Kristen, our Riverstone Counseling program manager, shares some tips for addressing the holiday blues:

The holidays are often touted as being a joyful time with family and friends. However, this is not always the case. Between juggling obligations, difficult family dynamics, unhappy memories, or simply changes to our sleep schedule or diet; increased anxiety and a depressed mood are common around the holidays.

However, this doesn’t mean you have to forgo the holidays altogether!

Here are some tips to try if you are feeling the holiday blues:

• Practice gratitude, finding ways to be thankful for what you do have.
• Try to maintain a healthy diet and exercise during the holidays.
• Reach out and spend time with supportive family and friends.
• Don’t play the “should” game. Try to not feel that your holiday “should” be a certain way, because this can just add more pressure during the holidays.
• Don’t overschedule and tire yourself. Remember to try and relax and get enough sleep every night.
• Try to maintain daily routines.
• Make a list of things you enjoy doing that can help you relax, such as listening to music, spending time outside, meditating, or watching your favorite Netflix show!

Family members can also help their loved ones through a difficult holiday season by keeping these ideas in mind. Try to be supportive, patient, and understanding, and offer your loved ones the space and support to practice the self-care they need.

What works for you? Share your ideas for self-care in the comments.

To learn more about Riverstone Counseling, or to request an appointment, click here.

The post Tips for the Holiday Blues appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Kristen, right, is Riverstone Counseling’s program manager.

Here’s the scene: a teenager is using drugs or alcohol. They get caught. They’re sent—by their parents or school, or by a court—to treatment, which can be an outpatient counseling program like Riverstone. Often, parents and schools want to see drug-free kids, but this abstinence-only model isn’t proven to be successful.

“It usually leads to the youth blowing out of our sessions without making change, fighting it, or faking it, without actual change happening,” says Counseling Program Manager Kristen Vogel. “When we hammer away the abstinence message, we’re missing something.”

Another Approach:

“People are often more likely to change when they realize they’ll feel better as a result of that change. Instead of trying to convince youth to stop using, we help them uncover why they’re using, and help them find different ways of coping with those problems.”

At Riverstone Counseling, we’re using a treatment model called the Seven Challenges. Backed by the Vermont Department of Health, this evidence-based practice helps youth look at their substance use in a thoughtful and honest way.

“Instead of trying to convince youth to stop using, we help them uncover why they’re using, and help them find different ways of coping with those problems.”

“A teenager’s job is figuring out who they are in their own identity,” says Kristen. “They’re going to come in with their own awareness of their life, and their own idea of what to talk about.”

When a young person is at the center of their own treatment process, they are learning how to make positive, healthy decisions for themselves.

“At Riverstone, we build a relationship between teenager and counselor to help the young person think thoughtfully about their drug use and how it plays out, and start to make better decisions for their future.”

To work through that process, our counselors use the Seven Challenges model. Plus, all of our staff have been trained on the treatment, so that youth who access other Spectrum programs see the Seven Challenges in those spaces, too.

At the Riverstone offices in downtown Burlington.

The Seven Challenges:

This treatment model comes from an understanding of youth development, especially brain development, that supports youth to develop problem-solving skills, constructive thoughts about their futures, and an understanding of how their substance use choices affect both of these. It is a health decision-making model that challenges youth to consider the health impacts of their substance use choices, and it helps them develop lifelong skills in making health choices.

For our clinicians, the honesty and trust built through using this treatment model are nothing new. As Kristen put it, “we’ve always been client-centered. We’re each forming strong, positive relationships with young people. We are accepting them for who they are at that moment, making room to build trust in a safe and non-judgmental space, and from there, helping them explore the potential changes they may want to make in their lives. Relationships—what we call strong therapeutic alliances—are really the groundwork for successful counseling.”

But is it effective? Our counselors say a resounding “yes.”

“The process isn’t forced,” adds Kristen. “It resonates with teens because they feel empowered in their sessions, they are the ones taking the lead, and we support them in making progress toward a change they’ve chosen for themselves.”

“We build a relationship to help the young person make better decisions for themselves and their future.”

