Virtual Family Support Group

Join us as we explore the 10 most common myths about addiction and recovery. We will gain a clearer understanding of the damage these beliefs can have on us and our loved one. We will also explore the reality behind each myth.

This session is about letting go of results without giving up on your loved one or the situations, and not giving into their challenges or their manipulations. We will also explore how to maintain a presence of ease and peace when the demands and challenges before us seem to outweigh our resources.

In this session, we take a brief look at the Invitation to Change Approach to understanding how your loved one’s behaviors make sense to them. Understanding what someone gets from using can lower your fear and anxiety and invites connection and collaboration between you. It will also help you take their behavior less personally and feel more empathy toward them. Instead of thinking that they are irresponsible or torturing you, you can recognize the underlying loneliness, insecurity, depression, or boredom. While you don’t have to agree with or like their reasons for using, understanding those reasons will help you be more effective in helping promote change. 

Your loved one has very specific reasons why their behavior makes sense to them, and their reasons are different from the next person’s. There are also many paths to change. Understanding that one size does not fit all will help your loved one find a way to change that works for them, and help you find what you need as well. 

Since your loved one’s substance use makes sense to them in some way, when they try to give up those behaviors they will naturally feel ambivalent and sometimes go back to those old ways. Change is an ongoing process, and how you respond to ambivalence can help move things along or set things back. 

As you try to help, it’s likely you will have pain, anger, fear, and upset. It’s likely you also have personal values of love, hope and a desire to be connected to your loved one. Your self-awareness, which includes awareness of your thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and reactions, along with connection to your values will matter a lot as you try to use the skills in the ITC approach. With self-awareness, you can see that your values and your pain are two sides of the same coin, and you can learn to work with both. 

Helping is not a pain-free process, focusing on willingness will help you find ways to accept this struggle instead of shutting down, withdrawing, or getting angry. Willingness will help you allow for the vulnerability that comes with caring. 

Bringing self-compassion to your pain and the change process will help you move away from self-blame and shame and tend to yourself better. This way, you bring kindness and care to the learning (and stumbling) that comes with making changes in behavior, for your loved one and yourself. Plus, taking care of yourself will invite your loved one to do the same. 

When things are rough, it’s normal to want to yell lecture, or shut down- but it’s not likely that anything positive will come from these interactions. By learning communication skills, you can speak with your loved one (and everyone else) in collaborative ways that decrease defensiveness and invite conversations that support change. 

It’s natural to focus on destructive and scary behaviors like substance use, intoxication, fighting, poor school performance, not having a job, being argumentative, and risky behaviors to name just a few. And it’s likely that your loved one’s unhealthy behavior gets most if not all your attention. In this session, you will see how recognizing and rewarding positive change invites it to happen more. You can contribute to your loved one’s motivation and confidence if you notice, acknowledge, and reward any progress they make. Research has proven time and again that positive reinforcement works to help people change their relationship with substances.

You have likely felt the impulse to help your loved one keep up with their responsibilities or take better care of themselves. Unfortunately, in trying to help this way, we often (unintentionally) reinforce or support substance use or negative behaviors. This session is about allowing natural consequences to occur, setting respectful limits, identifying boundaries, and planning consequences for when those boundaries are crossed to discourage negative behaviors.  

Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters!! Discover why accepting addiction as a disease matters. This session will include a robust discussion on how addiction impacts the brain, what are some common beliefs that challenge the disease model of addiction, and why it is important. 

Join us as we explore the 10 most common myths about addiction and recovery. We will gain a clearer understanding of the damage these beliefs can have on us and our loved one. We will also explore the reality behind each myth. 

This session is about letting go of results without giving up on your loved one or the situations, and not giving in to their challenges or their manipulations. We will also explore how to maintain a presence of ease and peace when the demands and challenges before us seem to outweigh our resources.