As you look through our behavioral health and addiction treatment site, you may wonder about some of the terms you encounter. We’ve created the glossary below to help you better understand what Cottonwood Tucson’s holistic treatment center in Arizona can offer you.
In addition to the multiple treatment modalities utilized at Cottonwood Tucson, each patient is strongly encouraged to regularly participate in 12-step meetings as part of the ongoing recovery process.
The term 12-step derives from, and forms the core of, the self-help program of recovery developed by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. Currently, over 100 self-help groups have adapted the 12-step as basis of their programs of recovery.
Patients are introduced to the 12-step process through a group called Introduction to the 12-Steps, and then regularly attend both community based and campus based 12-step meetings.
Meeting options address a variety of recovery issues and include Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Alanon, Debtors Anonymous, Anorexia and Bulimia Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts, Sex Addicts Anonymous, and Nicotine Anonymous.
Additionally, some patients are offered Lawyer specific AA meetings, Physician specific AA meetings, Young Adult 12-step meetings, and Gay and Lesbian specific 12-step meetings. Attendance at community based 12-step meetings aids in the development of community integration and utilization of supportive resources in recovery.
Research indicates that individuals who continue therapy following inpatient treatment have a higher likelihood of maintaining recovery behavior.
Understanding the value of aftercare, the Cottonwood treatment places a strong emphasis on developing a comprehensive aftercare plan reflective of each patient’s individual needs.
Each discharging patient is provided with continuing care referrals responsive to their needs. These might include: continuing residential care, psychiatric follow-up and medication management services, individual and/or group therapy and psychological services if necessary. Dates and times of first appointments are routinely set before the patient leaves Cottonwood.
Counseling focusing on helping people manage anger in more adaptive ways
A relationship in which one or both individuals are emotionally dependent on the other.
Behavior motivated by factors that compel a person to act against his or her own wishes. The term compulsion usually carries connotations of repetitiveness and irrationality.
Patients participate in daily psychoeducational groups in order to increase awareness and provide resources for ongoing behavior change. Topics include: Neurobiology and Recovery, Depression Recovery, Trauma and brain healing, Relapse Prevention, Anger Management, Spirituality, Medical Aspects of Recovery, Grief and Loss, Forgiveness, and many others.
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a psychotherapeutic technique, developed by Francine Shapiro. Studies have demonstrated the efficacy of EMDR in treating PTSD and exposure to traumatic events.
EMDR is founded on an information-processing model, which suggests that PTSD symptoms arise when events are insufficiently processed, and can be eliminated when the memory is fully processed.
It integrates many traditional therapeutic approaches, such as psychodynamic, physiological, cognitive behavioral, experiential, and interpersonal therapies.
EMDR also utilizes the component of dual attention stimulation, such as eye movements, bilateral sound, or bilateral tactile stimulation.
It has been said that the Equine-Assisted Therapy Intensive at Cottonwood Tucson offers a profound glimpse into the totality of human emotional experience. As patients explore their own capacity for trust, intimacy, boundaries, and self-acceptance, the horse confirms and mirrors the person’s strengths and challenges.
Noted pioneer in the field and lifetime equine professional, Laura Brinckerhoff, and her team of Equine professionals and safety support carefully facilitates this equine encounter, which is available at least one time to each patient at Cottonwood. Occasionally patients may participate more frequently as determined by the treatment team.
Although the intensive is a group process, patients work one at a time in the round pen with a chosen horse. This intimate encounter with a horse provides rich information to the therapist and often results in catharsis, insight and a life-changing shift in perspective for the patient. Horses make it easier to be venerable, to risk and ultimately to connect in a powerful present moment encounter of complete acceptance.
Metaphor is also a factor in Equine Assisted Therapy. Sometimes it’s less about the connection and more about the mirror created by the horse’s behavior. Patients may be able to in turn recognize things about their own behavior, which will provide the facilitator an opening for questions and observation.
All work with the horses is on the ground. There is no riding or riding lessons. Horses can be naturally therapeutic, but with the assistance of Laura and her team, we offer an intense, unique psychotherapy group.
These are therapeutic activities that help patients explore their life experience in an other than intellectual way. As participants engage in self-expression, they encounter new ways of engaging in treatment apart from the traditional aspects of “talk therapy”. These groups may include music therapy, expressive art therapy, psychodrama, Playback Theater, and Tai Chi.
Family Program is a five-day process during which patients and their families explore issues of recovery within a safe and structured therapeutic setting. Each participant will explore aspects of relationship recovery including the development of healthy communication and the strengthening of boundaries. Psychoeducational and list work process groups provide a dynamic and healing opportunity for all participants.
An intense emotional state associated with the loss of someone or something with whom a person has had a strong emotional attachment.
Patients participate in daily group therapy. Each patient is assigned to a primary therapy group facilitated by their primary counselor. Patients attend two hours of primary group therapy Monday through Friday.
Each patient will also be scheduled to attend specialty groups to address his or her presenting issues. Group therapy allows participants to improve communication skills and develop greater awareness of self and others through group process and integration of feedback from other participants.
