Featured Clinician Interview: Benjamin Kaneaiakala III at Phoenix Rising Addiction Center

OC Shrinks is a mental health digital space and networking group that believes the best way to uplift professionals in the field is to provide space for connection, collaboration, and community!

We had the pleasure of interviewing Benjamin Kaneaiakala III from Phoenix Rising Addiction Center.

Phoenix Rising Addiction Center offers substance abuse evaluations and day and evening outpatient treatment programs. Types of treatment and rehabilitation programs offered are for alcohol abuse, addiction, dual diagnosis, video game addiction, and mental health therapy.

The Vision of Phoenix Rising is to create a safe environment where each individual may rise from their past to a new and brighter future. Our Mission is to provide the best clinical care rooted in safety, security, attachment, and including current industry standards.

Learn more about Phoenix Rising at https://phoenixrisingbehavioral.com/

Connect with Ben on Social Media:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PhoenixrisingBHCS/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZwguolMl5Byo0aho2zRZA/videos
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/phoenixrisingbhcs/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/phoenix-rising-behavioral-health-care-services

Interview Transcript

I am Amber Irwin with OC Shrinks. OC Shrinks was officially created as an online space for the mental health professionals in the Orange County area to connect and find treatment centers, clinicians, and build referrals. It's grown into so much more and we're so excited to share with you what we have to offer and how we're building our community. Today, we're excited to have Ben with us. He has a private practice where he provides counseling and spiritual teaching. He also has an IOP program called Phoenix Rising Addiction Center. He's been working in the mental health and addiction industry for 32 years in various roles. Ben's passion has been working hands-on with clients with a variety of issues and struggles. Welcome, Ben.

First off, tell us a little bit about your practice and your organization, and how you got started.

We started our IOP program about six years ago and I've been, especially during COVID, have been moving towards Zoom and online stuff, and we just decided to just expand it, just focus on our private practice. A lot of our clients have transitioned to where they're just wanting long-term counseling or support with somebody that they've already built a relationship with. So, I've been very blessed to be able to move into more of a private practice role as a counselor and as a mindfulness spiritual guide or teacher-type of a thing with them in their sobriety.

We do introduce our clients through 12-Step programs so, there is a lot of discussions, talk around what that looks like for them and what that's gonna look like for them, maybe, in the short-term or long-term future for their recoveries and their success and things like that. But, I've also had clients that haven't gone into the 12-Step program or that dynamic or that support system so, just providing some spiritual guidance or some mindfulness practices to my private practice clients to kinda help with that as they're struggling through various different types of struggles in their life at the current moment. And I've been in recovery myself from alcoholism and drug addiction for 32 years. I got sober when I was 20-years-old.

I've been around the 12-Step program in this industry. That's how I got introduced to the industry. My first sponsor was the owner of a treatment center in Hawaii and I'm born and raised in Hawaii. I started off as a driver, taking clients to doctor's appointments and things like that. So, I started off at the bottom when I had three months sober, just driving clients around, and I've always just ended up... I ended up falling in love with helping people. My entire career for the past 32 years has been that in some capacity, whether it be a counselor or a clinical supervisor or program director, executive director, owner, CEO, whatever it might be. I've built my career around this industry of helping people.

Tell us a little bit about some of the patients that you have worked with. What are their stories? Is there a certain age that you see come in? How have your patients been able to be successful with the program? 

I think because we've been a boutique-ish type of program. We haven't been those big treatment centers, we've been very small. I think the most amount of clients that I've had in a group at any given time is probably around 12. The groups are smaller,  They're more intimate, they're more real so, it's very difficult to hide out in a small program like that. I think that's what's been unique about what we've done is that we've provided a small intimate environment for our clients to come and just get better. We've had clients from 18-years-old to 60-years-old and everywhere in between. The thing about it is that they've been able to blend together really well because of the intimacy of the group.

I don't have counselors doing groups. I'm the one that's doing groups so, the owners, I, and my wife are the ones that are doing all the groups for our clients. My wife is a psychologist and licensed MFT. We're very engaged, we're very there and involved in our client's progress so, when they transition to going back to work or going back to their families, or even while they're living with their families and attending IOP or whatever, we can then transition them into long-term counseling. I've had clients with me for the past... We've been open six years. I still work with clients for the past five years that I see once a month just for follow-up and check in. It's just been a really great experience that we've had in building this type of environment.

What do clients expect when they come? You said that it's a very intimate setting. How does this work if somebody is looking for treatment and they want to work with you guys? 

I'm the one that answers all the calls, so from the beginning, I'm already building a relationship. It might be a parent calling, it might be a husband or a wife calling, it might be siblings calling. I'm engaged with a client from the time the phone call comes into the time they get in and meet with me on a one-to-one. We were able during those phone calls, I'm determining whether or not they're a good fit for what we do or not, or do they need a higher level of care, or maybe they might need to get into a sober living. I'm already problem-solving during the first phone call and looking at what's the right option or a good fit for them moving forward. At some point in time, if we're not good for them. A good fit for them right away, we can then bring them back, hopefully, at some other stage of their development and growth and maybe coming back into counselling. Besides all the basic intake stuff, when they first come in, I'll sit down with them and go through all their paperwork and sign all their forms and consents and all that stuff, and get them right in and support them in any way that we can.

I've worked for many treatment centers where that wasn't the focus, so it's really important that I'm not bringing them in because I need a bed filled, or I need the money or whatever, I'm not financially driven in regards to helping the clients. I do get quite busy though, and a lot of times I'm making phone calls later or on weekends trying to follow up on clients that have called that I might have missed. But I'm the one that's engaged with them from the beginning.

How can our community support you more? 

I think just helping to get our services out there, that we truly care about the clients that we're working with, we want to make sure that we're a good fit for the people that we're collaborating with in regards to referring clients and things like that. I've been involved with OC Shrinks, now, for a few years, and it's just been a great support system, and I have gotten a lot of referrals from people in this group, and it's just been a really nice smooth transition with them. And just their social media support and platform, and I know you guys are building on that right now, I think that that's a really good thing. So I just wanna expand and just kind of more focus on building my private practice in the offering, whether it be 12 Step or recovery-focused type of counseling, and adding in some mindfulness and spiritual tools that they can add into their lives and hopefully enhance any situation that they're involved in.

How can people find you? 

Our website is phoenixrisingbehavioral.com. 

Phoenix Rising Addiction Center is on Facebook, it's on Instagram, Twitter. One of the things that I've been doing during COVID was getting people talking a lot about the steps and things like that, I created this YouTube channel back when COVID started.  I was like, "Oh, I’m just goinging do this, I'm going to put some videos together, talk about the steps and how do you integrate the steps into your recovery." I wasn't focused on alcohol and/or drugs, what I started focusing on my YouTube channel was on using the steps to address probably one of the biggest addictions that there is, which is the addiction to this obsessive compulsive repetitive thinking that goes on. I started implementing using the 12 Steps and addressing the problem of thinking. I've kinda just blended the two together and added some mindfulness practices. I've done a couple of meditation videos on there.

I didn't know where this thing was going to go, and it started off really, really slow. I might have had, after four months, 10 people subscribing to the page, to the channel. But now I'm like over 14,000 followers or subscribers on YouTube, and it's just kind of taken off. I don't know what's happening, but it's kind of just been slowly building and building and building. I'm only on step four, right now. I haven't even gone through all of the 12 Steps yet. I've probably done about 40 videos, and I've just been doing these little 10-minute videos and putting them out there on our channel and sharing them on all of the social media groups and platforms that I have, and it's been growing. And it's also available on most of the podcast platforms that are out there too. That's been my little project during COVID.