FOLLOW ALONG WITH OUR HOUSE PHILOSOPHIES

There is a "culture" in recovery - just like there is a "culture" in drug use. We may not even realize it, but often people abusing substances share common traditions, ideas, beliefs, and values. These become part of our identity and can be extremely hard to shake even after giving up the substance itself! To be successful in recovery, we will inevitably adopt new traditions, ideas, beliefs, and values. It's quite uncomfortable and difficult to try on these new identities and it takes time for everything to feel like "the new normal." At Footprints, we believe that this emphasis on providing a consistent, recovery-oriented culture sets us apart from other residence programs in our area.

In the field of psychotherapy, we find that modern-day humans aren't very good with successful communication. This may be something you never consider, but poor communication skills can be problematic in every area of life, especially relationships, work, parenting, and even when it comes to communication with ourselves! We learn poor communication when we are young - at home with our families and growing up with friends. As adults, our well-defined ego defenses tend to take over and cause lots of problems interacting with people and environments. At Footprints, we believe that respectful, honest, down-to earth communication can solve any problem. We help residents learn and practice healthy communication skills and pride ourselves on managing high stress situations and potential conflicts that might otherwise deter recovery.

Compassion is truly the thing that connects one person to another. We tend to naturally have compassion for loved ones, but our individualistic dog-eat-dog world doesn't allow for much left over for compassion toward others. Sometimes getting caught up in our addiction has caused us to stomp out compassion as a means for survival. Others of us are quite compassionate toward others, but haven't learned how to be compassionate toward ourselves! Footprints doesn't believe in older recovery traditions of using tough love and shame to motivate change - we know these methods don't work and actually cause more harm. Instead, we take a compassionate approach to interacting with our residents that is fueled by authentic care and concern for the welfare of each person.

Without connection, we would perish. It's been proven time and time again that humans need connection to form healthy meaningful lives. Psychologically speaking, the most important connections we make are with family, peers, and romantic partners. However, more often than not for people in recovery, these relationships are strained and perhaps a significant source of stress and even trauma. Over time, many people develop trust issues and have a difficult time making sincere connections - the risk of being hurt, rejected, or betrayed is just too great. As a result, we build a little wall around our hearts where we can feel safe and hide out. Our goal at Footprints is to help you chip away at this wall and figure out how to make those essential meaningful connections in your life.

Recovery is all about behavior change - if nothing changes, nothing changes. Anyone who has ever tried to train an unruly puppy or toddler may understand that consistency is at the core psychological concept of changing behaviors we don't like into behaviors we like. Footprints makes every effort to establish house rules and treatment programs that that are fair, easy to follow, and make sense with respect to the goal of stability we are trying to achieve. We enforce our program guidelines consistently and ask that our residents help us maintain this wherever possible! In our own experience with recovery residences in general, we find this to be one of the most important house values that many programs don't adhere to. At Footprints, you'll know what to expect, what's expected of you, and we will make sure you're comfortable using the processes put in place to get all of your needs met.