Arlington Drug Addiction Treatment

To that end, our facility provides flexible outpatient programs for those in the Arlington area who are looking to make a change. With East Coast Recovery, our team offers a range of therapies to help treat addiction and mental health conditions. 

CBT and DBT

With our CBT and DBT courses, your partial or full-day program will introduce you to the things within your control, the things that you might dwell on unnecessarily, and how to better regulate emotions. 

CBT and DBT both give you skills you can act upon when life presents you with challenges. Recovery and good mental health take time and are not without challenges. While you cannot control the challenges you face, you can control your response to them. 

CBT, for example, can teach you techniques like the worry tree. The “worry tree” is a simple exercise using a sheet of paper and the shape of a tree:

• At the top, you write what you are worried about
• On the first branch, you write whether this is a worry within your control or not, with “yes” on the left side of the branch or “no” on the right side of the branch
• From there, follow the appropriate side of the tree branch with additional prompts like “Can I do something about it?” If so, “What do I need to do something?” and “Can I do something right now or do I have to wait?” and if waiting, “When can I do something?”

Prompts like these can help you take worries and concerns and put them in the correct light. Maybe, for example, you are worried about making it to your next therapy session tomorrow because your car isn’t working right now. If so, you might ask yourself whether getting to class is something you can control. This could help you explore other avenues like having a friend take you, taking the bus, or seeing what transportation is offered. 

Suddenly, the idea that your car might not work in the morning doesn’t seem so stressful because you can still make your meetings and find a way to fix your car after the fact. 

Mindfulness Meditation

One of the most important lessons you can learn as part of your recovery is what you can control. While participating in CBT and similar therapy sessions, you might learn to catch your negative, automatic thoughts and challenge them. 

By challenging them, you learn whether they are grounded in reality or not, and this sets you up to change them into positive thoughts. 

Mindfulness meditation supports these same notions, encouraging you to be more aware of your emotions and thoughts. 

During your program with East Coast Recovery, our team will lead you through guided mindfulness meditations. These provide myriad benefits during recovery, not least of which is a chance to focus on the present, to bring your mind away from ruminating over the past or worrying about the future. 

The lessons learned in mindfulness meditation go a long way toward improving your ability to cope with negative emotions and to use positive behaviors in the face of stress and challenges instead of negative ones. 

Yoga

Relatedly, yoga provides a place where you can similarly focus on the present. Too often in recovery, clients can face setbacks or triggers that bring their attention to things like past mistakes and guilt or future worries and anxiety. 

Yoga, by comparison, gives a place to focus on the present moment. 

With our day and partial-day programs, you don’t need any experience in yoga to use it to your advantage. Even beginners with no experience in yoga who practice for around 30 minutes every few days will notice a difference. This type of practice goes hand in hand with mindfulness meditation and CBT/DBT to encourage you to bring your attention back to the body, back to the breath, and back to things within your control. This can be an especially useful tool when you leave your treatment and start to face setbacks and challenges. 

Art Therapy

With East Coast Recovery, our team employs evidence-based practices to support your mind-body recovery. The more you learn to improve your physical health, the more you improve your mental health, and vice versa. 

Art therapy is a great modality because, like yoga therapy, it does not require any experience or particular talent. Rather, you can participate in a range of activities like:

• Drawing
• Painting
• Playing with clay
• Doing paper mache 
• Using coloring books

Art therapy with anxiety coloring books, for example, offers an easy resource to bring your attention back to the tactile engagement, the feel of the paintbrush in your hand, and the look of the colors you choose. This, like meditation or CBT exercises, can be used at home or in a sober living environment when you are feeling anxious.