Family therapy is without question one of the most integral parts of substance abuse treatment. Let’s face it, we are who we are because of our family. It was our familial environment that helped shape us into the people we’ve become today. It was those same relationships we watched and developed ourselves where patterns and emotional responses were ingrained into our brains. It was in our families where we first learned to communicate as well as learned how to get our needs met. Some of the things we learned were positive, others not so much. A large part of family therapy is understanding and accepting how much our family of origin has influenced who we are, where we are and how we make our decisions.
Expanded Family Therapy Program
The staff at Destination Hope has always prided themselves on having one of the best family therapy programs around. That said, it’s about to get even better. Currently, Destination Hope provides group family therapy every week and individual family therapy which is as often as needed. But in a couple of months, they will also be offering family weekends! What that entails is having a pre-determined amount of client’s families with us over the weekend. In order to be eligible for a family weekend, clients must be clinically appropriate, emotionally stable, sober, motivated and have family that is interested in actively participating in their treatment.
The family therapy weekends will be rather intense. The therapists will talk to the family about their loved one without the addict present and address the good, the bad and the ugly. They’ll discuss what the process for the weekend is and what everyone, therapist, family and client hopes to accomplish at the end. Group family therapy shows up in many forms in family weekends: group process therapy, group within a group, even separate group therapy just for the moms, dads, siblings, clients etc.
The purpose of the different types of family therapy is to teach all the members of the family about active listening and how to improve their communication with one another. Here, the family will re-enact their family of origin and sibling relationships in an attempt to shed some light on some of the larger issues that are affecting everyone that need to be worked on. The family needs to learn to heal themselves as a unit and then work on how to move forward as one, rather than falling back into old habits which perpetuate the past, bad behavior and outcomes.
Destination Hope: The Women’s Program is a Joint Commission accredited drug, alcohol and dual diagnosis treatment facility in Florida for women with substance abuse issues. We firmly believe that the client with the best chance of beating their addiction is the client who’s family is engaged and recovered before they have. When the family is setting the example, doing the work, changing their perception, communication and behaviors, the attitude and environment is completely different than the one the addict previously used in, and that can make all the difference in the world. If you have any questions about Destination Hope’s family therapy programs, give us a call today and we’ll be happy to answer your questions.
