My specialty is in addiction counseling and co-occurring disorders. Addiction is fueled by unhealed issues such as trauma, relationship issues, pain, fear, mental health issues, and lack of purpose. A person cannot just treat the chemical, physical addiction, and successfully recover.
The term recovery is just another synonym for healing. If a person quits using, but they don’t work on healing the issues that led to the addiction, they are not in recovery. Being sober or not using is the road to recovery, but the healing has to be initiated for there to be recovery.
People take drugs and use addictive behavior to change the way they feel. There is a difference in “feeling” happy and “being” happy. One of the goals of therapy is for a person to go beyond just changing their feelings and to grow and be able to put purpose above pleasure and still function effectively and happily even when they don’t feel happy. Without a purpose to live, a person is just waiting to die.
With my approach, I utilize cognitive therapy, reality therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, narrative therapy, experiential therapy, stages of change, motivational interviewing, and solution-focused therapy to help people overcome addiction and maladaptive behavior that manifests when a person stops using drugs.