How can drug courts use this CBT image to show how to overcome limiting beliefs and values? The map image shows the process. See page 15 of Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com.

Two drug court goals are: 1. Reduce Recidivism, and 2. Reduce the cost of crime and treatment. In order to do this, drug court clients need to know how their brains work.

Get on the beliefs train as soon as possible in the program. Your clients are not going to change their behavior long term unless you help them learn to change their limiting, anti-social, permission-granting, criminal thinking and conduct (CTC) beliefs and values about alcohol and other drugs (AOD).

BEMT, Belief Eye Movement Therapy is the way to fast-track belief changes. Each drug court should have its own practitioner. Contact me to discuss a training for your unit.

Use the map to help them with AA/NA Step Four.

CBT map image is from Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com

There will be no long-term behavior changes unless limiting, hurtful, permission-granting beliefs are changed first.

This is true for all of us who desire change in some area of our lives. Drug court and mandated clients are a good example to demonstrate.

There will be no long-term behavior changes unless permission-granting, criminal thinking and conduct (CTC) beliefs about alcohol and other drugs (AOD) are changed first, in the program, and as soon as possible.

This is verified by the ABC-DE Theory of Albert Ellis. Paraphrasing, he said, “It’s not the event that determines behavior, it’s the belief about the event. He added that the belief must be disputed and replaced by an empowering belief.

To explain, it is not the event (A) that determines the behavior (C). It is the belief (B) about the event (A) that determines the behavior (C).

The limiting beliefs must be disputed (D) and replaced by empowering beliefs (E) to be effective.

I designed BEMT to help anyone learn to do this; to help anyone change limiting beliefs to empowering beliefs that will help people to get the outcomes (consequences) they want.

We’ve all experienced the violent revolving door of the criminal justice system. Rape, robbery, arrest, due process, conviction, treatment prison, parole and right back in the system and prison.

Where does coaching come in? Are you teaching desistence?

It’s the criminal justice WPA annuity system. It’s like a Roth IRA distribution. It just keeps on paying and maybe no taxes.

Nothing is going to change unless we, the system change. “It” is not going to get better unless the way we deal with the problem “gets better.”

Drug courts are a good example. Nobody does it the same way. But everyone reports 84% success rates.

How can that be when the DOJ and CJS report 85% of parolees will return to prison by the 10th year?

Drug court clients are recidivating while in the program and on the day of graduation. Some are high on Meth while giving their graduation speeches.

Drug courts report 84% success rates because per their record keeping, there were no new arrests and convictions within a three-year period.

Within three years is the time period used to measure recidivism rates by these courts.

Another definition of recidivism is “thinking of or returning to criminal thinking ‘and’ conduct. No time limit.

Relapse, thinking of or returning to AOD, alcohol or other drugs use, and recidivism are processes. They do not respect a 36-month measuring stick.

To desist or recidivate is a choice. Offenders are not taught how to desist. They are haphazardly taught ‘relapse prevention.’

Plus – drug courts only care about compliance, not change. Reduce recidivism is goal number one followed by cost reduction.

You get what you think about. Is it better to have clients think about desistence or relapse?

There will be no long-term behavior changes unless you change anti-social, criminal thinking and conduct (CTC) beliefs and values involving AOD, alcohol and other drugs, first.

What is your specific CTC belief change protocol?

Your answer will determine the quality of your programs. I designed Belief Eye Movement Therapy, BEMT, to help CTC/AOD offenders achieve desistence.

Once desistence is reached, criminals who have issues with alcohol and other drugs learn to collapse those things that trigger them to use or do crime and reach transcendence.

If you would like to hear more about this CTC problem-solving ideas, I’m available for comments or training.

Please share this post if you found it interesting. And you can find more information at https://lnkd.in/g9JUVuVr

The CBT map image is from Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com

Do you know what’s missing in treatment for court mandated clients? Something to do with geographic standard of care as it relates to goals of treatment.

Maybe it’s not the clients’ fault when they violate the drug court contract. Question: What was done for the clients to reprogram the hard drive?

What needs to be done differently?

Clients will not change their criminal behavior unless core beliefs about CTC, criminal thinking and conduct involving alcohol and other drugs (AOD) are changed first.

