Therapies
12 Step Immersion as an Addiction Therapy for Chronic Relapse
As a long-term, progress-based facility, Burning Tree Ranch features more therapeutic exposure than any program in the nation. Our clinical approach, our philosophies, and our mission are firmly grounded in the fundamental belief that permanent, lifelong sobriety is attainable for the chronic relapser.
Inspired by our own lived experience, we create life-changing upheavals that propel our clients into a state of newfound honesty. By leveraging the unavoidable truths that surround their condition, we invite the chronic relapser to explore new experiences, new solutions, and new ideas that, if embraced, will open their minds, increase their willingness, and nurture their growing relationship with honesty.
We invite our clients to have a brand new experience with the Twelve Steps and develop a deeper experience with the healing necessary to make full, permanent recoveries.
The 12 Steps in a Long-Term Treatment Setting
Burning Tree Ranch is a specialty program dedicated to the treatment of chronic addiction and mental health. Our program is long-term, progress-based, and highly intensive.
We use the Twelve Steps to teach our clients how to live by a set of spiritual principles that are taught in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. These spiritual principles help our clients move from a place that is self-centered to a place that is more altruistic and selfless.
Why Didn't the Twelve Steps Work the First Time?
Many chronic relapsers insist they have already “tried” the twelve steps and it didn’t work for them. Others express delight that it has worked for millions but remain steadfast that it cannot or has not worked for them.
At Burning Tree Ranch, we understand all of this. We also understand what working all twelve steps really looks like.
We are often asked by families, “with all the evidence-based therapies, addiction medicine, and dual diagnosis treatment that you offer, why the twelve steps?”
The answer is simple: to help them recover.
What Does Working the 12 Steps Look like?
The twelve steps create a clear-cut design for living, and a recipe that, if followed, unifies the chronic relapser with a permanently sober lifestyle. Here is a quick litmus test to help you know if your loved one really did work all twelve steps:
- Did they make sincere and frank amends for the harms they have caused you and others, and seek to make each of them right, and then follow through?
- Did they dedicate a significant portion of their lives to the service of others, helping other addicted persons find the same freedom they had been given?
- Did they accept and own responsibility for past mistakes, and identify a clear path to no longer engaging in the same behaviors, and then follow through?
- Did they attend meetings regularly, take service and volunteer commitments, and place spiritual principles (such as honesty & humility) at the forefront of all their affairs?
- Did they speak often of gratitude, thanks and appreciation for their sobriety, and the opportunity to be of service to others in need?
- Did they become responsible, accountable, and dependable in their daily life, with consistency and determination?
- Did they undergo a psychic change in personality that made them nearly unrecognizable from the addicted person you knew before?
These are just a few quick qualifiers to help you know if your loved one had an honest, open-minded, and willing experience with all twelve steps. If you are doubtful, you’re not alone. Most families would gladly invite their loved one to engage a practice of living that promotes selflessness, integrity, and principle.
“At the end of the day, what we’re really doing is empowering our clients to create a life of excellence.”
Jesse Earwood, Executive Director
Explore Other Therapies we Use to Treat Addiction at Burning Tree Ranch
How are the 12 Steps Different in a Long-Term Treatment Program?
Our therapeutic treatment plans work in conjunction with all twelve steps. The Twelve Steps teach our clients how to live by a set of spiritual principles that are taught in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. These spiritual principles help our clients move from a place that is self-centered to a place that is more altruistic and selfless.
The Twelve Steps also help our clients shift their beliefs, which in turn shifts their behaviors. As behaviors change, the whole person starts to reorient with life in a new and different way. The old ways of doing business become less frequent, emotional natures become more balanced, and self-awareness grows.
As we track the progress of our clients through each step, each treatment plan, and each milestone, we monitor the behaviors that inform us of each client’s willingness, honesty, and resistance towards recovery. By utilizing skilled clinical interventions, we help our clients overcome their resistance to a new way of living that requires a profound, and sometimes humbling degree of honesty.
We do this compassionately, but directly, in a manner that is commensurate with the gravity of the chronic relapser’s life-threatening condition. As stated throughout our website, Burning Tree is unified around one goal, to create a life of excellence beyond sobriety.
It is our belief that not using and not drinking will never be enough.
To share a life of purpose, to be reunited with family, to adopt new disciplines, new principles, and to live a life of excellence. This is the vision that Burning Tree Ranch holds for the chronic relapser since 1999.
Practicing The 12 Steps at Burning Tree Ranch
Burning Tree specializes in addiction treatment & Chronic Relapse
We understand the complex, multi-faceted issues many of our families face when it comes to addiction. The circumstances of long-term residential treatment allow us to create a treatment program unlike anything else in the world.
Operating outside the limitations of a traditional 30, 60 or 90-day format, Burning Tree adheres to progress-based metrics that inform the clinical treatment team of the unique mental, emotional and spiritual needs of the individual.
We are the only treatment center in the United States that combines time-intensive residential treatment with a therapeutically coordinated aftercare program focused singularly on the treatment of chronic relapsers.
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