The Seven Challenges complements our counseling practice, which is aligned with our clients and encouraging of family involvement. “The basis of the challenges is honesty,” says Kristen.

And honesty is the basis of our treatment at Riverstone: “we need all of our clients to be honest about what’s going on and to really understand that we want them to feel safe.” In this way, the Seven Challenges framework is helpful for any person who walks through our doors.

To learn more about Riverstone Counseling, or to make an appointment, call (802) 864-7423 x310.

The post Making Healthy Decisions: the Seven Challenges appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

“I myself feel very guilty and a failure as parent because I knew this could happen to him. I talked to him about it several times…” she wrote. “But talking and a good family weren’t enough.”

You can read Mark’s response in the Washington Post here. And let us know your thoughts.

If you know a young person 12-30 who needs help with their addiction, our counselors can help. Call (802) 864-7423 x310 or click here to make an appointment.

The post The words you never want to hear a parent say appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

“When you call someone an addict, it reduces them to just that,” said Mark Redmond, our ED. “But it’s just one element of their being — they’re a mother or a brother or a student.”

Here’s the story from the Burlington Free Press.

Photo: Associated Press

If you know someone who’s struggling with substance use or addiction, our counselors can help. Call (802) 864-7423 x310.

The post Talking about addiction? Word choice matters. appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

“I’m always confident when I team with Danni that her young adults will not only be served well—but served with the utmost respect and dignity. She’s an all-star.” – Amanda Moore, Social Worker, South Burlington High School

Danni Pratt, one of our JOBS Clinicians, received the Promising Professional award at the KidSafe Outstanding Service Awards on April 28th, 2016.

Danni has been working in the JOBS program for over three years. With your support, Danni utilizes her skills, instinct, and caring practice to help young adults successfully transition to adulthood. Danni builds solid, trusting relationships that make her clients feel empowered and capable.

At the KidSafe luncheon, Danni’s supervisor, Gina D’Ambrosio, Coordinator of the JOBS program, offered these kind words:

“I’m so thrilled and honored to have this opportunity to recognize the amazing work of Danni Pratt. Her commitment, hard work, professionalism, and amazing skills have made an impact on many young lives. She gets the complexities of navigating the world for the adolescents she serves, who are remarkable despite the challenges and obstacles they face. In trying to capture how much of an impact she had made, I fell short of finding the right words to articulate her work. So I decided to ask her clients.”

With your support, these clients are getting help from Danni to turn their lives around:

“Danni has been very fun to work with. She is always flexible to meet, whether it is in person or over the phone. She has helped me with anything from finding a job to just having an open ear when I need to talk. She has also helped me find some other supports through Spectrum counseling. If it was not for Danni, I would probably not have the current job that I have and also some of the other supports that I have. I always look forward to meeting with Danni every week and she helps to keep me on track with my goals.”
– JOBS client

“Danni was super, super kind to me. We went out for coffee which was awesome. She helped me do a job shadow at Petra Cliffs, and with her help that turned into my first job. She was awesome.”
– former JOBS client

Congratulations, Danni!

“Danni really was a big help for me . . . I could actually count on her.” – former JOBS client

The JOBS program is a collaboration with the Howard Center, Spectrum Youth & Family Services, and VocRehab Vermont. JOBS helps youth, ages 14-26, with multiple barriers, to find and keep employment, to understand and utilize resources, and to learn and build skills needed for successful independence.

The post “I could actually count on her.” appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Melissa Deas is a Bristol resident who works in Addison County for Spectrum Youth and Family Services teaching classes to people on furlough who have criminal and substance abuse backgrounds. The following is an article that Melissa wrote that appeared in the “Community Forum” section of The Addison Independent on March 26, 2015.

Visiting another state can be an awareness event that one can bring home to one’s own state. While reading the Bangor News in Maine, I found myself very impressed with an obituary a family wrote for a 27 year old man, Ryan Bossie, who died from a drug overdose.

The obituary read, “after losing a hard-fought battle with addiction.”  How many times have we read in other people’s obituaries, “after losing a hard fought battle with a particular disease or a kind of cancer”?  The point of both statements is that they fought what was killing them.  They wanted to live.

