Addiction doesn’t just affect the user. It also affects partners, parents, children, siblings, and close friends.
You have seen your loved one suffer. You have witnessed the cascade of shattered promises and the anxiety of the unknown. You have experienced addiction’s all-consuming wave of anger, guilt, exhaustion, and sorrow.
Often, family members want to assist but lack the means to do so. What should one do? Extend assistance or deny? Maintain proximity or isolate? These questions lack clear answers, and the consequences of acting without a plan can be paralyzing.
Research indicates that family inclusion in therapy strengthens recovery and lowers relapse risk. It’s not just the identified patient who heals. Families who participate in treatment and learn to communicate and set clear boundaries heal as a unit.
This article addresses the role of family support in addiction recovery, family therapy, and the means by which family members can assist recovery without triggering dysfunctional behaviors.
Why the Support of Family Members is Important in Recovery
Addiction fosters disconnection. It promotes secrecy, isolation, and an overbearing sense of shame. Substance users tend to withdraw, and family members become paralyzed in a helpless or ostracized feeling.
Connection Reduces Isolation
Family involvement breaks that isolation, which is one of the most powerful aspects of the process.
Knowing there are family members who are willing to put in the effort to help rather than just scoff at the problem helps alleviate the shame, thus increasing the motivation to remain sober.
Addiction Damages Relationships
Trust gets broken. Communication is filled with accusations, and things remain unspoken. Emotional elements weaken under the weight of lies, fear, and unpredictability. Attempts at recovery are an opportunity to mend the broken ties. However, the effort of all participants is required.
Research Shows Better Outcomes
Attendance to treatment is crucial, followed by continuing care and support from relatives and friends. Family and supportive friends significantly increase the chances of remaining in treatment and achieving successful outcomes.
Emotional Support Stabilizes Recovery
Stable and affectionate ties remedy relapse triggers and major problems like hormones and anxiety. Worry or fear of surviving is replaced by a focus on emotional support, which is essential in healing.
Understanding the Family’s Role in Addiction
Whether distant or actively involved, the family greatly influences both the drug or alcohol addiction and the recovery.
Addiction is a Brain Disease, Not a Willpower Problem
Substance use alters the brain’s reward and stress centers, and this is not something an individual can change through reason or willpower. It is a question of brain chemistry, and therefore, the help of professionals is necessary.
Common Family Members’ Roles in Situations of Addiction
When dealing with a loved one’s addiction, family members tend to assume specific roles unconsciously.
The Caretaker and/or Rescuer
The person in this role might scream and dive in from the sidelines to resolve issues or take the heat off the person with the addiction.
The Enabler
The enabler downplays the issue, provides resources that help the addiction, and makes excuses for the behavior.
The Avoidant
Some people engage in emotionally driven withdrawal to avoid the baggage, arguments, and disorder in the family that is a result of the addiction.
The Controller
Family members sometimes attempt to enforce the recovery via threats, micromanaging every single detail, and punishment.
Constructive Support
Family members learn that addiction is a family disease, and they start to see their part in the problem. This helps them let go of their previous dysfunctional roles and learn new ways to support their loved one’s rehab with healthy and clear boundaries.
What Is Family Therapy in Rehab?
Family therapy is a systematic process, facilitated by a licensed therapist, where the patient and family members learn and process their feelings and thoughts in a safe, therapeutic environment.
They learn to establish healthy, clear boundaries, stop the enabling process, and develop practical, positive communication skills. As a result, the dysfunctional family system rebuilds itself and becomes a functional system that supports long-term recovery.
What Happens in Family Therapy
Knowing what to expect during a loved one’s rehab can help families prepare and better adjust to the situation.
Restoration of Trust
In a safe, non-judgmental environment, members can speak freely about trauma, rage, shame and guilt, and loss of trust.
Communication Improvement
The therapist helps the family devise a plan to facilitate communication without judging or blaming, and encourages them to develop the self-discipline and diligence needed to follow through. Families learn more effective methods of expressing feelings, active listening, and setting boundaries with each other.
