Staying on the Right Path: Tips for Families in Recovery

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Families in recovery face their own sets of challenges when a loved one has a substance dependence. They often must deal with how the addiction has impacted their own lives. According to one study in the National Library of Medicine, when one person in the family struggles with addiction, the whole family suffers.

In addition to the physical and emotional turmoil that the user goes through, addiction leaves a psychological imprint. Individuals in recovery often experience emotional changes, which can impact their interactions and relationships with loved ones. Consequently, those closest to the patient learn to adapt and live with addiction’s effects.

Fortunately, families in recovery can make use of a wide range of options to improve their quality of life while supporting their loved one’s recovery efforts. Over time, families in recovery benefit from learning how to support and nurture each other physically and emotionally, while letting their loved one take responsibility for his or her recovery.

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The Family Unit

Families struggling with addiction should take time for themselves and time for the family.

Studies have long shown that the family unit plays a crucial role in addiction recovery, starting with communication. For instance, a lack of communication may have contributed to the substance misuse, as users tend to learn not to communicate difficult emotions, which can lay the groundwork for drug abuse to take hold.

If communication is poor throughout the recovery, an unchanged home environment can place him or her at high risk of relapse. Likewise, family members can fall back into destructive behavior patterns such as enabling a user that leads to relapse and harms recovery efforts.

In effect, families in recovery must consider how addiction is affected each family member. For these reasons, families in recovery must take the necessary steps to eliminate destructive relationship patterns and develop healthy ways of living and dealing with addiction in the home and in their lives.

Tips for Families in Recovery

Connect with Other Families

The emotional turmoil addiction brings often drives families to isolate the problem and themselves from the world. Addiction tends to breed feelings of shame and guilt that influences the behavior and thought patterns of the user and his or her loved ones.

Connecting with other families in recovery can go a long way towards breaking down the walls of guilt and shame. Support groups such as Families Anonymous, Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics provide a much-needed outlet for families living with the effects of addiction.

Drug Education

Addiction works in much the same way as a disease, by eating away at the user’s personality, character and power of choice. These effects inevitably seep into the family system and creates an environment ridden with conflict and distrust. Understanding how drugs affect the user equips families in recovery with knowledge to make informed choices when this behavior threatens the stability of the home.

Responsibility for Self

It’s not uncommon for relationships between family members to unknowingly foster the addict’s drug-using behaviors. Users quickly learn how to manipulate family dynamics to their advantage and develop codependent relationships with certain key family members. As hard as it may be, families in recovery must learn to detach from these tactics and take responsibility for their own actions rather than being swayed by the user’s demands.

Engage the Children

While children may not fully understand why their loved ones acts the way he or she does, they are no less affected by the destructive relationship patterns that addiction brings. Since substance abuse problems tend to run in families, helping children understand what’s going on can prevent addiction from impacting the next generation. For this reason, families in recovery should make it a point to include the children in the recovery process, such as through family counseling and/or child therapy treatment.

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Setting Boundaries

During the course of addiction, users’ life loses all sense of structure and order. In turn, they impose their “new world view” on loved ones by making unreasonable demands for the sake of getting and using drugs.

Families in recovery must become experts in setting boundaries and meeting consequences in terms of what the user can and cannot do. Setting boundaries not only protects and strengthens the family as a unit but also supports the addict’s recovery efforts.

Engage in Personal & Family Activities

Much like the user must develop new outlets and pursuits to overcome addiction’s pull, families in recovery must also engage in new outlets and activities that nurture closeness and resilience. Likewise, individual family members can benefit from expanding their horizons in terms of developing new interests and pursuits. This can take the form of:

• Family activities, such as picnics or walks in the park
• Volunteering
• Sunday dinner get-togethers
• Extracurricular pursuits, such as book clubs or joining a gym
• Joining a church

Consider Family Therapy Treatment

According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, families in recovery can benefit from the support and direction family therapy treatment can provide. This form of therapy treats addiction as a family problem rather than singling out the user as the source of the family’s problems.

Through family therapy, relatives can work through the hurt caused by the addict’s actions while at the same time taking responsibility for the roles they play in enabling the addict’s behavior. In the process, family members develop healthy ways of managing addiction’s effects in their day-to-day lives.

Relapse Preparation

While addicts in recovery may have every intention of staying on the straight and narrow, relapse is often a necessary part of the recovery process. The same goes for families in recovery.

Preparing for times when the family or a family member falls back into old behavior patterns offers one of the best ways for getting past difficult periods. By developing strategies for dealing with relapse, families in recovery can avoid drastic setbacks.

Addiction Recovery is a Process

Addiction recovery entails a process of growth and changes that families in recovery must go through if they intend to support their loved ones in recovery. Just as the user may require months or even years to overcome addiction’s hold, families in recovery may well require at least as much time to heal old wounds and develop the type of lifestyle that supports a drug-free home environment. For help finding addiction treatment call 800-934-1582(Sponsored) toll free.

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