By Michael Rass
A solid network of recovery support is a critical aspect of staying sober on the recovery journey. As part of their treatment program, Harmony connects clients with long-term alumni in their area who can continue the peer support and help them connect with the local recovery community. And, of course, they can stay in touch with their case manager and the Harmony alumni team. Continue reading “Harmony Foundation Supports Long-Term Recovery”
by Michael Rass
Harmony has provided addiction treatment at its Estes Park center in Colorado for half a century. In the beginning, Harmony was a place where alcoholic men could “dry out,” attend AA meetings, and then return home. Over the years, this first treatment approach was expanded to include group therapy sessions, the expertise of a physician, and a treatment protocol based on the Minnesota Model.
Beginning in 2008, Harmony expanded its detoxification facilities and revised its protocol to include Subutex detox methods for opioid addicts. More recently, Harmony added the HOPE Program which offers medication-assisted therapy using buprenorphine to clients with opioid use disorder.
Led by chief clinical officer Annie Peters, Harmony has now upgraded its dual diagnosis capabilities. Dr. Peters developed a roadmap for Harmony to become a dual-diagnosis capable facility serving clients with SUD and co-occurring mental health disorders. Dual diagnosis (also referred to as co-occurring disorders) is a term used for patients who experience a mental illness and a substance use disorder simultaneously. Harmony is now fully dual diagnosis capable.
This modern, evidence-based approach to addiction treatment acknowledges the important role mental health conditions play as drivers of substance use disorders. People may misuse drugs and alcohol because of mental health issues like trauma, depression, and anxiety. “If co-occurring conditions aren’t addressed, clients are more likely to relapse because they may be drawn to substance use to self-medicate those issues,” says Dr. Peters.
People with addiction may also have traumatic experiences as a result of their substance use. “When people are using substances, they may find themselves in dangerous, potentially traumatizing situations that cause further emotional pain, which then leads to more substance use,” says Peters. “This is a difficult cycle for people to pull themselves out of without help.”
Traumatic life experiences are extremely common among patients with substance use disorder. Many suffered adverse childhood experiences. “Studies of drug addicts repeatedly find extraordinarily high percentages of childhood trauma of various sorts, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse,” writes Canadian physician Gabor Maté in his seminal addiction study In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
Because of this strong correlation, trauma-informed care is an important part of addiction treatment. All staff at Harmony have been trained in trauma-informed care. “When people come to treatment, they often have few coping skills to deal with traumatic memories and emotional pain,” says Peters. “Our primary goals are to help them feel safe in the world, manage emotions and situations without substances, and improve their self-esteem and quality of life.”
Trauma-informed dual-diagnosis care begins with a careful assessment. “Every client gets screened for mental health disorders,” says Harmony therapist Gretchen Leezer. “We identify the needs of the patient and establish which ones we can start working on immediately while they are at Harmony and what follow-up treatment they should get once they have been discharged.”
It’s important to address mental health issues as soon as possible, even if the main focus of treatment is the addiction. “When someone comes into addiction treatment with a long history of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or trauma, we want them to leave here with a roadmap for recovery from all of these difficulties,” says Peters.
Harmony mental health professional Uric Geer likens Harmony’s dual diagnosis approach to a Möbius strip which can be created by taking a paper strip, giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip to form a loop. If one side reveals the SUD and the other the mental health disorder, then the twist makes both sides visible whereas a normal paper ring would keep the condition on the inside hidden from view. “If you only treat what’s visible on the outside—the substance use disorder—then an important part of the problem remains hidden and untreated,” says Geer.
The treatment team at Harmony works hard every day to address all relevant needs a client might have. “The culture at Harmony is simply amazing,” says Harmony psychologist Rob Leach. “The leadership has a great vision and the team as a whole is extremely dedicated. They put in great effort to meet clients where they are and develop individual treatment plans. There is great coordination of care. Really listening and meeting clients where they are, creates an atmosphere of trust and that’s crucial for their recovery.”
