Category: Intensive Outpatient Program

Addiction Treatment Intensive Outpatient Program

The Power of Community: Why Connection Matters in IOP

Post author By Megan
Post date October 3, 2025

Community is one of the most powerful curative factors in the treatment of addiction, mental illness, and trauma. In this post, we here at Villa Kali Ma explore some facets of this most precious of recovery diamonds: community.

We’ll also share more about how Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program draws on the extraordinary, transformative effects of community work to help women heal from addiction, mental illness and trauma.

Let us begin with the problem that community cures: isolation. Isolation is a contemporary psychological and social burden, one that haunts many women in the so-called first world. It’s easy to recognize that the way we live, as a collective, generates loneliness for all. We may have more than we could ever need of material and virtual products for consumption, but we are undoubtedly impoverished in the realm of wholehearted relating. Loneliness is epidemic.

We can see them plainly enough in the external world, but the forces that subtly separate human heart from human heart also exist inside us. Most of us carry painfully difficult beliefs, reflecting an unresolvable polarity of dependence vs independence.

We think we shouldn’t need other people, or the opposite: that we can’t survive without their total approval of every aspect of us. Many of us are missing the middle place of interdependence, of unity in diversity, of belonging enhancing individuality and individuality enhancing belonging. The prison of imagined separation is inside us as well as outside of us.

This insight is not new, of course. Thousands of years ago, philosophers in the East (to whom we at Villa Kali Ma owe a great debt of gratitude, being a yoga-based program) correctly identified that there is something within each of us that believes in a deeply painful and ultimately incorrect illusion. That illusion is the perception that we are separate beings, rather than parts of a whole, cells in one body of life. This unfortunate habit of perception, passed on and reinforced, tends to shape our ways of considering who we are, and who others are.

All around us, this illusion is arguably disproved, mainly by the simple facts of nature. Our biology dictates that we are social animals. For deeply-wired, mammalian reasons, we cannot help but feel safer in groups, with families, partners, and friends around us. Polyvagal theory emphasizes the importance of co-regulation: in order for our nervous systems to turn off the inner fire alarms of panic and dread, we need to look into safe, available eyes. We need to register smiling faces, hear soothing voices. We need to detect, perhaps without even realizing that we do, the deep slow breaths being drawn by calm, capable others around us. In this age of replacement of the human with the artificial, are we remembering that most of what’s wrong with us, could be cured with some good old fashioned human contact?

Implications of our fancied separation, and the resulting psychological pain, are serious. Addiction, mental illness, and trauma are strengthened by isolation, and they also strengthen isolation. In many ways, they arise as attempted cures for isolation, in answer to the severe distress that appears in the human nervous system whenever there is severing of connection, exclusion from belonging, and withdrawal of human warmth.

The natural need for human contact cannot be made to disappear, only go underground. We may be ashamed of our loneliness, our craving for company, contact, and attention. We may long to be able to depend on people, but deeply believe (for good reason, even) that most people are unsafe to depend on. Perhaps we look down on our needs for securely bonded attachment relationships, thinking that we should be able to, it would be easier to, go it alone. We long to belong, even while we reject and marginalize each other when exposed for trying to belong or expressing the pain of our non-belonging.

In short, our wounds around the topic of belonging versus separation from people, and the very real ways we have been hurt by our separation, present many barriers to coming together in community. And yet, the pain of separation implies its own cure: to heal from the illusion that we are fully separate entities, we must rediscover that, in fact, we are kin. We must remember that we are cells from the larger body of all humanity, rather than far-flung bits of meaningless material, without which the body of humanity would be just fine. That’s not so. When one of us leaves this planet, our passing is grieved in ways we will never even realize. We must find ways to recall what has always been true: we belong. It just is.

So what’s the cure? Well, we at Villa Kali Ma believe that willy nilly, we women who have been wounded must find our way back to organic, home-grown, human community.

How Community Support Strengthens Women’s Trauma Recovery in IOP

In all of the programs we offer at Villa Kali Ma, we place the value of community front and center. We teach each woman who comes through our doors not only that community heals, but also how she can actually “do” community.

After all, being in community takes some skills. For most of us, it’s not so much that we don’t realize we are lonely (though we may have numbed this awareness away with drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, self harm, destructive relationships, etc). It’s more that we aren’t sure if we really know how to connect with each other in authentic, harmonious, inclusive ways. Have we ever seen that modeled? Were our families, our schools, our churches and universities like that? We have this longing, to be loved for who we actually are, without so much faking, hiding, conforming and effort. Could that ever be fulfilled?

What if we take a risk, and then are rejected? What if someone wants something from us that we don’t want to give them, and we have to reject them, or else violate our own needs? What if people see all the things about us that are so unacceptable in our own eyes – our inadequacies and insufficiencies, our vanities and blatant acts of selfishness, all that we dishonor and disrespect inside ourselves? What if people hurt us like we were hurt before? What if we hurt them?

All of these fears are valid. Learning how to be in community takes some up-front work. We have to remember how to be, just as we are, allowing everyone else to be, just as they are. We have to know when the person across from of us is worthy of our efforts at authentic connection, or whether they’re more in a place of inwardness, therefore likely to not be able to meet us in the vulnerable zone. But community can be had. It is possible to restore the ability to relate in a group, and to have the experience of being accepted for who we actually, really are.

Reclaiming a place in community is not a platitude – it is an achievable accomplishment. Restoration of connection in community involves being willing to work on our ability to show up to connect and be connected with other imperfect human beings. Not because we have finally become acceptable enough, but because we understand that all human beings have been hurt. We are in the same boat. We all have burdens, and we are all figuring it out as best we can. Given this existential equality, we have every reason to work together, to forgive in others what we long to forgive in ourselves, to extend grace and compassion, knowing we need grace and compassion too.

The facts cannot be avoided: the state of psychological isolation is a root cause for addiction and other mental illness. The wounds we hold cannot be cured without relating, even if that relating is inward relating to our own Self. One way or another, we must allow relating to take place again, inside of us and also with others out in the world. For those of us with a life-threatening mental health condition or severe addiction, we must find a way to claim our place in community, or we will always be at risk of turning to those substances and behaviors that we used to manage the pain of the wounds we have around our lack of human-to-human connection.

Creating Safe Spaces for Vulnerability and Growth

As everyone knows, women have a lot of valid fears about opening up authentically in community. We didn’t make these experiences up – we really were shamed, bullied, rejected, ostracized in and by communities. The people we relied on let us down – through hurting us directly or through failing to protect us. What is most human in us was banished to the underground of the psyche. If these damaging social experiences didn’t happen directly to us, we inherited these traumas from our parents, observed them in the collective, and recognized deep in our bones that in this very damaged and damaging world, belonging can be highly conditional.

Nevertheless, as the adage goes, what was hurt in relationships can be healed in relationships; in this case – community relationships. Through community witness, acceptance, support, and working through relational topics in appropriately facilitated or peer-led settings, we can be guided through the complex process of healing our ability to connect in community.

To know ourselves as valued, unique individuals within a wider community, wanted and loved just as we are, is profoundly reparative. We discover we can be loved for what unites us with all others, as well as for what makes us different from anyone else. At last, the pain-creating illusion that says we are all alone and unrelated, irrelevant and unimportant, is dissolved. We finally understand our deep, inherent, and unavoidable belonging in the family of life.

At Villa Kali Ma, we are dedicated to creating safe spaces for vulnerability and growth. Through how we hold space, what we model in community, and what we practice together as fellow recovering women, we build community together. Vulnerability is a choice, a choice which is necessary for growth.

Building Lifelong Connections Beyond Treatment

Many women make friends in treatment, as friendships are forged by shared experience, in the intimacy of our recovery setting.

Many clients also form healing bonds of trust with treatment staff. Our facility itself becomes a place where you are known, recognized, a kind of home. Returning as an alumna, you may feel like you’re going back to see teachers who are still rooting for you, long after you’ve graduated. Many clients form close connections with a specific practitioner who really gets them. That relationship is then internalized, the therapist or healer becoming an “inner wisdom figure” – an ally the graduate can always remember in her mind, long after the work is done. Close, or collegial, (even fruitfully challenging!), the relationships with treatment staff are generally an important part for women going through our programs.

It’s also part of the Villa Kali Ma experience to build long-lasting connections in the recovery community at large. During their treatment time with us, women are supported to learn to use the recovery tools in full. These include the ins and outs of meetings, making outreach calls, sharing stories, being of service, working with a sponsor, and giving back to the community by helping out with newcomers.

Although we support each woman’s choice, we do strongly endorse involvement in 12 Step, or a comparable recovery community. The peer-support model of recovery pioneered by communities like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous is unmatched in ability to teach people how to belong in community again. Participation dissolves long-held burdens of shame, disconnection and loneliness among people affected by the topic of addiction.

