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Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, we seek to contribute a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals and their families, and the general public.
For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.
© 2015 by Kay Colbert and Roxanna Erickson-Klein
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: Central Recovery Press
3321 N. Buffalo Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89129
20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 978-1-937612-90-0 (e-book)
Photos of Kay Colbert and Roxanna Erickson-Klein used with permission.
LIMITED PHOTOCOPY LICENSE
These materials are intended for use only by qualified professionals.
The publisher and authors grant to individual purchasers of this book nonassignable permission to reproduce all materials which are indicated as handouts. This license is limited to you, the individual purchaser, for use with groups. This license does not grant the right to reproduce these materials in any other form or any other purpose, such as resale, distribution, or electronic display.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following:
The AA Twelve Steps are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
The NA Twelve Steps are reprinted by permission of NA World Services, Inc.
All quotations used with individual permission or permission from the estate of:
Rubin Battino, Milton H. Erickson, Patrick Carnes, Pennie Johnson Carnes, Kristina Erickson, Stephen Gilligan, and Ernest Rossi.
Publisher’s Note: This book contains general information about addiction, addiction recovery, and related matters. The information is not medical advice, and should not be treated as such. Central Recovery Press makes no representations or warranties in relation to the information in this book. If you have any specific questions about any medical matter discussed in this book, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.
Our books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date.
Cover design by David Hardy
Interior design and layout by Deb Tremper, Six Penny Graphics
To the men, women, and children who struggle with addiction
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
How to Use This Book: A Facilitator’s Guide
Overview of the Sections
Self-Acceptance: Inventory with Unconditional Valuing of Self
Self-Awareness: Individual Strengths and Areas for Growth
Self-Responsibility: Emotional Regulation of Self Care
Communicating with Others: Expressive Verbal and Nonverbal Connections
Being Part of a Larger Community: Participation and Developing a Sense of Belonging
Envisioning a Future of Recovery: Anticipation of Holidays and Success Over Time
Appendix
Resources
Alphabetical Index of Activities
This highly innovative volume, Engage the Group, Engage the Brain: 100 Experiential Activities for Addiction Treatment by Kay Colbert and Roxanna Erickson-Klein, brings a refreshingly new neuroscience approach to psychotherapy. It embraces a long tradition for facilitating the shift in the burden of responsibility in effective psychotherapy, first celebrated by Roxanna Erickson-Klein’s father, Milton H. Erickson, MD. The main idea is that the truly creative inner work of psychotherapy is the burden of the patient, not the therapist (American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1964).
While popular lore tends to promote the therapist as the heroine of the psychotherapeutic encounter, there is a long tradition of innovative professionals like Colbert and Erickson-Klein introducing new attitudes and techniques for facilitating a person’s own creative development in optimizing his or her own path of self-transformation and recovery. Consider how more than 100 years ago Sigmund Freud introduced free association and emphasized the patient’s own dreams as harbingers of the path to self-discovery and healing. Consider how Carl Jung introduced active imagination as a key for unlocking the person’s own spiritual life as an inner guide to self-fulfillment. In our time, consider how Carl Rogers introduced the simple reflection of the client’s actual words and concepts as the focus for facilitating the highest levels of attention, self-understanding, and problem solving.
Colbert and Erickson-Klein now expand this innovative tradition by introducing 100 experiential activities for addiction treatment and rehabilitation. It is their emphasis on experiential novel and numinous activities that makes their approach a wonderful therapeutic application of the new neuroscience research on memory, learning, and the creation of new cognition and consciousness at the molecular-genomic level of brain plasticity and stem cell healing. Although they began this work in a local nonprofit limited to women, we can safely assume it is only the beginning of a therapeutic journey. We all look forward to the eventual extension of their creative work to all people, all cultures, and virtually all the stress-related disorders.
Ernest Lawrence Rossi, PhD