We are real excited to hear about your center and learning a little bit more about your practice. I pulled some information off the website, so I’m going to maybe read a little back to you, and you tell me if I’m in line with that. It says that your practice focuses on both addiction, stress reduction, psychotherapy and mindfulness based stress reduction. How have you taken sort of this whole spectrum of services that you’ve provided and moved it into a practice, particularly in the work that you do with addiction? I guess more specifically, some of the work that you do with addiction and maybe mindfulness based stress reduction? How do those different services all kind of relate and work together for you?
Well, the Center for Courageous Living as a business that my wife and I created, and we’ve divided up our tasks, so I do the addiction and psychotherapy and she does the stress reduction. MBSR is her thing, and we keep it pretty separate. Although when I do my addiction work, I’m a graduate of the Roper University, so mindfulness is a big part of that. What I like to do is consider a person’s level of awareness and start from there. Continue reading “Center for Courageous Living”
by: Michael Rass
Sobriety is no longer just the earnest goal of recovering alcoholics. As of late, it has also become the holy grail of so-called “gray area” drinkers.
According to former social drinker Amanda Kudo that gray area is the “place where you’re not a super-casual, once-in-a-while drinker, but you’re also not a hit-rockbottom, time-to-get-help drinker, either. You’re just there, somewhere in the middle, drinking in a way that is still deemed socially acceptable if not socially necessary.”
Or as health coach Jolene Park put it in her TED talk, “from the outside looking in, my drinking did not look problematic, but from the inside looking out, I knew, the way I was drinking was a problem for me.” Many people like Kuda and Park say they never had a real drinking problem, but they had a problem with drinking.
One of those “gray area” drinkers was British expat Ruby Warrington, currently living in Brooklyn, who— according to the New York Times—”spent her early career quaffing gratis cocktails at industry events, only to regret the groggy mornings.”
“After moving to New York in 2012, Ms. Warrington tried 12-step programs briefly but decided that ‘Ruby, alcoholic’ was not the person she saw in the mirror,” wrote Alex Williams in the Times feature about a new sobriety trend spreading across the nation. “Three years ago she started Club Soda NYC, an event series for other ‘sober curious,’ as she termed them: young professionals who were ‘kind-of-just-a-little-bit-addicted-to-booze.’”
Being “sober curious” has caught on and Warrington wrote a whole book about this latest health fad. “For these New Abstainers, sobriety is a thing to be, yes, toasted over $15 artisanal mocktails at alcohol-free nights at chic bars around the country, or at ‘sober-curious’ yoga retreats, or early-morning dance parties for those with no need to sleep off the previous night’s bender,” wrote Williams.
But there is a serious side to avoiding alcohol use, of course. It is after all an addictive substance without any health benefits that physicians would acknowledge. And while the sober-curious vogue may well be short-lived, reducing or giving up alcohol consumption is certainly laudable since it comes with all kinds of health benefits.
When Jolene Park described her alcohol use as knowing “the way I was drinking was a problem for me,” she was actually paraphrasing the first diagnostic criterion of alcohol use disorder (AUD) in the of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which reads: “Alcohol is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended.” And when she said in the same TED talk that she had no trouble stopping but couldn’t “stay stopped,” she was paraphrasing the second AUD criterion in the DSM-5. Two criteria (out of eleven) indicate a mild alcohol use disorder.
Park probably wasn’t aware of the DSM-5 criteria at the time but she read the warning signs correctly and realized that she was “kind-of-just-a-little-bit-addicted-to-booze.” She understood that her alcohol use could escalate further and made the right decision. She embraced sobriety.
She also realized that her alcohol use was a coping mechanism for her anxiety issues and designed a new coping strategy for herself based on connecting with nature and other people, exercise, and meditation. Park now shares this healthy approach to life with other people.
Amanda Kuda also realized that she needed to drink in order to relax. “But there was a bigger part of me that wanted to feel happy, joyful, vibrant, inspired, energized, motivated, fulfilled. Once I realized that alcohol was not only failing to contribute to those feelings, but was actually dragging me further and further away from them, I no longer wanted to drink.” Neither Park, Warrington, or Kuda sought detox or residential addiction treatment for their alcohol problem, and only Warrington briefly tried a 12step program. This low level of care for a mild or moderate alcohol use disorder may not be the right choice in all cases, though. Some patients might require an intensive outpatient program or even partial hospitalization. Only a careful assessment of the patient’s individual needs can determine the appropriate level of care.
