Top addiction therapists in 92308: Apple Valley, CA.

I specialize in working with internet, video game, cell phone, social media, crypto and porn addictions. These process addictions have acquired a power over you that is difficult to break. I take a multi-faceted approach to helping you experience the change you desire. I use Motivational Interviewing to help you solidify your desire to change, I utilize abstinence based strategies and methods to help you establish and sustain sobriety, I help you learn how to replace these addictions with real relationships and interests that foster real relationships and I support you in identifying or establishing a natural support network that helps you to maintain and sustain the new changes in your life

Addictions make us feel good, filling unmet needs in our lives, and have destructive ends if not controlled. While you were just having fun, it becomes an attachment, or even a secret affair. When relationships get difficult, we know where to go to escape the pain, thus getting stuck. Why family therapy? The cycle of addiction almost always intertwines with relationship patterns that I've helped successfuly resolve through increasing emotional awareness and intimacy. Ask me about our multi-family support group for families with recovering members (free as of Nov. 2011). I'm supervised by Dr. Ian Chand, LMFT (MFC 21263) of CARE Counselors.

I take an environment and harm reduction approach with her clients. I am caring and understanding of addiction issues. I have experience in working with families and friends suffering from a loved ones addiction. I assist my clients in finding the core and underlying issue of their addiction. I look at the client's whole environment and how that plays into their addiction.

I have dedicated my career primarily to helping the addicted. I have over 23 years of recovery from my addictions so I understand addiction from both personal and professional perspectives. I can offer you an absolutely judgment-free environment. You will be treated with respect and dignity. Alcoholism, drug addiction, codependency or any other addiction, does not have to be your future. Through a combination of insight oriented therapy and behavioral changes, I can help you overcome your addiction, allowing you to enjoy a life of freedom from self-destructive behavior. Trust someone who's been there. My professional experience in this area of psychology is huge. I know this stuff!

Few are aware that an addiction is a form of self-medicating where the addiction helps cover up deeper problems. This is especially true for a person experiencing major depression. The addiction serves to uplift a person out of the depression and into a state of pleasure. The problem is that the addiction serves as a temporary fix and becomes a problem in itself where chasing the high comes at an even greater cost than that experienced as depression. Suicidal thoughts, imprisonment, loss of income and financial problems, and poor health all come with the addiction. A person experiencing addiction must seek counseling for the addiction and for the root cause.

Struggles with addiction and substance abuse can often be accompanied by guilt and shame, and this guilt and shame are typically triggers for continued use/relapse. Use of a strengths-based approach to treating substance abuse can tap an individual's own strengths to gain insight and to increase coping skills. Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Interpersonal Therapy can also prove useful to address unmet needs, feeling "stuck" and challenging irrational thoughts that lead to continued use.