So many people assume that a drug addict has a choice.  Few people understand how deeply debilitating the use of drugs can be.  It literally changes your brain chemistry.  One no longer thinks in the way a non-drug user is privileged to think.  A heroin addict searches for her/his next fix like someone who has not eaten in a very long time searches for food.  An addict simply wants to not feel so very bad.  Did it start off for the thrill of a high?  Yes, of course.  However, it quickly becomes a disease, like cigarette smoking becomes emphysema or lung cancer.

A major barrier to conquering drug addictions is that they are so tenaciously connected with shame.  Shame is an emotion that steadily undermines the seeking of help.  If an addict seeks help, gets it and then fails to stay clean, the shame deepens.

We as a culture attach shame to drug addiction.  We cripple the ever-increasing population of people who get caught in the “circling the drain (death) fight” to get help for their addiction by inundating them with shame.  We assure them that they are weak and useless to our society.  It’s a bit like being ostracized by the community because you have a missing arm or because you have cancer or a religious belief differing from what’s the norm.

Is there theft that goes along with this disease?  Yes, of course.  You are talking about desperate people.  At this point, the theft is to help fight the sweating and vomiting and sickness that comes with being a drug addict.  Crime happens!

Ryan’s older brother, Andrew Bossie stated, “I don’t think we should be ashamed of this.”  Andrew could not speak truer words.  I believe that once we remove the shame factor, our brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts have a better chance of succeeding, because they know their society loves them even though they are unmercifully addicted to such a life-threatening and destructive substance.  What would it be like for someone who has a drug addiction to be able to talk about their addiction to anyone anytime without judgment?  How would that affect and support their ability to recover? How would that affect the readiness of an addict to recover?  Here are questions for all of us to ponder.  Let’s at the very least think about this and decide who we want to be as a responsive community.

—Melissa Deas
High Risk Interventionist
Spectrum Youth & Family Services

The post The Culturally Induced Shame of Drug Addiction appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

 Jan Demers, Director of CVOEO. Photo credit: Burlington Free Press.

Spectrum’s most recent e-newsletter is online. Read it here. Below, a letter from Executive Director Mark Redmond.

The snow is gone… but a critical need remains.

This past winter, Burlington’s first Warming Shelter opened. This meant that homeless adults, even if they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, had a place to sleep out of the cold. Every night, all 28 beds were full.

It was a true group effort. The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO) took the lead, Champlain College offered space, and several paid staff and many dedicated volunteers kept the shelter open from 6 pm to 7 am.

Jan Demers, CVOEO’s director (see photo), was on hand every night to open the shelter, and every morning at 5 AM to help clean up. I volunteered, too, along with other Spectrum staff. In April, we cooked an evening meal once a week—my grandmother’s famous scalloped potatoes were a big hit.

One thing’s for sure: the Warming Shelter filled a big need for anyone who is homeless and struggling with alcohol or substance abuse—and a more affordable alternative to the previous practice of giving them rooms in hotels. And people got out of the cold, but they also connected with services—several found transitional or permanent housing, employment, or entered treatment when the shelter closed for the season.

So, let’s be frank. Now that the weather’s warm and the sun’s out, it can be easy to ignore people in our community have nowhere to go at night. But there’s no better time to make sure that the Warming Shelter continues next year. Right now, we’re on the hunt along with other nonprofit leaders to find a building for next winter.

For so many among us, the need for a warm place to sleep, shelter, a home, is constant. I’ll never forget when Adam, a Shelter guest, turned to me and said, “You know what this place is? It’s home.”

If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to reply to this post and give us your suggestions.

Thanks,

Mark Redmond

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On Monday, December 8th, Executive Director Mark Redmond was featured on Comcast Newsmakers. He spoke about what makes Spectrum services unique, the changing needs of the youth we serve, and the upcoming Spectrum Sleep Out in March 2015.

In his words:
“We work with young adults who are struggling … We try and focus on their strengths. We believe that with each young person, there is some strength that we can draw upon, and help them build from there. It’s called positive youth development, and I think that’s what makes us unique.”

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