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.