These communities are human, not perfect – they have 100-year old language and ideas that can be triggering to some of us, and that’s a fair critique. These imperfections we acknowledge. Still, in the West, there has been no better model to emerge to address the core problem of addiction. The core problem of addiction being: severe disconnection, alienation, and trouble relating safely and wholeheartedly among members of our species. To solve this particular pain, we help women learn how to rely on the power of 12 Step communities, knowing it to be especially powerful medicine for the wounds of belonging, specifically.

Find Sisterhood and Support at Villa Kali Ma’s Women’s IOP

There is a popular imported proverb, possibly of Igbo and Yoruba origin, which offers the wisdom that “It takes a village to raise a child”. We here at Villa Kali Ma would extend that notion towards healing mental illness, addiction, and trauma: it takes a village to heal a woman.

As a female-centered treatment community, Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program is a place to find sisterhood and support among women. With our signature blend of holistic therapies and clinical treatment approaches, we help each woman recover her sense of deserving to belong in community, just as she is now. We are here to be that village for you, and for all women out there who need us.

If you’re looking for support recovering from addiction, mental illness, trauma, or all three, check out our many programs for women. We offer a range of services at several locations in the northern San Diego county area.

Tags Community Support in Addiction Treatment, Women's Addiction Recovery

Addiction Treatment Intensive Outpatient Program Trauma Therapy

Therapies That Transform: How IOP Helps Women Heal from Trauma

Post author By Megan
Post date October 3, 2025

One of the features that distinguishes Villa Kali Ma’s unique, holistic approach to healing women’s addiction and mental illness is our recognition of the role of trauma.

Since the early days of opening our doors, we have placed emphasis on the value of providing women effective treatment options for addressing their traumatization, with and alongside any work we do to address substance use and mental health symptoms. In each of our programs, spanning the range of inpatient to outpatient, we include gold standard trauma treatment approaches like EMDR and Somatic Experiencing, as well as younger approaches which show strong promise in the ever-evolving trauma treatment field (such as Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy and Brainspotting).

According to several studies, women, even more so than men, are especially likely to be using substances as a way to manage the pain they carry from having survived traumatizing events. Of the traumatizing events women have survived, the majority of events can be categorized as sexually violating in nature. Sexual trauma, especially that incurred in childhood sexual abuse, is the most psychologically damaging form of trauma. Of those people affected by childhood sexual abuse and sexual violence, the vast majority are women.

Healing the deep wounds that trauma leaves behind in the body, brain and nervous system of women is key, when the goal is to change patterns of self-destructive behavior. Contrary to popular belief, women don’t use substances because women are irrational, overemotional, selfish, lazy, stupid, or immoral. (Just to rule out a few of the unflattering attributions that have been applied to women who use substances – scratch that, you know what? to women in general – over the centuries!)

Rather, women use substances because they are effective (in the short term, anyway) at reducing the overwhelming pain of unresolved traumatic experiences. Alternatively, substances help women behave in ways that support them to survive in society, in a context of carrying a secret burden of shattering psychological pain.

As the field of trauma treatment gains wider recognition and acceptance over the decades, the need for trauma healing centers of all manner continues to rise. It appears to be the case that for many women, trauma is best treated not in single, once-a-week outpatient sessions following the psychotherapy model, but rather in a more wrap-around approach. This is so that several different approaches to trauma treatment can be applied, working together in concert.

We recommend our Intensive Outpatient Program approach for addressing trauma to any survivors out there. A surprising amount of trauma-related memory content can be resolved in just a few sessions of modalities like EMDR. But complex and chronic traumatization of the type most likely to be driving women’s substance abuse and mental health problems is not a one-and-done affair. Rather, a blend of interventions to heal safety-perception distortions and dysregulated patterns of physiological arousal at neurobiological levels should be used in combination with attachment-informed individual psychotherapy, group work, and peer-based community support.

At Villa Kali Ma, we are very proud to be able to offer a state of the art array of the best of the best trauma therapies out there. We offer these to women who need help healing from what has harmed them most deeply, whether or not that harm has led them to use substances or receive a mental health diagnosis.

How Trauma-Focused Therapies in IOP Empower Women to Heal

The many trauma-focused therapies we offer in Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program empower women to heal through a few pathways.

We facilitate the resolution of problematic memories through treatments like EMDR and brainspotting, which work with the brain to reprocess memories safely. EMDR and brainspotting are believed to operate by altering where and how traumatic memories are stored in the brain.

Additionally, we empower women to understand themselves, and what they thought were their personality flaws, through the lens of trauma. Prolonged nervous system states become traits, which in turn become identities, to paraphrase the words of trauma educator Linda Thai. Through understanding the real depth of impact trauma has had, we help traumatized women experience something they may never have felt before: self-compassion.

Perhaps most importantly, we show women how they can shift gears naturally when their trauma symptoms are triggered by events in the external world. Gaining a measure of agency over one’s own body states has huge implications, making the need for substances, and many other extreme behaviors, redundant.

This ability to shift states consciously comes in part through restoration of somatic awareness, which in turn leads to the ability to use the practices found in polyvagal theory to downshift or upshift using simple, body-based tools like breath, stretching, and vagus nerve stimulation.

Somatic awareness is a term which refers to the subjective, personal experience of the body from the inside out. One goal of somatic therapies and other trauma-informed approaches is to restore women’s capacity to feel their own embodiment, as a stream of ever-shifting sensations. Women can then use body signals to note the triggered state, decide whether or not they are really in danger now (or rather just experiencing a flashback, or body-memory), and take appropriate action to return to the safety zone.

Women with trauma need help learning to relate to sensations again, because the ordinary operations of the nervous system have been damaged through shock that was too overwhelming to integrate. Traumatized women have been imprinted and impaired in such a way that when something possibly threatening happens (something which resembles or is associated with circumstances in which they were hurt before in serious ways), they go into overdrive, sending the nervous system into high distress.

This trauma-related distress, the kind that happens when a person’s life is in danger, is recreated as though “it’s happening all over again”, even though the current circumstances may not actually perfectly map onto the original traumatizing event. This happens because of over-coupling, or over-associating perceptual cues that may not actually be relevant. An example of an over-coupled perceptual cue could be the scent someone was wearing while they hurt you. Years later, someone harmless wearing the same scent can evoke the same feeling of supreme danger. Tragically, many cues can be over-coupled through traumatization, linked forever together with memories of danger – including fun, play, emotional closeness and love itself.

It is the signature handiwork of trauma to go into high distress, stay there until the body is exhausted, and then drop all the way down into numbness, completely skipping over the part where life feels good, pleasant, and relaxed. The yo-yoing nervous system (amped too far up or numbed too far down) is a sign of trauma, reflecting survival strategies that didn’t get to come to completion. The yo-yo experience is part of why substances that help women calm down or re-energize are useful at first.

Once we get into trauma recovery, it is through the doorway of learning to process sensation again that we heal. Once we find ways to safely experience our nervous system’s beautiful capacity for sensation, without being sucked into high distress or dissociating, we have the keys to (our own) kingdom. Gradually, we restore the capacity to process and release what happened to us, out of the body once and for all.

When women realize that they have natural options inside their own physiology for relaxing and/or reenergizing themselves as needed, the primary problem, to which addiction was an attempted solution, is eliminated in large part.

Evidence-Based Approaches to Trauma and Addiction Recovery

Evidence-based approaches are methodologies – collections of interventions paired with a theory of how healing occurs – that have passed a certain measure of scientific verification of their efficacy. There are several evidence-based approaches that are generally recommended in the treatment of addiction, mental health disorders, and trauma.

Consulting the list of evidence-based therapies is one way to check whether a method in question has been endorsed by authorities in the wider psychology profession. The assembly of a list of approved evidence-based approaches was offered as a protective measure, to ensure that treatment approaches clients commonly receive are indeed valid, as evidenced by peer-reviewed, controlled scientific studies.

At Villa Kali Ma, we offer many approaches that are featured on the list of evidence-based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The clinical core of all of our treatment programs is composed primarily of evidence-based approaches.

Integrating Mind, Body, and Spirit in Outpatient Care

Villa Kali Ma is committed to caring for each woman’s mind, body, and spirit, especially in an age where the latter two components may be regarded with great distrust.

It can be hard to find an outpatient setting that will honor the role of the body’s natural, organic intelligence and gift for self-repair, let alone spirit. We pride ourselves on providing the best of both worlds – East and West, body and mind, holistic and clinical.

If you’re looking for a place that is clinically grounded, providing the top treatment methods that have been scientifically validated, but which is also open to exploring the mind-body connection, we may be the right place for you. For those who appreciate the medical, scientific lens on healing, as well as other, non-dominant perspectives, you will find company in the halls of Villa Kali Ma.

