Our therapy program

In our therapeutic community, "together actions" are the stage of learning from action. This is possible with the garden belonging to the Institution, the care and shaping of which is within the scope of the whole community.

All activities , be it cutting wood, weeding, grinding benches, making jams – help us to connect, to look at how our relationships are to operate, and to understand our spiritual reality. We believe that three do-and-take a week dynamizes our social relationships, allows us to deepen psychotherapeutic results and try new coping strategies. Each activity is followed by a discussion, through which the emotional background that moves the actions in the "here and now" is better understood.

Community discussions with different goals and topics are an integral part of the daily schedule, which concern the following areas:

• Future-cool: the start of therapy week, the return to the House, the Community.

• Our common business: the place to discuss the tasks we undertake each week.

• Breakfast-dinner discussion: organisation of matters around breakfast and dinner within the Community's own scope.

• Mentoring meeting: helping to accommodate new patients joining the community by operating a mentoring system.

• Community forum: improving our own environment and cooperation.

• Stég: discussion of representatives of different areas of responsibility (the "chief managers").

Intézményünk a klinikai / szakmai munkájába szívesen von be önkénteseket, ami egy hosszabb távú (min. fél éves) elköteleződést kíván. Az önkéntességnek nem feltétele a terápiás előképzettség. Célja a terápiás közösségi munkamód megismerése, a működtetésében való aktív részvétel, valamint a tapasztalatszerzés és a kezelői team segítése.

További információk és jelentkezés

Basically, the therapy in our institution is organised around community life, group therapies and group processes. During the trial period (three weeks), everyone has the opportunity to have two short individual consultations with their therapist per week. Afterwards, for most patients, the relationship and emotional work with the therapist can take place in a small verbal group once a week, and technical consultations are possible during the therapist's office hours.

The first small group of receiving patients within the Therapeutic Community, in which the newly arrived patients participate for two to three weeks. The group uses a variety of techniques to make it easier to arrive in the Community, within the framework of its rules and the psychotherapeutic process, and to understand their meaning.

Another goal is to find emotional situations and memories of important relationships that may be closely related to the development of his illness and the onset of his symptoms. Working together in a group helps our patients to create an inner sense of security, which is essential in often stressful moments of personal therapy. The group prepares for the way of therapeutic work in the community.

After the reception period, patients are placed in a verbal (conversational) small group no earlier than the fourth week of therapy, which takes place twice a week for a period of one and a half hours. We talk without a predetermined topic, in a free form of interaction.

The group focuses on exploring the emotional and relationship "causes" underlying the physical and psychological symptoms. Recognizing and understanding these "causes" is the key to bringing our behavior and difficulties within our own reach, to taking responsibility for our actions.

In the group, it is possible to understand past and present relationship problems and to recognize parallels between them. We are working to rebuild the trust that is essential to dealing with the difficulties of our daily lives, so that we can learn again that in a difficult situation there is another way to solve it than what we have so unsuccessfully practiced or changed to symptoms. Here the threads "meet", the personal insights of the community and the therapeutic activities can be reached here in the intimacy of the group.

Togetherness with the participation of the entire community, twice a week. The scene of self-regulation of community life, the possibilities of contact with ourselves, the terrain of "forced paths" and tragedies, "the source of knowledge of the past and the future".

It is here that it becomes clear how the "illness" and "symptoms" can be related to the stressful social-family situations, where you can speak through a salutation that was "silent" until then.

The aim of the group is to prevent and reduce "slippages" and relapses in the case of addiction problems. The focus is on understanding the nature of passion, recognizing risk situations and actively and consciously coping with them.

In addition to the discussions, games, situational exercises and tasks help to develop the skills with which long-term stable abstinence can be achieved.

The aim of the playback group is to enable all patients in the Institution, regardless of their diagnosis and to the extent of their current capacity, to be able to participate in a joint action.

The healing power of playback feeds on various sources. First and foremost, people need to be able to tell each other their stories.

Telling our stories gives us a sense of identity and a place in the world. The mosaic-like, fragmented way of life that many of us live in, and in which the continuity of people and places is few, does not allow us to listen carefully to one another. Playback Theatre creates a non-judgmental forum for sharing personal stories. Ritualized storytelling has a healing effect on a wider audience, but patients have an even more constanced need to tell their stories, and they probably have fewer opportunities to do so than we do. Sharing stories takes place in an atmosphere that is not only safe, but also fundamentally benevolent and affectionate. It is a therapeutic environment that is somewhat reminiscent of "unconditional acceptance" from Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy. When presenting stories, patients have the opportunity to experience their own aesthetic sense, creativity, imagination and spontaneity. These experiences amplify their sense that they are shaping their own lives, increasing their autonomy and helping them heal.

