Holistic Recovery: A Trauma-Informed, Integrative Health Approach to Treating Addiction

Course overview

Addiction is rarely just about the substance. Beneath most substance use disorders is a dysregulated nervous system shaped by trauma, chronic stress, and unmet needs, a system doing its best to survive. In this workshop, participants will explore an integrative, trauma informed framework for understanding and treating addiction that addresses the whole person through a biopsychosocial spiritual lens, body (somatic), mind (cognitive), heart (emotional relational), and soul (existential greater meaning). Participants will learn to organize the landscape of integrative and complementary interventions using three practical lenses: which domain of the person an intervention primarily engages, which nervous system state it is best suited to, and how it is delivered, from clinician-led modalities to client-directed practices to foundational health behaviors. Along the way, the workshop examines the current evidence supporting these approaches and models a clinically grounded perspective on popular frameworks such as polyvagal theory, distinguishing what research supports from what remains under debate. Participants will leave with a practical framework for matching integrative interventions to a client's presenting state and most depleted domain, sequencing care so that insight-oriented work builds upon a foundation of regulation and connection, and identifying resources for continued learning and exploration.