Life Skills Therapy
The Life Skills program is all about teaching a woman essential skills for day-to-day living.
Life Skills Therapy helps women achieve sobriety by teaching the recovering woman how to joyfully perform day-to-day tasks without drugs or alcohol.
Like all of The Orchid’s therapies, Life Skills work helps address the challenge of successful drug rehab by creating capabilities and comfort in areas that might have suffered during a period of drug addiction, self-neglect and isolation from others.
For a woman who has been living in addiction for many years, the use of drugs or alcohol may have become a central coping strategy for countering the stresses and anxieties of daily life. For a newly-recovering woman like this, meeting the ordinary challenges of everyday life without pharmacological help can seem daunting. Life Skills Therapy guides recovering women as they do basic tasks as shop for groceries, prepare meals, and go out for cultural and recreational activities as a group.
By performing these daily activities together, recovering women not only learn valuable life-skills but also how to work with one another, to trust one another and to form lasting bonds of friendship and support. The grocery shopping and meal preparation activities do more than create strong social bonds, though. These food purchasing and cooking activities also help teach Orchid clients how to prepare the nutritionally supportive meals necessary for optimum health.
At The Orchid, we believe that proper nutrition geared to a woman’s unique dietary needs is vital to a successful and sustained recovery from drugs and alcohol. Rather than simply offering a temporary diet, Orchid’s staff coaches clients in how to select and prepare these supportive meals. As a result, clients can make better eating choices for life.
During the group excursions to local beaches and other social-recreational activities, recovering women how to enjoy themselves and each other’s company without drugs or alcohol. For many recovering women, who may have come from a background of anxiety, social discomfort, and a distrust of other women, the discovery – or rediscovery – of female friendship is a powerful source of joy and support for continued sobriety.
Further Reading