No B (behavior change) therefore, No A (change of core beliefs).

“Changing thoughts is not enough to get ongoing positive outcomes. We must change our [permission-granting (Beck)] core beliefs and [values].”

“Sometimes, these beliefs are so deep we are not aware of them.” Wanberg and Milkman, (Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment).

Beck, Milkman, Ellis, ABC-DE Theory, and others have emphasized the importance of changing core beliefs and values in order to effect behavior change.

Do you think this will happen magically because someone attended a tedious class for 12 months? Clinicians can get bored of the same old routine day in and day out for years.

This comes across in the delivery of the program. Counselors start to show movies, go out and play basketball, dance, do aroma therapy, etc. Anything but the program.

Clients and the world are not going to get better automatically. We, the counselors must get better.

The wind is going to blow the same this year as it did last year. We need to learn to reap the wind.

Anti-social, permission-granting, criminal thinking and conduct core beliefs and values won’t change by themselves. This requires specific skills on the part of the counselors.

Belief Eye Movement Therapy™, BEMT™, is the most effective and cost-efficient way to help clients explore and resolve their anti-social beliefs and values that lead to CTC, R&R, recidivism, and relapse.

It is “Belief Specific” counseling and therapy.

Some of the beliefs can be changed in 20 minutes to one hour. Imagine how much time and money that would save. Imagine discovering and changing the “driver core belief” in the first few days or weeks.

Subsequent limiting beliefs could collapse like dominoes.

If you would like to learn more about this, I’m available for comments or training.

If you found this of interest, please share it. And you can find more information at https://lnkd.in/g9JUVuVr

The CBT map image is from Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com

There are two primary goals of mandated treatment programs such as drug court. They are: 1. Reduce Recidivism and 2. Lower the cost of crime and treatment.

For the State of Hawaii, it costs $39,000.00-$40,000.00 per year to house drug offenders and others convicted of crime in the state. Many of the convicted offenders are housed in Arizona at Saguaro State Prison.

In Arizona it costs $90,000.00 per year to house the same clients convicted and sentenced for longer periods.

Now comes drug court, with the promise that “if you complete the 12-month drug court class, we will drop your charges and expunge your record.”

Approximately 50% of clients graduate from the program. It is possible to improve graduation success rates by lowering the standards, rules, and regulations.

Why drug courts? The number one reason stated is “it costs less.” Consider an in-community drug court program that costs less than $12,000.00 per year. That is a nice savings per person. At least $27,000.00 per year. When you consider that some of the sentences could have been from five to over 100 years it looks like a bargain. But is it?

The criminal justice system reports that 85% of released offenders will return to prison within 10 years. Drug courts report successes based on a three-year window. They report an 84% success rate.

Recidivism is defined as returning to criminal thinking and/or conduct (CTC). Many drug court clients are high on crystal methamphetamine or their drug of choice at their graduation ceremonies. Drug court graduates are supplying other graduates with illicit drugs the same day. Is that success?

This means there has been no change in behavior for these graduates who have faked it until they completed the class as spelled out in the sentence agreement: no criminal behavior.

Clients will not change their criminal behavior unless core beliefs about CTC, criminal thinking and conduct involving alcohol and other drugs (AOD) are changed first.

No B (behavior change) therefore, No A (change of core beliefs).

“Changing thoughts is not enough to get ongoing positive outcomes. We must change our [permission-granting (Beck)] core beliefs and [vaues]. Sometimes, these beliefs are so deep we are not aware of them.” Wanberg and Milkman, (Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment).

Belief Eye Movement Therapy™, BEMT™, is the most effective and cost-efficient way to help clients explore and resolve their anti-social beliefs and values that lead to CTC, R&R, recidivism, and relapse. Some of the beliefs can be changed in 20 minutes to one hour. Imagine how much time and money that would save. I’m available for comments or training.

Belief Eye Movement Therapy, BEMT is a Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT, intervention that can be performed and used by anyone. Of course, training is required first. It is ideal for treatment of substance use disorders, AOD use disorders.

One does not need a master’s degree or PhD to do this work for others.

It is also useful for help with criminal thinking and conduct. It is therefore useful for DBT interventions.

Drug courts want to reduce recidivism and reduce cost of crime and treatment.

