Addiction counselor, creativity guru, and humorist in one, THE OUTSIDE-THE-BOX RECOVERY WORKBOOK balances evidence-based medicine with that right-brained energy needed to survive addiction and create a life worth living.
OTB Recovery Relapse Prevention Plan
This 4-page worksheet helps people in recovery maneuver through difficult moments: cravings, triggers, and stress. It’s serious, it’s funny, and it’s worth reading.
Autopsy of a Relapse.
Relapse is life’s way of letting you know your recovery plan needs tweaking. It’s not about what you did wrong. It’s about what you need to change.
Your brain on sleep
We sleep. We spend a third of our lives doing it, but it’s still a mystery. Why do we sleep? Why do we dream? Why is sleep architecture so complicated, with different stages and physical changes? And if the need for downtime is so innate and deeply driven, why do we suffer from insomnia? Despite the […]
Strange But Meaningful Recovery Quiz
Written for addiction counselors, this humored quiz is a great platform to introduce themes like denial and coping skills.
CBT Puzzle: A Problem with Lots of Solutions
This “Find-the-difference” CBT puzzle features a problem with lots of solutions. It’s good for a little fun with groups, as well as an interesting way to introduce brain-storming and cognitive behavioral therapy.
What You Need to Know About Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder, also called manic depressive disorder, is a mental illness that produces unusual extremes of emotion. These mood states are severe enough to cause problems in the sufferer’s life. Read on for more information. Does having mood swings mean you have bipolar disorder? Not necessarily. We all have natural fluctuations in our mood. There’ll […]
Seven stress-busting ways to deal with anxiety
Think of life as a spectrum: on one end you’ve got the worse-case outcome. That’s where most anxious people lean when they consider their future. But if you’re going to invest energy into the worst outcome, you should invest that same energy into best-case scenario. You can’t have one without the other.
Avoiding suicide
Avoiding suicide: writing a crisis plan An article by Kim Rosenthal, MDKimrosenthalmd.com Sometimes life can be overwhelming, painful even, and you feel like you’ve been run over by a freight train. It’s too much to handle. You feel helpless. You feel hopeless too. Thoughts are dangerous. That’s crisis mode, and that’s when you need to […]