Family Sessions Help With Agreements

Hello and welcome. I am your host, Joseph Devlin, and today we're going to read chapter seven walking with someone in treatment, which is in my book, a step out of darkness. And as a reminder, just going to read a few pages, and then I'm going to expand upon what we read today. So let's get at it. If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them. Bruce Lee, every family system is unique. You and your loved one are the experts on how your daily living routines work. You are the ones who are going to be able to determine proper goals and action steps that are realistic to you and your family situation. The more groundwork that is accomplished while in inpatient treatment, the easier the transition will be for your loved one when they leave the inpatient facility. You may wonder what is happening while your loved one is an inpatient facility. Many facilities have something called blackout times. This means your loved one has no contact with the outside world for three days or even seven days, even though they cannot contact you, you are encouraged to contact the treatment center to see how your loved one is doing. So how can you actively support them during their treatment, I would like to discuss practical ways to accomplish this goal. While in inpatient treatment, your loved one is going to have weekly individual sessions. Since you know they will be having an individual session, reach out to the treatment center and ask to schedule a family session. This way you can openly discuss struggles and successes your loved one is having many parents or spouses with whom I assist get confused because they do not understand why a counselor does not just tell them everything that is being discussed with their loved one due to best practices and confidentiality laws, a counselor is not able To do this. It is our loved ones right not to have the counselor disclosed to you anything that is going on in treatment, but when you have a family session, you can inquire about goals and progress. This will open the door for your loved one and the counselor to tell you what is really going on in treatment and what progress is being made. Many people think that if they are unable to physically attend a family session, it is impossible. This is a misconception. You can always set up a conference call during the scheduled session time, and this way, everybody can get on the same page. The more involved you are in your loved one's treatment, the more you're going to be able to help and support them. You're going to know what their goals are, how they plan to achieve them, and how you can best support them upon their discharge from treatment. Being on the same page as your loved one and the counselor helps your loved one be successful and significantly reduces the chances of any surprises or miscommunication. Now is a perfect time for everyone to lean on the counselor for boundary setting. For instance, ask the counselor to provide examples of successful accountability, boundaries set by other families upon completion of inpatient treatment. There are going to be natural expectations and goals that your loved one will need to fulfill. Proactive boundary setting and inpatient treatment will take away any excuses upon returning home for not accomplishing these obligations, this theme of working together in treatment, your new partnership should continue as your loved one steps down from inpatient to PHP to IOP to general outpatient before we continue with discussing how you can walk alongside your loved one in treatment, I want to reinforce the importance of a support group for you and your loved one. Your loved one will be encouraged to join a support group after they are discharged from the inpatient facility. And since you are not currently in an inpatient facility, you should seek to join a support group as well. I encourage you to make attending support groups a part of your loved one's treatment plan, since you are leading by example, it will make it easier for your loved one to attend groups as well. And again, I'm bringing up support groups, and just to you know, remind you that there's, you know, Al Anon groups, narcotics, anonymous, NAR Anon, overeaters, anonymous, sexaholics, anonymous, there's Celebrate Recovery. I mean, there's so many 12 step support groups out there, and when you're leading by example and you're going to support groups, it makes it so much easier for you to have that conversation with your loved one like this is something important that you should be doing, because the treatment center is already recommending them to do this. And for you, I want to let you know is that it is really helpful as you're building out your support network. You. Because there's going to come a time where you know your loved ones in inpatient or in or they're in their treatment process, and they're going to say, Hey, listen, I just want to stop doing this. I think I'm good. Everything's okay. And that's generally a little bit too early, especially if it's happening within the first 45 days. And when you have made that connection with somebody in a support group, somebody who's been through these, these same experiences, you're going to be able to lean on them, and you're going to be able to say, hey, look, listen, this is what's going on. I really want them to come home. I think they're doing better. They sound better. And that other person will be able to be a voice of reason