Experience Holistic Healing at Villa Kali Ma’s Women’s IOP

The holistic mindset holds that while mental health symptoms may appear to be separate, unrelated phenomena, they almost never are. Addiction does not exist in a vacuum. Neither does depression, anxiety, boundary problems, or flashbacks. Each of these symptoms exists to address or respond to another condition, existing there alongside it. The inner ecosystem of the human being is delicately balanced, with strengths and challenges co-arising in ways reminiscent of the Buddhist idea of dependent origination.

Like weather systems tipped off by a flap of a butterfly’s wing across the globe, we and our symptoms exist in complex, stunning matrices of natural interdependence. In the context of that reality, what is healing? How can we approach problems, while remembering the totality at hand?

At Villa Kali Ma, in our Intensive Outpatient Program and all of our offerings for women recovering from addiction, mental illness, and trauma, we attempt to show how loving attention to the smallest details of our magnificence can give rise to a healing that transcends the seemingly individual nature of our lives.

Tags Trauma Informed Care, Women's Addiction Treatment

Addiction Treatment Intensive Outpatient Program Trauma Therapy

Why Intensive Outpatient Programs Are Essential for Women Healing from Trauma

Post author By Megan
Post date October 3, 2025

The Intensive Outpatient Program model is one of the most effective treatment options for women who need support recovering from substance addiction. This is especially true for women who also need trauma treatment and help overcoming mental health symptoms.

In Villa Kali Ma’s unique integrative program, we address the trifold burdens of addiction, mental illness, and trauma together as one. Our treatment philosophy arises from recognition of the strong link that exists between addiction, mental illness and trauma.

The correlation of addiction with trauma is especially established in women. For biological and social reasons both, women seeking treatment for substance use are more likely than men to present with co-occurring mental health disorders and trauma.

The more that is learned and confirmed collectively about what works in the field of trauma recovery, the more Intensive Outpatient Programs emerge as a strong model for resolving trauma, mental health symptoms, and addiction.

Why Intensive Outpatient Programs Empower Women Healing from Trauma

Intensive Outpatient Programs empower women healing from trauma in three notable ways.

Intensive Outpatient Programs educate women about addiction, empowering them with the most foundational healing tool, self-awareness. The addictive process, like all illnesses, flourishes in the dark shadows cast by misunderstanding. When women are trained to detect the subtler operations of addictive process, they are less likely to be taken over by it. Instead, they may learn to befriend the parts of them that have sought in the past to survive overwhelming pain, through substance-based ways to access needed experiences like bodily safety, relief from pain, relaxation, and love.

Secondly, IOPs empower women by educating them about traumatization, also fostering deeper self-recognition. Learning to see trauma triggers and how activation weaponizes the nervous system begins the liberation process. As women recover a measure self-mastery over nervous system states, it becomes possible to respond rather than react. Once again, befriending is key. In our IOP, women are supported through treatments that change how memories are accessed in the brain, as well as through somatic therapies that help women complete nervous system responses at the bodily level.

Once a woman recognizes how trauma and substances have worked together in a misguided attempt to protect her from feeling her woundedness, she is just a stone’s throw away from full self-forgiveness. One of the most difficult challenges for women with addiction, trauma and mental illness is shame. Shame is one of the most painful emotions for human beings to endure, and is linked to a deeply-held belief in personal unworthiness. Curing the burden of shame is the third profoundly empowering gift of participation in Villa Kali Ma’s trauma-informed IOP.

Flexibility and Intensive Support for Trauma Recovery

Intensive Outpatient Programs are offered as a best-of-both worlds type of solution – maximum treatment intensiveness (in terms of number of therapeutic hours per week) while still being flexible.

When it comes to addressing trauma, there are several advantages to healing it in a women-only Intensive Outpatient Setting like the one we provide at Villa Kali Ma.

Intensive Outpatient Programs are, by definition, concentrated enough to accomplish a large quotient of trauma resolution and memory reprocessing work – a lot more than is possible in the traditional, once-a-week outpatient model. IOPs provide a minimum of nine treatment hours a week, and may go up to twenty. The number of treatment hours per week usually depends on how much therapeutic contact is beneficial during in certain recovery phases.

Treatment intensiveness starts out high and steps down slowly, as a way to increase the proportion of free hours while a client is still being supported, and her progress and state are still monitored by staff. This gradual reduction in treatment time in tandem with an equivalent increase in freedom and flexibility allows women to make changes, then experiment with applying those changes in the world. New behaviors can be tested out, while still receiving a cushion of support. This model can make it easier to return to ordinary life at a pace which is least disruptive and which allows for integration time.

Integration is an important topic when it comes to trauma. Somatic Experiencing, a pioneering methodology in the world of trauma healing, emphasizes the concept of titration, or a drip-by-drip pace that is necessary in trauma integration work. Titration refers to the necessity to proceed slowly and by degrees, when reintegrating the body sensations (implicit memories), emotions, and disturbed perceptions that have been bound up with traumatic experiences. Little by little, we dissolve and dilute grains of painful experience into the larger ocean of body awareness.

Titration benefits from respite and, ideally, grounding, positively distracting contact with ordinary life. Intensive Outpatient Programs may provide an optimized balance of active trauma processing work against time spent outside of the treatment milieu, making integration easier. This has advantages when it comes to stability, continuity, and ease throughout the treatment experience.

Who Benefits Most from a Trauma-Focused IOP?

Generally, there is a strong likelihood of pre-existing trauma in women with addiction, implied by higher scores of addictedness and prevalence of addiction among the population of traumatized women.

Women who have a history of childhood sexual abuse, neglect, or physical violence, as well women who have survived sexual assault or intimate partner violence as adults, are strongly encouraged to receive support in a women-only, trauma-focused Intensive Outpatient Program like the one we offer at Villa Kali Ma.

Women with co-occurring mental health symptoms (depression, panic, and so on), behavioral health symptoms (eating disorders, self-harm, impulsivity, destructive relationships, etc), are also recommended to find support in an IOP that has a strong trauma treatment component. Targeted treatment resolving traumatic memories at the neurobiological level helps with these conditions, even when no official trauma diagnosis exists.

Definitions of trauma are no longer limited to the recognizable patterns of symptoms that appear in people who have survived combat, violent crimes and frightening accidents. Rather, there are classifications of trauma including, but not limited to: acute trauma, complex trauma, developmental trauma, relational (attachment) trauma, cultural/institutional trauma, family legacy/inherited trauma, and dissociative trauma, according to trauma specialist Dr. Frank Anderson in Transcending Trauma.

Given the advances being made in the field of trauma, it is important for women to know that in some corners of the psychology field, mental health disorders are being re-examined, as possible expressions of traits developed under extreme duress. What have been historically been thought of as “character flaws” – disordered aspects of personality – may actually be tendencies of attention and strategies of survival-oriented action, per trauma pioneer Dan Siegel.

According to researchers like Dr. Siegel, qualities we have come to identify with, such as our temperament, sensitivity, and reactivity, may be partly or wholly formed as adaptive responses to circumstances. The more chronic and enduring a set of conditions survived, the more likely it is the responses of the nervous system will have congealed into a semi-permanent set of behaviors, reactions, thought patterns, and emotional states.

In the past, such clusterings of extreme thought, emotion, and behavior have been interpreted as evidence of independently arising mental health disorders, with etiology unknown, often postulated as arising from fully genetic or biological origins. An origin in traumatization may explain why mental health disorders also respond positively to trauma interventions, resulting in reduction of symptoms and greater happiness and stability.

Begin Your Healing Journey in Our Women’s IOP at Villa Kali Ma

Wherever you currently are on your healing journey, you are warmly welcome within the halls of Villa Kali Ma’s programs for women recovering from addiction, mental illness, and trauma.

We are an integrative provider of holistic and clinical services in one, offering effective neurobiological trauma treatment as a standalone treatment track at a dedicated facility. We also offer trauma treatment integrated together with our addiction and mental health treatment tracks. Whether you need a course of inpatient treatment at our retreat-like Residential Rehabilitation facility, or are ready to participate in an intensive day program (Partial Hospitalization or Intensive Outpatient), we encourage you to consider Villa Kali Ma as a potential team of allies on your sacred journey to wellness.

Tags Intensive Outpatient Program, Women's Addiction Recovery

Intensive Outpatient Program

How IOP Supports Long-Term Recovery and Reintegration

Post author By Megan
Post date August 2, 2025

The purpose of recovery from addiction, mental illness, and trauma is to return to the world, and to live joyfully and fully there.

