatment, our professional growth, and the program development we’re embarking on, it behooves us to acknowledge and celebrate our treatment team and the culture they have built at Visions.

There is something that lies within every single person at Visions, something which connects all of us in a very unique way. As I’ve sat and pondered what that “thing” is, I‘ve realized it’s the sense of being of service which we all embody. The thing that drives us to get up and “do it again” isn’t the promise of a paycheck or the gratification of completing a task on time; instead, it’s the desire to put forth the effort in watering the seeds of recovery planted at the very beginning of treatment. It’s a continuum, this process, one which starts at intake and continues on to supporting healthy living. There is no “end” to the dedication and perseverance of our team. Selflessness is what I continue to notice about those who’ve been here since the beginning and in those just planting their feet. There is an element of altruism within the team, not forced, just naturally there and engaged beyond any expectations placed upon us by simply being an employee.

Amidst all of the selflessness and service, however, runs an underlying tone of never taking ourselves too seriously.  The team wears their hearts on their sleeves and carries laughter in their hearts. Frankly, we can’t see any other way to show our clients our authenticity.  As we know, adolescence is strife with the mistrust of adults and a deep need for autonomy; having adults who care for them and are willing to share their ability to be themselves while maintaining positive boundaries is crucial. There’s nothing forced about this, and the organic factor allows us to be consistent in our care and treatment. Remember, teens can suss out a fake in two seconds flat…especially when it comes to adults.

The treatment world understands a language all its own.  It feels the pain of the mentally ill, the addict, the depressed, the eating disordered, the anxious, and the suicidal. From our perspective, there’s no judgment, just the sincere effort to help someone heal. There comes a point where the need to “just” be of service ceases to solely focus on recovery and begins to seep into paving the path to living better lives. At Visions, we shoot for the families’ new beginning and aim to be the best examples of recovery, compassion and fun. As Dr. Seuss liked to say, “Fun is good.”

Categories
Mental Health

Adolescent Treatment: Mind and Body As One

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Since 2002, Visions has been in the forefront of providing adolescent treatment. Being well-versed in the characteristics of adolescent behaviors and cognitive development, it was only natural for us to refine our Mental Health Track in order to provide an optimal treatment model for teens. As we’ve seen time and time again, drugs and alcohol aren’t always the sole, causative factor in behavioral issues. Often times, there’s a mental-health component which needs to be addressed with the same skill and finesse used in the treatment of substance abuse.

It’s not easy being a teenager: for one, there’s the physical awkwardness, there’s the social constructs of trying to fit in and be liked, and there’s the desire to do well in school and meet the expectations of your parents. It’s tough. There’s no denying that. For some, it’s harder than others, and the pressure of “doing it all” is simply too much, which can present as the self-deprecating feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression, et cetera. Unfortunately, the environment of adolescence isn’t always conducive to one talking to their friends about these experiences without the fear of being stigmatized. Most of the time, one’s left trying to figure things out for themselves, and that never really works out well.

This October, Visions will light the path to a refined treatment model, addressing the complex issues relating to adolescent mental health. By thoroughly addressing and updating the mental-health component to our existing modalities, we will ultimately provide an environment which will allow teens struggling with mental-health issues to truly achieve physical and psychological health. The goal is to do so while also removing the stigma typically associated with mental-health issues.

We all come with the physiological footprints of our families. On occasion, we need help navigating those seas so we may begin to create new, emotionally sound paradigms in which to live our lives. Between successfully providing mental health, substance abuse, and family treatment, I believe we are well on our way to helping families achieve this goal.

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