Addiction is one of the most common and challenging struggles of the entire humankind.
From substance abuse and alcohol consumption to mobile, internet, and shopping addiction, all of them are harmful and equally difficult to overcome.
You need to follow multiple strategies and rigorously maintain a disciplined lifestyle with proper guidance to get sober.
Therapy is one of the most effective solutions for these matters. However, if you want to see the best and quickest results, try one-on-one therapy instead of group one.
In one-on-one therapy, you receive counseling from one (or more) therapist alone. There’s no other client besides you, so you’re their sole focus.
Wondering how it can help more than the other option? This article will share five primary benefits of this therapy so you can make the right choice.
Article Contents
1. Personalized Care and Attention
The greatest benefit of one-on-one therapy in the case of addiction treatment is that the experts will help you according to your needs.
In group therapy, experts deal with a bunch of people at once. Here, they don’t have the time or opportunity to focus on each patient individually. So, they follow a generic path that usually works for everyone.
However, in one-on-one therapy, you’re the only person they try to help. They focus on your specific type of addiction, relevant mental health concerns, triggers, and life challenges. The treatment is 100% made for you.
Especially if you choose the best rehab in Malibu, they will identify the root cause of your addiction, including stress, unresolved emotional concerns, or trauma.
They will devise a custom plan to overcome everything instead of following generic steps.
Moreover, you can request them to customize the plans further based on your specific recovery goals.
For instance, you can schedule sessions to fix quick fixes to resume regular life immediately or take your time and go for long-term treatments.
2. Confidential, Safe Space
In group settings, you can never really share your true concerns without feeling ashamed or afraid of judgment.
You also fear that someone in the group might make your concerns public or someone might criticize or laugh about your issue.
Furthermore, people also want to keep their rehab records because if word goes out, it’ll impact their job prospects and personal lives.
Of course, the confidentiality of individuals taking substance use disorder treatment is quite common, and most people will have signed a non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement.
However, you may still hesitate to openly discuss your concerns. After all, people may not say anything, but other patients in the rehab may isolate you.
Again, one-on-one therapy helps you by creating a private space where you only share your true thoughts with one or more therapists.
It creates a safe space so you can express challenging thoughts and emotions more transparently. You can be honest and vulnerable, which helps the experts understand you better.
They can carve out the right plan and offer effective mental and physical support according to your needs. The confidential, safe space also reduces the worry of feeling misunderstood by other patients.
3. Identification and Addressing Overlapping Mental Health Issues
Addiction hardly ever happens alone. It’s often accompanied by other mental health concerns, such as stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, OCD, and different mood disorders.
These co-occurring mental health issues are not easy to track in group therapy. This is because everyone needs unique treatment plans to care for their unique problems.
On the flip side, one-on-one therapy can help recognize these underlying conditions. This is because therapists try to address the core reasons behind your addiction.
They offer holistic and comprehensive healing by treating you as a whole, including your mind, body, and soul.
Moreover, you’ll be taught mechanisms to cope with your addiction cravings and triggers. You learn to stay away from certain people, objects, and environments, which can make you feel like trying the substances again.
Simultaneously, you learn to deal with mental health concerns and symptoms. For instance, they teach mindful exercises, positive self-talk, and relaxation strategies.
Together, these prevent relapse, which is around 40-60% in the case of substance use disorders.
4. Learn Self-Awareness and Resilience
While coping mechanisms are a must in your journey, they are not enough. After all, you can’t just keep on avoiding triggers or use strategies to overcome mental health issues all the time.
Ultimately, it all comes down to understanding yourself (self-awareness) and learning to deal with situations emotionally (emotional resilience). These can help you navigate further challenges better.
And one-on-one or individual therapy can help you with this. Therapists guide you to identify all the triggers connected to addictions. Then, they teach how to deal with stress, negative emotions, and self-destructive patterns.
They teach introspection which makes you think deeply about every challenging feeling (like cravings and triggers).
You identify the reasons behind why you feel a certain way and assess your choices – fighting the emotions vs giving into the emotion – and their respective impacts on your life.
Through self-awareness and emotional resilience, you become well-equipped to manage such challenges and stay sober.
5. Long-Term Support
Often, people assume that addiction treatment is a one-time affair. However, in reality, it is a lifelong journey where you need support to fall back on.
A group setting therapy can’t give you the right kind of support to ensure you overcome relapse and stay sober. This is because everyone gets the same treatment, and this approach may not cater to your specific needs.
One-on-one therapy, however, works wonders in this case because therapists can give you all the attention and identify relapse signs way ahead of time.
They even create strategic and effective plans to address them even if you can’t reach them immediately.
For instance, they teach you practical methods to overcome real-world challenges that push you toward addiction. These include clear communication, stress management, and problem-solving.
Individual therapy also includes more regular sessions. This creates a sense of accountability from within, which inspires you to stay focused on your healing journey.
Conclusion
Overcoming addiction is challenging, but one-on-one therapy from the right team can make anyone’s journey so much easier.
Whether you or a loved one is suffering from addiction, research your options for one-on-one therapy rehabs, make sure they cater to your specific needs, and make the required arrangements now!
