Our specialty is working with childhood trauma, neglect and attachment issues. Many individuals present with intimacy disorder, and their symptoms function to keep them alone. Ultimately the blocks to intimacy need to be uncovered and factors that have been reenacted or repeated from past destructive relationship’s need to be brought into consciousness. Individuals range from being extremely co-dependent and wanting to fix their partner to creating avoidance strategies which their psychiatric difficulties perpetuate.
Expressive therapy is fundamental , as it allows the client to get to suppressed emotions. We then help clients deal with the skills they need to integrate back into their world, including life coaching for career. Learning about healthy relationships and developing problem solving skills and emotional management is critical in dealing with their depression. Identifying triggers for anxiety and depression is a key to learning how to go towards each individuals problem rather then the over learned avoidance, which frequently initiates the downward spiral to relapse.
Our psychiatrists are particularly experienced in dealing with psychiatric symptoms that have not been responsive to other methods. We offer alternative interventions which then permit the psychotherapy to be effective. This combination of one-to-one intensive therapy , therapeutic community and more social interaction, med changes, and expressive work allowing for release of strong emotions, and skills for facilitating healthy relationships with food and people, and allowing for shifts in boundaries with families and friends. It has been our experience that co-dependency is at the core of the vast majority of clients presenting with addiction and mental health problems. For that reason establishing a healthy integrated sense of self is a primary goal of treatment.
Depression, anxiety, addiction, and compulsion are all common symptoms that we treat. A combination of medication and behaviorally-based psychotherapies are first used to stabilize those symptoms. After this, the underlying disorder requires treatment, outlined in five stages: Stage 1–Symptom control, as cited above. Stage 2–Work with the client’s family of origin to learn the patient’s history with trauma, neglect, or developmentally critical events that underlie symptoms and continue to negatively impact current function. Stage 3–Therapy with the family or couple. Stage 4–Work to establish intimacy with self and others. Stage 5–Counseling and education to build life skills, career plans and passionate play to help the patient regain a balanced lifestyle.
We have successfully treated clients who have completed other treatments yet chronically relapsed, as well as clients who have begun to move forward in their recovery but not adequately resolved the deeper issues, such as trauma and childhood neglect.
We specialize in resolving attachment and intimacy issues. Early symptom remission requires ongoing growth in the capacity for self-compassion and attachment with others. We offer life coaching to establish and strengthen core life skills. This facilitates the acquisition of crucial life tools and the practicing of fundamental skills that may have been absent in childhood and adolescence experience.
If you are struggling with a behavioral disorder or addiction, the process of overcoming the condition may seem overwhelming. Our treatment model gets to the heart of the problem, working through the underlying issues that led to the initial disorder and increase the risk for relapse later on. To learn more about our program, contact Harmony Place Monterey today at 831-747-1727.
