When someone comes to our treatment center, we do an assessment regarding their addiction, mental health condition, family history and other parts of their life. One factor that we do focus on is family history of addiction, personal issues with family members and how their addiction affects the other members of the family.
If you need treatment for an addiction or mental health disorder, we would like to talk to you about signing up for family counseling. We know it can be tough to confront or make amends to your family members. This doesn’t have to be done immediately. However, the sooner your family can understand your addiction or mental health condition and you start healing those relationships, the sooner they might support you in your recovery journey.
What is Family Counseling?
If you have never gone to family counseling, you may be unsure of what will happen during these sessions. Basically, family counseling is when you and members of your family come to therapy together. During the therapy sessions, a therapist will help you and your loved ones work with each other. You will talk about your addiction and other issues you have. You can even discuss your feelings about how the family treated you. However, you will also need to give your family time to talk about their feelings and thoughts, as well. The more you can discuss and understand each other, the more productive these sessions will be.
What Benefits Can You Get from Family Counseling?
Do you want to attend family counseling? Maybe, you aren’t sure yet because you don’t know how it can benefit you. Some benefits that you may want to be aware of include:
- Being able to connect with your family members in a safe place
- Being in an environment where you feel more comfortable listening to how your family members feel
- Learning how to listen to each other more thoroughly
- Learning how to understand each other’s point of view
- Finding ways to better engage in conversations with each other
- Learning each other’s love language
- Allowing each one of you the opportunity to make amends and work through issues together
The list noted here today is a small one. The truth is there are many more benefits to family counseling than just the ones just mentioned. However, you can tell from this list that you and your family members can truly benefit from this service.
Substance Abuse in Families
Unfortunately, there are many families that have people with addictions. If you have an addiction and start receiving treatment here at Midwood Addiction treatment center, you can be well on your way to maintaining a recovering lifestyle. On the journey you are heading into, you will want to learn about how your substance abuse issues impacted your family.
Some issues that may have come up as a result of your addictive behaviors include:
- Negative emotions, thoughts, and interactions with one another
- Issues with everyone’s safety
- Lack of communication or improper communications
- Avoiding responsibilities or forgetting about them
- Not respecting other people’s boundaries
- Not admitting to your addiction which can cause everyone to be on edge
- Allowing other people to make excuses for the things that you did or for your addiction
- Being codependent with one another
- Family members may have enabled you throughout the years
- Lying to your loved ones
- Isolating from your family, so that you could drink or do drugs without them knowing
There are numerous problems that can exist within a family when someone has an addiction to drugs or alcohol. If you have an addiction, getting treatment now can help to start the healing process. Not everyone will forgive you now and some may not at all. However, when you begin the process of recovery, it is likely that people will start learning to trust you again. Hopefully, in time, you can build up your relationships with your family members and start spending quality time with them.
If you have children, it is important that they get into family counseling with you. That way, you can listen to how the addiction affected them. Making amends with your children is very important. It would also be a good idea to have your children attend individual therapy, as they may need to talk to someone about their feelings without you being around.
Start Family Counseling at Midwood Addiction Treatment Center Today
Do you have an addiction? If so, it likely impacted your family in many negative ways. The good news is that you can start attending family counseling with your loved ones, so everyone can start to heal.
Contact us today to get enrolled in our family counseling services, here at Midwood Addiction treatment center.
Contact Midwood Addiction Treatment Center
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