Overview

Trainings are based on the Post Induction Therapy (PIT) Training Model developed over 30 years by Pia Mellody of The Meadows Treatment Center, Wickenburg, AZ. The origin of the Model was developed when Pia discovered that a unique and clear pattern of consistent symptoms emerged in people who were being treated for mental health and addiction issues. She discovered that all the clients she worked with had the following 5 symptoms:

  • Difficulty Experiencing Appropriate Levels of Self Esteem
  • Difficulty setting and maintaining functional interpersonal boundaries
  • Difficulty owning their own reality
  • Difficulty acknowledging and meeting their own needs and wants
  • Difficulty expressing and experiencing their own reality moderately

Pia developed a treatment model based on these 5 core symptoms which cause a developmental arrest in an individual’s life and relationships. Helping clients to understand the reality of their early developmental experiences during their formative years, and how these experiences impact their lives and overall psychosocial functioning today, is an essential part of treatment. This model of therapy supports the development of a "functional adult" rather than an adult who has arrested development and unfulfilling relationships.

In the PIT Model, the word abuse, or as we prefer to call it, relational trauma, is defined in a broader range. Trauma is viewed and defined through "the eyes of the child." All relational trauma whether, physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual and/or spiritual as well as abandonment and neglect can create enormous difficulties in overall psychosocial functioning.

Learning about family of origin issues helps the clinician to have an enhanced understanding of how the child’s role(s) in the family is an adaptation to the parent’s needs. Exploration of how these assigned roles lead to a child absorbing and "carrying" their parent’s dis-regulated emotions internally will be addressed. This Model helps clients become aware that these "carried feelings" can contribute to rage, pain, depression, feelings of worthlessness, behavior of shamelessness as well as addictions which all can create havoc in the client’s life.

Additionally, understanding how feeling states are deeply connected to one’s thoughts as well as how they are somatically experienced in the body allowing clients to both regulate their emotions as well as embrace their gifts will be addressed. The ability to tolerate, regulate and create movement within the feeling experience is also a major emphasis.