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Suboxone Treatment
Effective in-office treatment for opioid dependency.
Adolescent Services
Behavioral assessment, counseling and a strength-based approach to the development and treatment of adolescents (ages 12 -19).
Sexual Offender Services
New and effective therapies in individual or group settings.
There have been a number of sexual offender revealings in the media of late, and the details seem shocking when the offender is unconcealed. What is most remarkable is the level of persistent denial in the offender’s accounts of what happened. The deeper the pathology, the more defensiveness and denial required. For instance, when Jerry Sandusky says that it is true that he took showers with boys, in his rationale, this should explain away the multiple, detailed accounts of abuse that have been reported. Someone somewhere will believe this, he thinks.
In a more practical way of understanding this deviancy, the offender explains away behaviors that are known to be dangerous and wrong, by practicing lying and deceiving to account for decades of offending. Over time, they co-mingle truth and fantasy so much that both are expressed simultaneously in reality, splitting away from the impact offending causes on victims.
In thirty years of working with these sorts of distortions with offenders in psychotherapy, these justifications and rationalizations I have found to be true and consistently the same along a continuum of lesser to greater degree of pathology. Early onset, multiplicity and chronicity of experiences generally determine the depth and degree of sickness in the offender. And strangely enough, they are usually very compassionate and functional people in other areas of their life.
This conundrum creates such disbelief in the people around the offender that often, reports of their offending behaviors are dismissed as the victim wanting attention, or characterized as a character assassination. The skilled offender is savvy to this, and hides behind the suspension of disbelief that is cast around these accusations. For more information about consulting and treatment, please contact my office.
• Notice when I invalidate myself and diminish who I am in deference to others
• There is a tendency to infer negative intent, e.g., that others will mock me or make fun of me. This is a choice I am making based on past experiences or a story about the past, not the truth.
• Context is decisive- notice what informs my thinking when I am “playing small.” Fear has us play small or play safe to avoid what we think is going to happen if we make a mistake.
• The past experienced in the present gives us a future that we are familiar with, but one we may not like or want. We then recreate the past as if we don’t have anything to do with how things will go, and wonder why the same things keep happening in the same way.
• In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
• I’m here to learn, not to be perfect or infallible. The only way to learn is to make mistakes.
• Writing things down and completing items on a list give you practice at expanding your abilities to accomplish what you say you want to accomplish.
• Ask yourself, “is there anything I can do about this right now?” If there is something to do, do it or write it down on your list of things to do. If there is nothing to do about it, you probably are trying to change things outside of your control.
• Notice when you are anxious or upset if you are attempting to change things that you have no control over or have yet to occur. You might be projecting a past into your future, and living into it, much like a holographic image. It looks like it might be real, but it is not real.
• Mostly, recognizing the “great what’s so” will diminish and reduce your anxiety. When you see what is so, you can then take specific actions to alter how things will go. This involves writing things down and making promises to complete new actions you see appropriate to take.
• Then, mostly you will be dealing with promises that you make about the things you are committed to making a difference in your life and your work.
• Question: “Am I willing to give up who I am for who I can become?”
• Question: “Is it more important to be right or be related with people?” (and with yourself)
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In the near future, Triad Behavioral Resources and the Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization will be conducting a study with veterans who have Posttraumatic Stress from exposure to war. The study will be open to those interested in learning TM and who are also involved in counseling, or wanting to start counseling for PTSD. If you or someone you know are interested in participating, please contact our offices at 336-389-1413 for more information.
The practice of TM is the most widely studied meditation technique, with over 300 peer-reviewed studies. The practice of TM, which consists of sitting quietly for 20 minutes, twice per day, is beneficial for practitioners in a multitude of areas: improved sense of well-being, better sleep, reduction of anxiety and depression, lowering blood pressure, more resilient immune system, improved concentration, more energy, and a general sense of happiness and connectedness with the world. More can be learned from the web site: http://www.doctorsontm.org
We are excited to host this study and look forward to working with those interested in it. This study is funded by the David Lynch Foundation.
http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org
Also, visit: http://www.tm-carolinas.org/military/steering.html to learn more about the study.
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There are a number of adolescents who have experienced profound sexual abuse at the hands of guardians, parents or others who had access to them in the home, school and community. Depending on the age at the onset of abuse, these children and adolescents have a particular set of concerns that are not treated effectively with standard forms of therapy. Often, when traditional psychotherapy is used with these individuals, it can thwart progress, or even cause reversals in well-being. Direct lines of questioning and the problem-solving model can strengthen the patient’s defenses, leaving helping professionals and parents at a loss for how to approach this delicate problem.
What kind of therapy works? The first and best approach lies in recognizing that a direct line of questioning will usually cause a tremendous amount of resistance, and that talking about the abuse takes place much later in the therapeutic process. The adage, “what you resist persists” is in play here, and the therapist must recognize the danger in “processing” with the patient. Instead, the helping professional must begin to work with psychological resistance through acknowledging “the elephant in the room” without at first trying to unveil the elephant. Noticing with the patient the impact to them that their strategies have caused is the first line of intervention. For instance, when the adolescent says, “I don’t know,” this often means, “I do know, but I’m not going to talk about it with you.” Depending on the person’s resiliency, the therapist can begin to navigate the resistance and notice with the patient this recurring way of thinking, how it keeps them re-creating the problem and how they can begin to move out of old behaviors to learn new ones. If you or someone you know is interested in scheduling a Sexualized Adolescent Risk assessment, please contact our office at 336-389-1413 for more information.
