Follow these 14 Steps to Avoid Relapse

During the holidays and after the beginning of the new year, therapists often see an uptick in people who are stressed out and feeling depressed.   If this sounds like you, then you may also be at higher risk of relapse whether it be due to alcohol, drugs, sex and pornography, eating, spending or gambling.   Here are 15 suggestions that may help you avoid relapse and stay physically and mentally healthy this holiday season:

  1. Avoid certain unhealthy or triggering people, places and things. Part of relapse prevention is to learn to identify the what, who, and why of addiction, and then to avoid them.  This includes the familiar traps associated with a return or increase in use. Your therapist can help you recognize that relapse is a process of reverting to a learned behavior can make all the difference in terms of being in the driver’s seat over the problem behavior.
  2. Develop a strategy. Related to #1 above, it is crucial to know thyself and to pattern a strategy to NOT relapse. To NOT plan to stay abstinent is to plan to lose control or to relapse.
  3. Increase your support by making an appointment with your therapist or going to additional AA or group therapy meetings.
  4. Attend a Michigan Psychodrama Center workshop. The MPC offers numerous groups and workshops aimed at assisting those with addictive struggles.
  5. Address the emotional triggers that fuel out of control behavior. Many times, childhood pain surfaces during the holidays. Family get-togethers challenge most of us, but when there has been alcoholism, drug use, or other dysfunction in one’s family environment, the feelings when seeing family members or reliving memories at this time of year can be overwhelming. Talk to a professional or other “safe” person about these feelings. Otherwise, you may find yourself numbing the pain with substances or other addictions.
  6. Eat well, exercise, do yoga or mediate. All of these activities boost the body’s natural endorphins and sense of well-being and calm. It is Michigan, meaning there is little sun during the winter, so you may want to check your vitamin D levels. Low vitamin D can signal fatigue and bring on poor eating and sleeping habits.
  7. Manage your expectations. Avoid Facebook and comparing yourself to others. Most people exaggerate their successes and avoid posting their difficulties. Don’t fall into the trap of believing you are less worthy than others.
  8. Volunteer. Assisting others who are in need, worshiping or serving at a spiritual institution or giving of yourself in other ways boosts the mood and shifts the focus from your own feelings.
  9. Manage your thoughts. Read about cognitive therapy and learn how to spot cognitive distortions and reframe them. Dr. Corby is a certified cognitive therapist and can provide guidance.
  10. Maintain good sleeping habits and sleep hygiene. Sleep deprivation can lower your resistance to relapse and can also make you feel depressed. Talk to your therapist to determine if your sleep issues are psychological, and consider having a sleep study done to rule out things like apnea.
  11. Practice good self-care. Prioritize your schedule, balance it, don’t overdo it or overpromise to others. Perfectionism is the enemy to self-love.
  12. Don’t expect that you will feel festive just because it is the holidays. Allow yourself to be authentic and cry, write feelings in a journal, feel your frustration over the past and present, and feel down, so you can clear those feelings away for moments of joy that might pop up.
  13. Remember that this season is temporary. Staying centered, real and supported can help you ride out the urges and vulnerability to relapse and arrive on the other side of the season stronger than ever.


The Trial Lawyer’s Use of Psychodrama

Psychodrama is a deep action method developed by Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974), in which people enact scenes from their lives, dreams or fantasies in an effort to gain new insights and understandings, and practice new and more satisfying behaviors.[i]

Psychodrama is an amazingly versatile modality.  As a method of healing it has been used in group therapy and in one-on-one therapy (as an extension of Freudian “talk” therapy).  And Sociodrama, as a sub-set of psychodrama , had even more far reaching application, and allows further expansion of the method’s versatility.

Sociodrama is a type of psychodrama, but rather than using the methods to address individual issues, sociodrama identifies and explores group issues.  It is “a learning method that creates deep understanding of the social systems that shape us individually and collectively”[ii]

Sociodrama, is used in the classroom and in businesses.  It is also used for exploring literature and deepening religious understanding, such as with bibliodrama.

A blend of psychodrama and sociodrama is also used by trial lawyers. According to psychodramatist John Nolte, “as many as 1500 trial lawyers have been exposed to psychodrama through Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer College.”[iii]  Lawyers (staff and students) “have gone far beyond this goal (of personal development) by developing unique and creative ways of utilizing the psychodramatic method in training and their work.”[iv]

It is fascinating to observe how creative and spontaneous trial lawyers are and can be when bringing the tools of psychodrama to the courtroom.  For example, lawyers will often use the various methods of role reversal, doubling, chair back, and soliloquy to help deepen their understanding of their client’s case.  This can allow them to become better story-tellers in the courtroom.

Trial lawyers use psychodrama to increase their own creativity and spontaneity. They can then use the information they gain from these exercises to help bring their cases to life.

