Hopestream: Parenting Kids Through Addiction & Mental Health

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Listeners of Hopestream get to hear from lots of amazing doctors, therapists, specialists, and academics. We can't underestimate how valuable their insights are, but we also need to listen to the voices of young people who have misused substances and come out the other side.

That's why our recent guest speakers session for members of Hopestream Community featured an AMA (ask me anything) with three young people who are living healthy lives after facing extreme forms of substance misuse.  Each found their path in the 12-step program, which may be the most common treatment program in the country, but can also be totally unfamiliar to parents suddenly thrown into the world of addiction and recovery.

In this conversation, they answer questions posed by the parents of the Hopestream community, including the controversial concept of "rock bottom", the power of peer support and parents' united front, and whether recovery can (or should) include nicotine use.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Find an AA meeting here
Find a recovery high school here
Connect with Young People in Recovery here
Search locally for an "Alternative Peer Group" in your city

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

For those who haven't seen their child's life endangered by the misuse of substances, calling the experience "trauma" may sound like an exaggeration. But my guest today says that the effects on the body and mind are almost identical.    

Dr. Amy Hoyt has been working in the field of trauma for 10 years, with studies ranging from genocide to addiction. But her understanding isn't just academic.  After suffering sexual abuse in her teens, Amy repressed the memories and began drinking before high school classes every morning. With the help of a good friend and parents who were willing to step in, she has been in recovery for many years.

Over the course of her career, Amy has learned that toxic and vicarious stress mimic the effects of trauma in the body and mind. Constant stress changes our gene expression, and can even "turn on" experiences of pain, gut symptoms like IBS, autoimmune disorder, fibromyalgia, and serotonin issues.

In this episode, Amy reviews some of the current research on stress and trauma relevant to kids using substances AND their parents, proven methods to down-regulate an overworked nervous system, and why psychological pain isn't "all in your head."

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Mending Trauma Podcast
• Dr. Hoyt’s website
• Dr. Hoyt on Instagram
• Peace After Trauma Membership

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

Parents sometimes fall into patterns that can unintentionally prolong their child's struggle with substance use. In this eye-opening solo episode, Brenda Zane reveals ten common parenting pitfalls that might be keeping your family stuck on the Roller Coaster Ride. I emphasize that recognizing these behaviors doesn't make someone a bad parent but rather, presents opportunities for growth and positive change.

In just 30 minutes, you'll discover practical strategies to shift your approach and create the conditions for positive change – without the guilt or shame. And many of them you can implement today!

Key points covered in the episode:

• The importance of self-care and not running on fumes
• Why shaming, blaming, or yelling is ineffective
• The need for consistent parenting approaches between partners
• Understanding addiction as a health issue, not a character flaw
• Moving beyond the "rock bottom" myth
• Avoiding information overload and lecturing
• Not engaging when your child is under the influence (and two other times)
• Recognizing when "it's just a phase" thinking is harmful
• The dangers of being a "fixer" and preventing natural consequences
• The benefits of seeking support and community instead of isolating

Join me for practical tips, resource recommendations, and encouragement. And don't miss the helpful PDF download in the show notes where you can dive deeper into each of the ten pitfalls and find links to resources.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Click here to download this episode's free resource guide

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Everyone knows the experience of internal dialogue and conflict about who we are and how we will respond to the world around us. It can feel as if there are parts of us at war with each other. For kids using substances, these parts can become extremely polarized – for instance, part of them wants nothing more than to use, and another genuinely desires self-control. 

My guest today says that while their inner parts are engaged in this debate about use, it's hard for them to see the underlying cause of the substance use or addictive behavior, whether that be loneliness, anxiety, or shame.  

Cece Sykes saw her first client almost 45 years ago, and since then has been doing incredible work with young people suffering from addiction and trauma. Cece is one of the first practitioners of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a framework for understanding the roles each of these parts are playing, discovering what role they play in our coping, and gaining a deeper understanding of our kids' needs and motivations.

Interestingly, understanding IFS can change our relationship with ourselves as well. We all have these parts, and the self-examination that this framework provides can help us move beyond the unhealthy dynamics that often develop between parents and kids using substances. In this episode, Cece explains how that works, and how we can help our kids recoginze all the parts of them, without shame, and with more self-compassion.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Cece Skyes, LCSW website
• IFS Therapy for Addictions
• “We All Have Parts,” by Colleen West
• “No Bad Parts,” by Dr. Richard Schwartz

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

After years of producing feature films and TV shows about family life like Cinderella Story, Perfect Man, Lizzy McGuire, and many others, Mark Rosman was forced to face the reality of problems in his own family.

Mark and his wife spent some time in denial about their daughter's substance use. Even after two trips to the emergency room, they decided against professional advice to get her into treatment immediately.  They chalked everything up to ordinary teen rebellion and experimentation, sending her to a traditional boarding school instead. Less than one month later, she was in the emergency room again after downing a bottle of Listerine. Thus began the roller coaster we're all familiar with: periods of hope and sobriety, followed by lapses into chaos and returns to use.

