It’s often said that one can become addicted to anything that can numb emotional pain. Drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, and sex are all widely recognized for their addictive potential. Addiction to love and relationships, however, tends to be less well-recognized and understood.
Women who struggle with love, relationship, and intimacy disorders tend to seek the quick physical or emotional fix of “falling in love.” They tend to repeatedly find themselves in inappropriate relationships with toxic or unavailable people, suffer severe withdrawal symptoms when a relationship ends, and find themselves in states of constant turmoil. Because these toxic behavioral patterns aren’t as commonly recognized as a mental health disorder, many women don’t know where to turn once their lives have become completely unmanageable.
It can be difficult to find a program that recognizes the unique needs of women with intimacy and relationship disorders and has the specialized expertise needed to treat them effectively.
Help for Women with Love Addiction
To help meet this need, Meadows Behavioral Healthcare has launched Willow House for Women, a 45-day inpatient program for women struggling with sex, love, and intimacy disorders, and other co-occurring conditions.
Over the course of their stay at Willow House for Women, clients will work to better understand the emotional legacies of their childhood upbringing, family systems, belief systems, body image issues, sexuality, gender roles, trauma, and grief. Through this work, they will build the skills they need to develop and maintain real, deeply intimate connections with partners and spouses. They will also begin to cultivate more resiliency and empowerment and create a vision for starting life anew with more self-compassion, joy, and purpose.
In the heart of the beautiful Sonoran Desert, women at Willow House will begin to resolve core emotional trauma and change their self-destructive behaviors, whether they manifest as love addiction, sex addiction, unhealthy relationship patterns, or as co-occurring disorders such as drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, or other behavioral problems.
An expert team of multi-faceted professionals will lead women through various therapies designed to heal the mind, body, and spirit. Each client will begin her treatment process with a thorough psychiatric assessment and a plan customized with her particular needs and goals in mind. From there, she will participate in small group and individual therapy sessions, neurologically-based treatments designed to help regulate the brain and nervous system functioning, and experiential therapies, including equine therapy, expressive arts therapy, yoga, acupuncture, music, and dance.
Find Your Voice
The clinical architect of the program is Dr. Stefanie Carnes, a well-regarded expert in helping patients with sex addiction, eating disorders, intimacy disorders, relationship disorders, and chemical dependency. In addition to helping women begin the recovery process, she hopes that the Willow House for Women program will help them find their authentic selves. “We help our clients let go of beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve them learn forgiveness for themselves and others, begin to trust their inner voice, and accept their innate value and worth,” she said. “Women will leave Willow House with the self-knowledge and skills they need to build better relationships and live their best lives.”
The Willow House for Women program is accepting clients, for more information please contact The Meadows.