Pillars Recovery in sunny California offers a personalized and comprehensive treatment program for overcoming drug and alcohol addiction. Many clients arrive with a need for both addiction treatment and mental health treatment. This is where dialectical behavior therapy comes in as a multi-faceted treatment for addiction and mental health issues.

What Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy?

dialectical behavior therapy programIf you’ve been suffering from addiction for any length of time, you know that it feels like the same cycle of using drugs or drinking alcohol for weeks, months and years. Dialectical means to integrate things that are opposites. Specifically, a dialectical behavior therapy program helps clients break out of cycles and change their behavior. Firstly, before you can change your behavior, you have to recognize what you’re doing to get stuck in a pattern. Dialectical behavior therapy can be broken into four parts, including:

  • Mindfulness
  • Distress tolerance
  • Interpersonal effectiveness
  • Emotion regulation

Mindfulness describes being fully aware of your present state. Those struggling with addiction often have an intense fear of the future and past regrets. Generally, mindfulness helps you focus on the here and now. Distress tolerance helps clients learn to tolerate stressful situations rather than trying to control or change them. This also goes with interpersonal effectiveness, which teaches you to change what you can about yourself rather than trying to change others.

Regulating emotions comes from the same place in terms of accepting yourself and your situation. Negative and overwhelming emotions often result from a need to control and change things. Furthermore, these skills can be used in the treatment of mental health issues as well as addiction, such as in an anxiety treatment program.

How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Works

A dialectical behavior therapy program works by involving clients in one-on-one treatments as a type of talk therapy. Many of those who suffer from addiction see the world in black and white. Also, they react to triggers and become overwhelmed with their flaws. A dialectical behavior therapy program aims to help these people accept their flaws and change their negative emotions. Typically, the primary objective of the therapy is to halt behaviors that threaten life, such as substance abuse, self-harm or suicidal thoughts.

The therapy focuses on solving problems, analyzing behavior, setting goals and techniques for self-soothing that doesn’t involve substance abuse. We encourage clients to recognize that they need to make a change in order to get on the road to recovery.

The Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy

A dialectical behavior therapy program has benefits beyond just addiction treatment. It shows you how to regulate and deal with emotions in a positive way. However, those suffering from addiction especially benefit from dialectical behavior therapy as they need more productive ways to deal with stress and emotions. Those who participate in the therapy also tend to see fewer relapse incidents and enjoy a better quality of life after treatment.

At Pillars Recovery, clients enjoy a wide range of addiction treatment programs. We also offer two separate centers for women only in Laguna Beach and for men only in Newport Beach. Both centers feature a full range of treatments, including the following:

All programs are highly customized to each client as we recognize that no two addiction scenarios are the same.

Refuse to let addiction take over your life. You can take back control of your life through treatment at Pillars Recovery, including dialectical behavior therapy. Finally, give us a call today at 866-782-0247 to find out more.