We may keep one pinky toe in the waters of the healing realms for the rest of our lives. We may become the deep sea divers of psyche. But we undergo the healing journey in the first place, in order to repair and restore ourselves, to “get back out there”. We also equip ourselves, through the healing process, with what we need – what we have always needed, all along – to be able participate fully in life as our true Selves.

Each of us has a blueprint, a potential we are born with a unique gift to fulfill. As the psychology re-envisioner James Hillman puts it, we are each acorns, “full of oakness”.

The wounds that almost kill us, but actually make us stronger, eventually, require sincere attention, this is true. How long we will need to heal is unknown. Whatever our true and complete healing takes, the hope would be to, at some point, emerge from the deeps, re-empowered to face the fights and overcome the foes that knocked us down last round.

Treatment for addiction is a kind of retreat from the surface world, a phase of the journey of life which requires time in a healing sanctuary. In that sanctuary, with help from benevolent components of life, we meet our wounds and do the work to set things right at deep levels. All the while understanding that there will come a time, when we are released back into life, with new wind under our wings.

At Villa Kali Ma, we created a holistic, compassionate Intensive Outpatient Program specifically to support women to find long term recovery. We know that recovery isn’t a single event that takes place during a stint in rehab. Rather, it is a larger life process, requiring integration into life after treatment. We create programs that lead to long term sobriety and recovery success. We see ourselves in the role of that healing sanctuary described above, a way station for those on the journey of sprouting their unique acorn and becoming their “oakness”.

In this post we’ll illustrate how our Intensive Outpatient Program fosters sustainable recovery. We’ll talk about the importance of community, therapy and integration of recovery into the real world. Read on to find out more about how Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program creates long term sobriety and recovery success.

How Intensive Outpatient Programs Foster Sustainable Recovery

Intensive Outpatient Programs foster sustainable recovery through gradual integration of changes, through the building up of community-in-place, and through real world skills practice trial runs.

Compared to residential rehabilitation, which follow a full-immersion, inpatient 24-7 care model, Intensive Outpatient Programs unfold at a slower pace, keeping step with the rhythms of ordinary life. Because they are structured as day programs, with participants living at home and maintaining work and other life responsibilities while attending treatment part time, Intensive Outpatient Programs take a longer period of time to deliver the same number of treatment hours.

Provided participants are able to abstain from drugs and alcohol and participate constructively in treatment while living at home, without round the clock supervision, IOPs are a strong option because of this set up. The hybrid model that mixes treatment with regular life supports participants to more gradually introduce, test out, and finalize recovery-supporting lifestyle changes into their pre-existing lives. A slower, more gradual approach tends to create changes that are more well-founded and well-grounded.

Intensive Outpatient Programs also help participants build up recovery community, contacts, and connections in the location where they already live and work. Sometimes, graduates of residential rehabilitation facilities struggle when returning to their home and work lives, as the recovery contacts and sense of community they built up were in the location of the facility. For people who participate in IOPs, contacts and recovery friendships are built up in their home community already, which means that there is more continuity at the end of treatment. This continuity of community is one way that IOPs tend to help make recovery more stable and sustainable.

Finally, IOPs provide opportunities to practice recovery skills out in the real world while still in treatment. Participants can safely experiment with new behaviors at work, in their communities, and at home, while knowing a team of helpers and understanding peers are close by. Whatever happens during a recovery skills trial run, participants know that their treatment community can hold space for feelings and provide advice at the next treatment session.

This “training wheels” approach can be very helpful for making long-term changes more stably, as it means that when and if slip-ups or mistakes happen in early recovery, as they very often do, these are more treated as part of the learning process itself. Small set backs, triggers, and temptations that come up during these real world recovery trial runs are folded into the treatment journey as chances to learn.

Community, Therapy, and Real-World Integration

Intensive Outpatient Programs foster community, success in therapy, and real world integration for a few reasons.

Peers that attend the same Intensive Outpatient Programs tend to come from the same community, since everyone still lives and works at home while attending treatment. Connections that are made in Intensive Outpatient Programs are therefore more easily transferrable to life after treatment for the simple reason that people are less likely to move away to a different location after treatment is over.

Likewise, since people attend treatment while living at home, the 12 Step meetings and other recovery community contacts are also local to the area. Participants can keep attending their home meetings and see most of the same faces once treatment is over. This continuity of peers is a powerful aid, since the isolation of addiction is something every woman in recovery needs to learn how to counteract.

Due to the treatment intensiveness of IOPs – IOPs provide the highest number of treatment hours possible while still allowing for living at home and working – they have a strong therapeutic focus. Participants are thoroughly introduced to the practicalities and best practices of “inner work” which are generally necessary to live a life free of addiction over time.

Through a high frequency and density of therapeutic groups, individual sessions, and activities, IOPs provide chances to bring real world experiences into the therapy space, as the events, triggers, and opportunities to try new skills unfold in real time. Participants can share and process what happened earlier that day, or what happened during a fight with their partner over the weekend, for instance, learning lessons while in a current process taking place in the now. This is real-world integration in action.

Creating a Bridge to Independent, Sober Living

Intensive Outpatient Programs like ours at Villa Kali Ma create a bridge to independent sober living after treatment. Graduates are supported to grow towards increasing autonomy, agency, and empowerment.

An environment of unconditional support that believes in our potential to grow up and live our own true lives without governance once we’re fully ready, may be thought of as a kind of ersatz “childhood we never fully had”. Women in recovery need a place that provides support, shelter and guidance until we are all healed and more fully able to handle things on our own authority.

Finding we are able to make it on our own (with support of community) raises self-esteem and repairs trust in own Selves and life journeys immeasurably. It is an enormous relief to learn we do have the power within us to stand on our own two feet, to sprout our unique acorn and pursue our path of becoming. IOPs create such bridges to independent sober life in a few ways.

One way is practical – by providing referrals and connections to sober living facilities, helping with any job application processes, if needed, and helping out with contacts and connections.

The second, more profound way is by supporting unfolding psychological and spiritual growth processes, modeling how it works, and teaching sobriety skills.

Ongoing Support with Villa Kali Ma’s Women’s IOP

Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program is a holistic, compassionate approach to recovery from addiction, mental illness and trauma, created especially for women. Addressing the unique essence of each woman we meet, our program is made to connect gently and kindly to mind, body, and spirit.

We know that the women we meet have been deeply, deeply hurt. Often in unspeakable ways. Often by people who were supposed to protect and care for them. We know such wounds can injure women within an inch of their lives.

We also know that the women we get to know in our IOP are more than what happened to them. In fact, they are tough, strong, resilient and capable – powerful survivors, every last one of them.

The women we meet, treat, and grow to love have good reasons for behaving the way they do, no matter how destructive those behaviors seemed at first. They also have good reasons, to now come forth and claim their rights to live freely as their true Selves in this world. Every woman is meant to be loved and accepted for who she really is, to claim her rightful role and take her seat at the table of life. We know that with support she can do this, no matter how much abuse, exploitation, betrayal, or neglect her uniquely vital life force has faced until now.

If you’re a woman wrestling with addiction, mental illness, or trauma, looking for ongoing support on your recovery path, we hope you will please consider one of our many programs. We’re here just for you, and all the people you will touch with your recovery.

Tags Addiction Recovery, Intensive Outpatient Program, Reintegration and Sobriety

Intensive Outpatient Program

A Day in the Life at Villa Kali Ma’s Women’s IOP

Post author By Megan
Post date August 2, 2025

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What must it be like to wake up in the morning knowing for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are walking the road of becoming your full-flowered Self?

Imagine knowing for sure that the “hopeless case” image, offered to you every morning by your self-doubt, shame, and self-criticism, has nothing to do with you whatsoever.

We’re here to tell you, you’re not that “you” – you are something else, some One else, entirely. But just like billions of other people on this planet, if you’re bogged down in trauma, mental illness, and addiction, your inner light – a native, creative intelligence and beauty surpassing all expression – has not much chance of getting your attention.

This isn’t your fault at all. We’re all in the same boat – us here at Villa Kali Ma too. But one thing we can tell you for sure is that the life within you is waiting eagerly to be lived, and that it will respond to your attention and your courage to change, with a loving readiness that might astound you.

We know, we know. We know all the reasons it’s so so hard. All the yeah buts and the I tried thats. We know.

We know all about how the sameness stays in place. And yet – we also know there comes a day when the desire to change overcomes the fear-bound forces that insist we stay tight, stuck and small. In the words of the writer Anaïs Nin:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Is this speaking to you, friend? If so, we rejoice in it. This blooming comes for all of us. Somehow, some way, when the time is right, Self flowers.

The only question for you is – is your time for budding now, or later?

At Villa Kali Ma, we do our imperfect best to provide and ongoingly refine our healing services for women who are ready to bloom and grow. We trust that if you come to us, some budding something within you is ready for it.

