Why Choose The Bridge

With tens of thousands of treatment options in the United States alone, it is often difficult to determine what the best option is for you or your family member. The Bridge provides unique programming options. While we work with clients suffering from a wide array of negative behavior patterns - such as sex, love, relationship issues, drug & alcohol issues, caretaking, food issues, family enmeshment, anger & rage, anxiety & depression, perfectionism, workaholism, etc – we work with individuals and families heal from traumas, or “wounds” from their childhood and adult lives that cause them to reach out for these negative behaviors.

The Bridge is not a primary program for any one behavior, which sets us apart from most others available. Many focus on specific behaviors, such as drugs & alcoholism, sex addiction, “dual-diagnosis,” etc. However, because we believe that those behaviors are just symptoms of deeper pain, we believe you must heal the underlying issues before you will see reprieve from the behavior.

Our program is ideal for individuals who…

  • Are addicted to unhealthy interpersonal relationship processes such as sex addiction, romance addiction, relationship addiction, controlling and caretaking addiction, religion addiction, enmeshing, etc.
  • Experienced stressful, neglectful, painful of troubled environments in early life.
  • Experienced major childhood losses (such as death, deprivation, or divorce) that are affecting their ability to function in the present.
  • Are experiencing or have experienced emotional repression.
  • Have experienced spiritual psychological, physical, or sexual abuse.
  • Want to identify recurring problems in their lives that threaten their sobriety or their personal well-being and that of their loved ones.
  • Are adversely affected by a family member’s addiction and/or codependent behavior.
  • Suffer from low self-esteem.
  • Live fear based lives.
  • Are controlled by behaviors over which they have little to no control.
  • Are addicted to (or are in recovery from) substances such as foods, alcohol, and other drugs.
  • Are addicted to (or are in recovery from) activities such as working, gambling, spending, overeating, exercising, cleaning, hoarding, perfectionism, etc.
  • Are addicted to thoughts or feelings (overanalyzing, negativity, rage, misery)
  • Need relief from the debilitating aspects of self doubt or self-loathing.
  • Want to attain mature coping skills.

The Bridge provides a safe and secluded environment in which to thoroughly address the underlying issues that deeply affect an individual’s ability to thrive. Our environment is diverse and intergenerational. However, the underlying issues of individuals and their families are somewhat universal. Thus, there can be people with different problems (or “symptoms”) and primary addictive processes in the same room and they can still be productive as a therapeutic community. As individual clients do their recovery work, they grown in self-awareness, and learn more about how their families of origin shaped them.

At The Bridge, our residential programs are designed to assist individuals and affected family members suffering from codependency, trauma and a wide range of process addictions. Thus, we are referred to as a Codependency and Trauma program. Codependence is viewed as the underlying “dis-ease” beneath the surface of many addictions and counterproductive patterns of thinking, feeling and doing. As individuals and collective families address their codependency issues, they are more likely to obtain the long term recovery they desire.

This is why we don’t treat addicts alone; we treat all members of the addictive family system (but not concurrently). Our groups consist of people with substance abuse problems as well as people who have been affected by someone else’s substance abuse. We address multiple interacting dependencies. We strongly recommend that family and significant others participate in our intensive family program, a three-day, dynamic, educational and therapeutic blend designed to facilitate and motivate each person’s entry into his/her own recovery.

Codependence is a term that refers to people who are in a close relationship with someone who is dependent on something (usually drugs and/or alcohol, but there are many behavioral addictions that are equally harmful). The codependent person is typically overly-involved with the other person and his/her problems, often to the detriment of both of them. When the codependent person takes on the role of caretaker and invests too much in the welfare of the addicted person, emotions can get in the way and enabling results. Enabling is when the codependent person unintentionally helps an addict continue in his/her addiction by repeatedly putting out little fires, lying to cover up for them, paying their debts, taking care of their basic needs to excess. While this helps the addict get by in the short-run, it ultimately allows the cycle of addiction to continue.

Although the codependent person suffers as a result of the addict's behavior, it can be very difficult to break the pattern. Because the codependent is accustomed to adopting a certain role in the relationship-that of caring for the troubled addict-the whole situation becomes a merry-go-round the codependent enabler can't get off.