There are many benefits of holistic Intensive Outpatient Treatment programs like the one we created at Villa Kali Ma.

Among the sundry multidisciplinary approaches that heal addiction, mental illness, and trauma, the opportunity to undergo a deep, immersive psychotherapy experience is a key opportunity for lasting change.

In this blog post, we’ll unpack further details of the therapy journey of our Intensive Outpatient Treatment program.

What is the role of therapy in IOP for addiction?

Therapy plays an important role in the Intensive Outpatient experience. Through short term, highly focused, and structured support, each woman is guided personally to discover her unique needs and solutions.

Although suffering is a universal aspect of human life, it is only through compassionate self-recognition from within our own lived experiences that we can awaken and achieve an embodied understanding of why we have used substances.

Having seen into the heart of our own motivation for behaving destructively, we can see what we need to change to be able to live differently. Not only can we see the necessary changes, we start to feel that they are possible.

Here are some of the typical resources that therapy in Intensive Outpatient is likely to bring out for us.

Recognizing Triggers and the Triggered State

In the context of addiction, the word triggered refers not only to becoming emotionally upset, as it is commonly used in pop psychology nowadays, but also to getting activated into addiction-related self-destructive behaviors.

Before the moment a woman uses drugs or alcohol, there is a preceding state of discomfort. That uncomfortable state of being was activated by exposure to a trigger. For example, many women have had traumatizing relationship experiences, so that feelings of abandonment can be a trigger.

For such a woman, a relatively benign incidence, like a new love interest not returning her text in a timely way, could cause her to get triggered into a uncomfortable state of distress. This triggered state can easily lead to substance use, (she is now triggered to use) if she does not catch and soothe the triggered state in time.

A big part of therapy in Intensive Outpatient is devoted to a thorough inventory of triggers, and expanding awareness of what the triggered state feels like, so that women can catch the fleeting state before it turns into self-destructive action.

Building an Arsenal of Coping Skills

In order for a woman to be able to soothe the triggered state before it turns into negative action, she’s going to need some reliable coping skills that work really well to help her feel better in the moment.

Luckily, there are many, many coping skills we can learn that really do work. These skills range from body-based hacks like breathing and self-soothing movements, to thought tools, to spiritual solutions, to relationship skills.

It is completely possible, with the right information about the brain and body, combined with a chance to practice, to sufficiently rewire our brains and bodies so that triggers are disarmed.

The challenge here is that we may have had many experiences of trying coping skills and feeling that they didn’t really work (or not well enough). This has reinforced a sense of hopelessness or personal deficiency, contributing to our despair and shame.

The most likely reason this happened for us in the past is one of the following:

• we weren’t adequately educated about and trained in the coping skill and how it’s supposed to work
• it wasn’t the right coping skill for us personally (everyone’s different)
• we didn’t manage to stick with it long enough for it to become a habit (change takes time and effort!)
• we didn’t really believe we could change (self-limiting beliefs)
• we didn’t really believe we deserved to change (shame, guilt, and low self-esteem)
• we didn’t really want to change (we still felt like we needed our addiction to cope with life)

Within the therapy offered in Intensive Outpatient, women have the opportunity to have personalized support for finding tools that really work. Each woman is guided through the process of discovering, practicing, and anchoring these resources.

Repairing Underlying Pain

No one becomes an addict on purpose. No one decides to have mental illness symptoms like depression and anxiety, eating disorders, attention problems or obsessions. No one wakes up and decides that they will be traumatized.

All of these conditions develop automatically and without conscious choice, as life-protecting survival mechanisms that the body deems necessary, in order to make it through something very, very difficult.

Once a woman has been supported to achieve a measure of stabilization of her behavior, she has a chance to look at why the addiction was there in the first place.

What underlies addiction is often one or both of two things: disordered attachment and/or trauma. Disordered attachment means that on a deep, preverbal and physiological level, a woman feels conflicted about whether or not it is safe and possible to have a secure bond with another person (or whether all close relationships lead to some kind of harm). Trauma is the legacy in the body of extreme adaptive survival strategies – severe ways of coping that were once necessary for survival.