Drug courts should do this for mandated clients. Belief Eye Movement Therapy is used to change limiting, harmful, permission-granting beliefs about CTC, criminal thinking and conduct involving alcohol and other drugs AOD. Treatment providers want to do this as soon as possible in treatment without endangering rapport, according to Judith S. Beck, Cognitive Behavior Theory

“There will be no long-term behavior changes unless you first change limiting, anti-social, permission-granting core beliefs and values of the clients” to paraphrase Wanberg and Milkman.

Why would you wait to elicit and change these core beliefs? How specifically are you doing that now? If you do not have a specific belief change intervention for your clients, then this is for you.

For people who want to learn how to help others with BEMT, training consists of reading and studying theory, taking tests to assure comprehension and recall and practical training allowing the practitioner to learn how to do the methods properly and demonstrate effective skills.

Each drug court should have at least one skilled practitioner onboard to help mandated clients to change.

Upon satisfactory completion the participant will be given a certificate declaring the holder is a Certified BEMT Practitioner.

The basis of theory for this treatment protocol is based upon the works of Albert Ellis, REBT and ABC-DE Theory and Aaron Beck, Cognitive Behavior theorist and originator. The works of Francine Shapiro, Steve Andreas and John Grinder are also components.

Briefly stated and paraphrased, “behavior (C) is not based on events (A), but rather beliefs (B) about (A). Ergo, ABC Theory. Ellis went on to advise that we must Dispute (D) these beliefs and replace them with (E), empowering beliefs. This allows the client to be free of the pain of traumatic past events and move on to have a happier, more fulfilling life.

That is the goal of BEMT. Additionally, BEMT can be used for chronic pain relief in some cases.

Methods and patterns

Client presents with an issue such as not being happy with success and failures of life. Using various attending skills, the practitioner fleshes out what she/he believes to be limiting beliefs in a certain area of the client’s life. Non-validation in childhood might lead to “I don’t deserve success.”

This is discussed with and verified by the client before moving on. The process is a collaboration, meeting the client where she is at and then take her where she wants/needs to go, ABC-DE.

The client is instructed to say the limiting belief simply as possible.

The practitioner then instructs the client to describe the strength or pain of the belief on a scale of 1-10, 10 being really, strong and 0-1 being acceptable. As pain is a warning sign, we would not want to eliminate it completely.

Horizontal, vertical, circular, and diagonal hand/pointer movements are used. The client is instructed to follow the fingers or pointer of the practitioner with her eyes without moving her head while repeating the statement. This is continued for as long as it takes to see, hear, and feel the positive results.

As this statement is repeated the numeric strength of the statement is ratcheted down. The process is repeated for as long as it takes to get to 0-1. If the feeling or belief is diminished such that the client feels it is acceptable, we then go on to replace the “old You” limiting belief with a “new you” empowering belief. “I deserve to be successful. “Thus, ABC-DE. The brain is doing the disputing and reprocessing.

The client constructed a new empowering belief (E) that may only be a 0-1 initially. We then begin to ratchet up that belief using the BEMT hand/pointer movements until we reach 9-10, which is E.

This is a thumbnail sketch of the process. I am available for staff trainings by Zoom or live. For more details, please call or message me. Ph: 1 808 385 4550.

If you are having problems due to painful, limiting, shadow beliefs created by events of the past or present then BEMT, Belief Eye Movement Therapy could be for you.

What is BEMT? Good question. It is a hand-eye movement method that kind of reshuffles or rebalances the brain and the way information has been stored.

It is very effective for events caused by trauma, alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems and criminal thinking and conduct (CTC) treatment.

We can arrange Zoom meetings to answer questions and eliminate problems. Let me know.

Ph: 808 385 4550

Think of your task as a visual continuum. “Imagery” is the key with this intervention.

The Old You – New You gap below is the change time period involved. It can represent one hour, one day, one intervention or decades. Some say Stages of Change.

“The Old You _________________________________________ “The New You”

Compare and contrast the don’t want (Old You) image (left) with the ideal (New You) image desired (right).

The “Old You” don’t want could be abusing alcohol and other drugs. It could be anger management problems. Any kind of abuse. CTC.

