Alternative Treatment

Some individuals with a substance use disorder or mental health condition do not respond well to standard treatment. Their symptoms persist, even after trying multiple types of therapies and medication. This article will discuss why treatment resistance may occur and how it can be resolved. Neurofeedback is a viable brain therapy for those with various conditions, including treatment-resistance disorders.

Therapists and sponsors play essential roles throughout the entire addiction recovery journey. They provide support, information, and a caring shoulder through even the toughest days, helping to guide through crucial turning points in each individual’s life.  It’s crucial to find the right support for a particular part of a journey. Just any sponsor or therapist will be a good fit for each individual, and there may come a time when an individual realizes that their sponsor or therapist isn’t providing the kind of care they need.  Being open to new ideas and approaches throughout one’s recovery journey is essential. It is not required that every person agree or find success in everything a sponsor or therapist suggests. Some signs may indicate the need for a change in support personnel. While the decision to fire one’s sponsor or therapist is not easy, it is paramount to understand that such a possibility exists and may be necessary for continued healing.

Adolescents today face a world with different challenges than what adults grew up experiencing. To parents of adolescents, understanding your children’s internet habits and determining how much time spent online is too much is difficult to discern when your child’s daily lives are so deeply interwoven with it. If you are concerned about your teenager’s internet habits, understanding the warning signs of internet addiction and how your child may be affected can help you encourage a more positive relationship between your adolescent and their time online and find help if necessary. What is Internet Addiction? Just because your teenager doesn’t want to put their phone down doesn’t mean they have a full-blown internet addiction. Internet use disorder, or internet addiction, doesn’t happen unless the uncontrolled use of the internet interferes with your teen’s daily life out in the real world. The use of the internet in this disorder is not limited to just one activity but covers several different activities, including excessively using social media, blogging, gaming, gambling, or pornography. When constantly going online for one or several of these activities affects a teen’s physical health or social skills, this becomes a reason for concern of addiction. Underlying Causes Discussing internet addiction in teens can not be complete without discussing one of the major underlying causes of developing this type of addiction. Mental health conditions like depression and anxiety are an underlying thread that makes teens more susceptible to developing an internet addiction. Other co-occurring disorders may be influencing factors developing this addiction, like obsessive-compulsive disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Warning Signs in Your Teen of Internet Use Disorder

No two people are the same, and no two addictions are the same. Knowing this to be true, why should any addiction treatment be the same for two individuals? That is why at Avalon Malibu, we tailor our treatments to the needs of each client. Unlike a one-size-fits-all approach to addiction recovery, a personalized treatment approach allows for a flexible practice that addresses the needs of the whole person on the levels of mind, body, and spirit. The benefits of individualized treatment go much further than what first meets the eye. Reasons and Benefits to Seeking Personalized Addiction Treatment

We all have that side of ourselves, the parts of our personalities or life experiences that we don’t want to look at or want others to see. Maybe we’re afraid of how it makes us feel or how others could perceive it. All of this explains our “shadow,” coined and studied by the influential psychiatrist Carl Jung. It was his belief and theory that the more we repress and ignore our shadow, the more power and influence it has over us. For those in addiction recovery, they have pushed away from their inner shadow for years or decades when their suppressed shadow may be what manifested as their addiction in the first place.

Recovery from addiction, trauma or co-occurring disorders is a very personal journey. Each individual will explore their own best practices when addressing their unique needs. Because of the personal nature of recovery, it is essential to have as many options as possible for each individual to find their own most effective approaches and explore new ideas that they can incorporate into their sober lifestyle. Neurofeedback is just one of these options. While neurofeedback may not be appropriate for every person, those suffering from co-occurring disorders or who have been through extreme trauma may benefit significantly from this approach. However, before an individual decides to try any therapeutic practice, it is crucial to understand the approach and its intended effects to determine if it will be pertinent. It is also essential to be able to measure the effectiveness through the process.

Valentine’s is portrayed as a day for celebrating love and happiness with your significant other, but it can bring up a mix of sad emotions for those who have experienced the loss of a loved one. Anticipating, identifying, and knowing how to cope with the feelings that surface will help you feel at peace and calm this Valentine’s Day. It’s common to experience feelings of grief, loss, or isolation after the loss of your loved one, but for someone with a preexisting mental health disorder or in recovery, it’s even more vital to be on top of these emotions so they don’t trigger any episodes or relapse.

Many philosophers speak of self-discovery, whether they call it that name or refer to it as self-knowledge. It is believed that the best way to heal your mind is through learning about it. The transcendental philosophers believed that self-knowledge was the gateway to true freedom from fear and suffering. Many mental health therapies have adopted this concept. By learning our fears, our triggers, and our emotions, we can better understand how to control them or avoid them. This is often the first step in many recovery therapies.

Binaural beats seem to be the new trend in mindfulness practices. You can find hundreds of videos on YOUTUBE or other streaming services labeled, “theta for relaxation” or “beta for focus.” But what exactly are binaural beats and what are they supposed to do? Most importantly, do they work? Binaural beats have been around longer than you think and there is a science behind the concept. What are Binaural Beats? While many people think binaural beats are a new trend, they have been around for quite a while. Binaural beats is an auditory illusion that was discovered in 1839 by a Prussian meteorologist. To create binaural beats, slightly different frequencies are played into the right and left ears causing the sounds to travel separately into the part of your brain that processes auditory input. The tones meld together in the brain to create one beat at a new frequency. For example, if a 200 hertz (Hz) frequency is played in the right ear and a 210 Hz frequency is played in the left, they will merge into a 10 Hz frequency. Benefits of Binaural Beats The new frequencies that are produced by binaural beats are said to have a variety of benefits. The beats are categorized by their frequencies. Low-frequency beats are labeled as delta and theta. These beats are helpful for getting better sleep, pain relief, healing, and meditation. Other frequencies like gamma beats are considered high-frequency and help with high-level cognition, memory recall, and peak awareness. Using binaural beats with your mindfulness therapy can have added benefits. For example, if part of your mindfulness therapy is meditation, then adding a theta binaural beat will help you reach the level of meditation you desire. Playing binaural beats at night as you sleep will help you fall asleep and also help you fall into deeper stages of sleep. Delta frequencies are considered helpful with deep sleep while theta frequencies help achieve REM sleep. Several research studies have been conducted on binaural beats which shows their benefits. While not intended to replace any other treatment or therapy binaural beats may serve to enhance other treatments.

Massage therapy is more than a “spa day” favorite or celebrity pastime; when combined with traditional therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or a 12-Step program, massage therapy can effectively reduce stress and muscle pain in individuals with a substance use disorder (SUD).

Like music, art is very subjective, making it unique to each individual. Experiencing art is personal, and different pieces or styles of art elicit different responses, depending on the person. The practices of tapping into creativity and connecting to emotions in the present moment through art can be therapeutic, especially for those recovering from mental health and/or substance use disorders.

Music is defined as stringing notes together to create a melody. Like all forms of art, it is up to the listener to decipher its meaning. A piece of music can mean the world to one person, while someone else might find it tasteless and irritating. That is the best thing about art, its subjectivity. For those in recovery from addiction, music can be especially therapeutic because it helps them to connect to emotions and channel energy. Something as simple as someone’s favorite lyrics in a song can remind them that they’re not alone and give them hope that things will get better.