STUDY GUIDE: TOOLS FOR RECOVERY

  

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: This program will provide and overview of seventy (70) tools of recovery--tools that can be utilized by persons, in treatment for addictive disorders, as a support for maintaining abstinence from addictive substances.  These ideas and concepts provide a rapid manner for the clinician to “educate” the client on what is necessary for the client to do to abstain from addictive substances.  As a clinical intervention technique, these “Tools” also serve as a “free-association” assessment, or as a “projective” education, allowing the clinician to more readily understand attitudes of the client toward his or her goals for abstinence and recovery.  As a client reads (out loud) each “Tool” on the handout, the reading evokes: conscious and unconscious content, emotional reaction, attitude-laden bias, childhood transferences, and a richness of non-verbal language. For the client, this “free-association” assessment results in a deepening understanding his or her blocks to recovery, and also what needs to be done to recover from addiction. The use of these “Tools” of recovery as a “free association” assessment, and as “projective” education, may also be use as a training tool for clinicians who would like a better understanding of his or her own reactions, attitudes, and feelings about persons diagnosed with addictive disorders. The “Tools” also provide the clinician more information about what is necessary for a client to do in the recovery process.  This program is aimed at the basic to intermediate skill level. 

PROGRAM OBJECTIVES: 

• -discuss methods to utilize the seventy (70) “Tools” of recovery in counseling sessions with clients in recovery from addictive disorders,

• -discuss how these “Tools” of recovery provide an summary understanding of what is necessary for a client to do to maintain abstinence and continue in recovery from addictive disorders,

• -identify “free-association” or projective reactions of clients, as the client verbal reads these “Tools” (within a counseling session), and how these reaction assist the client and clinician to better understand what the client needs to do for his or her ongoing abstinence and recovery,

• -identify “free-association” or projective reactions of the clinician, as the clinician verbal reads these “Tools” (within a training session), and how these reaction assist clinician to better understand his or her attitudes, belief, and values as related to person’s suffering from addiction. 

BIOSKETCH: Wayne P. Sisson, M.A., is currently the Associate Director of the Southwest Health Professions Education Center, Inc./VA Employee Education System (SEC/EES), VA Medical Center, Prescott, Arizona.  Prior to joining that program, he was an addiction therapist at this VA Medical Center’s inpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Program from 1980 to 1994.  He was also the Program Director and addiction therapist at La Casita, Inc., a residential alcohol treatment center in Tucson, Arizona from 1978 to 1980. He has 18 years of experience in substance abuse treatment.  Mr. Sisson has presented numerous continuing education programs on substance abuse, co-dependency, depression and communication skills. 

AGENDA:

Segment # 1 -- Tools as an Empowering Mechanism for Clients

Segment # 2 -- Non-Verbal Reaction to Reading the Tools

Segment # 3 -- Free Association Reactions of Clients

Segment # 4 -- Free Association Reactions of Therapists