The Recovery Files · For Clinicians
Clinical Resources
Group work, treatment time, and the culture of a treatment center
Six longer guides for the people who run groups, plan treatment and lead programs. Four are about the work in front of you: how you lead a group, how you handle the people in it, how to make 28 days count, and how to help someone who is still drinking. Two step back to the whole organization, using the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions as a way for an agency to look at itself.
Each guide pairs readings with printable exercises or worksheets you can use on your own, in supervision or with your team.
In your practice
Leading groups, using the treatment day, and helping the person in front of you.
Finding Your Grove: Group Leadership Styles
Three ways to lead a group, pictured as the Captain, the Trail Guide and the Park Ranger: directive, facilitative and advisory. Helps you find your default style, see its strengths and blind spots, and choose a style on purpose for the group in front of you.
Inside: Why leadership style matters · the directive, facilitative and advisory leader · the integrated leader and reading the room · 8 exercises: finding your style, strengths and shadows, matching style to scenario, real-time assessment, a mentor map, difficult moments, specialized techniques, a growth plan
37 pages
Navigating People & Personalities
A clinical intensive on group dynamics in SUD treatment: the personalities that show up in group, how conflict can become therapeutic, and how your own reactions shape the room.
Inside: Group dynamics in SUD treatment · the cast of characters in group · rupture and repair · the facilitator's mirror: self-awareness · building a therapeutic culture · 10 exercises, including a personality profiler, here-and-now interventions, managing the monopolizer, engaging the silent member, co-created ground rules and a critical incident planner
53 pages
Maximizing Time During Treatment
With four individual sessions in 28 days, the treatment day itself has to be the therapy. This intensive does the math on a residential stay and shows how groups, the milieu and the patient's own effort can carry the work.
Inside: The 28-day reality, hour by hour · building sessions that count · everything as therapy: the treatment ecosystem · the group as multiplier · the patient as an active agent · worksheets: a 28-day treatment timeline audit and an individual session planner
17 pages
Guidelines for Helping the Alcoholic
Father Joseph Martin's six principles for helping someone with alcoholism, turned into practical work for clinicians and families: change your attitude, recognize the addiction, stop enabling, confront with love, use resources, never give up.
Inside: Addiction as a disease · understanding loss of control · breaking the enabling cycle · the art of loving confrontation · resources and resilience for the long road · 10 exercises, including an enabling inventory, consequence mapping, confrontation planning, a boundaries and self-care check and a recovery partnership plan
48 pages
For the whole organization
The Steps and Traditions as a way for a treatment center to look at itself.
The Twelve Steps for Treatment Organizations
The language of personal recovery applied to an agency: how a treatment center admits what is not working, takes an honest inventory of itself and rebuilds together.
Inside: The twelve organizational steps in short form · each step in full, with key principles, a practical exercise and an action step · discussion topics for leadership teams
89 pages
The Twelve Traditions: Core Traditions
Twelve traditions for the culture of a treatment center: patient well-being first, welcome to all who seek help, a clear primary purpose, and privacy as part of healing.
Inside: The twelve traditions in short form · each tradition in full, with key principles, assessments, exercises and action steps · discussion topics for staff and leadership
86 pages
These two guides adapt the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions for treatment organizations. They are not produced or endorsed by Alcoholics Anonymous.
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