The Benefits of Seeking Family Addiction Therapy

Addiction affects entire families. These days, addiction therapy and treatment can not only extend to the individual struggling with substance abuse but to family and friends too.

Family addiction therapy is an option for anyone close to someone that is abusing alcohol or substances. Addiction is often a disease of the family. It can put family members through a lot of stress, emotionally, physically, financially, and more. It can cause experiences that are sad, damaging, or frightening.

Family members usually come up with unhealthy strategies to cope with the addiction. As the family becomes more dysfunctional and fragile, younger members may be especially susceptible to being traumatized or negatively influenced by being exposed to addiction.


How Families Cope

Abuse of substances can have different effects depending on the situation, but no one can deny that they affect the dynamics of the family in a lot of unhealthy ways. These can include:

• Safety The family may be put at risk in many ways

• Negative emotions- Others may feel anger, guilt, anxiety, resentment, and more

• Responsibility- Certain members of the family may have responsibilities that aren't appropriate for their age

• Communication- Family communication may become negative, with positive interaction being limited. Concerns and needs of others may not be met

• Boundaries and structure- Structure may be lacking in the home, with limited parental involvement and boundaries that are loose or do not exist. This results in children having confusion over what behaviors are negative or inappropriate

• Denial- A family member may not face the issue and deny that it exists, not wanting to face it or because of fear
• Relationships- Abuse can result in damaged relationships, that continue through generations due to behavioral modeling that is negative. Abusers often isolate, spending social time mostly with other abusers

Coping with Unhealthy Behaviors

Families may often have unhealthy ways of dealing with addiction, such as denial or enabling. However, they can feed the addiction and get in the way of a successful recovery or path to treatment.


Codependency

This happens when an individual must adapt to a dysfunctional family. Behaviors that qualify as codependent can be learned attitudes, behaviors, and thoughts that have you neglecting your desires/needs for the problem of a loved one.

These include constantly worrying about the addiction and abuse, denial or isolation, reacting in an irrational or violent way in events regarding an addiction, having low self esteem, aiming your misplaced anger at children or the pets, engaging in unhealthy behaviors to cope, and having to base your mood around theirs.

Enabling is also supporting abuse by taking away consequences. This makes it possible for the person to continue their addiction and the unhealthy cycle continues. These include using with them, ignoring or repressing your feelings, accepting excuses, protecting their image, making everything appear normal, and feeling guilty whenever you can't stop consequences.

Family therapy may be able to help. It provides a space that is safe where people can learn things about how they can assist someone's recovery. It also allows the family to heal as well as recover collectively and make positive changes that can improve their home and relationships.

Involvement in recovery and treatment with the family may prevent relapse, but it is always a risk. Know the stages of what relapse involves and the signs it may be happening. Get in touch with us  today to find out about what family programs are available to help.

Are Substance Abuse and Depression Linked?

Mood disorders and substance abuse have a term when they are combined as coexisting, and it's called dual diagnosis. Is there a link between using substances and depression?

It's true that one issue can often make another worse. It's estimated that currently twenty percent of Americans that have an anxiety/mood disorder also have a problem with substances and vice versa. Those on drugs are twice as likely as the average person to have disorders of mood and anxiety, and the reverse is true, according to NIDA.


Shared Triggers of Using Substances and Depression

Which comes first, depression or abusing substances? Depression may be a predictor of dependence on alcohol for the first time. They both share triggers as well. Connections between the two may include the following.


The brain.


Parts of a brain can be affected by depression or by substances. Abusing substances has an effect on the areas of the brain that respond to stress and those areas can also be affected by mental disorders.


Genetics.


It turns out that DNA could increase your likelihood of having an addiction or mental disorder. Disease Markers published research in 2012 that indicated this fact. NIDA also reports that genetic factors may increase the odds that one of the conditions will show up once another has appeared.


Developmental problems. 


Drug use early in life can alter brain development, making later mental illness all the more likely to
occur. The opposite is also true, that early mental health issues could up the chances of abusing drugs or alcohol.


