It is a sad and unfortunate national statistic that the genes with which you are born account for half of your odds of developing an addiction within your lifetime. Most of the rest of the chances comes from the environment in which children grow up. Alcohol and drug addiction impact the whole family severely. The ensuing trauma is able to haunt a person for the remainder of your lifetime if there is not an intervention from a treatment center and program. This raises the question: Can you do family therapy at a Delaware Alcohol Rehab Center?
Addiction at home within a family causes meaningful connections to be lost, loved ones to experience feelings of guilt, loneliness, and shame, and difficult conversations to not happen. These means of coping are the primary blocks for getting effective family addiction treatment. This process of recovery should actually bring in the entire family so that no one is left out.
Family Rehab Center Program Structure
Remember that when a single family member suffers from alcohol or drug addiction, then the entire family suffers together, even if this is in solicitude and silence. It is necessary for the addict’s treatment to be complete that the entire family becomes a part of the recovery process. The ultimate underlying reason for family rehab is to rebuild a lasting family foundation for the future.
The family therapy sessions in Delaware rehabs are not at all like a family get-together. Instead, they include a structured setup. They start with a private meeting between the family member addict and the counselor to talk out your history of drug or alcohol abuse and the impact that this has caused on your loved ones.
Treatment will begin following the formal intervention in which the members of the family get to talk out their own impressions of the family member’s addiction and the ways in which it has impacted them individually and personally. This first official session of therapy is an intervention that will help the attending therapist to understand the different roles in the family and how the family framework is impacting the addict’s life. This is also the point where the therapist will make the offer to provide family counseling to the individual members of the family.
Untreated Addictions Have Severe Consequences
Deciding to forego family treatment of alcohol or drug addiction is the most destructive possible decision that the addict can make for his or her family since untreated addictions like this have devastating consequences longer term. It is in fact the youngest members of the family who are most severely impacted. Children of these addicts can easily contract depression, generalized anxiety disorder, emotional problems, loss of trust in people, and traumatic bonding.
This is so sad when kids become forced to come to grips with a parent or sibling addiction. They will suffer breakdowns in important core relationships like the parent battling their addiction. This causes the poor children to suffer a lasting loss of trust in others.
Most seriously though, the children will tend to imitate the behaviors which they grew up with observing at home. It means that they will likely start abusing alcohol or drugs once they grow up some. This home life experience also increases the potential for other damaging forms of behavior as they become teenagers, such as:
- Engaging in casual sexual relations
- Fighting at school with peers
- Reckless driving behavior
- Attempts to self medicate to deal with the pain
- Uncontrollable spending sprees to distract from the ongoing pain
Family Addiction Treatment Types
Delaware treatment centers will provide a wide range of different types of family therapy for alcohol or drug addiction. They are generally based upon one of four different models for treatment based on the Substance Abuse/Mental Health Services Administration data. First is the Systems Model in which families must break the cycle of trapping the abuser into his or her addiction.
The Disease Model states that the whole family must change to break the cycle of addiction as the substance abuse is harming each member of the family unit. A Multidimensional Model argues that families are actually not the only mitigating factor within the process of addiction. It accounts for outside of the home pressures like work, school, and society.
The last system is called Cognitive Behavioral Model. It argues that the dysfunctional interaction in the family stems from bad levels of communication and this encourages the continuation of the substance abuse at home. Delaware rehab centers will offer special types of therapy for families with children. This will be based on either one of the four models mentioned above or potentially a combination of two, three, or even all four of them.
In Conclusion
No one should suffer through an at-home family addiction alone. There is hope and help available to you today in calling our compassionate and highly trained staff at 302-842-2390. We can get you help if you only call us at anytime, 24 hours per day.
