Workshops For Self Improvement

Rio Retreat is a part of The Meadows organizes a different workshop for mental health and healing. Men and Women respond to everything differently as they are programmed differently. It is a 3-days Men’s way professional development workshop offers practical guidance and tools for professionals working with men in navigating these challenging areas. Many treatment professionals may be unintentionally re-traumatizing male participants, thereby increasing their risk of failure in the program.

Rio Retreat Workshop Discount Through March 31

Book any workshop for 2017 during the month of March and you’ll receive $500 off the cost of registration. (Some exclusions apply.)

A few of the life-changing options we have coming up for March, April, and May can help you begin to…

• Make peace with your past Survivors I and Survivors II
• Find more compassion for yourself and others Mind & Heart: A Mindful Path to Wholehearted Living
• Heal from grief and loss Healing Heartache: A Grief and Loss Workshop
• Break free from unhealthy relationship patterns Love Addiction/Love Avoidance
• Stop compulsive sexual behaviors Men’s Sexual Recovery
• Remove roadblocks to real physical and emotional intimacy Journey of a Woman’s Heart: Finding True Intimacy
• Reconnect with your spouse or partner Couples Bootcamp
• Move forward after sexual betrayal and infidelity Healing Intimate Treason: For Partners of Sex Addiction
  
  Content Source

All of the Feels: Accepting the Gifts of Emotion

In our culture, we are taught that certain feelings are off limits. There is a general sense that if you’re not happy most of the time that you’re doing life wrong.

I went into my own therapy and my career of becoming a therapist to rid myself and others of all those inconvenient and unpleasant feelings of fear and pain. Before I began any of my own therapy, I didn’t even have words to describe what my therapist referred to as “feelings”. Why would I want to describe or acknowledge any of these horrible sensations and experiences with words that might allow other humans to understand what I was going through and maybe even see the real me?

After doing my best to avoid feelings in my therapist’s office for as long as he would allow, I acquiesced to his consistent, we’ll call it re-direction: “That’s not a feeling, that’s a thought”. When I started labeling my emotions I discovered something quite shocking—it takes a lot less energy and creates less suffering to just feel them and maybe, if you’re brave enough, to share them with someone else.

Upon deeper investigation, I began to understand that I had neatly tucked away my feelings. I had traded them in for a nicely organized chart of life experiences with lots of explanations and justifications to avoid ever experiencing any of those emotions. I later discovered this was called intellectualization, a distorted thinking pattern, set up by certain parenting missteps from my major caregivers.

The Gift of Emotion

I’ve also learned that each of the eight primary emotions offers us different gifts, and to avoid any of them negates a unique part of the human experience. It turns out that while I was avoiding all that pain and fear, I was actually avoiding a whole lot of joy, love, and passion as well.

Through my work here at The Meadows, I have seen how much damage can be done while trying to avoid feelings. People attempt to avoid feelings through various types of addictions and other unhealthy behaviors. Many times shame is a major contributing factor. Interestingly enough, as we try to medicate our feelings of shame and worthlessness, we are actually creating more shame, which then has to be medicated as well, leaving us in a never ending bind. By looking at our past we are able to identify the messages we received about which feelings are “okay” and which are not, and eventually learn to cope with all of them. By learning to tolerate and accept feelings the way they are, and not the way we want them to be, we allow ourselves to become more authentic. The result is that we are less prone to use those old methods of avoidance and self-protection that landed us in a heap of trouble.

The Eight Basic Feelings

So, you may be thinking, “why would I want to feel my feelings?” The answer is that each one of our emotions offers us a distinctive gift. Even fear, pain, and shame—emotions we are most likely to try to avoid—serve an important purpose.Healthy fear lets us know that we are in danger and should move to safety, literally keeping us alive.

Pain may be one of the reasons you’re on this particular website; and really, it’s one of the main catalysts for change. Most people do not enter a treatment program or make a major life change without first experiencing some amount of pain. Pain can be a real motivator and—let’s face it—sometimes a good cry feels really healing.

When it comes to our own shame, healthy feelings of shame offer us containment. As Pia Mellody says, we only need enough healthy shame to keep us from running naked down the street. Experiencing our own shame allows us to accept our own mistakes and humanity; and, with those experiences, we are able to accept the mistakes of others without all that self-righteous victim anger or resentment bubbling up.

Most people don’t end up in treatment because of having too much joy, passion, or love; however, maybe you grew up in a family where these feelings were not acknowledged or expressed. Joy, passion, and love are the building blocks of relationships and being able to get in touch with and express these three feelings can be a very powerful experience and improve your mood almost instantly.

Learning to Feel

I’d like to think that I’ve made friends with most of those eight emotions, and have learned that the most uncomfortable feelings offer me the greatest lessons.
If you are struggling to cope with your emotions, join us for one of our Survivors workshops. These workshops are designed to provide you insight into how your past is impacting your present, as well as, reducing reactivity and intensity of your feelings in your current relationships. Call 866-932-2036 for more information.

Source Link:- Trauma Therapy Arizona

Are You Still Facebook Friends with your Ex?

What’s one of the first things people do when they break up with someone?
These days the most common answer is, “Check his or her Facebook page,” right?

So why do we do this? Why do we torture ourselves? Why is it so hard to delete them and start working on healing and moving forward?

Long, long ago, in the ancient olden days before Facebook, texting—even before the internets—when two people broke up the only way to remain in touch was to…

A) Ask their friends about them,
B) Call (and often hang up—until Caller ID was invented) or
C) Drive by their house (also known as “stalking.”)

There were no “check their status” or “see who posted on their wall” options. (Technically, this could also be called “stalking.”) Unfortunately, what modern technology can do is cause us to obsess more, feel jealous more, and stay stuck in the past.

