OUR THERAPY PROGRAMMES
A fundamental principle of Oasis’ treatment is our philosophy that addictive behaviours are a means to survive… A way to cope with stress, escape inner pain and relieve guilt. In our treatment, a crucial element is creating an understanding of the important function that each individual client’s addiction serves.
We aspire to be the best, most thorough and comprehensive addiction treatment team in the country because our clients aren’t treated with a one size fits all approach. Our clients aren’t shamed for having an illness, nor are they just measured in terms of their value to our bottom line.
We take every aspect of our client into consideration as we develop and create a personalised treatment plan that encourages healing emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.
With our 24 hour nursing staff, our programme integrates various elements from different therapy practices to provide the most effective and efficient care for our individual clients, including a full psychiatric, medical, psychological and nutritional plan.
For each of our clients there is a story of devastating entrapment, of erosion of confidence and destruction of their lives. But with each of these stories there is an ember of hope, an ember that with care, attention and skilled precision can be gently fanned to create a flame.
With over a century of combined experience we have assembled a relentless team who strives to help, no matter the problem, no matter how difficult the odds. Because our team understands that addiction is complex, and that as unique as each of our clients are, so must their treatment programme be.
• Schema Therapy
• Individual Therapy
• Group Therapy
• Psycho-dynamic Therapy
• Motivational Interviewing
• Trauma Focused Therapy
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Emotion Focused Therapy
• Interpersonal Therapy
• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
• 12 Step Programme
• Volunteer Programme
• Engaging with Nature
• Play Therapy
• Art Therapy
• Drama Therapy
• Yoga Therapy
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OUR PROGRAMMES
An alcoholic may drink to the detriment of their health and contribute to their own mental and emotional destruction. Alcoholics can suffer blackouts and binge drink for days. Sometimes they can stop for a while only to discover, when they start drinking again, that they drink the same amount and often more than when they stopped. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Drinking is the great remover for an alcoholic: it removes self-esteem, relationships and careers.
When the alcoholic hits the end of the road, their ‘rock bottom’, they can begin the road to recovery in the safe, therapeutic environment of Oasis.
Drug addiction is the inability to stop the urge to take drugs, despite the dangerous consequences that are both physical and mental. Drug addiction can cause personal, family and career difficulties and even legal concerns. The user will put his drug of choice before his/her own interests and safety.
On arrival at Oasis the client will be checked to see if they need to undergo detoxification. Withdrawal from some drugs may need medical supervision.
You’ve probably heard of sex addiction, but you might be surprised to know that there’s debate about whether it’s truly an addiction and that it’s not really even about sex. “That’s a common misconception.” says Rory Reid, PhD, LCSW, a research psychologist at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour. “It is no more about sex than an eating disorder is about food or pathological gambling is about money.”
Sex addicts, in other words, are not simply people who crave lots of sex. Instead, they have underlying problems — stress, anxiety, depression, shame — that drive their often risky sexual behaviour. “Those are some of the core issues that you start to see when you treat someone with sex addiction.” says John O’Neill, LCSW, LCDC, CAS, CART, a certified addiction counselor at the Menninger Clinic in Houston. “You can’t miss those pieces.”
Eating disorders affect millions of people worldwide. More common than most people think, these disorders are progressive and display the same characteristics as any other addiction whereby the sufferer is trapped in a helpless cycle of obsessive and compulsive behaviour, unable to break free of the need to escape their feelings of obsessive control.
Although there are different forms of eating disorders, the three most common and life-threatening types are Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and compulsive over-eating. However, most patients display traits of all three types as the root problem and this is generally the same in all sufferers, yet the action of dealing with these compulsions may be different.
These disorders are identifiable by obsessive and compulsive behaviour, but treating a food addictions can be a difficult task, as one cannot be abstinent from food. Below, read more about Oasis’ approach to the treatment of eating disorders.
Compulsive gambling shows many of the characteristics of other addictions. We have developed a special Twelve Step abstinence orientated programme to deal with this problem.
Compulsive gambling starts out as recreational and slowly progresses to the point where it has serious consequences for both the gambler and their family.
As with any other addiction, compulsive gambling is threefold in nature: mental, physical and spiritual, with its main symptom being that of denial and its major characteristic loss of control. The compulsive gambler frequently spends more time and money gambling than they intended and are unable to reliably predict when they will stop once they have started.
Co-dependence can be defined as an emotional addiction on another person. Sufferers are prone to being in toxic relationships. They are unlikely to be attracted to healthy partners. Often they choose unreliable and emotionally unavailable partners, who they try to control and change, putting the other person’s needs above their own. When one relationship ends they tend to be attracted to the same type of partner as before and repeat the same choices and behaviours in the next relationship. Often the partner of choice is an alcoholic or addict. The life of the sufferer of relationship difficulties is unbalanced and unmanageable, as their existence is wholly defined by the emotions and behaviour of another person.
When their relationships overwhelm them, they can get the help they need at Oasis Counselling Centre.
Medication abuse can be difficult to track as the addict often has an ostensibly justifiable reason to take the drugs. Taking across the counter, or prescription medicine, is legal and commonplace so it does not appear a risk. However, long term abuse does bring consequences.
When a patient takes medication without following a doctor’s instructions, it may be the start of prescription drug abuse. Increasing the dosage without consulting a medical practitioner to gain more or quicker efficacy from the drug is a common practise. Then the patient may begin to take the medication for unrelated symptoms. For example, they may take the prescription drug to aid sleep or to lessen stress when the medication is actually for pain relief. Dependency begins as the patient needs the drug to feel normal or to avoid withdrawal symptoms such as sweating and nausea.
A consequence of modern life is that our lives tend to be plugged in to virtual worlds, not from an escapist or self-soothing place, but from a functional work perspective also. Any solution for screen addiction that asks for complete abstinence would for many seem impractical considering how intertwined our lives are. For some, outright abstinence is a solution, for others harm reduction would be the necessary avenue of treatment. This is decided on a case by case basis.
During the first 2 months complete abstinence is asked for. Thereafter, the client and therapist create rules governing healthy use and introduce screen time back into the person’s life so that their use remains in balance.
In those first two months; what would be explored is:
- Client history and progression with computers / gaming / gambling and screen time.
- Unmanageability is explored: family relationships, socialising, financial consequences, vocation / studies, emotional.
- What function and needs has online using serve / served.
- History of trauma?
- Familial relationships; are these enabling, destructive…what needs to change and how.
- Practically how will the client meet those needs within treatment; weekly behavioural goals established with the client.
- Attendance in a 12 step fellowship, bridges connections and creates fellowship.