Coming Up for Air — Families Speak to Families about Addiction

Recovery is progress, not perfection, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. It can be easy to impose expectations of your own onto your loved one. But as you ease up on expectation, you’re taking the pressure off your loved one, allowing them space to try things and just see how it goes. Sometimes mistakes are learning moments. If we can change our expectation and the perception of what we’re seeing, noticing and acknowledging the positive, acknowledging our own feelings, we give them space to grow and we can learn more about what growth looks like from their perspective. Changing yourself makes room for your loved one to change as well.

It's easy to feel like you have to be perfect with CRAFT, perfect with your loved one to be successful. But perfectionism gets in the way of connection. It can blind us, keep us from seeing our loved one fully. Acknowledging things not going the way you wanted, taking responsibility for behavior that doesn’t work--that’s part of the connection, and the healing part of the process. If your loved one feels connection and love, that’s the beginning of treatment.

What you don’t do – like get caught up in being a superhero, or telling our loved ones what they “should do” – can help your relationships emerge as partnerships. If we develop good relationships, we have power. If we have the capacity to change, we have power. If we have awareness, we can make choices, and that gives us power, too. If we are what can change, them making changes in ourselves can have a huge impact on those around us.

Self-care is a pillar of CRAFT; helping yourself is essential to helping your loved one. A lot of CRAFT focuses on a parent trying to help an adult child, so how do we shift things in a partner relationship so we're able to play the starring role in our own lives? Is there room to focus on ourselves when our loved one is not showing up in the relationship, family, or household?

When your partner suffers from Substance Use Disorder, what are realistic expectations in your relationship? Are your expectations setting you up for frustration? Which of your needs can you meet for yourself? Kayla Solomon and Isabel Cooney explore the often sticky nature of partnership when SUD is involved.

A listener writes that she wonders about staying with her husband, who struggles with alcohol but hasn't responded to CRAFT thus far. Would leaving him constitute "natural consequences?" Isabel Cooney and Kayla Solomon examine this important question. Kayla, an IMAGO couples therapist, explains the dynamic of pursuer vs. avoider—which are you with your loved one?

The original CRAFT is outcome-driven and behavioral-based, aimed at getting people into treatment. Allies has made it more connection- and relationship-oriented, focused on listening and communication. The same skill set Allies focuses on -- validating, not arguing, not giving advice or challenging someone's reality or perception -- often works with someone dealing with mental health challenges. Creating that space helps that person feel calm and heard.

What happens to the 30 percent who, in the traditional, research-based CRAFT model, don't make it to treatment in 12 weeks? The Allies version -- "applied" CRAFT -- goes beyond the 12-week version and focuses on change, not just going to treatment. By making changes, starting with yourself, you are engaging in the same work as "treatment." CRAFT focuses on stepping back, listening, reframing, and communicating well, all starting points for long-term change.

What do these terms mean? Should we use them? And are they disparaging? "Dry drunk" comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, and refers to someone who's abstinent, but may not obviously be doing more than remaining abstinent. And "manipulation" is often in the eye of the beholder; CRAFT can help take the judgment out of it. The only fact you have is what is internal to you. CRAFT aims to help you get to know your process, and make choices on how you feel, what you need, and the boundaries you can live with.

How do you work with anxiety so it's of service to you? Sometimes, anxiety is information akin to intuition, a sign that maybe you need to set up a boundary. At the same time, the only completely accurate fact in moments of anxiety is that you don't know. Part of the work we need to do is getting comfortable with and coping with not-knowing.