Many people are good at hiding their addiction to start with, but eventually, friends and family find out and it puts a huge amount of strain on relationships. When people have serious substance abuse issues, feeding their addiction becomes their main priority, and that means that relationships suffer as a result. It’s also incredibly difficult for people to watch somebody they love, ruin their lives through addiction, and eventually, it gets hard to keep helping them when nothing seems to work. During the recovery process, rebuilding those relationships with family is so important, and rehab facilities can help you to do that.
Your Circle of Support
Every addict has four distinct groups of people in their lives and they each react to the addiction in a different way. There are people that know exactly what the situation is, people that don’t know about the addiction and enable it, people that try to offer support, and people that have distanced themselves from you because you have hurt them.
The people that don’t know about the addiction may simply be naive or ignore worrying behaviors, but they may also be rationalizing your behavior and blaming it on stress at work or health issues. The people that enable addiction are the biggest issue because they make it easier for an addict to get access to drugs and convince them that their issues are not as bad as they think. The supportive group members are the ones that will try to help you access help and do anything they can to help you through your addiction. Unfortunately, people can only take so much and many people that were initially in the supportive group end up estranged from the addict because they have been hurt too many times. Addicts often steal money from family, lie to them, embarrass them or say hurtful things to them. Often, the reason that people seek treatment in the first place is that they want to fix relationships with these groups.
Fixing Family Relationships
Many addicts start to understand the extent of their problem when they look around and realize that they have destroyed their relationship with their family and they are incredibly lonely. For some people, this is a wake-up call and it inspires them to seek help, but others feel that nobody else cares so why should they? But you shouldn’t give up hope because checking into a rehab facility gives you the opportunity to fix those relationships. These are some of the ways that rehab can help:
- Showing an effort to recover means that your family will support you.
- You learn more about your addiction and you can share this with your family so they understand the reasons for your behavior.
- Rehab facilities offer counseling services to help you fix relationships.
- Staying sober for long periods helps to build trust with your family.
Family Therapy
Family therapy is an important part of recovery because family dynamics often have their part to play in addiction issues. In some cases, people begin using drugs because they feel that their family is disappointed in them or favors other family members over them. Talking through these issues in family therapy can help you to start over and build better relationships. Fixing family relationships is essential if you want your recovery to be successful, and checking into a rehab center is the best way to start rebuilding.
