How Survivors Week Helps

At Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, we address the whole person, not just your presenting symptoms. Decades of experience with mental health and addiction have led to the understanding that childhood relational trauma underlies many of the maladaptive coping mechanisms that present in adulthood. It’s for this reason that all of our treatment programs incorporate trauma work into the process of recovery.

Everyone who undergoes residential treatment at a Meadows facility participates in Survivors week, a weeklong program where participants spend time exploring what is fueling their self-defeating behaviors and learning how to heal from childhood trauma. This is an essential element of our inpatient treatment programs and a foundational aspect of our recovery model. As others heard about this powerful experience, they wanted to take part as well. That’s why we also offer Survivors as a five-day stand-alone workshop at Rio Retreat Center.

Why a Childhood Trauma Workshop?

Survivors I is our signature workshop, based on the pioneering work of Meadows Senior Fellow Pia Mellody. When she first began working with mental health and addiction patients at The Meadows in the 1970s, she found that many of them came from less-than-nurturing or abusive family systems in childhood.

Such environments led to codependency in adulthood, which in turn translated into the addictions, mood disorders, and mental health issues for which patients were being treated. Her conclusion was that for lasting recovery to happen, the childhood relational trauma at the root of the issues needed to be addressed.

These discoveries, and her resulting Developmental Model of Immaturity, are at the heart of our Meadows Model. This model is incorporated into every Meadows treatment program and is the foundation of the Survivors workshops.

What Does the Workshop Entail?

Survivors works to heal inner childhood wounds in three phases: informational, debriefing, and experiential.

• Informational

In this phase, we use psychoeducation to introduce the concept of developmental immaturity and the impact of the profound relationship between a child and their major caregivers. Inner childhood wounds are highlighted and explored through the eyes of the child, allowing participants to discover the impact their childhood experiences have had on their self-esteem, boundary system, level of dependency, and ability to be moderate in all things.

• Debriefing

Participants in this phase explore negligent and/or abusive childhood experiences, focusing on associated feelings and imprinted messages and the self-deprecating patterns that have come from those experiences.

• Experiential

As part of this final stage, participants seek to reexamine their childhood relationships in a safe and nurturing environment by applying Mellody’s techniques for addressing childhood relational trauma. Participants are allowed to release painful emotions and begin the process of re-parenting the parts of themselves that have been shamed, neglected, or abandoned.

By exploring the origins of self-defeating behaviors, this childhood trauma workshop opens participants up to a deep inner healing that helps lead to lasting recovery.

Survivors at Rio Retreat Center

We’ve had a great response to offering Survivors I as a stand-alone workshop. Making it available to anyone who wants to experience inner growth and healing, means even those who aren’t in recovery can now benefit. Those in recovery from addiction or co-occurring disorders who have more work to do find it really helpful in moving them forward. Others simply want to improve their emotional well-being and discover why they feel “stuck” in certain areas of life. For both of these groups. this weeklong workshop is a must, allowing you to explore the childhood trauma that is impacting your present-day life and heal those old wounds once and for all. It’s such a powerful experience that some former patients return to repeat Survivors I as a workshop at Rio Retreat once they’re further along in their recovery journey.

For those want to continue the journey, we offer a follow-up workshop, Survivors II. This advanced intensive workshop builds on the foundation laid during Survivors I, and it is customized to meet the needs of each individual participant. Primarily experiential in nature, Survivors II uses psychodrama, art therapy, mindfulness, psychoeducation, and other therapeutic techniques to allow for deep healing and freedom from lingering emotional and behavioral struggles.

If you or a loved one is feeling stuck in life or in recovery from mental illness or addiction, our Survivors workshops could be just what you need to kick-start the healing process.

Take it from workshop alum Deborah who describes Survivors as life-changing for her. “It would have taken years to accomplish the end result that came after five days,” she writes. “It put me in a better position to grow in a healthy marriage … and parent in a healthy way, but most important, I’m a better me for me.”

Contact us today to find out how you can experience that same transformation for yourself. Healing is possible, and we are here to help you achieve it.

Recovery Month Workshop Special