Although none of the three “gray-drinking” women made use of a treatment program, they nevertheless realized a core principle of recovery. Stop using and change your life! Real recovery goes far beyond giving up substance misuse. It is a life-changing journey to long-term wellness that should make you feel happy, joyful, and inspired.
IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS STRUGGLING WITH SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER, OR YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR PROGRAMS, CALL HARMONY TODAY AT 970.432.8075 TO GET THE HELP NEEDED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Gina T.: Hi everyone, welcome to the Harmony Foundation Podcast Series. I’m pleased today to be joined with Amber Herring with Healing Journey of Counseling out of Denver, Colorado. Welcome Amber. Continue reading “A Healing Journey”
Gina Thorne: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Harmony Foundation Podcast Series. And I’m pleased today to be joined with Austin Johnson and Caroline Bunn with SummitStone Health. Welcome. Continue reading “Podcast: Summitstone Health Partners”
I can’t handle it when others are upset. I throw myself into work to avoid emotions. I want to be left alone. No one understands me. I want everyone around me to be happy. Can you relate to any of these statements when it comes to how you operate in your world? Does this describe your reactions when relating to others? If so, there is good news! The Enneagram is a personality test that not only looks at your strengths and weaknesses, but also allows insight into relationships with others in order to strengthen compassion and connection.
Personality Test Popularity
For many of us, we’ve been exposed to personality tests in the past, whether it was part of high school psychology class, a component of starting a new job, or a viral quiz on social media. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was the go-to personality test for several decades starting in the 1940s when exploring a person’s extraversion, intuition, and decision-making skills. The Enneagram has been around almost as long, making an introduction in America in the 1950s. Praised as a tool for deeper awareness, self-understanding, and self-discovery, The Enneagram classifies personality into 9 categories or types, identified below by The Enneagram Institute as:
The Enneagram also claims that a person’s designation as one of the nine types is solidified in childhood based on traumatic or impactful experiences that reinforce behaviors that support feelings of safety and security. For example, someone who tests at Type 2, The Helper, may have a core belief that “I am good and ok if I help others.” The authors of several Enneagram books, Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson further describe each person’s capacity to equally develop into any one type, however the type that ultimately defines us is reinforced by our environment at a very young age. Another example that can highlight this concept is the child who is praised for every positive performance or good grade, allowing them to feel pride when sharing their accomplishments at a young age. In continuing to seek that valuable praise to feel positively about themselves, they might find themselves pursuing various accomplishments throughout their life in a series of patterns of achievement, categorizing them as Personality Type 3, The Achiever.
Put it to the Test
So now that your curiosity is peaked, why not put it to the test and see for yourself? You might have an idea of your type just from the names above, however there are several options that can clarify your results. The Enneagram Institute (enneagraminsitute.com) has an online test that can define your type and any other connections to other types based on your responses to a series of questions. A faster option can also be found in a free App called EnneaApp, that can allow you to explore your type and read more about what the results mean in shortened form, ideal for those who want family members and loved ones to also test and identify their personality types. The Enneagram has risen in popularity due to its use in various contexts to help people better understand themselves and others.
As you can imagine, clarity about your type and The Enneagram type of others around you can help you rise to your fullest potential, including strategizing on projects in the workplace or connecting at a deeper level interpersonally. Therapists value the Enneagram due to its ability to start conversations about similarities and differences between people, as well as its ability to provide opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
Discovering Depth
Self-discovery with the Enneagram reflects the effort you put in the results and your ability to have an open mind. Designation of your personality type includes implications for balance and wellness by looking at the positive characteristics (which will please you) and the negative characteristics (which will make you want to hide). In other words, you will have positive traits that you feel fit your personality very well, and negative traits you will want to reject due to the painful accuracy of things you want to keep hidden from others due to embarrassment or shame.