Understanding Addiction
Therapists educate the family on the mechanics of addiction, the causes of a relapse, the process’s realistic goals, and the role of family support in addiction recovery.
Setting Healthy Boundaries
Family members learn the distinction between supporting recovery and enabling self-destructive behavior.
Creating a Support Plan
The family and the therapist work together to develop a post-treatment recovery plan among family members, defining what recovery support the family will offer, what boundaries will be set, and how the family will communicate about these matters.
Family therapy is not about finding a culprit; it is about collective healing.
Benefits of Family Therapy During Addiction Treatment
Family therapy is not only advantageous but a necessary aspect of the recovery process.
Breaks Cycles of Blame and Anger
Repeating the same painful arguments doesn’t yield results. Family therapy provides a space for understanding, accountability, and empathy.
Reduces Enabling and Codependency
Families learn how to identify behaviors that support the addiction, such as giving money, making excuses for the consequences, or sidestepping challenging discussions.
Helps Set Healthy Boundaries
Family members learn to stop, say no, and set healthy boundaries that protect their self-care and mental well-being while supporting recovery.
Teaches Coping Strategies
Family members develop skills to handle personal stresses and anxieties, and other triggers surrounding an individual’s addiction.
Reinforces Emotional Bond
Through individual and group therapies, a family creates deeper emotional bonds to support and maintain an individual’s recovery.
Data from NIDA show that patients who include their family in their treatment have higher rates of successful, long-term recovery.
Healthy Approaches to Supporting Recovery
Helping and supporting someone in recovery requires greater involvement in treatment. These are some meaningful and constructive ways to be supportive.
Come to Family Therapy or Education Sessions
Engage. Understand the processes of addiction, recovery, and solution-focused ways of supporting your loved one’s rehab.
Motivate Continued Treatment
Encourage the individual to attend therapy sessions, medical appointments, or support group meetings. If necessary, provide transportation. Follow through with clear and healthy boundaries that support recovery, not addiction.
Encourage Active Sobriety
Help develop and maintain healthy and responsible routines that include sufficient and quality sleep, healthy diets, and the avoidance of addictive or abusive substances.
Reduce Exposure to Triggers
Remove any alcohol or drugs from the personal residence, as they may lead to relapse. Early in the recovery process, refrain from risky social situations.
Practice Respectable Communication
Genuinely inquire about others’ well-being without bombarding them with ultimatums or expectations. Provide a safe, non-judgmental environment for communication without imposing any restrictions. Show support without being overly critical.
Recognize and Acknowledge Progress
Recovery is not a linear process. It is a process that is filled with hurdles.
Reward yourself and your loved one for small wins, like completing therapy, participating in a support group, and even 30 days of sobriety. Each positive outcome deserves recognition.
What to Avoid: Enabling Behaviors
Support and enabling blur into one. Enabling is a form of support where the individual is protected from the consequences of their actions. In this case, consequences that support the addiction are still allowed.
Enabling supports the addiction, not the recovery.
Examples of Enabling Behaviors to Avoid
- Money that can be used for substances: Even when someone promises that the cash is for food or bills, giving them money only enables them to use the drug, whether directly or indirectly.
- Covering for consequences or lying for them: Enabling them can look like making excuses for them, isolating them from family or friends, or lying to protect them from negative consequences, such as legal issues that need to be addressed.
- Making explanations: Defending someone’s actions, softening the impact of the addiction, or placing blame anywhere except where it belongs is known as enabling behaviors.
- Attempting to dominate or control recovery: The reality is, it is impossible to make someone get sober. Using threats, ultimatums, and hyper-vigilance has proven counterproductive. All it fosters is hatred, not results.
What All of This Means
Let your loved ones face the negative consequences of their actions, but do so with care and willingness to support them with access to treatment or counselling.
