Therapy
You’ve probably heard popular terms such as psychotherapy and counseling, where a specialist helps someone with an addiction. Well, family therapy plays similar roles a bit differently. For one, both the patient and their family attend therapy.
In family therapy, the family plays a critical role in a patient’s recovery. Every member is affected whenever an individual indulges in drug and alcohol abuse and struggles with addiction.
Family therapy seeks to provide clarity in a relationship. It differs with individual therapy, where the primary focus is the patient’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. It fosters closeness and repairs broken areas if members permit.
Read on and learn more about the roles of family therapy in addiction recovery.
Family Therapy
If you or one of your family members is undergoing recovery, accompanying them to family therapy can help in many ways.
Addiction tends to tear families apart and trigger major conflicts. Young adults may play fugitive (hissing, lying) as their counterpart seniors play detective (snooping, chasing) –and the cycle roar on.
Frustration, anxiety, and anger get in the way as parents strategize their approach to family life.
Family therapy seeks to rebuild these rifts. It aims to strengthen communication between family members and foster better emotional management skills. A family therapist can put substance use in a different dynamic. They can highlight other challenges and resilience in the context of the family, or address the bright side of the teen’s life.
Besides helping members relate to one another, family therapy aims to impart knowledge to members. Now, they can understand better how to care for their young or old drug abusers. They can also figure out that addiction is entirely a chronic brain disorder. And rather than assuming the route of unhelpful behavior, they can start indulging in effective behavior.
Lastly, a family therapist can point out new skills and coach the addict’s family members which can set their situation well. You can consult with a specialist at America’s rehab campuses Tucson if you’re looking for family therapist options.
Family Behavior Change
Family behavior change is a critical element in family therapy that seeks to transform various behaviors of family members. If a family therapist can intervene and shift members’ behavior at an individual level, they can successfully improve the family’s relationship.
Family therapist positively coaches and reinforces concrete new skills and mannerisms for the entire family.
A therapist can teach patients new ways of negotiating rules and boundaries, enforcing limits, communicating assertively and expressing their feelings more effectively.
Rational Reframing
A therapist works to shift family members’ unique ways of defining problems and generating solutions, so they focus on relationship elements instead. The specialist tends to deal with others’ attribution and help irrational descriptions of the family members’ situation or behaviour. Rather, they then refocus on the motivation behind that behavior in the context of the relationship.
Take for example, a family therapist reframing a mother’s critical (or judgmental) attitude toward their daughter’s act of getting home late. The therapist can simply rephrase them as parents concerned over their daughter’s safety and well-being, and nothing more.
Family relationships are important. Family therapy seeks to establish its clarity. As a parent who is legitimately concerned about your sibling’s drug abuse, don’t neglect this core value. Talk to a specialist today and get professional help.
