Living in Balance Curriculum

​The Living in Balance program includes three separate curriculums: ​

• Core Program
• Recovery Management
• Co-occurring Disorders

​
Core Program

This section provides a solid foundation of client education by addressing issues commonly

faced by clients in early recovery. Sessions educate clients on terminology, substances, triggers, and relapse prevention, the relationship between sex and substances and various emotional components of addiction and recovery.

Recovery Management

This section offers client education on in-depth, focused topics, such as self-help and Twelve Step programs, physical issues, social and family issues, sexual abuse and compulsive sexual behaviors, grief and loss, money management, nutrition and exercise, medication assisted treatment and chronic pain and opioids, strategies for older adults, and advanced relapse prevention.

Co-occurring Disorders

This section focuses on co-occurring disorders topics, including treatment, phases of dual

recovery, self-help groups, medication use, relapse prevention, and more.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tries to identify and change negative thinking patterns and pushes for positive behavioral changes. DBT may be used to treat suicidal and other self-destructive behaviors. The four modules of treatment skills are:

1. Mindfulness Skills – are considered core skills because they help a person develop the ability to control their attention which is a skill that is needed before a person can learn to regulate their emotions. In this module, the goal is to help clients learn to fully participate in their lives.

2. Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills – are taught so that clients learn to balance the ability to be assertive (ask for what they want and to say no), keep an improve relationships, and increase self-respect. The goal is to decrease interpersonal conflict, improve active interpersonal problem solving, and build positive social support.

3. Emotion Regulation Skills – help individuals appreciate the purpose of emotions when encountering different problems and situations. Clients learn to accurately identify and label emotions, change emotional responses to situations, reduce vulnerability to negative emotions, and learn to manage extreme emotions. For most clients, the development of these skills includes the process of learning an emotion vocabulary that helps them recognize and communicate their emotional needs to others.

4. Distress Tolerance Skills – are taught so that clients can learn to cope with periods of intense emotions and stress without behaving in a way that would make the situation or problems worse. The clients more effective ways of managing crisis situations. These skills help client who experience chronic problems and stressors learn to accept reality as it is.

Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT)

​Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT) is a systematic treatment strategy that seeks to decrease recidivism among adult criminal offenders by increasing moral reasoning.

MRT is a unique cognitive behavioral treatment approach designed for the criminal offender populations. The program is designed to alter how offenders think and how they make decisions about right and wrong. This is a 16 step program, and each person will complete this portion of their treatment at different rates of speed.