What are you most concerned about?

Depression & Anxiety

It is no secret that Depression, Anxiety, and other Co-Occurring disorders are on the rise with young men and women all over the world https://www.bcbs.com/the-health-of-america/reports/major-depression-the-impact-overall-health There are many contributing factors to consider, but do quick-fix solutions get to the core of the issue? Or will they only address the hurts temporarily?

At Capstone, we’ve worked with hundreds of families navigating their son’s struggle with mental health. Our highly trained therapy team are well equipped to walk with families through a process of understanding and responding to their son’s Suicidal Ideation, Major Depression, Anxiety, ADHD/ADD, PTSD, Trauma, and more. Perhaps you have the nagging sense that there is something deeper in his inner life, invisible to others, but deeply painful for him. For us here at Capstone, we see these hurts below the surface as being similar to a volcano. When a volcano erupts the outside damage is easy to spot. You can see your son is deep in depression, or having suicidal thoughts, etc. and some might think that solving the problem is solely about stopping the negative thoughts. But that might only “solve” the problem the way putting an enormous stone on the volcano would “solve” an eruption. It would do nothing to address the pool of magma that fuels the eruption in the first place. Our clients and their families frequently discover that beneath the surface are many deeper wounds, feelings of shame, trauma, and other hurts that, unless resolved, will continue to erupt in various ways. The external symptom or problem that was “capped” with a stone will only hold firm temporarily, usually leading to other poor coping behaviors and other kinds of eruptions in seeking relief from the underlying wounds – expressed in other behaviors like self-harm, laying around in bed all day, disconnecting by playing video games, etc.

Our job at Capstone is to get to the core hurts your son is experiencing and address those underlying hurts. Going to the core (the magma) of the issue to find out what is causing the eruption in the first place. Is it bullying, betrayal, some other hurt? These are a few of the questions we have to ask to make the situation make sense. Our team is fully equipped to address these hurts and support your son – and your family – along the way.

Pornography & Sexual Compulsions

Our therapy team receives Certified Sexual Addiction Therapist training so they are fully equipped to approach and address sexual impulses, porn addiction, re-enactment, high risk sex, sexual abuse, and more. With increased access to technology comes more opportunity to stumble onto inappropriate content. We are in the midst of raising a generation that has grown up with the highest level of accessibility to sexually explicit content the world has ever seen. The age of first exposure to pornography has dropped to nearly 8 years old and some data would suggest even younger.  Sexual content can easily be found by accident, shared by a peer, or advertised to you on social platforms. Often labeled as a taboo topic, the impact porn exposure has on impressionable minds is significant and worth addressing. There are numerous reasons an individual may turn to porn as a coping mechanism – our team is here to help address the root cause of that behavior and help your son on the path to healing.

Substance Use

Capstone frames our approach with the following question – What makes this make sense? We have worked with hundreds of young men who would be labeled an “addict” without hesitation because of their significant substance abuse. We see more than just a label – we see a young man attempting to avoid or relieve some sort of hurt he has experienced. Though a misguided response to struggle, being high on a substance may be the only moment they feel relief from immense anxiety, depression, hurt, or trauma they have experienced. Our job at Capstone is to get to the core of this behavior and make sense of the question “What relief are you trying to find by using these substances?” Our therapy team is trained to find answers to these difficult questions and help your son begin to connect the dots from his hurts to his abuse of substances. We won’t just label your son as an addict, we will hear his story and help him on the path to healing.

Trauma & Its Effects

There is a common misconception that trauma is only experienced by those who have endured significant trials such as: War, Sexual Abuse, Domestic Violence, or other large scale hurts in that same vein. While those events are certainly traumatic, the reach of trauma is far more extensive. See: Toxic Shame section for more information on the impacts of trauma. Other words for “trauma” include: hurts, fears, betrayals, rejections, significant losses, and more. Our therapy team receives extensive trauma training to approach this crucial element in the therapy process. Capstone categorizes trauma into three main categories: Big T, Little T, and Chronic T trauma. Below are several examples of each and you may be surprised by the examples of trauma in our day-to-day lives.

Big T Trauma: Significant loss, death of loved one, sexual abuse, being bullied, miscarriage(s), betrayal, divorce (even when merited), abandonment, relinquishment, infidelity, invasive medical procedures, near-death experiences, and more.

Little T Trauma: Rejections, humiliation, major disappointments, moves that relocate you from friends and culture, failure in academics, sports, or other extracurricular activities, jobs, relationships, etc.

Chronic T Trauma: Ongoing environments that cause you to be on edge and hypervigilant. Chronic T’s are like living in smog. Chronic T’s can be the most damaging of all the traumas. While a Chronic T environment can include Big T and Little T events, a Chronic T is a 24/7 environment. Examples include after mom’s diagnosis of breast cancer and treatment that “almost got it all,” the daily fear that it will spread. Or mom and dad have an argument, and somebody throws out the word divorce, so the children begin to walk on eggshells trying not to rock the boat. Or a basketball coach who berates his players thinking that beating them down will make them stronger, so a player is facing it 24/7 – bracing for it before it happens, enduring it while it’s happening and functioning with the memory of it afterward. These are just a few examples of Chronic T Trauma.

Family Conflict

Family – The people closest to you can have the ability to hurt you the most. You may be trying to make sense of the current conflict and wondering if reconciliation could even be possible. We’ve worked with many families that were asking the same question. At Capstone, we view the family as the most vital piece to the puzzle. As with all the areas of struggle that Capstone deals with, family conflict has the power to damage, even destroy relationships – if it is not worked through. However, if worked through with family conflict counseling, it has the power to be transformative and grow relationships to a deeper level of connection and intimacy. Let us be your partners in reconciliation. Capstone offers 35-40 hours of family therapy during family week, including 15 hours of multi-family group and 20-25 hours of individual family therapy with their personal therapist. 1-hour check in call per week from admission through graduation. 1-hour check-in call per week for 12 weeks after graduation with your personal therapist. We also offer a “family tune-up” 3 to 6 months after treatment. This is a two-day experience to take inventory. All participants get to look where they are in the process, what’s working, and what adjustments need to be made.

Attachment Issues

Developing deep relationship within the family

Capstone has worked with many families whose son’s have initially been diagnosed with a disorder when they very well may have deep attachment wounds. Our team is trained to identify the hurts and get to the core issue. The fear of abandonment, physical and especially emotional abandonment, is at our core as human beings perhaps our greatest fear and thus our greatest hurt. Attachment disorder in teens and young adults lies on a continuum. On the severe end, Reactive Attachment Disorder or RAD is what we see when children were abandoned as toddlers and left to survive on the streets who develop a survival instinct reactivity that makes it difficult to develop relationships and navigate social settings. Attachment Disorder towards the moderate to mild end of the continuum is more associated with exploded or imploded anger reactivity, isolation, poor relational boundaries (either too hard or too soft), a deep aloneness and self-loathing because of feeling like they are rejectable, unworthy and unlovable. Many troubled teens and young adults will be given diagnoses of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Depression Disorder, Bi-Polar Disorder and others when in fact they have attachment wounds. We see this most often from kids that were relinquished by their birth mother and father, the primal wound, according to Kathy Verrier in her book by the same name. We also see in our western culture birth and adopted children with intact families who are not present emotionally and/or physically because of many different reasons, some unpreventable and others by choice. Attachment Disorder Treatment is basically about healing trauma and developing attachment capacity with approaches like our Canine Companion Therapy and more importantly developing deep relationships within the family.