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Your Definitive Guide to a Happy and Sober Holiday Season - Accurate Status Assessment It’s common for newly sober persons to be concerned about “The Holidays.” Totally understandable. The holidays bring together many of the elements known to challenge sobriety or a recovery program: family, celebrations, cultural expectation of partying with alcohol, time demands, official and unofficial parties, money and...[ read more ]

The Science of Woo: Laughter Before I went to sleep last night, I laughed so hard tears were rolling down my cheeks. When I woke up this morning, my sides hurt. The same thing happened yesterday. This is a special and delightful weekend for the Recovery Therapist. My daughter graduated from college yesterday. That is, of course, one of my...[ read more ]

The Science of Woo: Gratitude “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson   It was 1991 and a pleasant enough day. I was not employed, but had been...[ read more ]

One Small Happiness: The Power to Change the Things You Can It’s the end of Spring Break. I’ve spent the day refreshing my home. And reflecting – mostly reflecting that my Spring Break wasn’t as productive as I had planned. Many of you reading know that I have a job role as an Administrator/School Counselor at a small private school...[ read more ]

I Can’t Have A Problem With Drugs or Alcohol... Even though stereotypes and stigma have been amended significantly, the ideas of who can be a person with a substance use disorder ** still outdated, limited, and provides “cover” to persons who are using defense mechanisms to avoid looking at their relationship with alcohol or drugs. Below are 3 composite vignettes...[ read more ]

Motivating Recovery in a High Functioning Person with a Substance Use Disorder As a professional who specializes in treating high functioning persons with a substance use disorder (SUD)**, I spend a lot of time assessing what motivates people to seek treatment, and what motivates people to stay engaged with habits and activities that support the bio/medical/psych/social/neural changes necessary for contented...[ read more ]

Defense Mechanisms Intellectualizing, Rationalizing, Cockiness, Justifying, Explaining, Analyzing   In my ongoing series of posts featuring the defense mechanisms used by persons with a substance use disorder (SUD), we've covered: Passive/mild styles: Denying, Lying, Silence, Withdrawing Dismissive techniques: Minimizing, Humor, Compliance Aggressive tools: Manipulating, Accusing, Judging, Projecting and Threatening, Blaming, Shouting, Defiance Today, we'll consider the cerebral set. These are common...[ read more ]

Defense Mechanisms Threatening, Blaming, Shouting, Defiance This is the next in my series on Defense Mechanisms used in substance use disorder**: drug, alcoholism, or behavioral (also known as process) addiction. Defense mechanisms are the behaviors that persons with a SUD use to protect their use by keeping those close to them away. These methods can be passive, aggressive, cooperative, or...[ read more ]

Parents, Teens, and Drinking It’s not uncommon for parents to adopt the perspective that they can teach responsible drinking by allowing supervised drinking at home, usually at the dinner table. I’ve been deeply concerned about this, but now there is meta-research supporting my concern.  The perceived logic is understandable: We’ll allow our teen to drink at home, under our supervision...[ read more ]

Defense Mechanisms (Denial Series) Humor, Compliance, Minimizing In a series of blog posts, we are highlighting and discussing in detail defense mechanisms of persons with a substance use disorder.** To help concerned family members and loved ones understand the forms that "denial" takes, we are looking at the various ways an addicted brain finds to protect the addict’s use of...[ read more ]