the warrior workshop

The most transformative work our clients do — and the hardest

The Warrior Workshop is not a group session or a lecture. It’s an immersive, experiential two-day intensive where our clients do the kind of deep emotional work that most people spend years avoiding. For many of the men at Choice House, it becomes a turning point.

What Is the Warrior Workshop?

Traditional therapy is valuable. But talking about painful experiences only goes so far. The Warrior Workshop takes a different approach — one that’s increasingly recognized across the addiction and mental health field as among the most effective forms of trauma healing available.

Over two intensive days, clients move beyond conversation into structured experiential work: revisiting, processing, and beginning to release the emotional weight they’ve been carrying — often for decades. It’s challenging. It’s also where real change happens.

Because our clients participate in the residential program for 90 days, most men have the opportunity to go through the Warrior Workshop more than once, allowing them to go deeper with each experience as their recovery strengthens.

Why Timing Matters

Not every man is ready for this work on day one of treatment — and that’s by design.

Before entering the Warrior Workshop, our clients spend time building the foundational skills that make deep trauma work possible: emotional regulation, grounding techniques, and a growing sense of safety within themselves and their community. That preparation isn’t a delay — it’s what makes the workshop safe and effective.

Running this kind of intensive with men in early recovery requires both clinical precision and genuine experience. It’s not something every therapist can do. We take that seriously.

What Is Pyschodrama?

Psychodrama is the primary modality used in the Warrior Workshop, and it’s worth understanding what that actually means

Rather than simply talking about a difficult experience from the past, psychodrama allows a person to re-enter it — in a structured, therapist-guided setting — and work through it in real time. Other group members may take on roles in the process. What was internal and stuck becomes something that can be seen, felt, and ultimately shifted

It sounds unusual. In practice, it’s one of the most powerful therapeutic tools in existence for trauma, grief, shame, and relational wounds — which happen to be at the root of most addiction

Alongside psychodrama, the workshop draws on sociometry: a method for understanding the relational dynamics within a group. It helps clients see how they connect, distance themselves, and relate to others — often revealing patterns they’ve never consciously recognized

The Family Warrior Workshop

Addiction doesn’t happen in isolation — and neither does healing.

Once during the 90-day program, as graduation approaches, families are invited to participate in their own version of this work: a three-day Family Warrior Workshop held over a weekend. Spouses, parents, siblings, and other loved ones go through their own experiential process — not only focused on the client’s story, but also on their own.

The people who love someone in recovery carry wounds too. And when families heal alongside their loved one, the outcomes are meaningfully better.

Meet Jill Krush, MS, LPC, CAS, TEP

Jill Krush has spent decades working with individuals, couples, and families navigating trauma, addiction, and the painful overlap between them. She is a licensed professional counselor, EMDR-certified specialist, and holds a Certified Addiction Specialist designation — but her most significant credential for this work is one most people haven’t heard of.

TEP — Trainer, Educator, and Practitioner — is the highest level of certification in psychodrama. It represents an advanced, rigorous training pathway that relatively few clinicians complete. For the kind of deep, high-stakes experiential work that happens in the Warrior Workshop, it’s not a nice-to-have. It’s essential.

Jill maintains a private practice in Boulder, Colorado, and brings her full expertise to Choice House’s clients and their families each time she facilitates. Her approach is direct, compassionate, and grounded in genuine clinical skill — exactly what this work demands.