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Intensive Sober Living for Women

Line drawing of a butterfly with NDFWWhere Should Women Go After Primary Treatment?

New Directions’ intensive sober living program combines transitional sober living with continued outpatient treatment services. This helps women transition to a sober lifestyle after completing primary or extended residential treatment.

Residential Treatment vs. Intensive Sober Living Program

Residential treatment is substance abuse treatment in which patients live at the treatment facility where they are receiving treatment. This means that patients at residential treatment centers live there all day and all night. As a result, they cannot work or go home until their treatment is over. Sober living for women differs from residential treatment in that members of sober living for women treatment facilities are encouraged to maintain their day job, responsibilities, and/or hobbies. 

Residential treatment is for people who are in the early stages of their recovery and thus need 24/7 supervision to remain sober. While residential treatment is a form of inpatient treatment, one thing that makes it different is the fact that residential treatment centers operate as a housing community. In other words, residential treatment is homier and less structured than standard inpatient treatment. 

While sober living for women treatment is structured in its model, like residential treatment, it also operates more like a housing community. However, our sober living houses for women do not require 24/7 supervision. 

Both residential treatment and sober living for women treatment centers use holistic treatment methods in their programs. Primary residential treatment is intensive residential treatment that takes a shorter amount of time due to the patients already having gone through physical detox. Extended residential treatment is residential treatment that occurs for a longer amount of time. This occurs for more than a few months as opposed to the few weeks to a month of primary residential treatment. 

Ultimately, sober living for women treatment was created to help women transition from residential treatment to complete sobriety.

Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) Sober Living

Typical intensive outpatient programs (IOPs) provide intensive substance abuse treatment for a few hours a day, a few days a week. These daily few hours of treatment usually occur in the evening so that patients can still maintain their day jobs and their day-to-day responsibilities. 

Patients in IOPs also aren’t required to live at a facility during treatment. Therefore, patients in regular intensive outpatient programs get to live at home and commute to the treatment facility to receive treatment during their program’s designated hours. 

Our intensive sober living program allows individuals to receive addiction recovery support in a safe, sober environment. Here, our female patients will live in our sober living houses in California when not receiving treatment as opposed to their own homes. 

Intensive outpatient program treatment sessions occur at the state Certified and CARF accredited IOP location at the NDFW campus. To help you learn more about our IOP program and female sober living, we are going to tell you about the different tools we use within our IOP program to make it effective.  

What Is the Matrix Model?

As one of our women’s sober living outpatient programs, our intensive outpatient program also uses the Matrix Model. This is a researched, evidenced-based approach that recognizes the diversity and individuality of each patient’s stage in recovery. 

The Matrix Model is a structured 16-week addiction treatment program featuring:

  • Individual therapy sessions
  • Early recovery groups
  • Relapse prevention groups
  • Family education groups
  • Social support system groups
  • 12-step meetings

This program also incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and contingency management within its program. 

There are 8 core guiding principles that the Matrix Model follows:

  1. Establish a positive and collaborative relationship between the therapist and the patient
  2. Create structure and set expectations
  3. Teach the patient about addiction
  4. Utilize cognitive-behavioral concepts
  5. Reinforce behavioral change
  6. Educate the family members of the patients about addiction
  7. Have patients participate in self-help groups
  8. Monitor patient drug use through periodic drug testing 

Can Patients Receive Therapy in a Sober Living Environment?

Our program makes sure to employ caring therapists. These therapists lead drug and alcohol addiction counseling sessions that help promote women’s self-esteem, dignity, and self-worth. 

Our therapists also take the time to educate all the families of our patients about addiction and recovery. In fact, our therapists even teach the families of our patients how to repair the damage that addiction has brought on them as a family by supporting one another. 

Holistic Treatment Methods

sober living for women

All women within our program utilize holistic treatment methods such as mindfulness, meditation, yoga, healthy nutrition, and/or workbook exercises. This is especially true for yoga since it is incorporated into our treatment program. By incorporating holistic treatment methods into a sober living environment, our patients are becoming accustomed to self-care. 

By combining holistic treatment exercises with our counseling and support groups, our patients are also able to identify problematic behaviors that they have that could cause them to relapse one day. 

Therapy and Addiction Treatment Groups

To facilitate growth while also addressing our patients’ drug addictions, we incorporate interactive daily process groups, individual therapy, specialized psycho-educational groups, and life skills workshops into our program. 