Negative thoughts and emotions, as well as very uncomfortable body states, can be traced back to these original causes. In therapy in Intensive Outpatient, there will be some measure of focus on allowing you to recognize the extreme conditions you have survived, which led to your extreme behavior.

You then have a chance to let go of the burdens of shame, low self-esteem, fear, and rage, which are the natural results of these underlying conditions. You have a chance, maybe for the first time, to really move forward into a positive future. You metabolize and release the thoughts, emotions, and physiological sensations which were necessary once upon a time (but not anymore). You leave feelings that were created in the past where they belong: in the past.

Developing a Plan

During therapy at any quality Intensive Outpatient Program, there will also be a large focus on developing a realistic, practical, and soothing plan for the future. Called a “Relapse Prevention Plan”,  this is a blueprint for the next stages of life. Your plan will help you know what your focus should be in the important first few weeks, months and years after completing treatment.

Relapse Prevention planning covers all aspects of life. It covers what will you do when triggered to use, specifically which coping mechanisms with which triggers. It also plans out how you can approach work, family, recreation, food, exercise, and all the other aspects of life. This is so that you have a map, which reduces the level of uncertainty. Uncertainty can feel overwhelming when newly anchoring important changes.

Beyond Treatment: The Lifelong Impact of Therapy in Intensive Outpatient Programs 

The experiences had in therapy in an IOP have lasting effects. Although short, the depth and intensiveness of therapeutic immersion restructures a person at foundational levels, so that a new life structure can be built. Here are some of the ways.

A Foundation for Continuous Change

The most important thing that therapy does is teach us how to self-heal, going forward. When we leave IOP, we do so with a firsthand experience of what positive change is like, how it really actually works and how it feels in the body.

For many women, they must learn in relationship with a therapist and a supportive community how much unconditional love, compassion, kindness, patience and softness is necessary for change. Having had these foundational experiences with love as the healing agent, they can replicate and remember what change work is, and how to self-facilitate it in the future.

A New Perspective on Life

Therapy teaches kind, mindful self-awareness. It expands consciousness, allowing us to see more, and to take in more truth than we were able to before. The new perspective on life that we receive through therapy has many benefits in work and relationship life. It allow us to see not only how we ourselves are deserving of love, kindness, and courageous connection, but also others around us.

Viewing our own past agitated states and negative coping choices with self-acceptance, we find we can understand human hearts and behaviors in ways we never could before: with compassion, without taking anything personally.

A Fresh Start at Any Age

There is a bumper sticker that says “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” In therapy, we realize that now that we are in safe enough conditions, we are allowed to go back in time, imaginally and psychologically, to retrieve the inner child from where she has been hiding out in loneliness, sadness, and fear. Discovering that the joyful, vulnerable, lovable child we once were is still alive, and can be brought back to vividness through self-love, self-connection, and kindness, means that we have a chance at that happy life we thought would never be a possibility for us. This fresh start is infinitely valuable.

Empowering Change: The Therapeutic Process in Intensive Outpatient Programs

Make no mistake, the therapeutic journey which is started in IOP is an invitation to a deeper, richer, more colorful, meaningful, and connected life than we have dreamed possible. Yes, change takes a while. Change is slow, requires patience and courage, and it is not an easy or shallow solution. It takes all that we are and all that we have. We must put everything we have on the table and be willing to have something somewhat uncertain and unknown happen to us.

But as the saying goes, it’s better to take one step in the right direction than one thousand steps in the wrong direction. We can be assured that although we don’t know what exactly our healing will look like, whoever we turn into under the changing pressures of love, kindness, and encouragement will be who we have always actually longed to be.

Villa Kali Ma offers therapy in IOP for addiction

In our Intensive Outpatient Program for healing addiction, mental illness, and trauma, we help women discover the treasures buried right inside their own hearts, bodies and minds. Through our multidisciplinary team of wakeful, compassionate clinicians and deeply grounded holistic healers, we help each woman who comes through our doors have a chance at remembering her own value, how precious and needed she is.