Like many parents, Mark instinctively rejected the notion of "self care", or any form of detachment from his daughter's behavior and state of mind at any given time. Finally, in what seemed like his 100th parent group meeting, he admitted to himself (and everyone else there) the utter hopelessness he was feeling. This was the beginning of the entire family's recovery.

In this episode, Mark talks about how this realization helped him to learn to set boundaries and how – now five years into his daughter's recovery – he’s making his own story into a feature film which, for the first time, focuses on the experiences of parents.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Keep Coming Back Film
• Keep Coming Back Instagram account

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

When Dr. Jarrell Myers took his first job out of grad school, he loved working with children suffering from anxiety disorders, as well as their families. It was a calling he’d already been pursuing for years. But there was a big problem: many kids who needed needed help for their anxiety couldn’t become patients in his program because they were using substances.  

While this made some clinical sense (for reasons Jarell will explain), it also failed to acknowledge that substance use was woven into their anxiety, often as a coping mechanism.  This is what finally led him to the Center for Motivational Change (CMC).

CMC publishes the book I recommend more than any other to parents of kids struggling with substances – Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change. Today I finally have a chance to speak with Dr. Myers about some of the core principles it contains.

In this episode, we discuss the nature of anxiety, why it makes sense that anxious kids to turn to substances, how parenting those kids may trigger our own fear and anxiety responses, and how to give our families the best fighting chance in the face of these realities.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Center for Motivation and Change
• Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change
• Beyond Addiction Workbook for Friends and Family

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Christopher O’Reilly says it’s a mistake to think that we can just understand our way out of trauma. But he claims that healing—once we understand how to receive it—can bring intimacy and connection with other human beings in a way we might never know without those challenges.

After surviving his own struggles with substance use, Christopher should know. When he discovered the power of mindfulness meditation to examine his own choices and motivations, Christopher chose the path of change. He has spent the past 20 years helping others do the same.

After earning his master's degree, Christopher pursued certification in multiple forms of trauma and addiction counseling. He teaches mindfulness-based stress reduction classes at Brown University, but the center of his professional life is serving as Vice President of Clinical Services at Onsite’s residential trauma treatment program, Milestones.

In this episode, Christopher and I discuss the anxiety and trauma of parents who have kids misusing substances, why our children can be reluctant to talk about their own anxiety and trauma, and why substance use is sometimes their best option – for a while.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Milestones website
• Onsite website
• Christopher O'Reilly on LinkedIn

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Upon returning from vacation, I started to notice a theme in our community and my friend groups - there are a lot of exhausted, brain-fried parents who are looking for an escape from the day-to-day strain of having a child who misuses or is addicted to substances. From spouse and partner relationships to our kids themselves, we sometimes need time to tap out and escape.

This episode will give you six simple (not necessarily easy) things you can do when you’re looking for an escape hatch to help navigate through difficulties. You’ll also hear about our upcoming Signature Fall Retreat: Restoration Mom and an invitation to dads who may want an escape of their own.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Episode 174 on boundaries with Cathy Cioth
• Onsite retreats and intensives
• Evoke Intensives
• Restoration Mom retreat, Oct. 1-4, 2024

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

We all have more going on in our lives than just kids who are misusing substances. But Leah is currently facing an overload of grief and loss including caring for her father-in-law through in-home hospice, the loss of her first grandchild as a newborn, and now caring in-home for her mother and sister-in-law, both of whom are suffering from alzheimers and dementia. Her oldest son, who’s been struggling with substance misuse for eight years, has recently been expressing suicidal ideation. All of this while Leah is working and raising her youngest, a 14 year old son.

It’s hard to overstate the stress and trauma this Hopestream mom has dealt with over the past year. Despite all of this, Leah moves forward with positivity and hope. Some days though, the anxiety pushes her to work herself to exhaustion to gain some control - any control - over a world that seems increasingly unpredictable and scary.

In this episode, Leah and I discuss the best perspective she can take on this season of her life, the good it will bring about, how she wants to look back on it in the future, and why the loss of her newborn grandchild may have been a turning point for her oldest son.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Hopestream Community

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

When AJ Diaz left his sober living home after a year-long stay, he got the same thing everyone else did - a sheet of paper that essentially said, "Here is your relapse prevention plan.We wish you the best."  AJ felt in his gut this was insufficient to support people in early recovery, and after years of working in the field, he now knows he was right.  

AJ says staying sober within the four walls of treatment isn’t all that hard. Individuals receive hot meals, supportive staff, structure and routine, and socialization with others facing the same challenges. It's when people - especially young people - leave treatment that the world hits them like a ton of bricks. They come face to face with relationships and complications that can disregulate everything they've been practicing, and without the buffer of substances to help them cope.

Seeing a desperate need for continuing outpatient care, AJ and his business partner created a supportive early-recovery program called Accountable. In this episode, AJ and I discuss the most common issues families face with a young person in early recovery (many will sound very familiar), why Accountable removes the responsibility of drug testing from parents and spouses, and why fathers often find it difficult to participate in approaches like CRAFT.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Accountable website and phone: 646-450-7641
• Read: Dear Opiates: A True Story Of How A “Harmless” Addiction Took Over My Life

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.