One of the programs we offer, our Intensive Outpatient Program for women, is designed to entrain women to a reliable rhythm that supports growth of Self, while allowing her the chance to stay involved in ordinary life to a large degree.

In this article, we walk you through a day in the life at Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) for women. We’ll illustrate how our IOP balances real life with daily healing practices, talk about how consistent care supports growth and resilience, and share more about how you can discover connection and transformation through attending our IOP.

A Day in the Life at Villa Kali Ma’s Women’s Intensive Outpatient Program

A day in the life at Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program for women reflects the hybrid, “best of both worlds” structure inherent to IOPs. All IOP programs combine treatment with life in the real world. What distinguishes our program from other IOPs is our signature weave of alternative, holistic modalities addressing mind, body, and spirit, gracefully incorporated into the fabric of our clinical core treatment approach.

Our IOP provides intensive treatment together with flexibility of schedule. Our female-positive, compassionate and holistic IOP is designed to immerse participants into a new, positive lifestream. Women undergo deep transformation while maintaining a measure of continuity with respect to their pre-existing life roles and responsibilities. Through living at home and staying involved in work, women are able to integrate positive changes little by little. Due to the hybrid structure that combines treatment with “life in the real world”, our IOP provides many chances to practice new skills live in the field.

So while days begin and end at home, ensconced in ordinary life, the hours of the week dedicated to treatment are deep journeys into healing realms. Each treatment hour touches mind, body and spirit. Within the halls of Villa Kali Ma’s IOP facility, recovering women learn new skills, ranging from the physiological to the cognitive to the transpersonal. These skills are then taken away to be practiced and tested live in the world. Learnings, personal challenges and victories are brought back to treatment next session, for celebration, anchoring, and further support.

Balancing Real Life with Daily Healing Practices

Our IOP for women balances real life with daily healing practices. We accomplish this by administering treatment in modules that are nestled into the rhythms of ordinary life. These modules take place during treatment blocks distributed throughout the week, primarily evenings and weekends, to accommodate most women’s work schedules.

Each treatment block immerses women in healing practices ranging from yoga to cognitive therapies to mindful self-compassion. Each facet of women’s multidimensional existence is addressed, through a combination of clinical and holistic interventions. The somatic, therapeutic and recovery life skills we introduce empower women to access states of peace, connection, and freedom from misery, and to continue to do that ongoingly once they graduate our program.

During IOP hours, our clients learn to use these skills, as our therapeutic staff and holistic practitioners provide guidance, instruction and chances to rehearse new, positive behaviors safely under supervision. These new healing practices are then further integrated into regular life through trial runs at work and at home.

All in all, attending our intensive, holistic treatment program while continuing with ordinary life teaches the art and practice of balancing real life with practices of daily healing.

How Consistent Care Supports Growth and Resilience

Consistent care supports growth and resilience. This is true in all things, material and spiritual. We women recovering from trauma, mental illness and addiction must expect that what we begin in recovery will require follow up and follow through.

For those of us who fear we can’t do that, we won’t know how to do that, because we haven’t been able to do that before – not to worry. How precisely to become trustworthy stewards who honor our deepest call to full-flowered life is part of what we learn in Villa Kali Ma’s IOP for women. Here we approach the shared ground of life thoughtfully, showing women how they can tend for the patch of life that’s rightfully theirs over the decades of joy, initiation, and vivid living to come.

Recovery is indeed like setting up a garden or planting an orchard – one we intend to visit daily and nurture with ongoing attention for years, if not decades, to come. Like real gardens, patience and regularity are rewarded in recovery from trauma, mental illness and addiction.

Not coincidentally, consistency is a main ingredient in forming strong interpersonal bonds, which are necessary for recovering felt-sense experiences of safety and connection with others. This includes our relationship with ourselves.

What was wounded in relationship can only be repaired in relationship, as the oft-quoted tenet of therapy goes. A good portion of the trauma that underlies women’s addictive and self-destructive behaviors is relational. Wounds that were incurred long ago between ourselves and the people upon whose love we were dependent for survival, hurt us until they are actually repaired. But the person with whom we repair attachment now is our Self, the real source of reliable, regenerative love. The one within we have all been waiting for.

Consistent tending of our healing garden sees us through the many phases of recovery. Villa Kali Ma’s IOP is a place where women can experience how consistent care supports growth and resilience in the inner realms of profound, transformational healing.

Discover Connection and Transformation in Our IOP

Connection and transformation take place in Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program for women every day. This is because we provide the right conditions for women to unfold safely and authentically. Women who struggle with addiction, mental illness, and trauma do so because they never got to have the supported, healthful life circumstances that would have nurtured confidence, capacity, and resilience.

Luckily, it’s not too late to begin again. At Villa Kali Ma, we help with relational repair, by providing opportunities to bond with healers and with other peers in treatment. The healing of relationships on the outer plane helps significantly with resurrecting the inner relationship with Self that is the primary healing agent.

In addition to these chances to bond with healers, peers, and Self, our program teaches all the necessary skills for ongoing spiritual and psychological work. The fruits of inner tending are lush and nourishing, bringing vitality not only to ourselves but to those loved ones we have longed our whole lives to be able to protect and nurture as well.

Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program for women is a place to find connection and transformation.

Tags Addiction Recovery, Intensive Outpatient Program

Intensive Outpatient Program

Why Intensive Outpatient Programs Are a Powerful Step in Recovery

Post author By Megan
Post date August 2, 2025

Why should every woman with addiction consider attending a holistic Intensive Outpatient Program like the one we offer at Villa Kali Ma? Well, read on: We have a few ideas!

Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOPs) are the most empowering option for women in recovery. IOPs allow for flexibility and independence, while still holding strong structure. IOPs create a perfect environment for some women recovering from addiction, mental illness, and trauma to thrive optimally. But which women?

In this post, we’ll share more about Intensive Outpatient Programs and how you can determine whether you’re a woman who would benefit most from IOP.

Why Intensive Outpatient Treatment Empowers Women in Recovery

IOP is the most empowering option for women in recovery. As an outpatient addiction treatment model, IOP supports women to be in charge of their program and participation. IOP also supports women to titrate – to do a little bit of recovery at a time, rather than healing everything all at once. Finally, IOP supports practicing recovery skills in the real world while still learning.

IOP supports women to be fully in charge of their own program and participation. With several options available, women have more influence over the what and the when of their treatment participation than in residential (inpatient programs). While the core of an IOP is relatively firm, being able to customize a program that fits best with life outside of treatment leaves more agency in the hands of women. It is important for women especially to have options and a measure of control.

Since they are less immersive, IOPs support women to titrate their recovery. Titrating means taking the healing in a little at a time, rather than all at once. Doing the inner work for trauma, mental illness, and addiction recovery at a less intensive pace means each piece of healing can be integrated into daily life more easily. Being able to maintain a steady life outside of treatment while digesting the healing work more slowly and stably can empower women to feel more balanced and in command of their recovery experience. The transition can be more gradual and grounded.

Lastly, IOP supports women practicing recovery skills in the real world while still learning them. Due to the IOP model of keeping one foot in daily life, women have many chances to apply what they are learning in treatment in real life scenarios, situations, and challenges. When and if something happens in external life that is overwhelming, triggering, or otherwise difficult to face, a woman can rely on the facilitators, peers, and supportive structure of the IOP program to have her back.

All in all, IOP is the most empowering option for women in recovery, supporting agency, choice and autonomy throughout the healing journey.

Flexibility and Independence with Structured Support

IOP is the option that allows for the most flexibility and independence while still offering highly structured support. IOPs allow women more scheduling flexibility, permit women to maintain more of their work and home life responsibilities, and allow for living at home while attending treatment.

The main benefit of scheduling flexibility is that IOPs are more adaptable to women’s pre-existing lives, including work and childcare responsibilities. While IOP naturally takes up a significant chunk of the week, having more options for when those treatment hours take place means women can usually arrange their work and other responsibilities more easily.

Working at least part time while in being in treatment allows women to have more financial independence, a topic that is very important for women, who are economically more vulnerable to begin with and often have dependents in their care who rely on their ability to provide for them, as well. The flexible scheduling of IOPs tends to work better with barriers to treatment that affect women disproportionately: managing school schedules, transportation, household duties, working in underpaid professions, and more.

Finally, living at home while attending treatment is usually the most practical option, to maintain ongoing life responsibilities outside of treatment and to ensure stability.

Broadly speaking, IOP is the option with the most independence and flexibility while still offering structured support.

Who Thrives Most in an IOP Setting?

IOP is best for women who fit in a certain profile of life circumstances combined with a certain state of mental health. In order to thrive in IOP, women must be able to abstain from substances and self-harming without 24-7 supervision. Women also must be living in a reasonably supportive (sober and mostly trigger-free) home environment. Finally, women must be able to realistically participate in work and life responsibilities without relapsing.

