Part of mental health and addiction treatment is holistic care. Holistic care allows teens to engage in non-traditional forms of therapy that extend beyond strictly clinical services. By introducing teens to these holistic services, they can address their overall well-being in a different way. This helps remove the overwhelming factor of clinical therapy. These therapies also help teen’s well-being, helping them connect to their inner selves to fully understand their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. They also invite creativity to teen’s lives as they problem-solve and overcome internal challenges. For instance, the idea of “taking a leap of faith” is applied in both holistic practices and in the teen’s life in general.
At Destinations for Teens, there are numerous holistic therapies for teens to engage with. One of these is mindfulness therapy, which can help teen’s well-being by reducing stress.
How Does Holistic Care Improve Teen’s Well-Being in Recovery?
Stress is a common experience among many clients, especially teens. At Destinations for Teens, part of the therapy philosophy is taking a holistic approach. This encapsulates the mind, body, and spirit into treatment rather than exclusively addressing the disorder at hand. Especially for teens, holistic care provides an environment that is creative and promotes freedom.
Adolescents and teens have different needs than adults and older adults. This is the case across physical, mental, and emotional needs. Therefore, the structure of treatment and the kind of environment provided must fit the needs of the teen demographic. Holistic care creates an environment that is more engaging, enjoyable, and accessible for teens. Teens with the same diagnosis, for example, will often be drawn to different therapies that they feel most comfortable with. By offering numerous modalities, Destinations for Teens ensures that each client is put on a path to success.
This model of care also improves teen’s well-being overall as it brings these different areas of health under one umbrella of therapy/treatment. It is a wellness approach. This approach uses holistic care to help teens understand their inner selves to a greater degree. By addressing multiple areas of health within one treatment program, clients can take these skills and experiences into their lives long-term and create an overall healthy life.
Mindfulness for Teen’s Well-Being at Destinations for Teens
This therapy program focuses on clients addressing their inner emotional, physical, and mental states without judgment. Mindfulness evokes a deeper sense of self-awareness, and Destinations for Teens’ program encourages teens to address how their bodies and minds react to certain situations or stress. This helps teens develop a greater sense of understanding and improve self-control.
Mindfulness stems from Buddhist traditions and is used in many Western practices to assist in the whole-person approach. This approach is widely encouraged through holistic care in order to address all effects and/or underlying causes of mental health disorders and addiction. While mindfulness can appear in clinical therapies, like dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness meditation is the common thread linking the practice together. This kind of meditation brings clients’ minds back to the present moment in order to help them ground their emotions and thoughts and observe them without judgment.
Other elements of mindfulness meditation include guided breathwork and movement exercises. At Destinations for Teens, teens may practice mindfulness by exploring nature or taking walks. No matter the environment where mindfulness is practiced, Destinations for Teens guides clients to evoke a sense of peace, mindfulness, and awareness.
Benefits of Mindfulness Therapy for Stress
Mindfulness therapy is beneficial for teens experiencing stress. The practice is meant to improve teen’s well-being overall. As said before, mindfulness can improve one’s self-control. This comes from gaining a deeper and fuller understanding of one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By understanding these and finding ways to ground oneself before making impulsive decisions, teens can gain greater self-control over their behaviors. This makes room for growth, healthy coping mechanisms, and a happier life overall.
Mindfulness therapy also normalizes and encourages non-judgmental observations. When coping with addiction or mental health, stress is normal, and it is easy to take on a negative perception of the world around them. Mindfulness therapy, though, gives teens a space to observe themselves and their surroundings in a peaceful manner. Rather than harp on feelings of stress and turning to negative perceptions immediately, mindfulness brings those stress levels down and makes room for simple observations. Likewise, when negativity clouds one’s mind, mindfulness gives teens an opportunity to release this negativity to make room for non-judgmental and more positive perceptions.
Mindfulness helps clients apply this non-judgmental thinking into their daily lives to promote healthy habits, too. After consistent mindfulness practices, clients gain the ability to scan their bodies and minds in daily situations. When feelings of stress arise, teens can use their learned practices and habits to ground themselves in the present moment. From there, they are able to practice breathwork techniques or simple non-judgmental observations to address the situation and how it is making them feel. For instance, if clients are experiencing stressors at home, teens can turn to mindfulness practices before acting impulsively and acting on detrimental behaviors. This may look like practicing breathwork or channeling that energy into a creative project.
Call Destinations for Teens for Coping Skills Today
Here at Destinations for Teens, we understand that stress is a normal and frequent part of teens’ lives, especially when coping with mental health and addiction. However, we make an active effort to reduce this stress through holistic care. This includes mindfulness therapy, which is one of the therapeutic services at our facility. Mindfulness is a Buddhist practice used in Western medicine to invite non-judgmental observation into mental health and addiction treatment. This practice helps clients ground themselves to make healthier decisions, fostering a happier life. For teens, this is an accessible, personal practice that stretches beyond clinical therapy. To learn more about mindfulness, the whole-person approach, and stress reduction techniques, please call us at (866) 678-8123.