Family and friends, those you love and closest to you, play an important role in any individual’s life. Our families influence many areas of our lives, from our very first moment to our very last. We learn how to love and interact with others because of our families, sometimes in a health and sometimes in unhealthy ways. Over the years, The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy has shown that 90% of people report emotional improvement following therapy. Family therapy is meant to help initiate change and nurture development, understanding, relationships between family members or couples. Here we dive into the benefits of family therapy and how it can help with addiction and mental illnesses.
Establish Healthy Boundaries and Family Dynamics
Figuring out ways to establish family boundaries during family therapy gives room for more personal space and freedom, thus giving each family member a better understanding of what each person needs and how they can meet those needs. By respecting each other’s boundaries, compassion and love can be shown and change can begin to occur. Please keep in mind, these boundaries and expectations need to be realistic.
Promote Effective Family Communication
Each person needs to feel that they are heard and understood. In family therapy, families work on creating a safe and respectful space where each person can share and express their emotions, thoughts, and feelings. By doing so, a deeper level of trust can be reached that allows healing around addiction and mental illness to come in. These skills can then be taken out into the real world and implemented in day-to-day lives to lessen conflict and anger.
Reduced Conflict and Better Anger Management
Addiction and mental illness often times show themselves through anger and outbursts. A safe environment that family therapy provides can allow family members to open up about the way this anger and conflict makes them feel, and the impact it has on their relationships. These eye opening conversations, and the practices family therapy teaches, can help reduce conflict and anger between families.
Develop Supportive Family Environments
The family member who is suffering from addiction or mental illness needs to know that their journey towards recovery and a better well-being are being supported. The isolation within these diseases is difficult enough as is, and the feeling that those closest to them aren’t supportive can cause further damage, mistrust, and anger. The practices a family therapist can teach everyone, tailored to their own unique family dynamic, will help the person suffering understand, and feel encouraged, that they are not alone.
The List of Benefits for Family Therapy Continues
In addition to the benefits we explored above, the list of benefits from family therapy when dealing with addiction and mental illness continues:
· Learn how to recognize and avoid triggers
· How to ask for and receive help
· How to dislike actions but still love the actor
· Recognize and change unhealth patterns
· Awareness of how behavior effects others
Next Steps at Resurface
The experienced, professional staff at Resurface is trained to understand your family dynamic and tailor the family therapy to go beyond your needs and goals. We help strengthen connections, establish healthy boundaries, promote change, and help healing. Please reach out to us today if you believe your family is in need of family therapy to help with the damage and havoc of addiction or mental illness. There is love, and there is help.