In order to be able to benefit from the flexibility and independence of IOP, women must be able to abstain from alcohol, drugs, and self-harming behaviors without round-the-clock monitoring. This capacity to abstain or not isn’t a moral issue, rather it is a question of how far the disease of addiction has progressed. Some women who have more years of heavy substance use under their belt will only be able to stay sober in a facility that prevents them from accessing substances. These women will fare better in residential.

Other women will be realistically able to make it through unsupervised hours between treatment sessions and operate out in the world for limited periods of time without being hijacked by their addicted part. IOP can be a good fit for these women, since the flexibility and independence won’t work against them.

Women who can maintain a reasonably supportive home environment thrive in IOP because that environment can support them. If there is abuse, chaos, conflict, and/or substances in the home environment, however, those conditions will undermine any gains made in treatment. Women who aren’t currently living in a sobriety-supporting environment, therefore, will generally be better off in residential.

Last but not least, women who can participate in the stressors of the world without relapsing are likely to thrive in IOP because they can get the benefits of practicing recovering skills in the real world. But if the real world setting is too challenging, she again would be better off in residential.

All in all, women who thrive in IOP are those who can abstain from drugs and alcohol between treatment hours even when alone and unsupervised, those who are fortunate enough to be living in a treatment-supportive home, and those who can productively engage with the triggers and challenges of life in the real world without relapsing.

Experience Our Compassionate IOP for Women at Villa Kali Ma

If we may say so ourselves, Villa Kali Ma’s compassionate, holistic Intensive Outpatient Program for women is the best one we know of. For women who will benefit from IOP’s signature combination of flexibility and structure, we are a rich opportunity for deep, transformative growth. Our strong, core clinical program is wrapped in a lush array of alternative healing modalities and practices. We embrace East and West, we address mind body and spirit as one, and we nurture each woman’s life as a unique acorn, full of infinite potential.

Tags Addiction Recovery, Intensive Outpatient Programs

Intensive Outpatient Program

Benefits of IOP

Post author By VKM
Post date February 20, 2025

For those struggling with substance abuse, mental illness, and/or trauma, lasting help can be found inside the supportive, healing structure of a high-quality women’s IOP.

Designed to bring a high saturation of treatment hours within the most flexible structure possible, intensive outpatient programs are made for women who want to or need to keep one hand in their existing life responsibilities, while still receiving a high level of healing care.

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we are big believers in IOP as a functional model for women on the healing path. IOPS is for women who need a short phase of high-intensity treatment to bring their hearts, minds, and bodies back into sustainable balance.

While we certainly would wish a healing stay in our retreat-like residential rehabilitation facility for any woman who wants and needs it, we recognize the option isn’t always possible or necessary, depending on each woman’s needs and life situation.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the many benefits of Intensive Outpatient Programs as we see them, through our holistic, female-centric lens. As always, we’ll steer the conversation towards the many ways, clinical and alternative, that women can get free from the weighty burdens of addiction, mental illness, and trauma.

Why choose an IOP for women?

The key reason women participate in an Intensive Outpatient Program like the one we have at Villa Kali Ma is to undergo a short-term, but very powerful course of therapeutic treatments.

The goal of an IOP program is to halt a downward spiral and gently but firmly reverse it, so that our life begins to move outwards and upwards again, towards health, healing, and all that’s beneficial in life.

The restoration to stability and health is accomplished through immersion in a program packed with a high number of treatment hours, involving multiple days a week for multiple hours.

IOP’s structured program of treatment hours – at least 9 hours a week, broken into segments occurring on select days of the week – comprises multiple kinds of therapies, each of which addresses a different facet of a woman’s life.

Some therapies we use in our IOP at Villa Kali Ma, like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, and Tension and Release Exercises, are primarily directed towards helping a woman feel safe, secure, and capable in her body again.

Many women do not feel adequately safe to experience their own body sensations without tensing up or cutting off from what they feel, living instead at the mercy of their amped-up or numbed-out nervous system states. Women who have this problem are not doing it on purpose – the struggle to experience regulation is not a choice, it is an automatic biological function that needs to be compassionately retrained with an appropriate therapy.

Other therapies, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Therapy, help women safely develop greater awareness of the role that negative and positive thoughts have in their lives. These therapies empower women to make conscious choices about how they choose to look at themselves, others around them, and the world at large.

Some therapies, like Equine Therapy and other Nature-Based approaches, use nature and animals to help women recover deeply, at levels of being that have nothing to do with words. Other therapies and activities use creative expression, mindful movement, healing touch, spirituality, and imagination.

Finally, many groups, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Relapse Prevention Planning, and Love and Relationships, coach practical skills for handling relationships, getting our needs met, opening our hearts again, and experiencing the juiciness of our emotional lives without fear of drowning in overwhelming sensations.

Intensive Outpatient Programs help women stabilize anything that has gotten out of control – problems like self-destructive behavior and substance abuse. They will also get at the inner heart of a woman’s subjective experience, to help her experience safety, containment, grounding, sanity, and good feelings again, inside her own skin.

Who can benefit from an IOP for women?

Intensive Outpatient Programs have powerful effects, provided women are able, ready, and willing to undergo a transformation process and change. Recovery is, in the end, an inside job, and the psyche can put up a powerful fight against treatment if a woman isn’t ready yet.

But if a woman is reasonably willing to surrender herself to a process of getting better, IOP can work wonders. Part of treatment is dedicated to the delicate dance of building up enough trust and safety internally, to open to greater and greater levels of healing, so you don’t need to be perfectly ready, just willing enough.

It’s not necessary to know how to recover (the IOP will guide you through it), but rather to feel an honest inner “yes” to the what of recovery. A good way to test your readiness for the what of recovery is to explore the following in your imagination:

Short Compassionate Inquiry on Readiness

Imagine you had a magic wand, which would give you anything you want. How do you feel about the following wish: Make me sober, healthy, happy, “all better”.
Would you make that wish, given the power to?

If your answer is a genuine yes, you’re willing enough. (If your answer was no, but you wanted it to be yes, the part of you that wants it to be yes is your starting point. You can pull on that thread to discover a more deep and genuine yes. Explore your no, too. Why not? What do you fear might happen, if you were sober, happy, healthy, “all better”? We can learn a lot from these answers).

Signs of Sufficient Change Readiness

Usually, when we are ready to change, certain qualities will be present with us.
Change readiness is generally signaled by:

-strong motivation to recover. We know why we want to get better, and for us, it’s a compelling reason.

-willingness to be accountable and to tell the truth. We are more interested in getting better than in saving face or pretending everything is ok.

-our actions show that we have made some steps towards healing and recovery. For example, if we ourselves reached out for help, told someone we love the truth about our true level of need, these are positive signs that change has begun within us.

-we have stopped fighting, resisting, managing, and controlling the change that needs to happen. A level of surrender, giving up and acceptance is usually palpable when we have decided to change. We are no longer in a bargaining or argumentative state about whether or not we need to. We are less defensive, a little more humble perhaps, and more quietly open to receive a new reality.

How Severe is My Situation?

In addition to readiness to change, there’s a question of how severe a woman’s case is. It’s not uncommon that a woman might need a higher level of care than Intensive Outpatient, in which case the intake specialist helping you will suggest that you should probably go into a medically supervised setting, such as an inpatient rehab, medical detox, or partial hospitalization program, these three being variations of treatment settings with round the clock supervision.

This is the case when a woman’s addiction has become a strongly medical issue, or when the interactions of mental health symptoms, psychiatric medicines, self-destructive behavior, and mood-altering substances are unpredictable and dangerous without supervision.

Some women won’t be able to stay sober if left unsupervised between treatment sessions. This isn’t personal, it’s the nature of addiction. For IOP to work, we need to be able to refrain from substance use throughout the course of treatment, even when exposed to triggers from our home and work life.

In general, if it is possible to take a pause from work and home environment, residential treatment is a strong, supportive option to consider before IOP. A retreat from one’s ordinary environment lends many kinds of protective and curative factors, a deeper level of safety, and release into the healing program which isn’t available if we are regularly revisiting our home and work environments.

That said, not everyone can take or afford a full pause from their life circumstances, and not everyone needs that higher level of care, in which case, IOP is the next best thing.

What are the benefits of IOP for women?

Intensive Outpatient Programs for women offer many benefits. Here are a few of them:

1. High Amount of Treatment Hours in a Relatively Short Period of Time

Women struggling with addiction, mental illness symptoms, and/or trauma need a high level of face-to-face hours per week, in order to stabilize their outer lives and inner worlds enough to be able to safely engage with the healing process successfully. IOP provides that saturation and frequency of therapeutic hours, and a safe consistent structure, using a variety of methodologies to address many facets of a woman’s being at once.

