Harmony Place Monterey Information Handout

Why Choose Harmony Place Monterey

We have a team made up of very accomplished and adept staff, several with more than 40 years of experience. We also have an exceptional Psychiatrist and Dietitian on staff.
Our program is five days a week and we offer 6 hours of targeted programming, with three individual therapy sessions each week plus one individual session with the psychiatrist for our Partial Hospitalization Program.
We also offer a shorter 3-hour Intensive Outpatient Program with 1-2 individual therapy sessions each week.
We offer three tracks: The Mental Health Track-which includes: Depression, Bi-polar, Anxiety and Trauma/PTSD, The Eating Disorder Track and an Addictions/Chemical Dependency Track. Once the symptoms have been stabilized, deeper treatments focused on the factors that caused or maintained the symptoms can be addressed. Our staff history includes working with: Eating Disorder, Relationships, Family of Origin Difficulties, and Co-Occurring difficulties in Trauma and Addictions. We have recently welcomed Dr. Larimer, who was the Director of a Chemical Dependency clinic for over 18 years before joining our staff at Harmony Place Monterey and he will be leading and managing the Drug and Alcohol Dependency Track.
We offer a therapeutic community and a beautiful Transitional Living house to those coming a long distance for a separate cost.
Our Psychiatrist is exceptional, open to changing medications and dosages when needed until the right combination of medication and dose is found.
We utilize a combination of psychotherapies, including: DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy), IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy), Somatic Processing, Expressive Psychotherapies—such as Psychodrama and Gestalt in conjunction with Relapse Prevention, and Cognitive Therapies.

TRAUMA AND PTSD TREATMENT

Trauma is now used in a broad sense to describe events of such a great magnitude that a child’s brain cannot consolidate into long-term memory, or the adult’s brain cannot make meaning and thereby integrate the experience. Often trauma is associated with dissociation, such that the self becomes fragmented and part of the individual feels one way and another part feels the opposite. For example, one part feels so much rage, they want to hurt someone, while another part is compassionate.

Typically, numbness, hyperarousal and intrusive symptoms can appear with poor emotional regulation and exaggerated startle response. We utilize evidence-based treatment approaches such as Cognitive Reprocessing Therapy, EMDR and Internal Family Systems and other forms of Exposure Therapy as well as the group process PTSD combined. We have over 40 years of experience working with Complex Trauma. When an individual has experienced PTSD from combat or sexual assault there is both the impact of events, and typically secondary traumatic events and stuck points or cognitive distortions such as blame and shame that prevent healing. Having worked with hundreds of Veterans and thousands of sexual abuse survivors, we are very experienced in compassionately facilitating the healing process.

MENTAL HEALTH/DEPRESSION AND BIPOLAR

The critical piece in fighting depression is to find the right combination of medications, at the right dose, with minimum side effects. Since there are now many medications with very specific targets to this complex disorder, it is important to monitor this closely each week to determine an optimal response. Once minimizing symptoms are contained, psychotherapy is critical to re-engineer one’s lifestyle to create day to day capacity for emotions and joy. Living outside the zone of depression requires specific interventions and lifestyle changes.

EATING DISORDER

Eating Disorders are complex and have about 10 different pathways which require very different treatments. Once the symptoms are stabilized, it is critical to determine the original contributing factors and those maintaining the symptoms. It is common that the original causes of the Eating Disorder often manifest at the age of 13 or earlier and become more complex as an individual ages. One’s relationship with food often parallels their relationship with people. Food is used for emotional regulation as a substitute for loneliness and avoidance of people, feelings and as a means of stress management.

DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION TREATMENT

Harmony Place Monterey with Dr. Lee Larimer as Chief Clinical Officer and his over 20 years of experience in treating addiction issues following abstinence and detox and bringing clients to where recovery really begins helps to facilitate the optimal healing process. Typically, the individual is flooded with all issues “swept under the rug” that they avoided dealing with for years. The unique aspects of Harmony Place Monterey’s program are a blending together of effective psychotherapy, medication management, relapse prevention, life coaching and 12-Step or spiritually based interventions, including Buddhist principles and relapse prevention to help maintain sobriety, and then psychotherapy work on the deeper issues that often maintains and perpetuates addiction.

In addition, emotionally focused individual and group modalities are offered that help in identifying and treating underlying patterns that often promote active substance and alcohol abuse and which can prevent a successful recovery. Our small group treatment setting provides intimate support and understanding to you or your loved one suffering from an alcohol, substance, or behavioral addiction problem.