Addiction and Recovery
I have considerable experience and expertise working with a wide range of substance use, addiction and problematic, compulsive behaviours. I take the opposite of a one-size-fits-all approach, tailoring the combination of strategies I use to perfectly fit the unique needs of each person I help.
My Experience
In 2012 I created a new Addictions Program for the Salvation Army, for use with convicts on parole. The 8-week Skills for Recovery Program combined the most effective and up-to-date research, theories and strategies, and met with universal acclaim. I facilitated the program for three years, working with hundreds of addicts, and further refining my knowledge and expertise. For the last few years, work with addictions has been the back-bone of my full-time private practice.
My Approach
If you see me for help with substance use or problematic behaviours, I will do the following:
- Prove that you can trust me absolutely, that I have no judgments, assumptions, or hidden agendas
- Help you to be entirely honest with me and with yourself
- Encourage you to locate, embrace and speak from the part of yourself that is most in touch with your authenticity and values
- Listen to your story and help you to understand it better
- Help you to formulate and clarify your goals
- Help you to find the motivation necessary to undertake the demanding process of change
- Help you to identify and deal with your triggers
- Encourage you to find and use a support network
- Help you to tailor-make and continuously refine a recovery plan that is built upon your own unique needs, goals, history, circumstances, personality and beliefs. This plan will involve the blending of numerous tried and tested strategies
- Encourage you to start imagining and working towards the life you would like to be living
- Help you to understand addiction in general, and your own addiction specifically
- Help you to identify and examine the underlying root causes that led you down the path of addiction in the first place
- Address and remove those root causes using the most effective and appropriate counselling strategies (as presented on the My Approachpage)
- Help you to create and execute a Maintenance plan
For more about my beliefs on addiction and recovery see my blog post