2. Flexibility and Options

IOPs give women the option to stay involved in their work and home lives, while still participating fully in treatment. Treatment takes place after work, over lunch hours, evenings, and weekends, and can usually be adapted to fit a woman’s schedule (though keep in mind that it is still many hours a week, typically at least 9).

Therefore during IOP, women can continue to live in their own homes, going onsite to a facility to receive treatment but then returning home each day.

Flexibility of schedule has many advantages for women with children, who are economically not in a position to take a break from working, or who have other kinds of responsibilities that make residential treatment less viable.

3. Cost and Insurance Coverage

Compared to higher levels of care, Intensive Outpatient Programs are more affordable. Since clients do not board or take meals at the facility, the costs of treatment are simply lower. For the same reason, many insurance plans that don’t cover residential treatment will cover some or all of the costs of an IOP.

However, recognize that if a higher level of care is necessary, then it is necessary. Being housed and supervised onsite in a facility is sometimes medically required to be able to achieve basic stabilization.

If this is the case, a residential treatment stay is less costly for you and your insurance, than a long drawn-out course of escalating and worsening crises, which eventually will require hospitalization anyway.

We say all this to highlight that, while cost and insurance are a factor that deserves their fair weight in consideration, sometimes the level of a woman’s need will take precedence in the calculation. Addiction is, after all, a serious, life-or-death issue.

4. Practice Coping Skills in the Real World

For women who are able to attend their therapy hours at an outpatient facility, and still manage work and home life successfully, the hybrid combination of treatment with exposure to the real world provides many chances to practice coping skills in real-world scenarios.

Provided we are able to stay sober and do not get overwhelmed by regular triggers, these frequent tests to our new coping skills and behavioral choices can be very strengthening. We therefore leave treatment having already practiced and mastered some key recovery-preserving skills.

5. Build Community, In Your Community

All good treatment programs will incorporate the aspect of community, ideally empowering each woman to find a nourishing source of connections and support in her local area, be that through AA or another community-based recovery model.

Sometimes, in residential treatment, the initial bonds we form in community aren’t transferrable when we return home, for example when we came to a rehabilitation facility from a different state. In IOP settings, the community we are encouraged to build takes root right in the lives we are already in, surrounding home, work, and our local environment.

Villa Kali Ma offers an IOP for Women

At Villa Kali Ma, our philosophy is that women are healed best by a combination of powerful clinical modalities, together with alternative, healing approaches.

Wherever Western modalities stand out in the evidence and literature as holding special promise for women’s healing, we’ve incorporated those approaches – Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-based therapies, EMDR, somatic approaches, nature therapy, and expressive arts being examples from our therapeutic offerings.

We keep a keen eye on the evolving trauma field and its many revolutionary advances, bringing in practitioners to help fill out our roster of interventions so that we keep abreast of the times: ketamine assisted therapy and brain spotting is recent additions reflecting our interest in supplying the best opportunities to help women heal from trauma.

At the same time, we rely on traditions that have withstood millennia of verification and refining: massage, acupuncture, Ayurveda, reiki, yoga, and many other ancient healing systems.

Our Intensive Outpatient Program combines the best of our residential treatment program experience, with the flexibility and accessibility of the intensive outpatient setting. We feel that if you’re looking to engage in an intensive, immersive healing program, that our IOP would be the thing for you.

Whatever you decide, you have our support and blessings, dear reader, on your road to wellness!

Tags benefits of iop

Intensive Outpatient Program

Does Intensive Outpatient Treatment Work?

Post author By VKM
Post date February 5, 2025

Intensive Outpatient Programs have many attractive benefits, but do they actually work to help people recover from addiction?

Yes! Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP) are very effective at restoring capacity and sobriety for women, provided the women are a good match for the IOP level of care.

In this article, we’ll explain why we at Villa Kali Ma feel that our female IOP has an important place in our spectrum of treatment options for recovering women.

Does Intensive Outpatient Treatment Work?

Addiction recovery requires many hours a week of direct contact with treatment professionals, especially at the beginning of sobriety. In an IOP program, participants live at home and attend treatment at an outpatient facility.

Women attending IOP join for at least 9 hours of therapy programming a week, in the form of individual therapy sessions, groups, and healing activities.

While IOPs are a strong option for many women, there are some factors to take into account when making a decision for which level of care is right for you. IOPs are more flexible than residential treatment, but that flexibility can be a risk factor. If the addiction is in a condition where we are not able to make good decisions without continual supervision by treatment staff, then we may not succeed in IOP.

We are more likely to relapse when exposed to environmental stressors and triggers than when sequestered in an inpatient rehab facility, so it’s important to assess whether living and working in the community represents a threat to our ability to achieve and work on our sobriety. Tests and triggers are part of growing strong and forming new habits, but too much too early on in our sobriety can set us up to fail.

Intensive Outpatient Treatment Programs only work well for women who are ready and able to take full advantage of all the treatment and services that IOP programs have to offer, and who can sustain some level of exposure to “the real world” without falling into patterns of relapse.

Whether or not we are able to recover successfully in an IOP depends on the severity of our addiction, and whether or not that addiction exists alongside other serious troubles, like mental health disorders and trauma. Some women’s addictions and mental health vulnerabilities will be too severe, rendering them unable to take advantage of the treatment in the less structured environment.

All in all, for women who are stabilized enough to do the work of self-transformation without continuous supervision, who have made a commitment to do so, and are able to place primary focus on their recovery over all other life priorities, IOP is likely to work well.

Through Villa Kali Ma’s IOP, women can establish and sustain a life of sobriety, recover from mental health disorders, and resolve long-standing issues of traumatization in their bodies, hearts, and perceptions. The negative, downward spiral of addiction, that pulls women further into disorder and enslavement, can be reversed into a positive, healthy, upward spiral towards happiness and re-engagement with the growth process.

Analyzing the efficacy of intensive outpatient programs

Intensive Outpatient Programs are a “best of both worlds” option for people who need a relatively high level of treatment, but also need to maintain one foot in the ordinary world.

Like all “best of both worlds” options, some aspects of each world are lost in the balance. At Villa Kali Ma, it is our opinion and experience that residential treatment, or inpatient treatment, is a more ideal setting for any woman seeking recovery, because of the added benefits of full retreat and removal from one’s home, working, and even family environments.

Our recommendation is to complete residential treatment in the full shelter of our retreat-like program and to follow the residential stay with a gradual downstepping of treatment through an IOP program.

However, a full-stop retreat from daily life, responsibilities, and environment is not always a realistic or feasible option for women, for economic and family reasons, such as having children to care for, and work responsibilities which will not afford a pause.

For any women looking to get the highest level of care without leaving their home and work environments, Intensive Outpatient is the next best option. IOP can work just as well, provided the woman in question is able to meet the larger demands on self-responsibility which are required in IOP.

Intensive Outpatient is a superior addiction treatment option when compared to outpatient therapy alone, (such as trying to recover from addiction through attending individual therapy or group therapy). IOP performs better in outcome studies, with a rule of thumb rate of 50-75% of graduates from an IOP program staying sober long term.

Many studies suggest that Intensive Outpatient Programs are on par with inpatient or residential rehab, though this is only true when someone is an appropriate candidate for IOP and does not require round-the-clock supervision, retreat, and sequestering from environmental conditions (work and life).

The determinants of successful outcomes in treatment

One of the biggest reasons that treatment doesn’t work, is that participants do not complete the treatment. Leaving treatment before the recommended amount of treatment has been completed will obviously affect our ability to embody the benefits we had been meaning to get out of treatment.

Reasons for premature termination of treatment, therefore, are important to consider. The main reasons a woman might decide partway through her treatment to stop doing the recovery work include:

Lack of clarity of purpose (she hasn’t fully decided to undergo the change)
Difficulty tolerating withdrawal symptoms, lack of coping skills for self-soothing and surviving difficult moments
Life problems which get in the way of being able to attend treatment, such as childcare and work problems
Negative input from the environment, such as from peers who do not understand the treatment priorities, family dysfunctional relationships, and work stress
Co-occurring mental health problems and trauma disorders, which make it very distressing to experience life sober

Therefore, a program which aims to address all of these factors alongside administering addiction treatment, is more likely to be successful. At Villa Kali Ma, we offer:

Motivational Interviewing and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help with change readiness
Several healing modalities and recovery skills training groups, to teach each woman how to regulate her nervous system, modulate difficult sensations and emotions, change toxic thoughts, and get through the difficulties of early recovery
Partnership with each woman to make a realistic plan that will work for helping her to attend all treatment and meet all participation requirements
Family and couples therapy sessions and education programs to help loved ones better understand and support treatment
A comprehensive program of treatment for mental health disorders and traumatization that runs in parallel to interventions addressing substance addiction

Strategies for Relapse Prevention

Relapse prevention is a core part of addiction treatment and a key part of our programs at Villa Kali Ma. We provide a tapered, careful downstepping of treatment intensity and frequency of services, which can last many months afterwards, through ongoing engagement and community involvement. Relapse prevention planning actually begins almost immediately, because it is such an important part of recovery.

