Our Approach
A Clinical and Integrative Approach
South Coast offers a full continuum of care that includes sub-acute detox services, residential treatment, partial hospitalization, and intensive outpatient. We are a culturally sensitive, evidence-based treatment center that blends traditional and holistic approaches to address the physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds of addiction.
Recovery doesn’t just take place on a conceptual basis. You must also learn to land in your body again, feel your emotions, and heal from the inside out. Recognizing the indisputable connection between body and mind, our highly credentialed staff uses an integrative approach to treatment. We draw on traditional, evidence-based therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as well as experiential approaches like yoga, psychodrama, and expressive art therapy.
Your specific treatment plan will be individualized to your most pressing clinical needs as well as your preferences, goals, and life experiences.
Evidence-Based Clinical Programming
Treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) are time-tested approaches that have been proven to help people recover from addictions and co-occurring mental health disorders. Our evidence-based clinical programming includes:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT helps you identify the link between unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Your therapist will teach you to recognize dysfunctional thought patterns, challenge them, and replace them with healthier alternatives.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
An offspring of CBT, dialectical behavior therapy teaches you skills and strategies for recovery like mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT focuses on the present moment, teaches healthy coping skills, and improves interpersonal skills.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a treatment designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. EMDR helps you heal from trauma symptoms and emotional distress associated with disturbing life experiences without re-traumatization. A therapist uses bilateral stimulation of your eyes to help you reprocess trauma in a healthier and more empowering way.
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation groups teach you about addiction and mental health disorders. When you understand your condition better, you can better manage symptoms.
Problem-Solving Therapy
This form of therapy draws on cognitive-behavioral interventions to help you develop healthy ways to cope with stress and learn how to manage the emotions tied to it. You’ll learn to decrease emotional distress and improve problem-solving abilities.
Family Systems Therapy
Family systems therapy views the family as an interconnected system. If one member is struggling with substance use or mental health conditions, the entire unit is impacted. Family systems therapy helps everyone understand their role in unhealthy attachment and how they can contribute to better communication, boundaries, cohesion, and problem-solving.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT draws on CBT and mindfulness to help you recognize and accept difficult feelings and thoughts instead of trying to avoid them. You’ll come to view emotional pain and challenges as one part of life and not something to be feared. You’ll work to identify your core values and incorporate them into all areas of your life.
Life Skills Training
You’ll receive daily assistance and training in life skills that are necessary or desirable for full participation in everyday life. This may include job readiness and vocational skills, resume building, interview prep and skills, budgeting, chores, community integration and resources, referrals, and a variety of other practical skills.
Support Groups
Peer-run support groups can be a crucial aspect of long-term recovery. Twelve-step groups often serve as a “home base” for recovery, providing support, unconditional acceptance, and accountability in sobriety. We will introduce you to the 12 Steps as well as alternatives to the 12 Steps such as SMART Recovery. Attending these types of groups after you leave treatment is important for relapse prevention.
Holistic and Wellness Services
To support whole-person healing, we offer a range of holistic approaches to complement our traditional therapies. Some alternative treatments we offer include:
Expressive Art Therapy – Creating art gives you a way to express emotions and thoughts that you find difficult to put into words. It can serve as a way to calm yourself, manage emotions, and as a creative outlet and an ongoing coping skill in recovery. Art therapy may include painting, collages, coloring, photography, drawings, and clay.
Mindfulness and Breathwork – We offer mindfulness through breathwork as well as movement and meditation. Mindfulness can provide a personal, powerful, and transformational experience that supports acceptance, staying grounded, and being in the moment.
Yoga – Research suggests that the practice of yoga modulates the stress response. Mental health and physical health are not just closely allied but are essentially equivalent. Yoga uses stretching, balance, poses, and breathing to help you stay centered in the present moment and release physical tension and stress tied to emotions.
Psychodrama – Through dramatic play, clients are often able to access deeper emotions, become unstuck, forgive, heal, and practice ways of dealing with difficult situations or feelings in the future. Psychodrama involves role-playing with other clients or a psychodrama instructor.
Music Therapy – Music therapy can help you express yourself, reduce stress, and improve your mood. In music therapy you may listen to or play music, make playlists, write music or lyrics, improvise, or communicate through songs. No previous music ability is needed.
Experiential Groups – Our group topics vary, but often include spirituality, grief and loss, anger management, relationships skills, music therapy, and recovery journaling. These groups draw on a blend of process therapy as well as hands-on, experiential approaches.
Nutrition and Wellness – We offer nutrition support and provide opportunities for healthy movement and exercise.
Seeking Safety – Seeking Safety addresses the connection between addiction and trauma. It draws on 25 treatment topics with themes around interpersonal, cognitive, and behavioral issues. Seeking Safety emphasizes addiction and trauma education, grounding tools, and coping skills. It can help you reduce trauma and addiction symptoms and feel safer in emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and relationships.
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Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT)
As clinically appropriate, we will prescribe medication-assisted treatment in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies for mental wellness and the treatment of substance use disorders.
