Therapies
Equine Therapy for Treating Addiction at Burning Tree Ranch
Burning Tree Ranch conducts a 6-person, 6-week equine therapy course for our clients. While participants do not physically ride the horses, they do engage with, tend to, and interact with these intuitive and perceptive animals.
Equine Therapy is used in a variety of ways to assist the chronic relapser on their path to recovery. At Burning Tree Ranch, our clients begin engaging in Equine therapy around 60-90 days into their treatment episode. Their experience at Equine Therapy assists them in gaining self-awareness, growing distress tolerance, practicing honesty, and building trust.
Primarily, it helps our clients engage in healthy and honest relationship building. Horses will not comfort you like dogs or other pets, horses function as a mirror. This fosters an environment for authenticity and healthy risk-taking in which clients can thrive and learn skills they can take into other areas of life.
Equine Therapy at Burning Tree Ranch
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 Equine Therapy as one of several addiction treatment therapies to help our clients define what is a real problem and what is a false story they have made up to justify their actions or behaviors.
The Benefits of Equine Assisted Therapy
Led by our clinical director, Meghan Bohlman, LPC, LCDC, equine therapy provides our clients an opportunity to experience themselves through the lens of an unbiased and non-judgmental creature, the horse.
Horses are highly social animals. Each one has its own character traits, its own personality and demeanor. Similar to humans, horses require that we earn their trust, respect, and attention. Developing a good relationship with the horse demands effort.
During Equine Therapy, our clients get to find out what they are willing to bring to the relationship with the horse, and what they want in return. This exercise helps the chronic relapser look more deeply at what they want their human relationships to look like.
Explore Other Therapies we Use to Treat Addiction at Burning Tree Ranch
“We encourage clients to observe what the horse might be communicating to us as it observes our own behavior. In contrast, what does our behavior communicate to our families, our peers, and ourselves that we might not be conscious of? Equine therapy helps our clients grow in their self-awareness.”
Brook McKenzie, LCDC, Chief Operating Officer
“The benefits of Equine Therapy are vast. For our clients particularly, it helps assist with symptoms of trauma. Other benefits are improved communication skills, adaptability, and distress tolerance.”
Meghan Bohlman, LPC, LCDC, EMDR-Trained, Clinical Director
Incorporating Equine Therapy in Long-Term Treatment
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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