Coming Up for Air — A Toolkit to Help with Your Loved One's Recovery from Addiction & Mental Illness

Alex Ribbentrop joins the Allies in Recovery hosts to discuss intergenerational trauma, substance use, the importance of family, and finding connection. Alex is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Qualified Supervisor, EMDR Trained Clinician, and Certified Family Trauma Professional, practicing in Virginia, Maryland, and Florida.

How do you handle that difficult time when your loved one comes home from treatment, and is back in an old environment, complete with old triggers? It can be a time of depression and anxiety. Think about reconnection -- being present and engaged, making things fun when you can, and using the CRAFT communication tools to leave doors open.

Enmeshment is a blurring of the boundaries between people. How the other person feels affects you intensely. Enmeshment is one-way -- your thoughts, feelings, and choices are about the other person's well-being. Countering enmeshment means checking in with ourselves, calming our systems down, taking pauses, and allowing the other person the dignity of their own process. You can learn to listen and make reasonable requests and develop a healthier kind of connection.

What questions should you ask, and what plans should you make if your loved one is coming home? Dominique and Kayla discuss a family's question about a new living situation.

What’s the impact of emotions on how we interact with loved ones? Learn to acknowledge, claim, and identify your emotions. Don’t discuss anything when you’re reactive. Instead, pause, check in with your feelings, and don’t take things personally. Have a strategy that’s not confrontational or accusing, but engaging. Calm your system, and engage in a way that you can feel good about. Hopefully this will reverberate with your loved one and create change over time.

When the noise dissipates and there's clarity, that's an "ah-ha moment." You can move forward in a different way. You might even find new commitment to a way of thinking or behaving that you didn't have access to before. Allies in Recovery uses CRAFT to give you the tool set for your own ah-ha moments, but also to help create the conditions for your loved one to find their own moments and possibilities for long-term change.

When you’re in the middle of crisis, feeling reactive or uncertain about what to do, use the “three questions” to helps create space and time and take the best action. What am I feeling? What can I do about it (think as broadly as possible)? What am I actually gonna do? Kayla likes to consider a fourth: What’s happening that’s making me feel this way?

Just before change happens with your loved one, things often get chaotic. Know that it's small, consistent differences over time that create such change. Learn to avoid reactivity and embrace gentle, subtle change -- starting with yourself.

We're all interconnected. The most effective way to help someone with substance use disorder is helping their family. Work on yourself and your communication as a family member, and the odds of your loved one seeking help increase dramatically. Get informed, and learn the tools -- become a transformation agent.

Treatment and recovery are not black-and-white ideas. With CRAFT, it's a matter of progress, not perfection. We want our loved ones to heal, to get their lives back. But change happens over time, and there are many ways to get there. Notice what's good, and work on the relationship. Treatment is how you engage them and help them learn what they like and enjoy it again. Be part of the joy, not a source of negativity. Be ready for when they're ready for new options.