Ongoing strategies for relapse prevention include:

Using the comprehensive, detailed, pragmatic plan for all post-treatment contingencies which you created with us during treatment
Committing to an ongoing course of individual therapy
Continuing with trauma healing, through a somatic, body-based approach to heal the nervous system, body, and brain in a bottom-up way, where trauma is a factor
Maintaining an exercise practice, such as Qi Gong, working out, yoga, or hiking, so as to keep building body resources for staying sober, and increasing capacity for joy and enlivenment
Continuous involvement in AA or another 12 Step program, to learn more about recovery, remember the dangers of relapse, and to form positive loving connections in the community

Villa Kali Ma offers an IOP for Women

Villa Kali Ma’s Intensive Outpatient Program was created with love and care. We took the successful core of our inpatient addiction treatment model, including its holistic heart, and nestled it into an IOP setting which we feel reflects the best path for recovering women.

With adjunct therapies like Equine Therapy, Yoga Therapy, Nature-Based Therapy, Shamanic Healing, Creative Therapies, Massage, and Nutrition, as well as powerhouse clinical models like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness and Self-Compassion, and EMDR, we have created a nourishing and restructuring blend of transformative treatments and courses of therapy.

With more flexibility and a less intensive structure than residential treatment, our IOP provides effective therapies and resources for healing trauma, mental health disorders, and addiction.

References:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24445620/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4152944/

https://library.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/pep20-02-01-021.pdf

Tags does intensive outpatient treatment work

Intensive Outpatient Program

Do I Need an Intensive Outpatient Program?

Post author By VKM
Post date February 5, 2025

Figuring out what kind of care we need for our escalating mental health troubles can be intimidating. Amid the many approaches and pathways to mental health recovery available out there, how can we know which is the best for us? How can we avoid getting bogged down in information overload?

In this blog post, we at Villa Kali Ma will do our best to demystify one of the best treatment options for women who struggle with mental health disorders, trauma, and substance abuse: Intensive Outpatient Programs.

Do I need an Intensive Outpatient Program?

When we’re really struggling, we need more help than the traditional, once-a-week therapy model provides. We need more attention, different kinds of help than we’ve had until now, and a safer, more contained setting. This is most likely to be true when we have serious mental health symptoms and/or trauma, and also if we use substances.

Our Intensive Outpatient Program for women aims to offer this higher level of care. By providing a high frequency of face-to-face therapy hours, including individual psychotherapy, group, couples, and family therapy, education about mental health, training in coping skills, and many other kinds of support, IOPs immerse women in a healing program that addresses many levels of need at once.

At Villa Kali Ma, for example, our IOP helps women address trauma and mental health disorders, while also receiving treatment for substance use disorders. We do this through a core program of contemporary evidence-based clinical approaches – interventions like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

These robustly effective clinical modalities are nestled into a comfy cushion of ancient holistic practices. Therapies like massage, acupuncture, nutrition, and yoga help women embody their inner and outer changes more comfortably.

All in all we aim to create an environment that guides women through the phases of healing with the maximum amount of regard, respect, and sensitivity to each woman’s unique soul journey.

In contrast to traditional rehabilitation settings, participants can attend Intensive Outpatient Programs while living at home and maintaining some level of life responsibilities. For this reason, they’re a popular choice for women who do not feel they need to fully pause their current life, or for whom that isn’t a viable option.

In the end, figuring out whether an IOP is a good idea for you is a decision which can be made most easily with an intake specialist, who will make a recommendation for you that’s tailored to your individual case. An intake specialist will ask the right questions to help you figure out what kind of care you realistically will need to get better.

How do I know I need an Intensive Outpatient Program?

Stability and Safety

If you need therapy more often than once a week, but you don’t need round-the-clock supervision, attending an IOP could be a good option for you.

How do you know if you need therapy more than once a week? If you are struggling with severe negative emotions, and have a hard time refraining from negative behaviors – drinking too much, using too many prescription pills – or you’re constantly experiencing triggers and flashbacks from your trauma, once-a-week therapy most likely won’t cut it.

Once-a-week therapy is good for people who have a relative degree of stability and safety, who can therefore participate in therapy productively without overwhelming pain and crisis interfering with the healing process.

Not sure? One way to find out would be to attend weekly therapy and see if you are able to stabilize and feel safe at that level of care – if you are, great! But if you’re not, read on.

Crisis As A Call For Help

For those who are not able to feel safe and stable with weekly therapy alone, please know that there is no shame in this. It’s actually rather common for women who have been very deeply hurt, as many women have. Many of us need a chance to reset our bodies, minds, and spirits to a safer baseline, and that takes an approach which addresses all these layers of our being in tandem.

If we haven’t yet had the chance to deal with our deepest wounding, addiction, trauma, and mental health symptoms tend to erupt into the surface of our lives. These disruptive symptoms easily reach crisis levels, overwhelming our current ability to soothe and normalize ourselves. This is just how it works – not a personal failing on our part.

These crises are a sign from our inner depths that we need help, that something serious needs addressing. When we lose control of our behavior, our emotions, or our thoughts, it’s because part of us deep inside is pulling the fire alarm, saying that something is deeply wrong. If you feel like your body, mind, heart, and spirit seem to be going haywire, this would be a signal that on a deep level, you are sounding the alarm as a way of getting the help you need to heal.

What are the signs you need an Intensive Outpatient Program?

If any of the following apply to you, you would most likely benefit greatly from an Intensive Outpatient Program.

1. You’re not able to refrain from using prescriptions, drugs, and/or alcohol.

If you recognize, or have been told by your therapist or loved ones, that the way you use drugs, alcohol, or prescriptions represents a block to your healing, relationships, or ability to participate positively in life, you probably have a substance-related illness which is best treated in a clinical setting. IOP can be a good resource for people who don’t necessarily need to be supervised constantly but do need substance abuse treatment.

2. You experience out-of-control emotions, and/or engage in self-harming behaviors

If you often feel overwhelming emotions, including rage, fear, sadness, and devastation, you may need a higher-intensity therapy program to help you address what’s going on that’s manifesting as these imbalanced emotions. This is also true if you have obsessive and painful thoughts, thoughts you can’t get under control, which make you unhappy and get in the way of your life.

Finally, if you engage in any kind of self-harm, such as cutting, disordered eating, risky sexual behavior, or drama-filled relationships, these are all signs that something within you needs help at a deep level so you can feel better. A trauma-informed IOP like the one we offer at Villa Kali Ma would be a good setting for you to get help that matches your level of need.

3. You have a mental illness or trauma and you also use substances

If you have been diagnosed with a mental illness, such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and you use substances to cope with your symptoms, you are very likely locked into a negative interaction between these two conditions, which will feed into each other in ways detrimental to your wellbeing. It is highly advised that you enter a structured program that will address both sides of the coin.

4. You have completed an Inpatient Program in the Past

If you have completed a residential rehab program recently, the staff probably recommended that you follow up with an Intensive Outpatient Program to support you in transitioning into your post-rehab life. If that’s your situation, we also highly recommend that you engage in an IOP program, to help you down-step safely and gradually.

If you completed an inpatient program a while ago, and had some measure of success staying sober and safe, but now you have slipped or relapsed, an IOP program is also a good choice. IOP can help you restart and refresh your healing path, without necessarily needing to go back into a supervised setting.

Villa Kali Ma offers an IOP for women

The Intensive Outpatient Program we created at Villa Kali Ma reflects our accumulated wisdom about what really helps wounded women recover from the triple burdens of addiction, trauma, and mental illness.

Modeled from our core residential treatment model, but adapted to provide more flexibility in schedule including work and living arrangements, our program is a good choice for women who need to stay in their home environments while receiving high-level treatment.

We’ve paired a solid clinical core of modalities together with a rich selection of alternative, healing therapies that help you connect to feelings of profound safety, meaning, and depth to help you understand yourself more lovingly.

Whatever your situation, if you’re sensing a need for a higher level of care than you’ve been able to have so far, to address your deepest and most aching levels of need, our Intensive Outpatient Program heals through body, mind, and spirit might be the right choice for you.

Whatever you decide, we wish you encouragement and strength, and all the best on your path to recover your inherent wholeness. It is worth it, and you are worth it.

Tags do I need intensive outpatient program

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