Trauma-Informed Care
At Crossroads, trauma-informed care starts with understanding you as a whole person, rather than placing you on a treatment track that doesn’t fit your recovery needs.
Trauma can affect much more than your memories of difficult experiences. It can influence substance use, mental health, relationships, emotional regulation, and your ability to feel safe or trust others. If you’re living with both trauma and a substance use disorder (SUD), entering treatment may bring its own challenges.
The purpose isn’t to force you to relive painful memories – it’s to create a treatment environment where you can build safety, develop practical coping skills, and have a voice in your care so you can continue recovery in a way that works for you.
How Trauma-Informed Practices Shape Treatment
At Crossroads, trauma-informed practices are integrated throughout our residential “right track” and outpatient programs, from the initial assessment and planning through therapy, peer support, family involvement, and ongoing care.
Examples of ways that Crossroads integrates these practices include:
- Comprehensive assessment: Crossroads considers your symptoms, risks, goals, health history, and individual circumstances during the assessment process so your treatment team can better understand the support you may need.
- Individualized treatment planning: When you start treatment, you’ll receive a treatment plan based on your specific goals, needs, and circumstances. You’re involved in developing that plan and identifying what you want to accomplish during treatment.
- Co-occurring mental health support: Crossroads treats people who are experiencing substance use disorders alongside mental health challenges. This can be especially important when trauma, anxiety, depression, or other emotional concerns are affecting recovery.
- Therapy and peer support: Trauma-aware care continues through individual and group counseling, psychoeducational programming, behavioral health support, and peer mentoring. These services give you opportunities to develop coping skills and connect with people who understand the recovery process.
- Family involvement: When appropriate, Crossroads can coordinate with your family or support system as part of treatment and planning for what comes next.
- Ongoing evaluation: Your treatment team continues to look at your progress throughout treatment and adjust your plan and support when needed.
Why Choose Crossroads
- Joint Commission accredited & Licensed by ADHS
- Provides over $300,000 yearly to those that can’t afford treatment
- Largest substance abuse treatment provider in Arizona A+ BBB Rating
- Non Profit
- Serving the recovery community for over 65 years
- Serves over 1500 meals per day
- Major insurance accepted. Verify Now!
Creating a Safe Treatment Environment
A trauma-informed environment should give you room to feel respected and supported while you work through difficult changes. At Crossroads, safety starts with recognizing that people enter treatment with different experiences, concerns, and levels of trust.
That can include:
| Area of Support | How Crossroads Supports Clients |
| Individualized assessment | Your physical health, mental health, substance use, goals, and support needs are considered when treatment begins. |
| Peer connection | Peer mentors bring lived recovery experience into treatment and can provide support from someone who understands what early recovery can feel like. |
| Multiple recovery pathways | Crossroads offers options including 12-Step programming, SMART Recovery, and trauma-focused support so treatment isn’t built around one single approach. |
| Specialized referrals | When needs extend beyond the services available through Crossroads, the team can help connect you with mental health, medical, or community resources. |
The idea is to create enough safety, consistency, and respect for you to take part in treatment without feeling pressured to disclose more than you’re ready to share.
Staff Training and Trauma Awareness
Trauma-informed care depends on having staff who understand addiction and the mental health concerns that can accompany it. Crossroads invests in ongoing clinical training that includes areas such as group facilitation, individual sessions, treatment planning, clinical workflow, and discharge planning.
Many Crossroads staff members are also in recovery themselves. Peer mentoring is a major part of the Crossroads model, giving residents and clients access to people who understand what addiction and early recovery can feel like firsthand.
Crossroads also offers Peer Recovery Support Specialist certification opportunities to clients and alumni who want to use their recovery experience to support others. That emphasis on giving back is part of a larger culture where people who’ve been helped can eventually become a source of help for someone else.
Supporting Different Types of Trauma
Trauma can take many forms, and everyone’s experience is different. You may come to treatment with experiences involving childhood trauma, family trauma, sexual trauma, PTSD, grief, domestic violence, or other difficult life experiences.
Rather than applying the same approach to everyone, Crossroads considers how those experiences may be affecting substance use, mental health, relationships, coping, and recovery.
