People’s emotions and behavior are connected. Negative thoughts and emotions can lead to inappropriate coping methods, such as using substances or having unsafe sex. However, with the proper skills and tools, you can manage your emotions and control your behavior.

Why Treat Negative Patterns of Behavior?

Stigmas, or negative attitudes and beliefs, against people with mental health disorders continue to exist in society, even though more and more people are open and honest about their mental health. When people hold prejudice against a whole group of people, it can impede people from seeking help when they have more serious mental concerns.

Negative behavior can be normal like a child throwing a tantrum because they do not know how to communicate. However, some negative behaviors can be learned to help a person survive. For example, if a child does not get their needs met at home, like food, they may turn to stealing or bullying to get what they need. Their behavior can continue into adulthood, even if they learn right from wrong. This is because the negative behavior helped and protected them in the past. As a result, they will continue to engage in this behavior.

Treating negative patterns of behavior, especially early on, can help break cycles of trauma, mental illness, poverty, and other negative life outcomes.

Therapies to Combat Negative Symptoms of Mental Illness

With three locations in California, Alter Behavioral Health provides compassionate, judgment-free care to help you understand and manage your mental health. This is done primarily through cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

Exploring CBT

During negative experiences of traumas, especially in childhood, a person can learn unhealthy behaviors and ways of surviving. For example, if a child grows up in a home where their parents neglect them, they may attempt to do anything to make their parents happy and pay attention to them. This can cause that child to grow up insecure in relationships or a people-pleaser with an underlying disorder.

With disorders like anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), CBT is used to identify patterns of thinking and false beliefs. When you can identify and see what you are doing to harm yourself, it is easier to change that behavior or stop it.

What Else Does Alter Behavioral Health Offer to Help with Negative Patterns?

From birth until approximately 17 years of age, traumatic experiences are called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). During these experiences, a person may not receive the proper teachings that help them become an independent adult. Since ACEs affect a person’s psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being, Alter Behavioral Health offers five other support services besides CBT or other therapies.

#1. Holistic Approach

The first service you will receive at Alter Behavior Health is a holistic approach to your healing and treatment. Your symptoms of anxiety, depression, or whatever is ailing you do not define you. There is more to you than your negative thinking or behavior.

Holistic treatment, or whole-person wellness, focuses on the whole person’s wellness and health, not just the symptoms of your disorder. That way, you get to heal all aspects of yourself that were harmed.

#2. Individual and Group Support

With Alter Behavioral Health, you receive a minimum of two individual therapy sessions a week for the duration of your treatment. This is combined with various group therapies to support you while you heal. While some parts of your healing are private and just for you to share with your therapist as you are ready, other parts of treatment require others’ help.

When you have only ever known dysfunction in your family, social life, school, work, or other parts of your life, you would not have learned appropriate behavior or interactions. Through group therapy and psychoeducational groups, you learn how to communicate with others and be in a community with them. Within that, you learn appropriate group functions, such as family dynamics or navigating a program with someone you do not like.

#3. Medication Management

When you have a mental health disorder, the chemicals in your brain may be processed or produced at different rates than others. This can cause intense emotions, impaired comprehension, and more. Sometimes medications can help balance out those chemicals, helping your body produce them or providing hormones.

Medications can be beneficial in the early stages of healing, or in general, depending on your disorder. When you go through Alter Behavioral Health’s programs, you receive education on your existing medications, adjustments to medications or dosage, and help to keep to your medication schedule. Having assistance with your medication provides stress relief and allows you to focus on other aspects of healing.

#4. Family and Community Services

Regardless, while you are there with others in treatment, it can sometimes feel isolating. From your first week at Alter Behavioral Health, you receive support and encouragement to reach out to your family. During treatment, you will work on reconnecting with your social circle. If your previous social circle was unhealthy, you can receive support through therapy on how to establish a new social network.

During treatment, you are healing from psychological, physical, social, and emotional trauma. That is very sensitive work. You should not be on that journey alone, which is why establishing social connections is essential in treatment.

#5. Treatment and Discharge Planning

You know yourself best, meaning you should be part of your treatment planning. At Alter Behavioral Health, you can meet with your medical doctor weekly to discuss your progress and specific needs.

While in treatment, you receive near-constant support. Returning to your life without that support can feel scary, unknown, and alien. This is why another support service is helping you plan for discharge, prepare you to return home, and establish post-discharge plans.

Do you find yourself doing things months ago you would not have? Are you struggling with your thoughts and actions? This could be a sign that something internal needs attention. Due to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), you can learn unhealthy ways of coping, which is a survival technique. At Alter Behavioral Health, without judgment and with compassion, we can help you identify unhealthy behavior and thought patterns. From this, our clinical team can help you understand how to manage your emotions with the skills to back them up. With our evidence-based therapies, you can work with your medical doctor to design a treatment plan. Contact us today at (866) 691-4386.