Allow me to illustrate. If you are found to be a Type 8, The Challenger, you, like all the types, have both positive and negative characteristics. Some of your positive characteristics include having a powerful vision of your future, being vocal about your goals to get results, getting others cooperation in those goals, and being described as passionate. So far so good right? You sound like a force to be reckoned with. On the other hand, your negative traits include speaking over others, a ‘my way or the highway’ mentality when challenged, being described as bossy and overbearing, and being intimidating when expressing anger. As you can imagine, balance between positive and negative characteristics is important in exploring shifts to support connection with others both personally and professionally as well as workplace success.
Enneagram Enhanced
The Enneagram can go much deeper into passions, difficulties, relationships, team work, and more. Just look for trainings in your community and online to move into further discovery after you identify your type or the type of those you value. By beginning your journey into The Enneagram starting with your own reflection, you will uncover unlimited possibilities regarding how to successfully connect with strengths in yourself and with others!
“The point of it isn’t to just be a type, but to use the awareness of our type as a kind of entry into a more full-bodied humanity and a greater and greater capacity to embody and flow with all the different qualities of our humanness.” ~Russ Hudson
Khara Croswaite Brindle, MA, LPC, ACS, is the owner of Catalyst Counseling, PLLC and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the Lowry Neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. She received her Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Denver with a focus on community based mental health. Khara has experience working with at-risk youth and families, including collaboration with detention, probation, and the Department of Human Services. Khara enjoys working with young adults experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, relational conflict, self-esteem challenges, and life transitions.
For More Information, Please visit:
CATALYST COUNSELING, PLLC
Gina Thorne: Hi everyone, welcome to the Harmony Foundation podcast series and I’m pleased today to be joined with Eva Malanowski, a clinical psychologist with the Amate Institute in Boulder. Welcome.
Dr. Malanowski: Thank you so much and I’m happy to be here, Gina.
Gina Thorne: We are too. We’re really interested in hearing more about the Amate Institute, but before we do that let’s talk a little bit about your background and why and how did you get into the field and doing what you do.
Dr. Malanowski: Okay, sure, I’d be glad to do that. I’m a clinical psychologist, I have over 18 years of experience, much of it has been in helping people recover from trauma. I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and growing up here I saw so much substance abuse going on. I remember going to a party for a friend of mine to go to rehab, it was a going away to rehab party and we were both at the age of 13, and of course it was a drinking party.
Gina Thorne: That’s interesting, I haven’t heard of one of those. I guess that’s Boulder.
Dr. Malanowski: I know, it’s Boulder. So I have seen alcohol so often used by people suffering from unresolved trauma, unresolved abuse that happened, or traumatic events that they went through, PTSD, war situations, I’ve worked with a lot of veterans. I just knew that this needed to be part of my work, I needed to address this because it’s such a prevalent issue. A lot of the work I’ve done is inpatient work in inpatient hospitals, PTSD units.
Dr. Malanowski: I did work as the Director of the Aspen Counseling Center and I oversaw the IOP program there. I’ve also worked in the prison system where I worked with a lot of men who had sexual and pornography addictions, and they would often use alcohol to deal with the shame and guilt that they felt from what they were doing and why they were there. I have a lot of experience working with both trauma as well as co-occurring mental illness and co-occurring substance abuse.
Gina Thorne: It’s interesting because it sounds like you’ve really covered the full spectrum in working with all populations. It sounds to me like this issue of trauma is not unique to one unique population that it really does go hand in hand for just about anybody that’s struggling with addiction.
Dr. Malanowski: Yes. I would say that’s true. I think 60% of adults at least have had some kind of significant trauma in their life that they’re dealing with. It’s not just having a trauma, it’s what kind of support a person had when they went through the traumatic event. So for one person, and they may have had a very supportive adult in their life that provided them with that love and security that they needed to get through the trauma, somebody else may not have had that. It really depends on not just what happened but the surrounding support that the person had.
Gina Thorne: And the coping skills that they may have whether it’s very small or quite big really does have an impact on how they respond.
Dr. Malanowski: Yes, very true.
Gina Thorne: You launched the Amate Institute Boulder and this was born from the work with Susan Horton.
Dr. Malanowski: Correct, yes.
Gina Thorne: I know you and I spoke about Susan Horton at one point. Trained in, they call the Amate Growth model. Can you describe for listeners what this means as it relates to emotional maturity?
