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Initially patients may see the word "God" and want to run a mile but the Twelve Steps themselves are quite specific in emphasising (in italics and underlined) "as I understandHim". (The Twelve Steps were written at a time when it was understood that `Him' included `Her' or even'It').
At PROMIS we work through all these Twelve Steps in group therapy sessions - giving patients a basic understanding of the need to work them and the benefits from doing so. Each patient - or student, as we call them - will come to work them in much greater depth after they have left treatment and when they are under the guidance of a "sponsor" (a fellow member of an Anonymous Fellowship who has had greater experience in working the Steps). The reason we encourage patients to work through the Twelve Steps in group therapy sessions - allowing patients to some extent to select the members of the group - is because of the old Alcoholics Anonymous saying that we are "as sick as our secrets". The more we hang on to guilt and shame, the more it poisons us. The more we bring it out into the open, the better our chance of making a new life and of making appropriate amends, wherever possible, to those we have harmed.
By the time patients leave PROMIS, they should be aware of the need for ongoing regular attendance at meetings of the Anonymous Fellowships and, in particular, the need for continuing work on the Twelve Steps on a daily basis. Indeed, the true recovery rate at PROMIS, as with all other treatment centres, is zero: recovery is obtainable only through working the Twelve Steps in the Anonymous Fellowships. What PROMIS is able to do is to help a larger number of people to recover in the Anonymous Fellowships than would otherwise do so.
In the course of patients' treatment, our counselling staff will employ any number of therapeutic approaches, most particularly Choice Theory, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Psychodrama and EMDR, depending upon the training, experience and personal enthusiasm of each individual counsellor. We generally avoid one-to-one therapy, although each patient or student has an individual Focal Counsellor to provide brief reminders, because vulnerable patients can only too easily form dependent relationships with individual counsellors. By the same token, counsellors may sometimes become too wrapped up in an individual patient's problems to be able to see clearly and dispassionately.
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