Allies’ founder and director, Dominique Simon-Levine, responds to questions from our Content Editor about the Key Observation exercises in our eLearning Center. This Q & A provides a clear explanation about how important these exercises are and how they help families understand their loved one’s addiction in order to successfully guide them to treatment.
A mother is trying her best to maintain communication with her addicted son, but he is being verbally abusive. He is bullying to extract money from her. This has created a situation that is escalating beyond what she can handle.
Setting healthy boundaries and confidently following through with them is not easy and requires reflection, work and practice. But it is a strategy that provides support during the difficult times, especially when addiction is present.
When your loved one is high all day long, without ever seeming to sober up, it might seem impossible to reach them and have any influence on their behavior. The CRAFT method lays out three steps to take.
Using positive communication while disengaging with a loved one is a softer, more neutral way of letting them know that things aren’t okay. It’s not going to turn things around right away, but it will keep things calmer.
Annie and Laurie open up about the parallel issues that can arise during the worst of times. With their sons’ addiction raging, they also had to deal with what was going on on other fronts: chaos, crises, judgement, family discord. They learned how to respond to other’s remarks, and not react to them, how to stay united and not sink.
When an addicted loved one is exhibiting increasingly alarming behavior, first of all, don’t take it personally. Remember, it is not directed at you. This, unfortunately, the face of addiction.
This week Annie and Laurie invite Laurie’s husband Trevor and Annie’s ex-husband Elliot Sr. to discuss what it means to “be on the same page” during a crisis and when making decisions. The conversation touches on blended families, exposing siblings to potentially dangerous behaviors, intrusions from others, being in agreement even though divorced.
Manipulation is used as a strong arm tactic when there is no healthy communication: “Healthy families communicate, unhealthy families manipulate”. In this podcast, Laurie and Annie discuss their own experiences with manipulation. How do we recognize manipulation when it’s present? How do we as affected family actually manipulate as well?
In today’s podcast, Annie and Laurie welcome Allies in Recovery founder, Dominique Simon-Levine, to explain the CRAFT method for helping families support an addicted loved one into treatment and through recovery. They share their personal experiences in implementing the CRAFT methodology and why it became their ‘strategy of choice’ not only in helping their addicted loved one, but also in looking after their own well-being.
In this next podcast, Annie and Laurie analyze the meaning of drama using examples drawn from an entertaining public poll. They also discuss drama within the family and friendships and how they learned not to get sucked in.
If you are the bystander watching this brutal disease from the front row, what do you do? Detach from someone you love as they are spiraling? What does it look like to detach? How do you abruptly cut them off? We hear “you have to detach” a lot, but what does it actually mean?
It’s been said that for every one person struggling with addiction, there are at least 15 people affected. The effects are painful and relentless for those of us left in the wake.
It is critical that you, as your addicted loved one’s ally, understand that you can’t create motivation. And it is equally critical that you know there is something you can do!
When your loved one is abusing alcohol or drugs, engaging in dangerous activities, or making life decisions you dislike, the natural impulse is to try and change your loved one’s behavior…. But as Allies in Recovery’s online program teaches, you cannot change other people. You can only change yourself.
So you’re mad or hurt or feeling hopeless? To be effective at helping your addicted family member, you must first get a handle on your negative feelings and learn to take extra good care of yourself.
If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve made it to this site. This means you are putting together a plan for dealing with substance abuse in your family. And not just any plan – a plan that puts together the best that science and practice have to offer.
Our role as the family member of a struggling loved one is not limited to doing things for them. What we do for our own well-being (physical, mental, spiritual … ) will create a ripple effect that brings relief and much needed change, within us and all around us.
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