The “New You” compelling image on the right is the person you want to be. See it, V, hear it, A, and feel it, K. VAK. Use all your senses to anchor this desired state.

Consider ‘Old You’ problems and consequences as you do this. On the left, construct a picture or a hologram of yourself in that situation (using alcohol or other drugs, under arrest, in jail, hiding…) that you definitely do not want anymore. Compare that with what you do want, on the right.

Everyone has issues. Attorneys and clinicians can choose a personal problem to work on as you read this. We all have issues. Right? Choice is better than no choice.

Give yourself a break today. You have a choice. It’s not hopeless and you are fully capable. 

You can see a change map on page 15 of Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com.

The CLE class for Judges and Attorneys cover this in detail. So does the CEU class at standokmanus.com.
The CEU class is available at Udemy – https://lnkd.in/g9JUVuVr

If you want help with an alcohol or other drug problem, referred to as a Substance Use Disorder, you have come to the right place. I care about your life, family and your happiness.

I am a certified substance abuse counselor – with 38 years of sobriety. I’ve had no triggers, cravings or urges since my clean date. Some call this their Birthday.

Not your belly button birthday. Your “New You” clean and sober date. I’ve noticed that people who are serious about and successful with sobriety know their ‘clean date’ when asked. Even if they’ve never heard the term, they get it.

A clean and sober date is the day you committed to abstinence and maintained it. After 38 years I believe I have “Transcended” what was a deadly, progressive problem for me. I surely would have been dead by now. Nothing has killed more people than alcohol diseases, accidents and crimes.

If you are committed to sobriety, and you truly want to put the disease and harmful behavior behind you, Congratulations! You will find the truth here.

But remember, “Above all, to thine own self be true!” Remember that phrase. Why? That’s a fair question. Here’s the answer:

“The Man in the Glass”
By Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr.
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He’s the fellow to please – never mind all the rest
For he’s with you, clear to the end
And you’ve passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.”

Digest that thought. You can copy this and tape it around your house, office, or anywhere that it will help you. Frame it and put it in a place of importance in your house. Put it where it will be a constant reminder.

You can bs me all you want. And get pats on the back by your bs slippery people user friends too. But..?

You’ll get a lot of that here. Here’s the deal. You have formed some very limiting, permission-granting beliefs about alcohol and other drug use. We need to undo those limiting, harmful beliefs first.

Then we will replace them with new, healthy, empowering beliefs that will get you what you truly want?

Let me ask you: 1. What do you really want? 2. How will you know when you get it? 3. What is stopping you?

Whether you are looking for help with AOD, alcohol and other drug problems, or you are a counselor who needs CEUs, continuing education units, you will find it here under the classes tab above. Click on classes and get the information to meet your goals.

If you want help with a drug or alcohol problems, you can call me at 808 385 4550. Feel free to read the post in this blog. They were all written with you in mind.

MI, Motivational Interviewing skills are useful in treatment for drug court clients. So is knowing ‘tells’ and baseline cues.

You might use a MI question like, “if you could picture yourself successfully completing drug court, what would that look like?”

You might notice that your right-handed client looks ‘up to the right’. This is a visual construct. It’s a normal response for a right-handed person.

A leftie would be the opposite, usually.

Some say you can tell if a person is telling the truth or lying by watching their eye movements, skin tone and body language. These are called sensory acuity skills. They are next level skills.

There will be no long-term behavior changes for criminal offenders unless you first address and change permission-granting core beliefs and values. This is part of that change process.

That means there will be no reduction in relapse or costs of crime and treatment if you don’t change the clients’ belief systems first.

This is another skill level regarding meeting your clients where they are. You are establishing a baseline for how clients respond.

These concepts are covered in detail in the “Criminal Justice and Addictions Counseling” CEU/CLE classes at standokmanus.com.

You can take the class on Udemy also. “Criminal Justice and Addictions Counseling.”

The CBT map image below helps to explain the criminal-addict behavior cycle to clients. You can visually show them and discuss where they got tripped up in the cognitive behavior cycle.

Beliefs lead to behavior according to Albert Ellis, ABC-DE Theory. This is true for us too. The map image is from Drug Court Treatment: The Verdict. Amazon.com

If you would like to discuss your problems with alcohol and other drugs you can call me now at 808 385 4550.