Life Management Resources

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All treatment programs were not created equally!

If you are looking to get your life on a healthy footing, we look forward to visiting with you. 

Life Management Resources is uniquely qualified to provide an unparalleled level of chemical dependency treatment services.  The success of treatment is based on the quality of the material presented, the education and capability of the presenter, and the commitment to patient care of the entire staff.

Dr. Fred J. Hansen, creator of the inspiring film about chemical dependency Finding Hope, is the Clinical Director and is personally responsible for the creation of the protocol selection provided at each session.  He remembers a time when he first began working at a psychiatric hospital, being asked to lead a group.  He asked, “What is the topic?”  The reply was, “you can talk about macramé if you want.”  The handouts he felt were insulting and did not respect the person who had come to the facility for help.  Copies of copies that were barely legible and written for a juvenile audience.

He vowed that this would never continue on his watch.  When he created Life Management Resources in 1999, he began the task of writing important, significant protocols that would touch each patient emotionally, that would direct them towards the understanding of a new skill they would need to develop.  The Life Management Resources Protocol Development Library today is over 8,000 pages of material, divided into 24 specific sessions covered in the eight week program.  There is no other treatment program with a structure that begins to compare to that of Life Management Resources.

However, the success of the program only starts with the printed material.  The presentation of the material in group by Fred Hansen or his therapists' is exciting, challenging, involving and full of excitement.  Breaking midway into gender specific groups, the women’s group and the men’s group continue to process in emotionally charged sessions that allow each patient to process their own difficulties in dealing with the topic of the evening.

In individual sessions which meet each week, the counselors continue to embrace the efforts of each patient, encouraging them, supporting them, and prayerfully motivating them to a life of recovery.        Fred Hansen encourages family sessions to allow the entire family to begin the process of healing.  He is active in facilitating these sessions as well as couples counseling for those in the program.

If you need help, or you are a family member needing help – reach out!  Call us, we can arrange for you to visit the program, no cost, no commitment – just see if the exceptional programs of LMR may be right for you!

If you are reaching out for help for the first time or the final time, help is available and recovery is possible. There is a time and a place in your life when you know that it is the right moment to act. If this is the time, we are prepared to walk side by side with you down the road of recovery.

If you are a family member realizing that the time has come when something has to be done, we welcome you and will work with you to encourage recovery on the part of your family member.

The American Psychiatric Association classifies alcoholism and drug addiction as a progressive, chronic and lethal disease if left untreated. Addiction does not go away. Denial on the part of addicts and their families only continues the insanity.

Life Management Resources exists to provide the highest standard of professional therapeutic treatment, education and recovery support service to clients and their families. In a variety of programs, we focus on identifying not only the presenting needs of the client, but the historical and environmental effects that may be negatively impacting their progress and recovery.

Working hand in hand with our clients, we develop a treatment plan that provides opportunity for growth and personal development, not only for the client, but integrated to include the family as well. Life Management Programs are available to participants from the age of 17 and up.

With our new Joint Commission Accreditation, we will now be able to work with almost all major health insurance carriers.  We are also one of the largest NorthStar providers in Collin County and work on a sliding scale with all program participants to insure that cost is not a barrier to treatment. Our goal is to provide the quality and quantity of care necessary to meet the challenges of your life based on a mutual assessment of your needs.

This is the work we do and why we do it (and why we created Finding Hope).

Twelve weeks ago, I received a call from Marcia L., her son had been taken to a local hospital overdosed from heroin. He’ll survive this one, today he’s lucky. Not an uncommon call, sadly I get these frequently. What is troubling is that he, like so many others, had been “flirting” with an overdose for sometime – pushing the limit of how much he used as his brain worked to compensate for the quantities he was ingesting and not allowing him the high he once experienced.

I asked Marcia to bring her son Eric over to my office the day he discharged; I like to have the opportunity to visit with them while they are still feeling the physical and psychological effects of what they have done. We had a great visit; I was able to help Eric understand that he did have a problem with drugs (you ask of course why that wouldn’t be obvious). I helped him understand why “denial” kept him from confronting the disease he suffered from. I helped him understand that drugs and alcohol were not the problem – that they were the solution! Yes, drugs and alcohol were the solution to the difficulties he faced each day, the fears of the past he faced, the trauma he perceived he experienced when his mom and dad divorced 8 years ago.

