Importance of Family Support During Rehab

When someone is going through treatment for substance abuse, it can be a challenging road to travel. The support of family and friends is incredibly important for everyone that is going through recovery. Recovery facilities like Mile High Continuing Care believe that family support is important and needed for anyone going through a recovery program. When a person going through a treatment program has the support of their family, the chances of success increase dramatically. It can also help the individual avoid relapses.

Addiction impacts everyone in the family, not just the individual. During the process, family members typically find different ways of coping. These coping mechanisms can range from ignoring the issues to trying to control the person’s life. This means that the entire family must have some type of recovery. Relationships within the family often become strained and sometimes broken as a result of the addiction. These relationships must be repaired, and an improved family dynamic must be formed.

Family members must understand how best to help their loved one who is going through recovery. During the process of addiction, the family may have taken over roles and responsibilities and, in some ways, enabled the addiction. They have to learn how to stop those behaviors. These behaviors become destructive and are not always helpful for someone in recovery.

The family also benefits from the education available through treatment programs. They can learn about addiction as a disease and the physical and emotional impacts of addiction on a person, as well as the consequences of those impacts. The family can learn about how addiction has impacted the family and what happens during recovery. The family learns how to support their loved one, but also how to find support for themselves.

An important outcome of family support through the recovery process is that the family can work through rebuilding trust. Just about every individual going through recovery has done damage to relationships during their addiction. The family needs to understand and create healthy boundaries. They also need to learn how to communicate better. Communication typically breaks down when your loved one has an addiction. In most cases, families need to learn how to communicate with each other again. When an individual has family support during recovery, it reminds that person that they are loved and supported even though they have engaged in destructive behavior.