Long-held prejudices may prevent understanding how effective mindfulness truly is
When Centered opened in the metro Atlanta area in 2017, the founders had already been using mindfulness-based CBT and DBT for almost a decade for the effective treatment of addiction. Naturally, we were stunned to hear many professionals in the area had never heard of it! Worse yet, many clinicians appeared to believe mindfulness-based work was essentially just, as one clinician put it, “coloring books and yoga.” I don’t blame them for thinking that at the time! Fifteen years ago, the only thing that was well-known by the majority of the public was the vague notion that mindfulness included yoga, meditation, and maybe some feel-good exercises designed to help people feel calm. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things, but these things alone do not make a comprehensive program for the treatment of addiction and mental health issues.
Research has been examining mindfulness for decades
According to the National Institutes of Health, there have been over 20,000 publications related specifically to mindfulness research in the field of mental health over the last 80 years. The application of mindfulness-based modalities in mental health has experienced exponential growth in the last ten years, with a strong focus on the treatment of stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction, and many of these show better results than the modalities most commonly used by other facilities. Perhaps some clinicians came through school before this explosion of research into mindfulness-based modalities, or were taught by professors who had, and they just innocently missed the advances being made in mental health. But as the years tick by, mindfulness-based research, modalities, tools, and books have begun to proliferate, and should be easily accessible to any clinician interested in growing their skill set. So why do some professional clinicians still view mindfulness-based modalities as “fluff” and ignore all of the data that proves their worth in almost every mental and physical health issue? Why wouldn’t a clinician recommend mindfulness for their client?
A few possible reasons someone wouldn’t choose mindfulness
Here are some of the reasons I believe mindfulness-based work is still largely snubbed by an industry that is unwilling to move beyond the box of “treatment as usual,” even with strong clinical evidence to support it:
- False Advertising: Many programs in the mental health and addiction industry will simply jump on any trending clinical buzzword, and mindfulness has been no exception. When mindfulness first began trending in the mental health world, the number of programs that suddenly claimed to offer it skyrocketed. Clients can find countless websites touting facilities that claim to include mindfulness in their program despite having no facilitators trained in any mindfulness-based modalities. Most of these are simply grabs for attention in a very oversaturated online market, and it can be hard to discern which facilities actually do what they say they are doing.
- Poor Implementation: Let’s be honest here, a lot of “mindfulness” in the field looks like 3-minute breathing exercises tacked on to a group, YouTube videos of aesthetically pleasing but essentially useless meditation videos, or vague attempts at recreating mindfulness-based tools without providing the foundational skills-building or education. They don’t ask their clients to integrate evidence-based mindfulness practice into their everyday lives or track their progress, which often results in a lackluster attempt at mindfulness-based recovery with disappointing results.
- Culture Clash: Mindfulness entered the West in the 1960s as part of the countercultural movement and was often seen as something only “crazy hippies” did, usually accompanied by the use of mind-altering drugs. Conservative negativity toward mindfulness often stems from concerns that it promotes non-Christian, Eastern religious ideologies, specifically Buddhism, and poses a conflict with traditional or religious education.
- Missing the Mechanism: If traditionally trained clinicians don’t understand the neuroscience of predictive processing, interoception, default mode network activity, and neuroplasticity, they miss the mechanisms through which mindfulness becomes neurological recalibration rather than simple relaxation. This is exacerbated by the previous three reasons!
How Centered is Different
- We are the ONLY fully-mindfulness based mental health and addiction recovery treatment facility in Georgia. This does not mean that all we do is meditation and yoga! It means our evidence-based curriculum includes skills building in MB-CBT, MB-DBT, ACT, IFS, and Interpersonal Neurobiology, all highly regarded and peer-reviewed to be incredibly effective in the treatment of anxiety, depression, PTSD, substance addiction, alcoholism, and more. We didn’t jump on a bandwagon to advertise mindfulness once it became popular; we were the first program in metro Atlanta to offer something other than “Treatment As Usual” or the traditional 12-step model that is offered at every other facility. If you choose mindfulness at Centered, you are also choosing the gold standard in clinical modalities, presented with the benefit of mindful awareness skills!