How Families Have to Learn to Live With Their Pain
Addiction is not only destructive to the individual who uses substances. It affects the family as well. It results in chronic stress, fear, guilt, financial issues, and, in some cases, trauma.
The Impact on the Families
There is anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and overall debilitating worry that forms due to the stress of living with someone’s addiction. You may feel you owe an apology for something you are not responsible for.
You may feel ‘unreasonable’ anger towards the person you profess to care for. Such thoughts and emotions are common, but they are best not ignored.
Ways Families Can Heal
- Therapy for family members: Individual counseling or family systems therapy may help you set boundaries and navigate the painful process of regaining emotional well-being.
- Support groups: Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, Families Anonymous, and other similar services provide the companionship of others in the trenches. You are not alone in this.
- Self-care and stress relief: Mindfulness, exercise, journaling, and setting aside time for yourself are not luxuries. They are absolutely crucial if you wish to assist any other human being.
To Remind Us
Recovery is not one-sided. Families deserve the same level of care, support, and guidance in the healing process as the person with addiction.
Supporting the Family After the Rehabilitation Process
The first 6 to 12 months, also known as the aftercare phase, are when relapse is most likely to occur. Family support in addiction recovery can be paramount, as recovery does not cease when treatment does.
How to Stay Involved After Rehab
- Continue therapy and check-ins. Remain active in family therapy and aftercare planning. Ensure that effective communication channels are open.
- Encourage participation in outpatient programs and support groups. Encourage your loved one to remain connected to therapists and AA, NA, or other recovery communities.
- Encourage sober living, if suggested. If transitioning into sober housing, trust the process. It provides structure and accountability in the early days of the recovery process.
- Support the maintenance of the structure. Regular, scheduled meals, sleep, and other daily activities aid emotional stability and healing.
- Have a drug and alcohol free home. Remove alcohol, drugs, and anything that could trigger a relapse. Your home should be a safe space for recovery.
In the first year, when family participation is comprehensive, there is a significantly increased likelihood of staying in the recovery process and a lower chance of relapse, according to NIDA.
A Subjective Experience of Recovery
Trust is lost in one moment and takes years to regain. Addiction is emotionally devastating, wrought with promises, lies, and the financial ruin of countless others. Recovery offers a chance to heal, but does so through a slow process.
How Trust is Rebuilt
Trust and recovery go hand in hand, and both are built through daily, consistent routines instead of transient gestures and acts.
- Consistent actions: Repeated, reliable actions build trust over time, rather than promises. Your presence, sobriety, and honesty for weeks and months restore trust.
- Clear communication: Both parties should commit to a relationship devoid of defensiveness and blame in discussing their feelings, fears, and challenges.
- Patience as a virtue of progress: Recovery is not black-and-white. Slips or other seeming setbacks don’t erase progress. Sensitivity in supportive responses is an essential part of trust reconstruction.
When Family Support Is Lacking
For many, family participation is unattainable or simply unsupportive. Countless people are in relationships marked by exclusion who come from abusive backgrounds or lack supportive people willing to assist them during periods of recovery.
The Message
It is possible to achieve sobriety and healing through professional help and community support without involving family members.
The Involvement of Family Members Changes the Scenario of Recovery
The impact of addiction is experienced universally. It is, however, recovery that has the potential to heal everyone.
When family members can provide support without enabling or blame-shifting, communicate while setting constructive boundaries and limits, and foster relationships without neglect, there are benefits for all members.
Recovery no longer has to be a solitary fight; it can be a joint endeavor toward healing.
Your loved ones’ sobriety is out of your control. However, you can control how you approach your and their self-care, and how you participate in the healing process. Family can help restore life and relationships and create the foundation for stability.
At Star City Recovery, we advocate the idea that families seek healing together. Our luxury rehab center in Los Angeles facilitates healing by establishing clear boundaries, building a post-treatment support system, and enhancing communication skills.
Outcomes of treatment become more favorable as families become active participants in the recovery process, and all family members have the opportunity to recover.Get in touch to find out how our family therapy programs can help your family recover.