Environmental Factors

Trauma, stress, or an unhealthy household early in life can cause depression as well as turning to substances. Dual diagnoses can go back to early life experiences. Children are always in a state of discovery and gratification. An interruption of this process can manifest in a clinical way. Denial or interruption can influence individuals, letting them believe that what they think or feel is wrong generally across the board.


Those who have a dual diagnosis may not be trying to medicate themselves or their depression and may be doing the opposite, according to Dr. MacIsaac. Those who are depressed may choose to drink in order to feed into the negativity. It can be soothing at first, but then make the individuals feel worse than before.

These types of people get a form of oxygen through this negativity. Even signs that treatment may be working may end up triggering a drive or need to return to negative discovery through substances like alcohol. According to Dr. MacIsaac, substances such as alcohol may only make their depression worse.


The Importance of Simultaneous Treatment

In order to recover, individuals dealing with abusing substances and going through depression may need to be treated for both of these conditions. They may not want to accept treatment, clinging to the way that they feed the negativity.

Those that have a dual diagnosis must ultimately see the root of all of their issues and understand them. Then they have the chance to change. It may involve therapy, rehab, antidepressants, meetings, a support group, and more.

The APA recommends that people ask for a referral from their primary care provider, discover whether the psychological association in your state has a service when it comes to referring people to licensed professionals of mental health, or ask relatives/close friends if they have psychologist, psychiatrist, or mental health counselor recommendations.

How to Address Addiction As Family and Friends

Many individuals struggle with addiction, and so do many of their friends and the family members. Some continually try to help the individual seek addiction treatment, while others have reached a

breaking point so many times that they don't know what to do anymore or have given up.

The pervasive nature of addiction means that relationships are disrupted. They become unreliable, even untrustworthy. They may have stolen from you. You may not even recognize the person anymore.

Addiction is something that can not only affect the person with the substance abuse problem but the people that are closest to them as well. Family members often should be involved in the treatment process. Getting additional information, education, and resources can be helpful.

Friends and family may not always understand addiction or the need to set boundaries. They enable the addict by excusing behavior, covering up, casting blame, doing things for them, and even taking their word at face value. This can be precisely what an addict wants you to do and has even pressured or manipulated you into doing. However, all it does is allow addiction to continue. The family can become reactive as a result. Successful recovery can involve the following.



Give up the old ways.

If it's not working, it's not working. To embrace recovery, family and friends must give up on the old way of doing things. Only with new strategies can they start working to make healthy existence, at least for themselves, a reality.



Get rid of your urge to fix it.

Only the addict can fix it. The family cannot be the answer to addiction or many addictions would be solved already. It is too large of a burden and an individual must choose to take on recovery themselves. The individual in the middle of addiction must be the primary person to take control and say yes to getting clean and sober.


Be on the same page.

When family members are working together to be supportive and everyone is on the same page, it's easier for an addict to embrace recovery and gives them less room to capitalize on any rifts or weaknesses in family dynamics.



Hold them accountable.

Instead of blame, accountability must be the action pursued. Holding an addict accountable for what they do is important. Have boundaries set, have certain expectations, and maintain structure.



Be aware of where your energy goes. 

Energy can often be redirected in a family to go toward the addict. Families must take care into guarding the relationships that they have outside of the addict.

Family treatment and professional guidance or attending meetings can inform families on what is and is not healthy behavior. Support and guidance may be necessary and many family and friends do not even realize that they needed an outlet for their emotions.



Try healing with family therapy.

Effective therapy in families should be inclusive of all the family and friends' needs and take into account their dynamic. Clear goal setting and prioritizing therapy for the family could be healing. It can be done without the person suffering from addiction as well if that is more comfortable or productive.


Recovery may mean walking away from the loved one with a problem and going in another direction. It also could be working on yourself and your own quality of life. Family healing is important. Don't allow addiction to rule your life through another.