When addiction took over your life, drugs or alcohol became the focus of your world. Everything you did was guided by your need. You may have stolen and lied, neglected your health, and sacrificed the goodwill of family and friends in order to feed your addiction.
What Are Core Values?
Core values represent your values to live by, making life more honest and fulfilling. There are many core values that you can use in everyday life; however, some are very important when it comes to leading a positive and successful life free of drama and negativity. Important core values include
Integrity
Honesty
Accountability
Diligence
Discipline
Perseverance
Accountability includes taking responsibility for your actions. Involved in this is the courage to say, “I am responsible for my actions,” rather than “You (or they) made me do it.” Other core values can include dependability, reliability, commitment, loyalty, consistency, open-mindedness, and spiritual belief of some kind. Examples of core values in mental health treatment may lead to thinking of the importance of family or the idea that honesty and integrity matter, even in the little things. Maintaining a healthy life and work balance might be the result of discovering your core values. Finding meaning in life can be the direct result of using core values to guide you every day.
You might find that you have a commitment to the environment, passion for technology, or enjoyment of doing good for others. These are the result of discovering your core values and putting them into action. The knowledge of what you have become is one of the difficult realities you must face when you begin the road to recovery. To heal and learn to live in sobriety, you must embrace values that will guide you through your new life. At Oak Forest Recovery, our integrated treatment is based on these core values:
Hope: To keep you going when circumstances beat you down.
Courage: To shore you up when difficulty and uncertainty block the way.
Willingness: To let you to risk the unknown so that you can learn and grow.
Integrity: To allow you to regain self-respect and self-love.
Spirituality: To acknowledge that you have worth in a greater plan than you can understand.
Service: To rebuild your connections with others.
Oak Forest Recovery Can Help You Discover Your Core Values
With the right core values, you can lose the negativity and gain a more positive outlook on life. If you are a young person 18 to 30 years old who is struggling to find meaning in life beyond addiction, call 1-888-597-6257 to speak with a Oak Forest Recovery specialist.
Experiential therapy provides hands-on activities to help you recover from a drug or alcohol addiction. In this treatment method, you’ll experience these life-changing therapies, learning about yourself and your addiction through physical pursuits. In addition, this type of therapy helps you work through your feelings and emotions while enjoying new ways of keeping yourself focused and healthy.
Throughout the rehab and recovery process, people often find themselves wrestling with complicated thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. To help them succeed, addiction treatment specialists use a combination of medical care, talk therapy sessions, and skill-building. When we think about treatment, we tend to think of things like 12-step programs and cognitive behavioral therapy. These are powerful methods that consistently get results, but there’s another method that can be extremely valuable called experiential therapy.
How Does Experiential Therapy Work?
Overall, experiential therapy helps young adults struggling with drug or alcohol addiction work through their feelings and emotions. Fortunately, you’ll feel like you’re not even going through therapy. This is because experiential therapies take place in comfortable environments like the outdoors or a creative studio. Oak Forest Recovery in Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village provides experiential therapies for addiction recovery. These include:
Nature or Wilderness Therapy
Art Therapy
Music Therapy
Animal Assisted
There are therapies that can enhance a treatment program through dealing with these challenging emotions and issues. Experiential therapy can help draw out and process memories or issues that may contribute to the person’s substance abuse without the person’s awareness. Experiential therapy can be a beneficial addition to a treatment program for people who are having trouble expressing the feelings behind addictive behaviors.
If you or a young adult you love suffer from addiction and to learn more about experiential therapy at Oak Forest Recovery, call 1-888-597-6257.
Oak Forest Recovery Center is the best Mental Health Treatment Center in Los Angeles, Southern California. We help you with mental health through comprehensive treatment programs. Our intention is for clients to get better as they begin to understand trauma and how it has affected their lives. Clinical sessions help clients learn important skills for coping with emotional distress. We want our clients to leave our program with a better understanding of themselves, an ability to change their destructive behaviors and tools to improve their relationships with others.
Levels Of Care
Our program is divided into 2 separate levels of care – IOP & PHP. IOP clients participate in 3 hours of therapy per day. PHP clients participate in 6 hours of therapy per day. After an assessment of the level of care the client needs we design a customized clinical IOP or PHP treatment program that includes individual therapy and group therapy. When appropriate, we will also provide family therapy. Clients participate in treatment 5 days per week.
Treatment Modalities
Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) gives clients the ability to recognize how events/triggers can create thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause negative results in their life. Through CBT new thought patterns and neural pathways can be created, inspiring positive outcomes in daily life.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) helps clients learn how to tolerate overwhelming emotions and distress through emotional regulation and tolerance skills like mindfulness; intrapersonal skills development to build self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-awareness helps clients understand who they are in relation to self. Interpersonal skills development like acquiring emotional intelligence and developing better communication skills to encourage healthy relationships with family and friends are also at the core of our curriculum.
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. EMDR enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. helps clients disconnect from negative belief patterns and neutralize triggers connected to trauma and undesirable life events.
