Addiction Recovery Consulting: Treatment and Recovery is a Family Affair

Addiction affects the entire family system and typically the disease becomes the family’s organizing principle.  As the disease sets in and advances, family members adapt their behaviors and reactions around their addicted loved one in unhealthy ways and the family system becomes chaotic, unpredictable and terrifying.  Maladaptive behavior and coping become the norm as the wounded system continually reinjures itself.  This slow, insidious process cripples and devastates good, intelligent people, diminishing the quality of their lives individually and as a family. 

Addiction Affects the Whole Family
Family Recovery is Essential for Success

Family Recovery Consulting was developed to help families address the ravages of addictive disease, to help them heal and grow together as a recovering family system.  The focus is on healing the wounded family dynamic that supported the disease rather than focusing solely on a single individual, the addict/alcoholic.  The program spans 6-24 months, the period of highest risk for relapse and stalled progress. 

Family Recovery Consulting is individually tailored to your family and to the individuals that make it up.  It is fluid and flexible, the dynamics, focus and program evolving as your family, individually and collectively, grow and heal.  This program is the bridge, the missing link, between treatment/early recovery and long-term recovery. 

Commonly asked questions:

1. My family does not reside in one place; is this program available to all of us? 
   
   Answer:  Yes.  Technology and the program design make this unique service available to families nationwide and abroad.
   
   
2. Not all of us have the same amount of time or interest; is that a barrier or hindrance? 
   
   Answer:  No.  The program is flexible and tailored to each individual within the family system.  It easily accommodates any schedule.
   
   
3. Not all of us need the same help at the same time; wouldn’t counseling be more effective?
   
   Answer:  No.  Counseling works in isolation with an individual or couple and requires that the counselor and client(s) be in the same location.  This service works with all family members regardless of location, enhancing, supporting and furthering the growth of the family as a whole, not just one or two members of the family.
   
   
4. Is this service considered counseling or in lieu of counseling? 
   
   Answer:  No.  This service is consulting, a unique and tailored combination of education, advisement and goal-setting growth and family reunification.  Counseling services may be recommended for some family members in conjunction with this service or they may be unnecessary.
   
   
5. What is the difference between counseling and consulting?
   
   Answer:  Counseling is individual-oriented; Family Consulting is family-oriented.  Counseling is scheduled (i.e. Tuesday, 3pm, 50 minutes); Family Consulting is available to all family members as needed, 7 days/week (scheduled appointments are incorporated, but not required to access on-the-spot advice/consultation).  Counseling focuses on talk and feelings; Family Consulting focuses on action, learning and goal accomplishment.  Counseling often focuses on the past; Family Consulting focuses on the present and the future! 
   
   
6. Must everyone in the family be willing to participate?
   
   Answer:  No.  It is the rare family where all members wish to participate or participate at the same level.  Sometimes only one member of the family engages this service, but all benefit from the change and others are incorporated as that change begins to take place.  It is very exciting!!

For more information and to find out if this program is appropriate for you and your family, please call (415) 717-3675.