Drinking alcohol disorderly causes family pain: Recovery from addiction is a family affair
As a family disease, those who have been affected by addiction may take years to recover, as they rebuild and stabilize their lives, independent of what the alcohol and drug addicted family member does. Without question, it can seem overwhelming, but it helps to keep in mind that commitment to the recovery process is also a commitment to the overall well-being of the whole family. Therefore very constructive and active family engagement in the recovery process is essential if the family is to heal from the destructive impact of drinking alcohol disorderly and addiction related complications. To keep hopes alive, the whole family needs a variety of supports, information and skills.
Drinking alcohol disorderly causes family pain: Essential family support
End the isolation and connect: By joining an education or support group.
Education on Addiction and the Family: Understanding how addiction affects both the addicted person and the family is an essential foundation to moving on.
Learn communication skills: Active addiction destroys family communication. Developing these skills is essential to family recovery.
Detachment and responsibility for self: Learning to detach with love and focus on assuming responsibility for our own behavior.
Stop old behaviors: Many of our old ways of coping are ineffective and contribute to the problem not the solution: enabling, denial, blaming and minimizing the problem.
Engage the children: As a parent, depending on ages, you play a critically important role in providing support and protection for the children. But, engaging them in their own recovery is very important.
Build on resilience: Surviving active addiction to alcohol and drugs is never easy. Therefore use the recovery process as a means of building on your personal and family strengths.
Engage in personal and family activities: working alone and together to find activities that serve as a source of personal and family fulfillment.
Understand and prepare for relapse: Relapse into old behaviors is as real for family members as it is for those addicted to alcohol and drugs. Family members need to develop strategies for dealing with their own relapse issues and other challenges.
People recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction, their families, and their children can and often do achieve optimum levels of health and functioning, but this achievement is best measured in years rather than days, weeks, or months. In the process of recovery, families are strengthened through increased levels of genuine intimacy and families are better able to cope with life’s challenges. Over time, the discipline of recovery can bring the family together to be the healthiest it has ever been!
Finally as we settle on solutions to this problem, we must all appreciate that family recovery is very ideal and realistic for millions across the globe, and because of this hope, help, and healing of family recovery has become the most powerful way to break the intergenerational cycle of alcoholism and addiction in the family thereby bringing restoration to where hope was dying and discouragement was thriving. You can speak to us at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center about al concerns you may have in relation to alcoholism and addiction as potential factors of family pain and we will gladly come to your aide.
Drinking alcohol disorderly causes family pain: Recovery from addiction is a family affair
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