for you and a strong support to say no. You got to say no for right now, you know you're on a good path, and you want to be building a solid foundation. So for right now, you just got to be strong and say no. Not, not right now. And that's not, that's not always so easy to do. And I have definitely, you know, if you're not going to get involved in a support group. I've, you know, I've worked with many families just to to walk them through that process of, hey, we've got to remove our emotions from this point and we just need to say, hey, no, not right now. It's been the greatest thing that they've ever was the greatest gift they could give their loved one is to get behind them and say, Hey, listen, I'm going to walk along this with you so but right now you got to stay in treatment. And going back to the book here, you know, I'm talking about the groundwork that we need to do well, that individuals is in inpatient treatment. And it goes back to, do we want to build something on a rock? Do we want to build our foundation on a rock, or do we want to build it on sand? And by taking these, you know, these steps, these small steps along the way, we're going to give ourselves the best chance to really heal our family, as well as be able to provide the most success we can for our loved one to achieve sobriety, as well as really take their life back and be able to accomplish the things that they've always wanted to however, the addiction has kind of steal, has stolen those dreams from them. So one of those things I suggest doing is, hey, when they go into inpatient treatment, remember, you know, hey, they might be on blackout for three days, seven days. And definitely a frustrating point is, hey, listen, why don't they just tell me what's going on with my loved one? But I think, you know, it's really good to remember that there is confidentiality laws that the treatment center must abide by, so we want to respect those. So what we can do in the in the meantime, is we can either just call and leave a message for our loved one and and speaking encouragement into that sweet Hey, I just love you. I want to let you know I'm here thinking about you. Hey, I'm proud of you. We can also, you know, a letter would go a long way. You can drop off a note at the treatment center or send them a note, but just something very encouraging. This is a great time to put in scripture verses. And you know, again, encouraging scripture verses such as, hey, a quarter three strands is not easily broken. I'm here. I see your value. You know, you're a child of God. It just, it's such a great reinforcement for those who are in the treatment center at that time because their head is still really cloudy, and they're feeling tons of guilt and shame as they're going through this process. Like man, you know, for many people, it could be, you know, their third or fourth time being in there, and like, man, again, I'm back here. What happened? And you know, we're not giving up on them. We're there. We're ready to lock arms with them. And another thing that you can do is, while you know you know that they're going to be in the treatment, is to reach out to the counselor and say, Hey, listen, I am here, and I would love to be a part of a family session. And this is so crucial because, as I stated in the book, it's like you start to hear what their treatment goals are, what their action steps to achieve them

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are. So you know how you can come up alongside them and help support them. And this is a great time for you, like, there's, you know, when somebody goes into inpatient treatment, there's so many emotions that are, that are going on for the loved ones on the outside, and the person you know who's in the inpatient facility, and when we're at such heightened emotional states, it's really hard for us to think clearly, to express ourselves clearly and accurately on what we really want to be saying. And you know, what we can do is, when we utilize like a counselor, we're going to be able to, hey, we go in, we can see their treatment plan, we can talk with them, how we can support them. It just gives us a framework, and a counselor could be a great sounding board to make sure everybody's hearing the same thing, because also in this heightened emotional state, a lot of times, I can only hear what. Want to hear, or I'm also only able to hear what I'm capable of hearing at that point in time, because there's still a lot of hurt going inside of me, as well as the as the loved one who's in addiction, and so the counselor becomes a very key piece in all of this. I also encourage you at this point like this is a great point to lean on your support network. What had worked for them, what were treatment goals that worked for their loved one when they were in impatient also, this is a great time for you as family members to be engaged with a counselor, because you can know, hey, listen, what are some of the things I need to ask as I go into these family sessions? What are the things I shouldn't say right now, and what would be some proper boundaries or goals that I would be looking for to see if somebody's really on the right track. And you know, to further that is that as you're getting in there and they're in this inpatient facility, this is a great time where I really encourage families to come up with an agreement with their loved one. And what I mean by that is like an agreement to say, Hey, listen, if