Oak Forest Recovery in Agoura Hills, meet the Founder & Owner RJ Elizarraz
Interview with RJ Elizaraz where RJ discusses his personal experiences in recovery and how they have shaped his business, and the principles that guide him as a leader.
Describe your business
What differentiates us really is the fact that Oak Forest has a really incredible structure. The structure is entirely created out of my own recovery and those recoveries that I’ve seen and admire most. We have a brotherhood here, and it’s an all male facility. Were gender specific, which I think is also very important because it creates a really cool camaraderie and that camaraderie is all being facilitated in the high structure environment that we have created here. We get guys up at 5:30 am, which is early, but what we find is that when you’re around 15 other guys going through the same struggles, waking up at the same time and meeting in the kitchen to have breakfast together with not only myself, but also Gerry and Marcos, it’s not so much of a chore to wake up anymore. It becomes like a fun summer camp, where these guys are waking up on their own and having fun in the kitchen at 5am before the sun is even out yet. Then after breakfast we go to a 7am meeting and after the meeting, we head to the gym for about an hour and a half to two hours. The gym is mandatory. Sometimes you get push-back from guys the beginning, but there is a male camaraderie that happens and its only facilitated through these structured events that happen. Getting up in the morning, going to the meeting together, going to the gym together, training together, playing basketball together and doing fun things creates a male bond where these guys are pulling each other through the fears. We put a lot of care into making sure that the clients that do come here are getting the right treatment. What also makes us unique is that we have an entire network of intensive outpatient programs, psychiatrists, doctors and therapists so we can really cater to the needs of our clients. Not only are they getting these men into a routine here and getting male camaraderie, but we are also setting them up with the right resources that allow for the best recovery.
What made you decide to open this business?
My recovery journey started when I was about 20. I turned 21 in my first rehab in Utah. I went to a 45-60 day in patient treatment center and then went to a all male sober living in Salt Lake City. I connected so well with the guys there. I got into going to the gym, I got into fitness, I got into healthy eating, and healthy habits. I felt a camaraderie and brotherhood that I had never experienced before. I stayed sober fro 4 years from that and then I relapsed. Following my relapse, I started a tour of several other treatment centers and rehabs. I wanted to recreate what I found in my first sobriety but make sure to add the principles of spirituality and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. That is what I set out to strive to do and I think we achieved that.
What has surprised you most when owning a business?
I think the biggest surprise of running and owning a business has been the deep relationships that are created with the people I work with. One of the most important things to me is that anyone that I work with or that works for me feels like family. I didn’t expect it to be to the level that I have now found in running and owning a business, but the guys that work with me, I would lay my life on the line for. I think a business is only as good as the relationships that are created in it.
What is something most people don’t know about the business?
My life is totally transparent to everyone that is here. People don’t really understand the depth of that until they live here. There is noting in my life that is secret. It has created such an incredible wellspring of trust and relationship building. These guys can track where I am 24/7. They know every move I make whether I’m here, not here, where I go, who I see. They know everything. Its cool because it allows me to expect from them, the same level of transparency that I give to them. I am leading by example.
What are your goals over the next year?
Right now we’re an all men’s house, I would love to see a women’s house open or a second men’s house open. What we’re really good at here is the high structure, family environment. I want to recreate that for women and expand my capacity for men. I always want to use our local community for resources as far as therapists, doctors and psychiatrists and I plan to continue utilizing our outreach for our expansion moving forward.
How long have you lived in the neighborhood?
I was born in Los Robles Hospital. I grew up all over the Conejo Valley, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura and Newbury Park, but mainly in Westlake Village. I had the unique opportunity of going to Westlake High School, Oak Park High School and Newbury Park High School. I can definitely say I loved my experience at all 3 schools.
What do you love most about the neighborhood?
I started a business here because I love this area. Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, the entire Conejo Valley – it’s one of the most incredible places to raise a family and raise kids. I grew up my entire life living in Westlake. I grew up my whole life in Westlake. I was a little kid running the street in Westlake and not once did I ever feel worried or scared. I never want to leave, I want my kids to grow up here.
What do you want to see improve the most in this neighborhood?
I would love to see more things for young kids to do in the later evenings. With the recent open of Dave and Busters in our area, everyone seems to be going there and loving it. I haven’t been there yet, but it’s just nice to see something that these young people are getting excited about.
What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had working with a customer?
There was a kid who came into Oak Forest and he was 20. He celebrated his 21st birthday here. He had never had a license, he had never worked a job in his life, he never paid bills and he had never had a normal life. Today is a year and a half later. He has a license, he bought his own car, him and his family are a part of my family now, his family fully trusts him. He also has a full time job working in treatment and getting paid about 20/hour and fully supports himself in only a year and a half. He is someone that will be part of my life forever and these are the experiences that are priceless.
Anything exciting going on that customers should know about?
Oak Forest is continuing to grow. We are looking for another house and are hopefully going to expand our capacity and offer services like this for women in the future. I also started a media company called Mad Rose media which is a full production business. We do video production and high end content creation for corporate business needs.
