At Freedom Institute, we have found success in treating adolescents with our integrative approach, which combines individual adolescent substance abuse counseling with family therapy. The individual counseling allows for the adolescents and young adults to feel like they are in the driver’s seat of their treatment, and provides them with the opportunity to assert their independence and process experiences and feelings in a way that they might not feel comfortable doing with their parents. It is important that adolescents have a safe place in which to explore their issues and further develop their insight and awareness of how their behaviors are affecting their lives.

We are biologically wired to seek intimate, ongoing attachments, to feel sustained by closeness and disturbed by disconnection. Without this powerful form of bonding, our species would become extinct, baby animals and human children would wander away from parents and parents would forget about their young. Our brains and bodies are wired to connect. Understanding relationship trauma requires understanding the depth and strength of these very intense, life-sustaining bonds. Because these are survival bonds, when they are ruptured, through neglect, mental illness, addiction or divorce, we may experience that rupture as traumatic.