According to one lawyer deeply steeped in the method:

Trials are frequently likened to a drama. The comparison is an easy one to accept since both theater and trial involve storytelling. One of the lessons we can take from the theater is the notion that credibility originates with the inner feelings the actor is experiencing and not the action itself.[v]

As finally, as John Nolte eloquently explains, trial lawyers “have reinforced strongly my long-held conviction that psychodrama is indeed the road to spontaneity-creativity and that psychodrama is for everybody.”[vi]



[i] Garcia, Buchanan, Current Approaches in Drama Therapy, Chapter 9, pg.162 (2000).

[ii] Browne, R. Towards a framework for sociodrama. Thesis for Board of Examiners of the Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association, (2005).

[iii] Nolte, Non-Clinical Psychodrama: Lawyers and the Psychodramatic Method, The Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy, Vol. 60, No. 2, pg. 7 (2012).

[iv] Id.

[v] Cole, Psychodrama and the Training of Trial Lawyers; Finding the Story, The Warrior, Winter (2002).

[vi][vi] Nolte, Non-Clinical Psychodrama: Lawyers and the Psychodramatic Method, The Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy, Vol. 60, No. 2, pg. 13 (2012).

Psychodrama: Social Networking for Healing

One of my favorite psychotherapeutic methods has not even been widely recognized as strictly “psychotherapy” at all. It is called psychodrama, which, conceived and developed by Jacob L. Moreno, MD, employs guided dramatic action to examine problems or issues raised by an individual (psychodrama) or a group (sociodrama). It is considered a hybrid between mind exploration (Greek: psycho = “mind”) and theater (“drama”). So what is this psychodrama and how can it be applied to therapy?

Sigmund Freud believed that our unconscious processes contained, at deep, unaware levels, the seeds of our earlier repressed memories and emotions. Freud’s method of psychoanalysis works wonderfully at sometimes accessing those trapped or hidden past traumas, memories or feelings, after often many years of painstaking analysis of memory traces and reflections by the psychoanalyst. The father of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck M.D., who developed the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia, where I received my post-doctoral Cognitive Therapy training and certification, was a psychoanalyst. Beck discovered that after many years of traditional psychoanalysis, patients may have found some or even much relief, but often persisted with often unaddressed distorted thought systems, causing great psychic pain. His development of cognitive therapy was an active, experimental approach to addressing these distortions, by teaching patients to participate in their dismantling of unrealistic thoughts and adopting new more realistic beliefs and subsequent actions (see other links and blogs on this webpage for more on cognitive therapy).

Psychodrama is not a technique that I use to replace these other forms of psychotherapy. Like traditional analysis of past wounds and relationships, and the dismantling of cognitive errors, psychodrama is another tool in the properly trained therapist’s tool box for accessing deep and potent (painful or joyous) emotions, perhaps long-severed from the individual’s conscious awareness. How does psychodrama work, and how is a different “tool?”

Psychodrama was founded circa 1920’s by Jacob L. Moreno, M.D., a psychiatrist who believed in using the social network to reinact particular roles or incidents from the past, using a ‘stage’ and typical ‘acting’ components of protaganist (the patient), director (usually the therapist), and auxillary egos (people in the drama). By coaching the client into the full-blown active, realistically re-created “scene” of an unresolved issue or relationship, people are able to virtually re-experience the past within the setting, with a safe network of supporters. Techniques used in psychodrama include role-play, role reversals, imagining other’s feelings and roles, and even imagining outcomes in the future. This very active relationship with the director/therapist and auxillaries enables a full ‘mind-body,’ in-the-moment re-engagement of sometimes long-buried memories. The action of psychodrama with patients acting as protagonists enables them to access very potent memories through the action, that would not often be accessible to them through talk therapy.

I have been able to utilize psychodrama techniques with most types of clients, in individual and group settings. Many re-enact painful encounters with others, and others even take on their “disorders” (e.g., role reversing with their OCD, anxiety, depression, or addiction “monsters”). Following successful psychodrama experiences, after which a catharsis often occurs, sharing takes place with other group members,  and integration on cognitive, affective, behavioral and spiritual levels can follow (Farmer, 1996). Unique to psychodrama is the active, spontaneous and creative enterprise of reenacting the drama, both positive and negative, which authenitically accesses, for the client, the core who he is. The honor of a client allowing a social network to gain a glimpse of this very personal space and his self-growth journey, is special and powerful. Protagonists who share their story with the social network often feel a renewed sense of inclusion and belonging, because of the group’s sensitivity and compassion. The healing that takes place through psychodrama is wonderful and it is my hope that more people learn the benefits of this special but little-known technique.

Please see my membership group, American Society of Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama, to learn more: