What helps a woman recover from drug and alcohol abuse: Gentleness or harshness? Raising expectations or lowering them? Softening or hardening?

As experts in the field of women’s trauma, mental illness, and addiction, we here at Villa Kali Ma believe that roughness almost never helps. We’ve noticed that being too tough on a woman who’s already in a lot of pain only adds more hurt to the equation.

Instead, Villa Kali Ma prefers a different approach: gentle containment. It is true that people with out of control substance use need to have options taken away from them, in the short term. We just do not believe that boundaries need to be harsh, or administered in a spirit of punishment. Boundaries can be as soft as a child’s playpen and still help create safety.

Containment involves strong, firm, clear boundaries: yeses and nos. Limitations and restrictions. Reducing the amount of space available to a dangerous, harming part of a woman is necessary.

But nowhere along the way is judgment, harshness, moralizing, criticism, withholding of warmth, or any other negative approach useful. The only thing that really works with women’s pain is to find out what that pain is trying to say, what it really needs, and how it wants to heal.

For all the families out there who are at their wits’ end, frustrated, hurt and worried – you’re right too. It can’t go on like this. It is alarming. Substance addicted women are wreaking a path of destruction, moving like a wrecking ball through the hearts and lives of those they love the most. That is all true.

And…still: The only thing that actually helps is to create the time, space, and right conditions to get curious. What’s going on? Why would any woman end up destroying her own precious being, and the lives of people around her?

The answer to this question is a Gordian knot, that needs time, space, kindness, and patience to unravel. But trust us, it all makes sense in the end. Once that woman’s pain has been sufficiently heard and believed, understood and encouraged, it will eventually transform, back into a positive expression of this woman’s vital life force. What was once bound in pain will emerge with a new face – as authenticity, courage, love, and compassion. As pure aliveness of the kind that rises to meet the world with joy.

Why a Safe, Nurturing Detox Experience Matters for Women

The detox experience can be extremely challenging for women. In some cases, it represents a health risk, when withdrawal symptoms may be life-threatening, as with benzodiazepines and alcohol. In other cases, it’s mostly the physiological and psychological nightmare that has to be endured, which is challenging to get through without resorting to using substances again.

A safe, nurturing detox is extremely important for women with trauma, mental illness and addiction. That’s why Villa Kali Ma’s holistic, trauma-informed medical detox facility for women is effective. We take care to combine the ingredients of safe containment with exquisite gentleness, compassion, and kindness.

We don’t want to lie to you: detox is difficult, no matter where you do it. And, it can also be made a lot safer, less painful, and more tolerable, by choosing to do your detox in a nurturing, woman-friendly program like ours.

The Importance of Compassionate Care During the Detox Process

During detoxification, the body, mind, and emotions become extremely sensitive. During initial phases, small bits of stimulation in the environment, such as the quality of the lights, sounds, and other environmental factors, become very intense to experience. What a person might ordinarily process as an unimportant background noise can be perceived by the detoxing nervous system as loud and large. What would be a very subtle sensation on the skin, or a tolerable amount of light normally, can contribute to pain in an already pained, agitated, and taxed body.

This sensitivity extends to include emotional and relational stimulation, such as may be introduced by interactions with people administering the detoxification protocols. Bedside manner matters a lot. A nurse or doctor who isn’t able to give us full, kind, attention when we are in such a vulnerable situation can unintentionally amplify the amount of pain, fear, and distress we may feel.

Women fare better in environments where caregivers have an understanding for what kind of relational interactions are needed with a sensitized nervous system, especially one that has been traumatized and hurt by people in the past. Women with a background of trauma and mental illness are more able to relax enough to heal when they are relationally safe, sensing themselves to be gently held, seen, witnessed, and cared for by present, emotionally-regulated caregivers.

The reason it’s important that caregivers are regulated as they interact with us, is because only in the relaxed, relationally connected state of being are we able to properly convey compassion, and its many soothing benefits for patients. It is very difficult to heal in the absence of compassion; compassion is a key that opens the door to relaxation, which is part of the healing process, linked to the parasympathetic nervous system response.

How Trauma-Informed Detox Promotes Long-Term Healing

Detox is the very start of a healing journey. What happens during detox can have long-ranging implications for how the rest of the journey is experienced. In particular, where fear and distress can be minimized, through gentle, holistic, and trauma-informed care, the long-term healing process can begin with a stronger foundation.

Several aspects of trauma affect the detox process, including what trauma does to the nervous system’s ability to process and release stimulation. Women with a trauma background are coming in with an extra challenge to detoxification, which is that their nervous systems most likely are not well-versed in the regulated state. Add to that the specific impacts of drug and alcohol withdrawal – the amplification of pain, anxiety, and despair. Drug and alcohol withdrawal makes emotions and thoughts go haywire even in a relatively un-traumatized woman’s nervous system. For women coming in with serious trauma histories, the effects are intensified.

For all these reasons and more, it is highly recommended that women receive detoxification services in a trauma-informed facility, such as that offered by Villa Kali Ma. This is to avoid re-traumatization.

Begin Your Healing in a Peaceful, Supportive Detox Environment at Villa Kali Ma

Villa Kali Ma believes that feeling safe, peaceful, and supported are an important part of creating the combination of gentleness and containment that women genuinely do need to be able to get better.

Our medically supervised detox program integrates holistic treatments, and approaches women’s pain with a feather-light touch, to make the process as smooth as possible.

If you or a loved one are in need of detox services, we invite you to consider our program. We’d love to help you gently rid yourself of toxins that are robbing you of your right to peace, safety, love and longevity.