Dr. Malanowski: Yes, I’d be happy to. The Amate Growth Work method is based on the idea that we get stuck in our emotional development due to traumatic situations. Again, where we didn’t have that love and security we needed, some kind of supportive environment to get through that trauma. What happens is the person stops feeling safe enough to go out there and continue to take the risks that are necessary for them to continue to grow, and they kind of retreat.
Dr. Malanowski: If you imagine like a snail in a shell, like they start building a shell around themselves and they retreat into that shell and start basically hiding from the world. So when they’re not going out there and taking those emotional risks, they are no longer growing. Depending on at what point that trauma happened, the stoppage happened, that would be the emotional maturity age that they would be stuck at. That might be the age of six or it might be the age of 13, and then that person continues to try to navigate their life.
Dr. Malanowski: They’re continuing to grow up mentally and physically, but they’re trying to navigate their life from the perspective of an emotional six-year-old or an emotional 13-year-old, and you can see how that doesn’t work so well. As they continue to grow, because they experienced more trauma and more hurt, their shell continues to grow and get harder and harder. The emotional dysfunction comes more apparent the older they get. It might be cute and funny at the age of 20, at the age of 40 it’s-
Gina Thorne: Not so much.
Dr. Malanowski: … not so much.
Gina Thorne: How does that play a part in what you do with treatment or with therapy with folks around Amate? You’ve created sort of this understanding that you’ve got this almost arrested emotional development that happens due to some sort of trauma-based experience. What’s the work that you do to kind of help move them to that level of emotional maturity?
Dr. Malanowski: The process of Amate Growth Work is a three phase program. In the first phase that’s really that part where we helped the emotional self grow up, and it’s a process called inner work where we really get through the subconscious blocks and go to the depth of the, the inner … Can I start over? Sorry.
Gina Thorne: Yes. When you’re talking about the process of your Amate work with clients that have had this sort of arrested development emotionally, what is it that you’re doing with clients to help them move past that?
Dr. Malanowski: In the first phase of Amate Growth Work we’re doing a process called Inner Work. Inner Work is the process of actually helping that inner self, an inner child grow up and it’s a very systematic process, so step-by-step we helped the inner child be able to reconnect. We reconnect with the inner child and we rework those traumatic situations as they come up, so the person actually naturally has the ability to heal themselves.
Dr. Malanowski: I’m more of a catalyst for the work so I’m not doing the work for them. I’m a facilitator, and a catalyst and I help them along with it. We stop phase one of the work when the person actually becomes emotionally the same age as they are biologically. That’s the end of phase one and then we move into the phase two where they’re trying out now their grown up self to go out and take those emotional risks that they really didn’t do before because they had been stuck and they had been living in that shell.
Dr. Malanowski: Now they’re going out into the world trying things out while they continue to have the support of myself in figuring out how to navigate these now adult situations that they hadn’t learned before.
Gina Thorne: It sounds very appropriate that you create this sort of one and two process because once they get to that point where they’re now emotionally at their biological age, it can be scary. I can imagine having them now move into the world at this age that they haven’t really lived out for such a long time.
Dr. Malanowski: Exactly, really that’s just the beginning. Once they’re out there the work really never ends. Then we do have the third phase which is the aftercare, so this is after they’ve gone through some experiences and actually have reached some challenges where they even reach a state of emotional overwhelm, and I teach them a process of complete surrender. They’re also learning how to connect with their inner guidance, so it’s a very spiritually based approach.
Gina Thorne: That’s one thing about you that I’ve really come to enjoy is that you’ve got a very deep sense of spirituality that you incorporate into your practice which is great. I’m gonna skip around a little bit but playing off the idea of the word harmony. What do you think it means to live a life in harmony?
Dr. Malanowski: To me, harmony is about balance, and it’s really living a life of balance and peace. I think that happens when you reach emotional maturity, and you’re really listening to that inner guidance that I mentioned. No matter how challenging what the inner guidance leads you to do, you are able to step into that and do it. I think living a life of harmony is also about being in harmony with others around you and your world, and so it’s not just for yourself, but when you’re living an emotionally mature life, you’re thinking about others and you’re thinking about what is my purpose here, and how am I impacting this planet?