The playback group basically builds on the experiences and experiences of the movement and music therapy groups operating in the Thalassa House in the therapeutic work with patients.

The psychodrama group is based on the playback group. During the dramatic events experienced here and the experiences in the therapeutic space of the Thalassa House, the patient becomes more and more burdensome. That's when we work on the psychodrama method.

Playback-style play is suitable for patients who are not yet ready to go through the whole psychodrama process, too vulnerable to participate in the thick of the story. They can gain much more by the distance of the storyteller's chair. They share their stories with others and then "pass" them on for display. In psychodrama, on the other hand, the storyteller, who is called the protagonist here, enters his own story and expands on its details while playing, with the help of the leader. The story is shaped and carried forward by past experiences and momentary feelings. In our group, we use the protagonista-centric psychodrama method developed by J. L. Moreno. The most basic root of Moreno's psychodrama is Greek theatre, where the battle between the protagonist and the "counter-actors" (antagonists) is accompanied by an active participation of the choir representing the community – the group members. Perhaps Moreno's most important dramatic discovery is the use of role-swapping, which allows the protagonist to look at himself through the eyes of the characters in the story – and at the same time face himself.

In the music therapy group, the primary communication channel is music itself, within which rhythm, sound, rhythm and tempo map our current state, attitudes and roles. In the course of this therapeutic method, the therapeutic relationship between the patients and the therapist is established through music as an intermediary.

During active playing with instruments, body sounds or vocals, as well as improvisational music, moods, vibrations, emotions, images are manifested, memories can surface, which often do not have a suitable word for expressing them. The aim of the therapy group is to encounter together experiences through which the group members can gain new experiences about their emotional world, their relationships and themselves. Through more structured music games and tasks, patients can undergo their connections. In addition to the above, they receive feedback about their place in the group, their level of activity and their relationships with the other. Through the technique of improvisation, the mood of the sessions, the style of playing music can be very different each time. Musical and vocal manifestations in the therapeutic space can promote change and healing on their own, without verbal processing, but verbal reinforcements can often mean further development for patients.

Through psychodynamic movement and dance therapy, group members can get closer to themselves and their peers through direct physical experience. Participating in a group can help you connect, build trust, find your own space, and refine your image of yourself.

We never "work" with ready-made movements and choreography, the emphasis is on free choice, spontaneous movement, communication with touch and movement. We work individually, in pairs, in groups, with different attentional focuses, using the inspiring power of music and silence and the healing effects of free movement and dance.

The language of the body - movement - can bring out emotions and unprocessed experiences. Traumas, losses, the possibility of working with parents, the possibility of establishing relationships, the development of the ability to bond and intimacy "healthier", the development of identity and self-acceptance can occur, and corrections can be made even in cases where the underlying problem, trauma, does not become conscious, does not become articulated.

This group is often the starting point for the therapy of our patients with more severe symptoms.

In the group, therapeutic work takes place in the form of experimentation, creation and shaping along the foundations of analytical art therapy, with tools and materials suitable for the branches of fine arts such as paints, clay, coal, sand, paper, textiles. This therapeutic work often helps the mechanisms of emotion expression and regulation by accessing past, defining (e.g. traumatic) experiences, visualizing and (resharing) current or previous inner experiences.

Creation itself is an individual process with individual characteristics and individual experiences. It creates the possibility of intimate connection with our own inner world, where less conscious or unconscious inner contents that can affect current relationship situations, emotional states, reactions, self-perception can be recognized. By observing the works with formal and content aspects and focusing on the unique characteristics of their own work process, the group helps to find this connection, which is partly done individually and partly through the joint work of the members, and through which the participants have the opportunity to interpret and organize their own inner world.

In the creative phases realized jointly or in pairs, more hidden dimensions of connection with each other may appear in everyday life, such as the continuous follow-up of the situation of the other and ourselves, the experiences of adaptation, dominance and subordination, cooperation or separation can also be experienced, made tangible by the works and thus processable.