Your family loved you before treatment. They will love you during treatment, and they will still be there to love you after treatment. They are the constant in your life. Keeping them constant during treatment will help maintain communication, heal relationships, and build the heart of your support network for your future recovery.
Your Family: The Foundation of Your Support Network
Families are not perfect, but they are your family. For many people, that means that they will be there for you and love and support you. When you are in treatment and recovery from substance abuse, you need all the support you can get. Your family can become the foundation for your support network if you are willing to let them.
Your family members have likely been there with you at your best and worst times; they have seen your highs, your lows, and everything in between. They still love you, even if relationships may need some repairing. They will be the people you can call when you are having a tough day when it is the middle of the night, and you really need to talk to someone, or when you are celebrating a milestone in your recovery. They will be the ones who will not give up on you.
Allowing Your Family to Be Part of Your Treatment
During treatment, the impulse may be to isolate yourself from everyone as you are going through these dramatic physical and emotional changes. Yet this is the time you need your family the most. Allowing them to see what you are going through, understand how you are changing, and witness your growth will help to strengthen bonds and earn their support.
Treatment is the time for your family to learn about addiction, treatment, and recovery. By being involved in your treatment, they can educate themselves about what you are going through. They can ask questions while you have support from a therapist, and together you can learn what it will take for you to heal from substance abuse. By getting them invested in your recovery during the treatment process, they will be better prepared to offer you support as soon as your treatment is complete.
Beginning Family Healing
During active addiction, relationships get damaged. Trust is broken, feelings are hurt, and sometimes worse. The pain caused by some relationships is at the root of the addiction itself and requires forgiveness and healing as part of the treatment process. Using family therapy during the treatment process is the time to begin family healing.
Healing from addiction often requires familial healing, and that should begin as soon as possible, ideally in treatment. The sooner you are able to forgive and be forgiven, the sooner you will be able to love and accept yourself.
What if My Family Is Unsupportive?
For many people with addiction, their family members are unsupportive of the treatment process or are unhealthy for them to be around due to active addiction, mental health diagnoses, abuse, or other forms of dysfunction. While it is painful to have unsupportive or unhealthy family members, this creates an opportunity for you to choose your own support family.
You can choose the people you want to be in your family from many different areas of your life:
- Friends
- Coworkers
- Neighbors
- Church members
- Teammates
By choosing the people you want to support you like family, you know that they are invested in your health and well-being. Unlike actual family members, you get to choose people you like and who like you too.
Support From the Family You Choose
Building your own support family allows you to find people who are willing to love you like family and will still be there for you, no matter what. When you choose people to support you in treatment and early recovery, you know that they truly love you and have your best interests at heart. Just like family, you can call them on those tough days, in the middle of the night, or celebrate those small victories along the way.
Whoever your family is, involving them in your treatment process will be an important building block for the rest of your recovery. While most people might choose support from their original families, sometimes having a supportive family of people you choose can bring more support with less drama. You can also make your family of choice as big as you want, with as many people as you want to be there for you and love and support you.
Your family can be the constant in your life. Allowing them to be a part of your treatment will help begin the healing process and build your support network. You can choose your support family and build your own support network to help you from treatment throughout your recovery process for those who lack family support. The Ho Tai Way – Recovery For Women is a residential treatment facility for women with addiction and co-occurring mental health diagnoses. Located in Costa Mesa, California, we value family involvement during the treatment process and offer weekly family sessions throughout your stay. Our trauma-informed care can help you begin your healing process as you build your support network for your recovery. Our individual and group therapy will help you address both personal and family issues as you find the root cause of your addiction. Contact us at (714) 581-3974 to learn more.
