Family therapy is one of the best tools we can use to help ourselves when a loved one is struggling with addiction. Working with a therapist as a family can help us at various stages in the addiction and recovery process: when we feel we need an intervention, planning and executing the intervention, supporting each other during treatment and throughout the recovery process and beyond. Addiction affects everyone in the family. When we process family issues together, as a family, and treat addiction as a family issue, we have more hope of making progress than if we tried to recover, or help our loved one to recover, alone. Processing addiction in our family with a therapist can make all the difference in the whether or not we have a successful, lasting recovery.
Clarity
Working with a therapist can help us to observe and examine our issues in a more profound way. We gain new levels of clarity and understanding. We start to see things from new perspectives. We make discoveries about our issues, our emotions, and our needs. We get clear on our goals and how to achieve them. We get clear on all the factors that have been bringing us down.
Objectiveness
A therapist can be the unbiased, impartial third party we need to help us see things more objectively. When we’re dealing with such intense emotional issues, we can’t help but to take things personally, to overreact or to be impulsive. Our judgment can be clouded and our thinking compromised. Learning how to navigate our issues objectively can do wonders for our progress as a family unit.
Support
Therapy can be the foundation for receiving the support and understanding we need, and when we’re dealing with addiction in our families, we need all the support we can get. The recovery process forces us to confront difficult issues. We face unhealed wounds and unresolved fears. We’re learning so much about ourselves and our families, our addictions and our family issues, and receiving support through the process can help strengthen the family’s bonds, connectedness, and resilience.
Expertise
Therapists have years of expertise helping families learn how to resolve conflict, to listen mindfully, and to communicate consciously and effectively. We can benefit from all of this wisdom, perspective and experience, and it allow us to learn even more and helps us apply that knowledge to our everyday lives and to our recovery.
Forgiveness
Working with our families in therapy can help us finally move past the tension, anger, bitterness and resentment that have been keeping our family separate, never really connecting on common ground. Therapy can help us learn how to have unconditional forgiveness for our loved ones, to help us move forward as a family.
The treatment programs at Riverside Recovery include weekly family therapy and monthly family workshops. Call us today: (800) 871-5440