Any act or event triggered by a stimulus and occurring with short latency and with little or no conscious control or direction. In physiology, a self-propagating excitatory state transmitted along a neural fiber.
A class of disorders (e.g., kleptomania, pyromania, explosive disorders, pathological gambling) all marked by failure to resist an impulse or temptation to engage in some act that ultimately proves harmful to oneself. Typically, the affected individual feels a highly increased sense of tension prior to the act and a pleasurable, gratifying feeling afterwards. Guilt may or may not be experienced following the act.
Patients participate in regularly scheduled individual therapy sessions with his or her primary counselor. Session length and frequency are determined by the patient’s treatment needs and guided by the treatment plan. Individual sessions will address issues such as chemical dependency, depression, anxiety, relapse prevention, and treatment planning.
Resourceful minds. Strong wills. Trained to argue.
The same skills that make people good lawyers can make them difficult patients. So we undertook major research to determine how to best address chemical dependency and other behavioral health issues of legal professionals.
Cottonwood clinicians were invited to present the findings of the research at the 2003 American Bar Association Conference on Lawyers Assistance, and the study was published in the behavioral health journal Addiction Professional.
Building on the year-long research project, Cottonwood Tucson developed a comprehensive treatment focus that includes complete assessment, medical and psychological therapy and ongoing clinical help to resolve a client’s problems and prevent relapse.
Legal professionals undergoing treatment for co-occurring disorders at Cottonwood attend both general and lawyer-specific treatment activities, some facilitated by clinical staff that are also practicing lawyers. Lawyer-specific 12-step meetings are also available.
For more information about this program or for information on admission to Cottonwood, please contact us.
An extended state of reflection or contemplation that can be helpful in the development of mindfulness and the ability to live in the present moment.
Mind/Body Therapies offer a holistic approach that unites mind, body, and spirit to assist patients in the discovery of “self”. The utilization of spiritual concepts allows patients to learn the art of self-acceptance, self-care, and the creation of balance as the core of recovery.
Mind/Body therapies include the following groups: Yoga, Meditation, Energy Psychology, Energy Medicine, Honoring Anger, Voices of the Heart, A Soul Journey of Recovery.
Nicotine cessation groups educate participants on the physical, emotional, social, and psychological implications of nicotine use. Participants are also helped to examine their own addictive process regarding their use of tobacco, including triggers to the impulse to use. Medical doctors and therapists help participants also develop a plan to stop smoking.
An impulse control disorder characterized by chronic inability to resist impulses to gamble. The term is generally not used unless the pattern of behavior disrupts and damages personal, family and/or vocational life. Also, the maladaptive pattern of gambling is not better explained by another psychological or psychiatric conditions, such as the mania or hypomania associated with bipolar disorder, a more generalized impulse control disorder, or disinhibition due to the use of mood-altering substances.
A Cottonwood employee whose job it is to support the patient while they are with us. Responsibilities can include taking daily vital signs, running community meetings, driving to off campus 12-step meetings and appointments and generally making sure the patient is comfortable and safe.
Some people experience an abiding or recurring urge to gamble despite adverse consequences and an honest desire to stop. Problem gamblers and their families can suffer severe financial, emotional and relationship problems as a result of the gambler’s behavior. Recent research suggests that pathological gambling is an addiction that affects the gambler’s brain similarly to the way drugs affect the addict’s brain.
An experiential therapeutic technique in which participants act out certain roles or incidents in the presence of a therapist and other persons who are part of the psychodrama exercise.
That area of counseling that focuses on minimizing the potential or relapse into past unhealthy or problematic behavior, especially focusing on attitudes, beliefs and behavior that put a recovering person in greater danger of relapse.
Spending Addiction, also known as compulsive shopping, is mood altering behavior that involves making compulsive purchases that are often emotional driven and undertaken regardless of increasingly negative consequences.
The development and cultivation of spiritual principles, e.g., forgiveness, acceptance, humility, compassion, etc.
Therapeutic recreation groups are an essential aspect of treatment. These groups aid participants in the development of crucial recovery skills, including self-discipline, stress management, self-control, improved self-esteem, anxiety reduction, and assertiveness.
Therapeutic recreation groups allow for kinesthetic learning opportunities that enhance the understanding of recovery issues such as trust, forgiveness, and decision-making. Through participation in therapeutic recreation, participants identify and change dysfunctional behavior by evaluating these behaviors in a safe environment.
These groups include Rocks and Ropes, Cardio-kickboxing, Recreation in Recovery, Challenge Course, Leisure Wellness, and Community Reintegration.
From the Greek word for wound, trauma describes a psychological injury caused by an extreme emotional or physical assault.
Many individuals enter treatment with a history of untreated trauma. For these patients, the careful identification and exploration of traumatic events is crucial to successful recovery. Trauma therapy may include trauma process groups, trauma and intimacy groups, psychodrama, psychoeducational groups, and EMDR.
The use of mindfulness techniques, expressive art therapies, and mind-body groups offer participants the opportunity to develop containment skills to manage traumatic memories more effectively.
From the Sanskrit word meaning union, emphasizing disciplined physical body or cognitive/mental control.
