Family Counseling

We help relatives and significant others to learn about the detrimental effects of substance use on relationships and provide the support they need during the recovery process.

Defining the Family

In recent years, the concept and definition of family have broadened significantly to include people who are important to the client. These people can include a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a same-sex partner, parents, siblings, children, extended family members, and friends. Family members are critical to the strength and duration of the client’s recovery.

Benefits of Family Couceling

One main goal of involving families in treatment is to increase family members’ understanding of the client’s substance use disorder as a chronic disease with related psychosocial components. family-based services can have the following effects:

• Family sessions can increase a client’s motivation for recovery, especially as the family realizes that the client’s substance use disorder is intertwined with problems in the family.
  
  
• Identify and support change of relationship patterns among family members that can work against recovery by supporting the client’s substance use, family conflicts, and inappropriate coalitions.
  
  
• Prepare family members for what to expect in early recovery, by mitigating unrealistic expect that all problems will dissipate quickly, reducing the likelihood of disappointment and increasing the likelihood of helpful support for the client’s recovery.
  
  
• Educate the family about relapse warning signs. Family members who understand warning signs can help prevent the client’s relapses. Help family members understand the causes and effects of substance use disorders from a family perspective. Most family members do not understand how substance use disorders develop or that patterns of behavior and interaction have developed in response to the substance related behavior of the family member who is in treatment. It is valuable for individuals in the family to gain insight into how they may be maintaining the family’s dysfunction.
  
  
• Counselors will help family members address feelings of anger, shame, and guilt and resolve issues relating to trust and intimacy. By taking advantage of family strengths and utilizing family members who demonstrate positive attitudes and supportive behaviors we can encourage the client’s recovery. It is important to identify and build on strengths to support positive change.
  
  
• Encourage family members to obtain long-term support. As the client begins to recover, family members need to take responsibility for their own emotional, physical, and spiritual recovery. Our comprehensive program views the client as part of a family system. When the family is involved in treatment, the following treatment outcomes are possible:
  • The client is encouraged to enter treatment.
  • The client is motivated to remain in treatment.
  • Relapses are minimized.
  • A supportive and healthy environment for recovery is provided.
  • Other family members who may need treatment or other services are identified and treated.

Changes in the family’s longstanding dysfunctional patterns of communication, behavior, and emotional expression may protect other family members from abusing substances. Engaging the Family in Treatment Difficulties with engaging the family in treatment often are cited as reasons for not using a family systems approach and, in many cases, substantial obstacles exist. Family members may be resistant, or the client may be ambivalent or object to the family’s involvement in treatment. But given the potential benefits associated with taking a family approach to service delivery, engaging the family in treatment is worthwhile.

Individual counseling is an important, supportive adjunct to group sessions but not the primary form of treatment. Whereas concurrent psychiatric interventions and addiction counseling are appropriate for clients with co-occurring substance use and mental disorders, most individual counseling in our program addresses the immediate problems stemming from clients’ substance use disorders and their current efforts to achieve and maintain abstinence. Counseling typically does not address the client’s underlying, longstanding conscious and subconscious conflicts that may have contributed to substance use. Many of the readily available counseling manuals for substance abuse treatment have enhanced components for individuals or orient the entire approach to individual counseling.

A 30- to 50-minute individual counseling session is typically a scheduled part of the program and occurs at least weekly during the initial treatment stage. A client is assigned a primary counselor who strives to establish a close, collaborative therapeutic alliance. An individual counseling session frequently follows a standard format. A counselor may ask the client about reactions to the recent group meeting, explore how the client spent time since the last session, ask how the client is feeling, inquire about drug and alcohol use, and ask whether there are any urgent issues. The counselor helps the client review reactions to recent group topics, reviews treatment plans and coping strategies, addresses fears and anxieties related to the change process, provides personalized feedback on urine toxicology and Breathalyzer™ results, and probes into sensitive issues that are difficult to discuss in the group. Counselors also help clients access services they need that are outside the treatment program’s capabilities and plan the transition to another level of care or discharge. A counseling session usually ends with a summary of the client’s plans and a schedule for the next few days.