Dr. Malanowski: This is what I love about harmony, your center here it’s just in such a beautiful place. I always think of harmony as also harmony with nature, and this place just has such good energy and a wonderful connection to nature. I think when you come up here you just get this wonderful sense of clarity, and the clouds kind of move away and you really start to see, okay, what is my purpose here? Why am I here? What am I really meant to do with my life?
Gina Thorne: Thank you for that, that’s a great response. If someone were listening today and they wanted to access services at the Amate Boulder Institute, how could they get in touch with you?
Dr. Malanowski: They can call me directly at 303-242-7824 and I’d be happy to set up a free consultation with them either by phone or in person.
Gina Thorne: Well, thank you Eva for taking the time to visit us today, it was good to talk with you.
Dr. Malanowski: Thank you so much and I’m happy to be here.
Visit www.amateinstitute.com for more information.
Gina Thorne: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Harmony Foundation Podcast Series. I’m please today to be joined with Dylan Rivard who’s in private practice out of Golden and Boulder, Colorado. Welcome.
Dylan Rivard: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Gina Thorne: Really excited to have you on campus today. Before we get into some details about your practice and what you do, we’d like to learn a little bit more about you first, so let’s talk about your background. How did you get into this field?
Dylan Rivard: Yeah. For me, it really started in working at summer camps in Vermont. It was not specifically therapeutic. It’s was just something to keep me busy between semesters in college. While I was there, I just discovered a fundamental shift in myself. I really like who I was living simply, being so connected to the earth and the woods, and saw that change both in my coworkers, the kids I worked with at this camp. I didn’t know exactly what that meant or how to pursue that. It didn’t really seem like a legit career, right? I just want to be a professional camp counselor.
Gina Thorne: That would be fun.
Dylan Rivard: Right. But then in pursuing it and looking at my options, I actually got an email from my dad pointing towards a masters in wilderness therapy at Naropa University out in Boulder, Colorado, and it was just perfect. It was the exact grad program I could have wanted. It was specifically designed for me, it felt like. And that is what kind of set me on the path.
Gina Thorne: That’s wonderful. I have to say, I was camp counselor as well, actually at Durango, Colorado. I wanted to figure out how can make this a life career myself.
Dylan Rivard: Nice.
Gina Thorne: So, I completely understand what you’re talking about.
Dylan Rivard: Yeah.
Gina Thorne: When I went to your website, I was really impressed by this modality that you have. You have this sort of three prong approach that you work with, but the thing that really stood out for me was that you’re trained in Hakomi, a Hopi Indian word that means how do you relate to all things, also called core therapy. For those of us that are new to this entire practice, can you describe what that means? And more specifically, what these five principles are and how you apply those to the work that you do in your practice.
Dylan Rivard: Sure. Really, the place to start with that is what it means to be a core therapy. As people, and we grow up, often there are incidence in our lives, often when we are very young, where we make some decisions about the world, about people, about ourselves, and these become what we could call core beliefs. Often, later in life, these become completely unconscious. We have not idea they’re running the show, but they’re there.
Dylan Rivard: Sometimes, people experience them in things like, in every relationship, not matter what’s happening, I don’t feel good enough, or I’ve got to stay busy all the time, if there’s open space for whatever reason, I get really anxious, so I just don’t even hangout there, we’re just going to skip right over that. Hakomi is specifically designed to drill into those types of experiences, those types of beliefs. Ultimately, the pain of those experiences, whatever set those up, that will probably never change, but the decisions we made about them, that’s where we really get to have some choice, and maybe even create more options in our lives versus how we’ve been running the whole show.
Dylan Rivard: The five principles of Hakomi, the framework through which we approach all those beliefs is mindfulness. It’s really about studying your experience from the inside out. I might offer some experiment or word, and really the emphasis then is on studying what happens. Suddenly, there’s tension and fear in my chest when you say that, or there are immediately thoughts like, that’s never going to happen. We get to learn more about that in that. I kind of pointed to this, there’s also a focus on a mind body connection, that everything that’s running your behavioral program has some relationship to your body, whether it be gestures or an internal felt sense. We really use that to move out of what’s kind of ordinary consciousness and start to access those realms that are a little more subconscious.