- Our intensive programming includes crucial information about how our clients’ brains actually work—how habits are created, how nervous systems can be stabilized, how to strengthen executive function, and how to cultivate real awareness of themselves in real time—emotions, judgements, and ruminations that may be keeping them stuck in unhealthy habits. Our facilitators are highly trained professionals with at least 100 hours of mindfulness-based education, and most have decades of experience in the mental health field. Our groups are run like rigorous college dialogue courses where our clients are encouraged to deeply explore their relationships with themselves and others, enhance the 5 major pillars of physical and mental health, and get really serious about improving every aspect of their life because we know that addiction and mental health issues don’t happen independently without affecting everything else. Choosing a mindfulness-based program like Centered means getting a true holistic recovery program to address your specific needs.
- Our program is highly structured, and our Transformational Recovery© curriculum contains more than 100 written groups, all of which include peer-reviewed scholarly support to the skills and claims provided, meaningful experiential exercises tied to relapse and mental health triggers, and integrates the best known mental health modalities and cutting edge neuroscience to provide a comprehensive education and skills building session every day we are open. Our CEO, Krista Smith, works with the Harvard Psychology Department’s Mindfulness Lab weekly to collaborate with some of the top clinicians, professors, and researchers in the world regarding mindfulness in the field of mental and physical health, and that incredible wealth of information frequently gets passed on directly to our clients through the continual development of our skills-building program. The program is also heavily grounded in measurable skill acquisition, and Treatment Plans aren’t just paperwork for our team; they are a strong component in our daily programming to help clients meet their goals. We don’t provide “McMindfulness,” we deliver life-changing transformational processes, and success in our program is the norm, not an outlier.
- Centered tracks outcomes, and they simply speak for themselves. Our program doesn’t just help people get sober; it helps clients transform all areas of their lives—improving relationships, parenting, work performance, friendships, issues with food, gambling, gaming, and social media overuse. Our clients complete the DASS-21, BAM-R, GAD-7, and the MMQ on a regular basis and discuss their results with their case manager and clinical team. They are given challenging homework assignments to integrate class learning into their everyday lives—and can’t wait to share their results! The hundreds of reviews we have gotten over the years share intimate portraits of people whose lives are “forever transformed”, even those who had previously been to a dozen or more treatment facilities for help and were considered “treatment resistant.” Our clients are often surgeons, attorneys, Fortune 500 executives, teachers, stay-at-home parents, and retirees—many of whom have struggled quietly for years, knowing there was a better way to live, and finally found it at Centered.
Centered is not exclusionary!
While every group is centered on the cultivation of mindful awareness, our team fully believes that our clients should use what works for them. We encourage the use of AA/NA/SMART meetings in conjunction with our program. We connect clients with highly qualified clinicians, physicians, and psychiatrists in the area to ensure they have the best treatment team possible, even after they complete their time with us. We frequently recommend multi-modal approaches to treatment to be used alongside our program to ensure our clients are able to uncover the root causes of issues, explore the best medication protocols for their needs, or utilize modalities such as EMDR or ART to enhance their recovery journey.
Centered *is not* just for:
- people who are already interested in mindfulness.
- people who want an alternative to the 12-step/AA treatment program, although we are an excellent option for that!
- people who only want a holistic recovery (although we do offer that!)
Centered *is* for: (why you should choose mindfulness)
- anyone who has never been to treatment before
- anyone who has completed 1 or more treatment programs, but still struggled after
- anyone who knows that they no longer want to live with the burden of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, or addiction issues.
- anyone who knows they want to get to the root of the cause for things going sideways
- anyone who is willing to invest in themselves and be honest about their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
- anyone who is ready to change their life, for the better, in any way they identify and are willing to work through
If you are any one of these people and are ready to choose mindfulness for your recovery journey, give us a call at 800-556-2966. We offer the most flexible program options in the state, from Educational Groups Only, a Concierge Level Program to accommodate any state in the U.S., and an Outpatient Program, Intensive Outpatient Program, and Partial Hospitalization Program available anywhere in Georgia. Our facility is located in the heart of the north metro Atlanta suburbs, in Roswell, and we proudly serve clients in Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Milton, Alpharetta, Marietta, Cumming, Buckhead, Atlanta, and beyond.
References:
Mindfulness meditation: A research-proven way to reduce stress
