Intensive Workshops

In addition to helping you overcome addiction, Alta Mira’s comprehensive treatment program helps you heal from past trauma, engage in relationships in a positive way, grow spiritually, and create the life you want. Our intensive workshop series supports deep recovery work, allowing you to create your healthiest possible lifestyle and relationships.

Alta Mira’s transformational program gives you the opportunity to participate in one or more of our extraordinary intensives. Led by experts in their fields, our inspirational intensives last between 1 and 3 days and provide you with the support you need to participate in this life-changing recovery work. Our residents routinely tell us that our intensive workshops mark a turning point in their lives.

We offer two-day intensive workshops provided by our team of clinicians on a variety of topics that are best explored within this format. Workshops provide longer lengths of time to cover complex material and allow clients to engage in experiential activities designed to make it come alive in ways that are generally not possible in standard didactic or group formats.

These workshops are offered monthly, and all clients are welcome to participate as long as they are medically and clinically cleared to do so.

Among our newest offerings are the following:

(Re)Connecting With Your Authentic Self with Karen Spedowfski, Ph.D.

In this two-day workshop, we will explore the ways that we lose our authenticity from an early age, develop identities that contain aspects of both our true selves and falsehoods to be identified and challenged, and masks that we wear that hide and protect our true, authentic selves in the world.

Codependency and addiction, in many ways, are the opposites of authenticity. Clients will explore their own masks and identities through multi-media and experiential exercises designed to explore core beliefs, roles, and messages received from others beginning in early childhood and will realize the opportunity that recovery provides to be able to choose whether these fit or serve them any longer. Clients will consider how to change behaviors that do not serve them, and, most importantly, how to begin to develop self-compassion and live authentically. This workshop will be interactive and will challenge clients to view themselves in new ways while engaging meaningfully with each other.

Exploring Spirituality with Kellie Beals, Psy.D.

This two-day workshop on spirituality offers a reflective and immersive journey designed to deepen personal insight, inner peace, and a sense of connection beyond the material world. It involves delving into the deep human desire to find purpose, and connection. Spirituality is often described as an inner journey—one that transcends religious boundaries and speaks to a universal longing for meaning and truth.

In a therapeutic setting focused on substance use recovery, exploring the meaning of spirituality can be a powerful tool for healing and transformation. It encourages individuals to ask profound questions such as “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “What is my relationship to others and to life itself?” While it can be expressed through religion, art, service, or personal philosophy, spirituality is deeply personal and evolves over time. Ultimately, it invites people to live more consciously, guided by values like compassion, authenticity, and a deeper sense of interconnectedness.

Process Addictions with Andrea Garrett, LMFT, CSAT-C

Many people describe themselves as having “addictive personalities.” While this is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis, we are learning more about what are referred to as “process addictions” which can be just as powerful as those involving chemical substances.

In this workshop we will explore all aspects of the addictive process as it presents in a number of different human behaviors such as sex and romantic relationships, gambling, gaming, internet use and social media, shopping, food and eating, exercise, etc. Clients will come to understand how the neurobiology of the brain and nervous system become involved in the process of behavioral addictions in ways that are similar to those of chemical addictions. We will explore the very real risk of cross addiction in early recovery (and beyond), how process addictions serve as attempts to regulate emotions, and how engaging in these behaviors can pose risks for relapse back to chemical substances if they are not managed within an overall program of recovery.

If you would like more information on our intensive workshops, please contact one of our Admissions Specialists.