Dylan Rivard: In addition to that, there’s also this principle of nonviolence. Hakomi is not looking at blasting you through whatever the beliefs are, getting you to the other side. It’s really about honoring that whatever is there, it was put there for a really good reason. Actually, a classic Hakomi experiment is actually to just help you do those defenses more, to kind of take that over for you so you get a change to see, what’s it like from the inside of this? Do you get to have a different experience when someone else gets to take that protection for you?
Gina Thorne: Oh, that’s interesting.
Dylan Rivard: Yeah.
Gina Thorne: Really very fascinating. I think it obviously goes in line with your philosophy of what you do within your practice, which is really focusing on counseling wilderness, and also interesting was ceremony. Ceremony is always something that people equate to and they talk about religion, or they’re talking about spirituality. How would you look at that piece as it relates to the work that you’re doing?
Dylan Rivard: For me, I feel like spirituality is central to actually experiencing. A lot of what Hakomi points to is that internal sense of ourselves, that internal world that actually drives everything. And largely in our culture, it’s not given a lot of space. It’s really focused on external achievement, external presentation, but at the end of the day, the things people struggle with most, particularly in the realm of mental health, are these feelings of worthlessness, these feelings of fear, these feelings of emptiness, which are ultimately spiritual experiences. For me, that’s where spirituality feels really like core and central. I don’t mean to define that as any type of particular religion or a particular practice, but more about, how do you relate to your internal experience, and finding ways that actually can create a sense of fulfillment, connection, excitement. These are really things that are our birthright. Human practices have been around since the beginning of humanity. I know in our modern culture, it’s often true for people that those types of things have become really estranged or really distant.
Gina Thorne: And we do, we just disconnect ourselves from it because it’s uncomfortable or it’s not familiar, so we don’t know how to align ourselves with it, and that’s probably where we see a lot of addiction popping in too. Well, thank you for sharing that. That’s very interesting. You have a very unique practice. Just out of curiosity, I’m playing off this idea of harmony because you’re visiting with us from outside. What did it mean to you to live a life in harmony?
Dylan Rivard: It goes back similar to what the Hakomi word means. My mind goes right to, how do I relate to all things, both in the outer world, the people in my life, the nature in my life, but also all of those parts of myself that are online. For a lot of people, if you’ve not really examined yourself, it’s really easy to gloss over those or not even know they’re there, but any one point is like some little three year old inside of me. It was always looking for safety or those parts of myself that feel embarrassed or ashamed, it’s like all of these different things live inside me, and I think harmony is really about having the ability to open to each of those experiences. See them for what they are and not have to get rid of them or change them, but actually be able to work in cooperation with them.
Dylan Rivard: I think a lot of mental suffering comes from people identifying some of these parts, but then immediately going towards, I’ve got to get rid of it. I’ve got to change it. It’s got to be something different, and that’s actually in some way kind of violence towards yourself from yourself.
Gina Thorne: Yeah, you’re right.
Dylan Rivard: There’s really a much more powerful stance that I think where true healing happens where we get to accept those parts of ourselves that we feel like are kind of ugly, or unwanted, or maybe we’re a little less proud of.
Gina Thorne: Which actually makes part of who we are, right?
Dylan Rivard: Right. It’s part of our uniqueness.
Gina Thorne: That’s right.
Dylan Rivard: Often, they contain seeds of our superpowers or greatness as well.
Gina Thorne: It’s hard for people to see it that way because we’re always so focused on the negative and looking at the defects, but not really recognizing that those are actually a part of what makes us so special. That’s very interesting.
Gina Thorne: Dylan, if someone wanted to access your services, your amazing services that you offer, how could they connect with you?
Dylan Rivard: Yeah. Feel free to give me a call and setup an initial consult. That number is 720-633-4311. If you’re also curious and don’t know if you want work with me or not, just want more of a flavor, feel free to go to my website. It’s just my name.com. That’s dylanrivard.com.
Gina Thorne: Wonderful. It was good to have you on campus today. Thank you for coming.
Dylan Rivard: Thank you. It’s been a really wonderful visit. I very much enjoyed it.
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