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Chronic Relapse Program

Importance of Honesty

Honesty is critical to what we do and how we do it.

In fact, it is the chief ingredient in helping our clients and families to achieve lasting recovery.

As many families will share, Burning Tree’s practice of honesty throughout the course of treatment may sometimes create discomfort, not only for the loved one, but for the family, too.

It can be difficult to look at ourselves honestly, to answer tough questions, and to be challenged in owning our mistakes. Yet honesty must prevail.

At Burning Tree Ranch, we believe honesty helps our clients and families achieve a fairer playing ground in their fight against addiction.

It helps them to see more clearly, to see things as they really are.

Honesty is what helps our families become more open to new information, a new experience, and a deeper understanding of what is going to be required to create a life of excellence beyond sobriety.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Honestly, We Ask a Lot of Questions

At Burning Tree Ranch, we ask a lot of questions.

As you can imagine, we do not always get honest answers.

Helping our clients recognize their dishonesty is a key component of the Burning Tree Ranch experience.

Through honesty, our clients can begin to evaluate their circumstances more accurately, and with more clarity. To achieve this, it is required that the family become honest, too.

Many of our families have lived in a place of fear for an exceptionally long time. Loving a chronic relapser can be a difficult, emotionally draining experience. Their inability to accept personal responsibility, to be truthful, and to function as reliable, trustworthy participants in the relationship causes an incredible degree of confusion for every person that loves them.

For some family members, they resist an honest exchange with their addicted loved one to avoid setting them off on a tangent, a spree, or a relapse. In other cases, the family member simply lacks the required energy to navigate the reactionary emotions that the chronic relapser responds with.

Sadly, the family has come to a place where they are no longer able to enjoy a relationship of integrity with the chronic relapser. Trust has been broken. Lines have been crossed.

Do Our Actions Match up with What We Say?

It is exceedingly rare for a family member to suggest that they do not want their addicted loved one to change. Even our clients say they want something different.

At Burning Tree Ranch, we are extremely interested in learning more about what our clients and families want. But first, we have to distinguish the difference between what they want and “what they say they want.”

We do this by asking questions and matching their actions to their words.

From years of experience, we know that words may lie, behaviors do not.

If a family member says they are willing to do anything to help their loved one recover, but they persist in rescuing, enabling, or engaging in other unhelpful behaviors, we know right away that the family may require additional support in becoming more honest about what they are really willing to do (and not do), to get ”what they say” they want. We employ this same protocol for our clients.

If a Burning Tree client says they are willing to go to any lengths to get and stay sober and to stop hurting their family, but at the same time they continue to break rules, resist suggestion, and make excuses…we know instantly that their behaviors have better information than their words.

This is where honesty becomes vital.

Brook McKenzie, COO
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“One of the main things we ask our clients to do is to develop a deep and affectual relationship with honesty.”
~ Brook McKenzie, LCDC, Chief Operating Officer

What Happens with Honesty

Once our clients learn to self-recognize how their actions and words match (or do not match), they begin to view themselves more clearly. This same process applies to the family.

For the first time in a long time, they are able to challenge themselves authentically, and to allow for greater scrutiny around their relationship with the truth.

This practice assists with the development of self-awareness and promotes a more genuine engagement with the world about them. In short, it helps them become more trustworthy.

Not surprisingly, as our clients develop the practice of honesty, they gain self-esteem. They come to embrace their emotions more readily and learn that they can communicate what they are feeling in a balanced, honest way.

Before long, manipulation (which is a form of dishonesty) finds itself replaced with assertive, direct statements or requests that are not tied to the expectation of any specific outcome.

For our families, the development of a deeper relationship with honesty creates vast opportunities for healing.

We want our families to mean what they say and say what they mean. Most importantly, we want their behaviors to match up with what they say they want, and with what they say they are willing to do.

This helps everyone to get on the same page.

Speaking of Everyone

Burning Tree’s mission is to help the entire family recover from the by-product of chronic addiction.

That means everyone.

We utilize direct, bottom-line language to communicate our intentions, our agenda, and our policies.

We do not sugar-coat.

As the nation’s only authentic, long-term treatment program for the chronic relapser, we are perfectly clear that our families are engaged on a life and death errand. We take our program, our procedures, and the trust that our families place in us very seriously.

We expect that the journey will be long, sometimes difficult, and incredibly rewarding.

The sooner we can help our clients and families match their behaviors to the claims they make about what they want, the sooner we can create a life of excellence beyond sobriety.

All we really need to make this start…is honesty.

Our Chronic relapse therapies

Burning Tree Ranch utilizes
addiction medicine to aid in the diagnosis, treatment and recovery of persons with the disease of addiction.

A form of goal-oriented therapy that helps our clients understand how their thoughts affect their actions, leading to healthier thinking patterns and behaviors.

An evidence-based psychotherapy approach that helps our clients better manage stress, regulate emotions, and improve relationships with others.

An interactive psychotherapy
technique that helps our clients reduce the emotional distress caused by the unresolved pain associated with trauma.

An experiential therapy that imparts physical, cognitive, and emotional benefit to our clients as they engage the important work of establishing lifelong recovery.

A form of positive psychotherapy that helps our clients clarify their values and connect with their authentic selves, leading to a greater sense of self-worth and empowerment.

A humanistic form of psychotherapy that helps our clients concentrate on the present moment, and engage the
opportunity to they have increase
personal freedom and fulfillment.

Facilitated by a licensed clinician, group therapy helps our clients develop improved communication skills, boundaries, and self-awareness in a therapeutic setting.

We take into account the whole
person, not just the addiction. Our holistic approach enables our clients to discovery well-being for the mind, body, and spirit.

The goal of individual therapy is to motivate the client to explore certain behaviors that may interfere with, delay, or sabotage the opportunity to achieve permanent, lifelong recovery.

A form of psychotherapy that helps our clients re-build relationships with loved ones, and establish new relationships with a healthy support group of peers.

Neurofeedback Therapy is a noninvasive treatment designed to instruct patients as to how to control brainwave activity in order to change behaviors.

The Twelve Steps teach our clients how to live by a set of spiritual principles that are taught in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

KRISTINA ROBERTSON, LMSW, LCDC

KRISTINA ROBERTSON

LMSW, LCDC | Counselor
Kristina Robertson serves as Counselor at Burning Tree Ranch. Holding both a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Social Work, Kristina’s greatest joy is “watching our clients learn to love themselves again.” An avid equestrian, mother to twenty-one horses, and all-around animal lover, Kristina serves as a bright shining example of long-term recovery in action. Her commitment to whole person health: mental, physical, emotional and spiritual makes her an invaluable member of the Burning Tree Ranch clinical team. As a distinguished Phi Theta Kappa and Alpha Zeta member, Kristina believes deeply in each client’s pursuit of becoming their best selves.

"who is a burning tree client?"

Beth Legacki, Burning Tree Ranch Alumni