“Seeking Safety” Curriculum

Our intensive sober living program has another foundational curriculum that we use, except we use this one just during our Partial Day Program. This new curriculum is called “Seeking Safety,” which is a cognitive behavioral group therapy program that helps heal people with substance abuse disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This “Seeking Safety” form of therapy also teaches patients how to ask for help, realize when they are getting close to relapsing, perform self-care exercises, and cope with PTSD. 

Outpatient Treatment Programs

Typical outpatient programs allow patients to live in the comfort of their own homes and only come to a treatment facility for treatment during the designated hours that their program is offering it. Once again, the outpatient treatment programs at New Directions’ sober living home will function similarly to a normal outpatient program, except that our patients will live in our sober living homes for women when not receiving treatment as opposed to their own homes. 

sober living for women

Our outpatient programming focuses on early recovery skills, relapse prevention, family involvement, individual therapy, and 12-step methods. Patients may enter the outpatient level of care at any stage as the model accommodates people in various stages of early recovery. However, we require a minimum of 45 days of sobriety and some residential treatment experience to live at the intensive sober living home.

Our patients receive 15 to 30 hours of outpatient treatment weekly and are involved in 12-step programs while they work, go to school, or are involved in other productive activities. 

We employ a live-in house mother who provides accountability and support exclusively to our patients living in our Women’s Sober Living homes. Women also attend our weekly Saturday Family Group, along with a support system consisting of individuals within their family systems.

Key Benefits of New Directions All Women Intensive Sober Living Facilities

Among the different services that the programs our intensive sober living program offers, there are countless benefits. Some of these benefits include:

  • Gender-separate treatment for women by women
  • Allows women to transition from residential treatment into a sober lifestyle
  • A tranquil and supportive atmosphere
  • Continued support in a sober house for women
  • The Matrix Model helping patients achieve independence from addiction
  • The program provides patients with the essential skills for establishing and maintaining sobriety
  • Family involvement 
  • Relapse prevention 
  • Weekly individual therapy that helps patients enhance the quality of their recovery
  • Social Support that helps patients transition to an alcohol and drug-free lifestyle that supports recovery
  • Ability to have evening programs
  • Opportunity to improve mental health through mental health treatment and therapy

Services Offered in New Directions’ Intensive Sober Living Home Program

Many of the services provided by our sober living program are a result of the Matrix Model. This is particularly true for all of the different forms of therapy and specialized groups that New Directions provides its sober living home attendees. 

The specialized groups and forms of therapy within our intensive sober living include:

  • Individual and Group Therapy – Provided at the outpatient location
  • Early Recovery Skills Groups – Provided at the outpatient location
  • Relapse Prevention Groups – Provided at the outpatient location
  • Family Education Groups, Family Conjoint Sessions – Provided at the outpatient location
  • Social Support Groups
  • 12-Step Involvement
  • Established schedules
  • Drug Testing – weekly at random
  • Aftercare – up to one year
  • 24-hour awake care coordinator staff to provide oversight in addition to the live-in housemother

Intensive Sober Living

Where should I go after primary treatment?

New Directions’ Intensive Sober Living Program combines transitional sober living with continued outpatient treatment services.

New Directions for Women

Benefits of Our Sober Living Program

Tranquil Atmosphere
Evening Programs
Family Involvement

Amenities Offered

We provide countless amenities within our sober living program so that you can be comfortable at all times. Our recreational amenities will also help keep you entertained and active in between treatment sessions.

New Directions’ intensive sober living home amenities include:

  • Private and shared bedrooms in a single-family home
  • One block to beautiful Newport Beach Back Bay reserve
  • Shared living room, bathroom, and kitchen
  • Fully equipped kitchen
  • Onsite Gym
  • Direct TV in the living area
  • Garden and meditation area
  • High-speed wireless internet access
  • Housekeeping
  • Designated parking area

Admission Criteria

The Choice Is Up to You

Now that you know all there is to know about our women’s sober living program, the choice of where you want to go after your primary treatment is up to you. If you have already completed residential treatment but feel that you still need some extra support and assistance to keep you from relapsing, we suggest you give our program a try. 

To learn more about our New Direction’s sober livings in Costa Mesa, contact us today.

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Clinically Reviewed By:

Heather Black-Coyne, LMFT, CADC II, Chief Clinical Officer

Heather Black-Coyne, LMFT, CADC II, Chief Clinical Officer

Heather most recently served as the Clinical Director of a gender-specific treatment center in Huntington Beach. She is trained in both Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which serve the needs of our patients, many of whom have experienced both complex trauma and substance use disorder.

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