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Addiction to drugs or alcohol creates a huge amount of stress on the abuser, and is sometimes overlooked in recovery. The nature of trauma is repetitive, and addiction fits the bill. At some point, the addict is just trying to feel normal, so using becomes a reason to restore some kind of balance in a person’s life. But continued use only perpetuates and amplifies the problem, pushing the abuser further in the hole of addiction.
So what is the way out? The first step is recognizing that one’s best thinking has gotten you where you are today, the good, the bad and the ugly. Thinking that we can handle it on our own is over-rated, and will likely keep us going in the same direction. A closed system only supports what has happened up to now, and will continue until some new way of approaching addiction emerges. It will take giving up being right and letting go of making others wrong. This usually doesn’t happen until people run out of options. Being bankrupt, or in jail, or losing one’s family, job or career can get our attention, but it doesn’t have to get this bad to make some changes.
Trauma, like depression attempts to solve problems by ruminating over solutions to future problems that have yet to occur, or that we think might occur again. When we become trapped by this way of thinking, the past seems fast on our heels while the future occurs like something to avoid. To work with this stuck way of thinking, we look at what we can and cannot control, addressing what we can and leaving the rest alone. Disrupting the momentum of this faulty thinking requires letting go of fixed ways of being. It also requires us to manage the things that are manageable, and distinguish the things that are unmanageable, leaving them alone.
Getting support and coaching from a counselor and medical staff is important to disrupt unhealthy patterns of thinking and to begin to work with what is within one’s control.
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Do you experience withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, sweating, flu like symptoms, nausea or cold chills when you stop taking pain pills? Have you told yourself you have to stop, but continue and justify your using by telling yourself you can get it under control?
Suboxone is a safe and effective medication that can help you get your life back on track. Our outpatient clinic offers medical supervision and counseling to address your addiction to opiates. Contact us today to get your life back in your hands.
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Triad Behavioral Resources provides outpatient Suboxone treatment in the Greensboro area, and was one of the first outpatient clinics in this area to do so. If you are addicted to opiates such as Percoset, Vicodin, Oxycontin, or Heroin, we can help you. Unlike Methadone, Suboxone users do not develop a tolerance, needing more and more medication to treat withdrawal symptoms. Many people who use Methadone regret ever starting it, saying they have terrible withdrawal symptoms from its “cure.” Methadone is an outdated method of treatment, and is still around because Methadone clinics make a fortune off their clientèle. A typical dose of Methadone costs the supplier about fifty cents, and clinics charge around $12 a day with as many as 500 patients. The counseling in these clinics mostly consists of making sure you have paid your fee, and reviewing your drug test.. Many Methadone clinics are “chains” and produce millions of dollars in profits all at the expense of patients without ever having the intention of getting people clean.
Methadone was created by the Nazis to keep workers chained. Talk to anyone who has escaped from a Methadone clinic and they will tell you the truth about the costs of this “treatment”, physically, financially, spiritually and emotionally. The good news is that if you are taking 40 mgs. of Methadone or less, you can safely switch over to Suboxone. Call our offices today at 336-389-1413 to schedule an appointment to get expert counseling and medical supervision to get your life on track.
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There is YOU as a conversation, and then there is the skin and bones YOU. Both are apparently in the same location until one starts to investigate the YOU as a conversation. What we find is that YOU actually exists over there. Another way of stating this is that how YOU actually show up is in other peoples’ listening. The YOU you that you are familiar with also shows up in your listening for YOU.
Another way to describe this is that the self is like a corportation with 10,000 employees. But when you go around and interview all the employees, you find they all have specific functions, but none would assert they were in charge of the whole operation. Much in the same way, the self has many voices, some louder and more in use than others. Conversations are fluid, but when our notion of the self becomes rigid and fixed, we eventually have problems. So, the work of managing the existence of YOU actually has the ability to access other ways of being that a set and fixed way of being cannot access.
Confusion occurs when we don’t know what we are actually commited to having happen.
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Addiction doesn’t appeal to reason, but instead, responds to commitment.
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In the work of self transformation, the access point for change is noticing what we are choosing, and then determine if this is what we want. For instance, if we are experiencing a low mood or fatigue, noticing we are at the effect of that mood or energy is the first step. A self reflecting voice might sound like, “I’m really saying a buch of bad stuff to myself today”, or, “I keep saying it is no use to talk to that person”, or, “I have this persistent conversation about I just want to sleep right now.”
After observing the physical state we are in, there is a concordant conversation that co-arises with one’s physical state. On the psychological side, we have a monologue that transpires and adds to whatever is going on physically. So, if you are tired and you say, “I’m really tired”, the psychological anticipation of fatigue is re-inforced with one’s self. This often is experienced in real time as amplifying the fatigue. For instance, if you have a physical fatigue of 3 (out of ten), and you say repeatedly, “I’m really tired”, then the experience of fatigue is amplified as a four or a five.
The operative practice we can deploy is to first distinguish what the actual pain or fatigue or sadness is, and then begin to observe our subsequent conversation about that physical state. If we then own or be responsible for what we add to it psychologically, we then gain access to choosing a different experience. Often, what we choose is by default, based on the past and what our typical orientation to fatigue or sadness or success or anything else. Freedom to choose becomes ours for the making.
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