So let’s review.

Facebook with your ex = Fear.

Deleting and moving forward = Faith.

The letting go, grieving, healing, and moving forward parts? Let those who want to help you do so. Seek support. Find healthy people and healthy activities to stay busy with. Go on a trip. Practice self-care. And whatever you do, don’t check your ex’s Facebook page. Delete it and block it. Treat it like detox from a drug. One day at a time. You can do it. Have some faith.

For more information call 866-835-5431 or visit.

Source Link : Internet Addiction

Living in Abundance: Balancing Work, Money, and Relationships is a five-day didactic, experiential, and psychodynamic intensive that will help you develop insights into your relationship to money and work.

Understand The Issues

Living in Abundance is a five-day intensive that will help you develop insights into your relationship to money and work.

Living in Abundance is a didactic, experiential and psychodynamic intensive lead by a facilitator trained in the area of financial and work disorders.

During the workshop, you will address a myriad of disorders including money obsession, work addiction, under earning, spending addiction, gambling, hoarding, deprivation, and codependence related to work and finances. The goals of this workshop are to help participants:

• Discover how your behavior related to money and work developed
• Recognize the rewards and costs of your behavior to one’s self and others
• Obtain a treatment plan which intervenes on existing behavior and fosters a healthy relationship with money and work that will also enhance your relationship with yourself and others, more about

If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

Natalie felt lost. She didn’t quite understand why, but everything just felt wrong somehow. Even though it was hard for her to admit that she needed help, she reached out.

She found The Meadows Survivors workshop where, for the first time, she began to understand where she came from, where she was going, and where she wanted to be.

Survivors I is an essential component of The Meadows inpatient treatment programs. It is also offered as a stand-alone workshop for anyone who’s interested in learning more about the ways in which self-defeating thoughts and behaviors learned in childhood continue to affect their daily lives.

The intensive, 5-day workshop helps participants identify their specific emotional wounds and understand the impact they have had on their self-esteem, boundary system, level of dependency, and ability to achieve balance and harmony. For more information call 800-244-4949.

Source Link

How Horses Guided One Therapist From Fear to Freedom

Nicole Clarke, MS, Intake Manager of Outpatient Services
I recently had the opportunity to attend Spirit: A Somatic Equine Workshop at The Meadows. It was a life- influencing experience, am excited to share a little of my story with you.

As a clinician and someone who encourages others to experience their emotions daily, it was not until I worked with a horse that immediately knew me better than I knew myself that I was able to see the power of somatic experiencing.
I arrived scared to approach a horse from a bad experience more than 20 years ago. I was thankful for the setting, the facilitators Coleen and Buddy, the other group members, and of course, the horses. All immediately made me feel welcome. Within two hours I was able to walk up to the horse that I was encouraged to work with for my processing. Little did I know, the horse had already chosen me.

Letting Your Emotions Guide Your Thoughts

Along with the education and rapport building with others, I found a continuous feeling of peace on the ranch that I could not ignore. As a traditionally trained talk therapist, I knew that the concept of working the “other way,” by allowing my emotions to guide my thoughts was going to be a challenge.
“Let it go,” and “go ahead and feel that,” were two things I vividly remember Coleen saying to me. “Ok, how did that feel?,” was a question Buddy asked me multiple times. It was clear to me on the first day how difficult the transition would be for me but I was ready to trust the process and leave all I had learned behind, even if only for those three days.
e would not be comfortable coming near me until I learned to be honest about how I felt. The horse would not let me lie.

Walking into the circular pen alone with the horse for my first somatic experiencing exercise was immediately insightful. My emotions were in chaos and my long-term defense mechanism of talking them away would not work in this situation. Not only was I supportive and encouraged by Buddy and Coleen to finally allow myself to feel things I had buried for so long, but the horse also let me know that sh As my left brain continued to fight the desire to let my emotions be felt, the facilitators and group continued to provide support through experiential exercises that did not tell me, but showed me it was ok to “let go.” It is always nice to have support from others, but there is nothing like having a horse walk up to you, its head low with eyes half closed, showing support for the pain you were finally allowing yourself to feel.

Transformative Healing

Each day I drove back to the Buddy’s Ranch wondering what insights the day would provide. As I increased my personal insights through progressive relaxation, experiential processing with others, and somatic experiencing, I would begin to realize that I was learning more about myself in these three days than I had in the last 20 years.

By day two, I had already begun to change. I returned home from the workshop to continue with everyday life and experienced something that would have typically upset me. Instead of getting frustrated and overthinking the situation, I was able to recognize how I felt internally and work on that discomfort. It was amazing how I quickly made better decisions in spite of that frustration. It was an initial learning experience that I have returned to many times since leaving the workshop.

In my position at The Meadows I frequently get asked about this specific workshop and who it might be helpful for. I now get to smile to myself and answer that question from my heart and not my head. I tell people that this is a special workshop, one that promises to be life changing and unlike anything that you have ever experienced. This is true for all individuals, including clinicians and horse trainers.

There are no words to express my gratitude for the experience. It has made me a better person and for three days, allowed me to truly see myself as the person I am, and not just describe her in a way I had seen fit.

Register for Spirit: A Somatic Equine Workshop

The Spirit Equine Workshop allows participants to address self-esteem, boundaries, honoring reality, wants and needs, emotional regulation, and spontaneity through experiential activities with horses. It was created exclusively for a small group of no more than five participants and is facilitated by two gifted extremely gifted professionals. If you’re looking for a way to achieve a real emotional break-through, this may be the perfect workshop for you. For more details, call 800-244-4949, or visit the workshop’s webpage.

Source Link