I explained to Eric that for me to ask him to quit drinking and drugging, without giving him the skills, support, and counseling to confront the issues he faces, would be like asking a police officer to take off his Kevlar vest and go out onto the streets without it. Certainly no one in their right mind would do such a thing.

No wonder Eric is so fearful of quitting. No wonder his mother’s admonition to quit, “Eric, if you would just quit using drugs everything would be OK,” doesn’t work. If Eric quit using drugs, he fears he would be totally overwhelmed and probably die from the experience.

Finally I talked to Eric about the tools I could teach him. I helped him understand the way working on his self-esteem would allow him to take a more confident stand against the difficulties he faced. I helped him understand the way learning better communication skills would enable him to ask for and receive more of what he wanted and needed from other people.

I helped him understand the way conflict management and anger management would lessen the emotional swings he experiences that lead him back to a feeling of defeat and ultimately to relapse.

I helped him understand the way a daily stress management program would keep his life better balanced – physically, mentally and spiritually.

I helped him understand that the resentments he carried around with him, the burden of the offenses of other people against him – only served to weigh him down and keep him from becoming the man he could be. I helped him understand what “forgiveness” meant. That forgiving was for him, not for others. That he could learn to forgive and by doing so could learn to live a life that was happy, joyful and free.

I helped his mother understand how some of her behaviors contributed to enabling Eric and that those behaviors would need to change. I helped her understand that the family becomes as sick as the one we call the “identified patient.”

Finally I helped Eric understand the value of the support he could get and would benefit from by participating in a 12-Step program like AA or NA, not to mention the benefit from participating in spiritual activities at his church.

Eric understood. Eric knew it was time. Eric started in the program.

A program of recovery is perhaps the hardest thing a person will ever have to do. It requires changing the way we think, feel and behave. None of which come easy. Yet people do it everyday!

Eric participated in the program for over three months and grew stronger day by day. He graduated a month ago and has three months of sobriety. He is working at Starbucks and starts training at a vocational school in a couple of months. His mother is beginning to feel the peace she deserves. Eric is feeling the peace he worked for.

I am fortunate I had an hour to talk with Eric and his mom. I get to do this several hundred times a year. I am thankful to God for what He allows me to do. I am thankful for the hundreds of lives we get to save each year.

Yet I am just one person, operating one substance abuse treatment program, in one small city, in a huge country where 35,000,000 are suffering from chemical dependency. Only 5-6% of them will ever walk into a drug and alcohol rehab center for help, and so I wondered, “if they won’t come me (or one the other 10,000 or so drug and alcohol treatment programs around our great country) maybe I can go to them!” So I decided to write a book about my counseling sessions with those seeking addiction therapy, which proved to be very effective in getting them to participate in a chemical dependency treatment. But a friend of mine suggested that I make it into a sobriety video about overcoming addiction, so anyone could sit and watch from the comfort and serenity of their own home. I totally agreed (thanks Carol).

And so, a simple therapist in a small town, with the help and support of dozens of friends and family, began to make such a movie.

A friend once told me to set great goals and then just get started – “don’t try and work out all the details, those will find a way to take care of themselves in time.” Lots of details came up and answers were found as soon as they arose. I live in the knowledge that my life is being directed by the God I serve. I live in the knowledge that whatever my needs are, God will answer. I live in the knowledge that when I devote myself to a life of service, blessings will follow.

And so with the help of my beloved wife Marieta, my friends Martin, Bryan, Randy, Michael, Meagan, Cindy, Kimberly (my daughter and administrator of our program), Trent, Universe, Dan, Randy M., Miss Ann, Frederick, Christy, Mark, and the kids who helped - my grandson Spencer and my little friend Katie in Texarkana, we made a movie.

Finding Hope is wonderful! It is joyful!

It is the conversation I had with Eric and his mom – complete with the testimony of dozens of others who have so successfully overcome addiction.

It is a conversation that will touch your heart, fill your eyes with tears, fill your heart with hope, and lead you to a place of joy.

Finding Hope is “Finding Hope.”

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