you come home, here are some expectations I have for you. I see your treatment plan. That's great. We're going to support you on that. But here are some other things that need to occur while you come and you move back home. And for many people, they're going to go move and they're going to go live in a sober living house. First, you can still come up with agreements for that. When someone is in an impatient facility, there's this window of opportunity where they're going to be more receptive to agree to things and to say, yes, I want to live a different way of life. And this is a great time to get it down on pen and paper. And you know some of the agreements, you know, every family system is unique, and I want to honor that. And I know everybody listening here, you you know the things that work for your family or the things that do not work for your family. And you know, if you can have somebody helping you craft some of this agreement, it's going to be part of that rock that you're building this foundation on. So some of the things that I've done with families in the past is like, Hey, listen, let's, hey, you have an agreement. You're going to take out the garbage every Tuesday night. Now that's the day garbage and recycle. And go, okay, good. And this builds up trust and responsibility for somebody. Okay, this is what I'm going to do. Another key one is, hey, listen, you're going to get up. Let's agree on the time that you're going to get up every morning. And this is helpful, because the inpatient facility has already been establishing a normal routine for somebody getting up at the same time every day. So continue and to build off of that momentum. The other thing is, you guys agree on how many meetings are they going to attend a week. Again, this is something that's going to be on their treatment plan. So it's like, okay, let's agree. Is it three times a week? Is it five times? Is it seven times? What is it? And another one is that, one of my favorites is saying, Hey, listen, three times a week, we're going to eat dinner at 5:30pm for me, when you come to the table, that dinner table and you just meet and eat a meal together, so many beautiful things happen. I just say it's so spiritual to be able to break bread with one another that we never know what's going to happen. We never know the bonds that we're going to make. We never know the fun that we're going to have. And I do encourage you to say, Hey, listen, let's try and have any of these things to be fun. For example, if you're at the dinner table, for some families, it's fun for have different people make the meal. For other families, it's fun to tell a joke. Others it's it's to tell like a celebration, you know, a high and a low of the day, make it yours. And for many families, it'll just be like, Wow, we actually got together three times a week at the same dinner table. Hooray when celebrated. It's amazing. You are building that foundation that's going to be successful. It is, it's going to be that launching pad that that you need for yourself, for the family to heal, and for your loved one to be successful. Another thing I want to note here is that you also have to think about, if these things don't happen, what's the accountability for that? For some families, it makes sense to say, hey, we're going to take away the video games. Okay, we're not going to have internet access for hours between x time and X time. Other families. It says, Okay, we're going to do a book project together, and that could mean that you're going to discuss the book at the dinner table, or you're each going to write up a paragraph about a chapter. It really just depends upon your family and what's going to make the most sense for you. The other thing I want to say is that you're leading by example here, and I really do encourage people to have fun and to make these things unique to your own family situation. And so that means we all look at folks. In a different way, because this is, like, stressful. This has been hard and it's awkward for people. So for some folks, you know, a fun thing to do is to have a swear jar, right, where everybody drops some money in a swear jar. And for other families, it's a you jar. Anytime you start, then somebody starts saying, Hey, you did this. They've got to drop some money in that jar, and then at the end of the month, you, you know, you go to a movie, you go get some ice cream. It's just, it will be something that will bring you together. Other families I've seen, you know, if they've gone jogging together, if they've gone walking together, and they've even had competitions, who could, who could walk the farthest, who could jog, jog the most. And the beauty of this is that this is all. These are all things like this is the mental, the emotional and the physical changes that are going to make a difference for long term sobriety. And when you're organically doing this within your family, you are building that foundation I keep talking about, and we don't want to skimp on this. We want to we want to count the cost and say, Hey, listen, this is what it's going to take for us to do it, and let's make it happen and make it a priority. I thank you for being here with me today. And if you found this information useful, please like and subscribe and even send it to somebody else, this will increase the algorithm, and it will get this information out to more and more people. So until our next episode, remember sobriety is a family affair.