Family Counseling Services for Addiction for Philadelphia Residents

Family Counselling for Addiction for Philadelphia, PA Residents

Substance addiction encompasses a multifaceted condition that attacks an individual’s mental and physical health. Yet, not only can it take a toll on someone’s career and finances, but it can also negatively affect their families in profoundly serious ways. The fact is, an addiction to drugs or alcohol can threaten everything good in a person’s life.

JC’s Recovery Center offers a wide array of alcohol and drug addiction programs, including family therapy tailored to each family unit’s needs. If you live in Philadelphia, you and some family members may wish to get away from your home environment and spend time at our Hollywood, Florida treatment campus. Sometimes it’s best to get away from a place where you’ve established unhealthy patterns.

At JC’s Recovery, we blend Christian support and doctrines with evidence-based therapies. Our family therapy programming can help you and your loved ones repair broken bonds, understand the chronic nature of addiction, and find ways to ward away relapse.

Addiction sufferers from all over the U.S., including Philadelphia, choose JC’s Recovery Center for treatment. We are certainly located in a dazzling part of the country filled with sunshine and ocean breezes. Still, it’s our programming and caring staff that attracts people who are seeking lasting recovery. We combine faith-based and evidence-based treatments that target an individual’s body, mind, and spirit. By taking a holistic approach, we can help people rebuild each aspect of their lives that has been affected by their substance addiction.

At JC’s Recovery Center, we believe that family therapy is an important part of our program. Spouses, children, and other family members are often indelibly affected when a loved one abuses and becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol. We provide addiction sufferers and their families with the help and expertise needed to heal the entire family. During each therapy session, we’ll identify problematic behaviors, unhealthy ways to support (or not support) one another, and strategies to communicate optimally and mend relationships.

How Addiction Affects the Family

Substance addiction can affect family members in countless ways and in ways that differ. It might cause parents to feel anxious or depressed. It might make a spouse angry enough to want to end a marriage. It can increase the risks in children that they might grow up to abuse drugs or alcohol. It’s no surprise some therapists refer to alcoholism and drug addiction as a ‘family disease’ as it profoundly affects family members and their mental health.

Counselors often begin therapy sessions with lots of information about substance addiction, including what it is and how it works. We use this method because many families feel confused, possibly even outraged that their loved one is making unhealthy decisions and making choices that negatively affect their lives.

Family members often feel anxious and scared because they may have experienced their loved one’s mood swings when they’re under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They may have gone to check their bank account, thinking they could pay the rent or mortgage only to find the money gone and spent on drugs. The reality of drug and alcohol abuse for families is that it’s often fraught with deception, negative emotions, and sometimes even violence.

When addicted to drugs or alcohol, an individual might engage in behaviors they never would have contemplated before they began abusing these powerful substances. It can be immensely difficult for family members to understand and forgive a person who has cheated on them, lied, or taken money. These behaviors are all too common, and the feelings they produce as a response in loved ones are challenging to overcome.

As a result, counselors spend time explaining how addiction changes the brain’s chemistry. They talk about how addiction is a disease of compulsion. Compulsions and cravings are so powerful that substance addiction sufferers are typically unable to control them without professional treatment. Once families understand this disease, they can begin to focus on healing and adopting strategies to cope with their loved one in healthy ways. In time, many families do overcome the anger and mistrust and take the important steps needed to rebuild their relationships.

Learning Coping Skills as a Family

Family members will cope with a loved one’s addiction in various ways. Unfortunately, many of these coping methods can be unhealthy for them and unhelpful to their loved one. During family therapy, our addiction specialists offer crucial support designed to help them identify problematic behaviors so they can work on changing them. For instance, it’s not uncommon for someone in the family to be an enabler who provides unhealthy forms of support. They might provide money even though they suspect this money will be spent on drugs. An enabler may bottle up their own emotions and assessments of the situation or simply hope the problem will improve on its own.

Other family members might turn their back on their addiction suffering loved one altogether. Often, though, family members just don’t know what to do in the face of this illness that can cause so much chaos. Our therapists understand the ideal ways to cope with addiction, addiction recovery, and even relapse. We give families the tools and resources they need to provide the right kinds of support for their recovering loved one.

Bringing Families Together to Heal

At JC’s Recovery Center, we help families heal in many different ways. First, we provide a faith-based framework. We talk about our Christian values and how they can shape family life going forward. We also explain how our programs help individuals who are suffering from addiction. We talk about the different strategies we are developing to help recovering individuals identify their triggers and ward them off. Then, we help family members learn to identify those triggers so they can provide the necessary support to help their loved one avoid relapse.

During therapy, our counselors emphasize that it’s not only the addiction sufferer who is healing. Each family member has been harmed by the addiction and needs time and space to heal as well. We want to help each participating family member become empowered to understand the mechanisms of addiction so they can help their loved one combat it successfully. We know that relapse presents a serious risk for people addicted to alcohol and powerful narcotics like opioids, even after treatment.

The best way to reduce the risk of relapse is to continue with therapy on a long-term basis and include family members in the recovery process. Certainly, relapse is never a foregone conclusion. In fact, the risk of relapse decreases the longer an individual spends in therapy and the more healthy support they have in their lives. Family support can be one of the most powerful keys to lasting recovery.

JC’s Recovery has helped hundreds of families begin their healing journey from substance addiction, and we can help yours too. If you live in Philadelphia and want to spend time at our rehab in Florida, be sure to call us to enroll. We can help you choose the ideal plans and treatments to suit your individual needs. Call 844-524-6873 to learn more today.