Counseling treatment of addiction
Counseling treatment of addiction
Addiction is a brain disease that affects a person’s inhibitory control over their behavior. When an individual engages in compulsive behavior such as drug or alcohol substance abuse – despite harmful consequences to themselves and those around them – they are likely struggling with a chronic illness called addiction.
Counseling, also called “talk therapy,” is among the most important ingredients in addiction treatment. Counselors and therapists who provide treatment for addicted individuals and their families need special training in behavioral treatments for addiction. Addiction treatment often requires a combination of medication and addiction counseling or substance abuse therapy.
Several counseling therapies are available for addiction. Some of them are:
Individual therapy
In the individual therapy, a single psychotherapist meets with a single client or patient one or more times per week for about 50 minutes each meeting. Patients have the therapist’s full attention during an individual session, which may help the session to feel more secure and safe. The individual format encourages patients to explore their difficulties in-depth across multiple sessions
Group Therapy
Group therapy is also often run in a ‘support’ or ‘growth’ mode, wherein the therapist will guide the patients in a discussion of things they are struggling with in their lives. Without overpowering the discussion itself, the therapist attempts to shape it so that the participants support one another, model effective ways of managing problems, and get relatively equal chances to talk.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy
Cognitive behavior therapy is based on the idea that feelings and behaviors are caused by a person’s thoughts, not on outside stimuli like people, situations and events. People may not be able to change their circumstances, but they can change how they think about them and therefore change how they feel and behave, according to cognitive-behavior therapists.
Couples and family therapy
Some addictions don’t only impinge on the user’s life but the whole family is affected. So, family members can act as a powerful force for change in the addicted person’s life. Each family member can begin to heal the damage their loved one’s addiction has caused in their own life.
