Should You Consider Family Therapy?

Families who have one or more members struggling with addiction or other mental health problems face a much higher hill to climb than others in order to find happiness and amicability. They frequently must demonstrate perseverance and resilience when low points are inevitably reached. Many of these families who do find happiness despite their challenges will probably credit some of their success to family therapy.

Family therapy means going as a collective to meet with a professional and discuss problems, communication, and other issues that they are facing amongst each other. The main objective of each session is to find the best way to work through these problems with the help of a neutral moderator who understands each person’s goals and how they can be balanced with the collective goals of the family. So, with all of this in mind, should you consider family therapy if your family is facing these challenges? The obvious answer is a resounding yes, and what really needs to be considered are the potential consequences of ignoring the problems or not getting professional help.

While everybody should at least consider family therapy, not everybody is in the position to make it happen. If you do not have a good relationship with your family members or do not communicate with them anymore, even if the reasons are not just about addiction and mental health, it may seem too difficult to get together. It never hurts to ask, though, and you may find that family members who won’t otherwise communicate may be open to talking if there is a therapist to help avoid some of the pitfalls. If not, you can still engage the family members who are willing, or at least get involved in your own therapy and recovery process. If any family member works on themselves, it is likely to improve the overall family dynamic even if everyone else refuses.

Why Support Systems Matter

A recurring concept you’ll see in a lot of our blog posts is that we’re very big on support systems. They’ve been proven to be an essential part of the healing process. For instance, recovery fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous or SMART Recovery allow someone facing addiction to surround themselves with like-minded and supportive individuals who want to improve their lives. Additionally, such fellowships give an outlet for members to voice their struggles, while also providing healthy accountability and modeling. The low points of recovery don’t fall so low and the highs become more frequent when people recover together.

When someone struggling chooses to invest in family therapy with their loved ones, they are establishing a support system for everyone involved. A great aspect about family therapy is that it looks beyond just who is fighting, and instead includes every member of the family in the healing process. This can be essential for the ones who feel like they don’t have much of a voice in the family, or are sacrificing huge amounts of time, money, or resources to fight for someone else’s recovery.

Family therapy can be a great chance for relatives to express to somebody recovering just how much they mean to them or illustrate how hard they’ve been working to help them find success. On the other side of the coin, it can be a safe forum for family members to talk about how they have been impacted by addiction and other mental health issues. Family therapy serves as something to cling to during tougher times.

The Impact of the Recovery Process on Families

Just about everybody knows that recovery is a difficult thing to achieve, let alone maintain. It takes more than most people have to do by themselves. For this exact reason, the recovery process almost always has to involve other people in order to come to fruition. The first people to get involved are direct family members.

Watching and helping someone who is going through a difficult struggle can be stressful if you love them. Many may even blame themselves for something that is out of their control. Even worse, if you are the one struggling you may not have the energy or ability to even realize that other people are also challenged by your problems. When enough time passes, trust and communication will erode and relationships can be damaged or even destroyed irreparably in some of the worst cases.

This is why family therapy is not just to support the person struggling with addiction and/or other mental health issues, but instead to help everyone involved heal and even grow. Everyone involved can use the help to recover from what has been happening.

Family therapy not only acknowledges the harsh reality of helping someone recover, but seeks to either proactively stop it from happening in the future or help heal damages that have already occurred. 

Some Final Thoughts

Family therapy is not a catch-all solution to recovery or maintaining a good relationship with family. It’s imperative that those trying to fight addiction or mental health ailments take part in multiple forms of recovery. It’s highly recommended that other support systems are found, and that professional help can be especially crucial in the early stages of recovery. If family can see their struggling kin fighting hard to make a change, they’re even more ly to want to maintain their help, support, and love. 

Windmill Wellness is proud to offer family therapy alongside addiction and mental health recovery services. Through a blend of traditional and proven methods paired with newer and more technological treatments, we seek to not only eradicate the problem but help find out what brought someone there in the first place. By rooting out the source of struggle, recovery becomes a more concise and effective process that minimizes the chances of relapse in the future. 

Take the time to learn more about us and our treatment techniques if family therapy seems like a good solution for you. Take the first steps and reach out to us with an email or a phone call. We’ll be happy to talk with you.