This can include:
- Trauma-focused curriculum: Seeking Safety is used in some Crossroads outpatient programming. It focuses on practical coping and safety skills while addressing both trauma and substance use without requiring you to process traumatic experiences in detail.
- Lived-experience support: Peer mentors can offer encouragement, connection, and perspective based on their own experience with addiction and recovery.
- Referrals when needed: When trauma-related needs require specialized services beyond what Crossroads provides, referrals can help connect you with additional care.
The focus isn’t on treating every type of trauma with a separate protocol. It’s on recognizing trauma, understanding how it may affect recovery, and helping you access the support that makes sense for your circumstances.
Trauma-Informed and Evidence-Based Therapies
Crossroads uses several therapeutic and recovery approaches, allowing treatment to draw from different tools rather than relying on one method for everyone.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT can help you recognize connections between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and develop healthier ways to respond to challenges.
- Individual and group counseling: Counseling provides opportunities to explore substance use, mental health, triggers, coping skills, relationships, and other concerns that may affect recovery.
- SMART Recovery: Crossroads offers SMART Recovery as one of its recovery pathways for clients who prefer a secular, evidence-based approach.
- 12-Step Facilitation: Crossroads has deep roots in the 12-Step recovery community and offers 12-Step meetings throughout its campuses.
- Trauma-focused support: Crossroads also incorporates trauma-focused therapy and trauma-informed approaches into its broader treatment model.
Having several approaches available can give you more ways to build coping skills, understand patterns, connect with others, and find tools that make sense for your recovery.
How Trauma Treatment Supports Recovery
When trauma and substance use overlap, addressing one without considering the other can leave important parts of your experience unaddressed. Treatment that recognizes trauma can help you better understand the experiences, emotions, and situations that may contribute to substance use.
Treatment can provide opportunities to:
- Identify triggers and patterns connected with substance use.
- Develop healthier coping strategies.
- Build greater awareness of emotions and responses to stress.
- Reduce shame around difficult experiences.
- Strengthen relationships and supportive connections.
- Develop practical skills for navigating challenging situations.
- Address mental health concerns alongside substance use.
- Connect with specialized trauma services when needed.
These skills can support sustainable recovery, but recovery isn’t always predictable or easy. You may experience cravings, difficult emotions, or setbacks along the way. The purpose of this type of care isn’t to promise that those challenges will disappear. It’s to help you develop more tools and support for responding to them.
What Makes Trauma-Informed Care Different at Crossroads?
At Crossroads, trauma-informed care is about more than what happens during treatment. It’s also about creating a sense of belonging, connection, and support throughout recovery.
From the moment you arrive, the people around you understand that addiction can come with experiences that aren’t easy to explain. Crossroads has been part of Arizona’s recovery community since 1960, and much of its culture has been shaped by people with lived experience who’ve chosen to come back and help others.
- “Welcome Home” from day one: Crossroads’ message of “Welcome Home” reflects a commitment to helping people feel accepted, supported, and part of a recovery community from the start.
- A workforce with lived experience: Many Crossroads staff members have personal recovery experience, bringing firsthand understanding into the treatment environment.
- Peer mentoring throughout recovery: Crossroads incorporates peer mentoring into its programming, giving you access to people who’ve faced many of the same challenges and understand what the work of recovery can look like.
- Long-term connection: You’re encouraged to remain connected to Crossroads and the recovery community after formal treatment through aftercare, meetings, alumni involvement, and peer support.
- Multiple pathways to recovery: Crossroads offers 12-Step programming, SMART Recovery, trauma-focused support, and other approaches rather than assuming one recovery model will work for everyone.
- Deep roots in the recovery community: Since 1960, Crossroads has built strong connections throughout Arizona’s recovery community and continues to host recovery meetings across its campuses.
For Crossroads, treatment is about giving people a community, practical tools, and connections they can continue to rely on as they build a life in recovery.
Begin Trauma-Informed Treatment at Crossroads
You don’t have to explain everything you’ve been through before you’re ready. Trauma-informed care at Crossroads gives you space to begin recovery with people who will listen, respect your experiences, and help you find the support you need.
Crossroads has been part of Arizona’s recovery community since 1960, and many of the people you’ll meet here understand recovery firsthand. Call our admissions specialists at (602) 263-5242 to talk about your treatment options and find the right place to begin.
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