Creating sustainable change is important when teens are struggling with addiction and mental health disorders. However, doing so alone is difficult. Through family therapy at Sustain Recovery, teens and parents process their emotions together, learning new skills, healing, and moving forward as a family. With the help of a therapist, teens, and parents communicate their experiences and emotions in a way that goes beyond normal conversation at home. This helps the healing process and builds a foundation for improved future communication that supports teens to stay sober and maintain their mental health.
Family Therapy: Processing Emotions Together
In family therapy, teens and parents will work through many different issues. As teens are in a transitionary point of their lives, both teens and their families are faced with many challenges. These difficulties are unique to them. Therefore, the counselor will first work to understand what difficulties they are having.
After a clear outline of the challenges, teens and parents will be asked to participate in the healing process. This will include direct and indirect approaches that help all family members improve their understanding of each other, build healthy communication methods, and get the support and care they need.
Creating Sustainable Change in Family Therapy
When an adolescent is struggling with addiction, they need help and support from their loved ones to create lasting change. However, conversations at home often do not help. Family therapy is a way to involve the entire family, with the support of a counselor who helps to mediate and manage the conversations and processing. This helps to find solutions for family issues, improve communication, and allow teens to get the support they need to stay sober.
Solving Family Challenges
For some teens, family challenges can play a role in their difficulties with addiction and their mental health. This can be due to experiencing stress at home or feeling like they do not have the support they need. Fortunately, family therapy can help to solve these family challenges, creating sustainable change.
Solving family challenges is not an easy task. It means that parents and teens both need to admit the role they have played in the situation. Additionally, it means learning tools that help the entire family function differently. Family therapy at Sustain Recovery will look different for each family, helping to address the unique challenges individual teens and parents may face.
Improving Family Communication
Communication is key to whether a teen is struggling with addiction due to stress, trauma, or mental health difficulties. Communication helps parents to open up a dialogue with their teen that is honest. This type of communication gives parents an opening to discuss the risks of drug and alcohol use and teach their teens new skills.
However, communication in families is often poor. Family therapy is a place where teens and parents can improve their communication. With the help of a counselor, teens, and their parents learn new ways to work with each other. This changes the dynamic of communication and creates long-term changes in the family system. As a result of the changed environment, teens are more likely to maintain the changes they make in their lives and continue to learn and grow in a new and improved direction.
Improving Support at Home
Treatment is the first step to teens’ healing from addiction and mental health disorders. However, it is also a new beginning. After treatment, teens need structure, safety, and support to help them continue to grow and sustain the changes they made in treatment.
When teens and parents participate in family therapy, they learn to communicate and process their emotions together. This sets them up for success in problem-solving together. After treatment, teens will face many challenges. However, support at home can enable them to get through these difficulties, helping teens to stay sober and manage their mental health well.
Value of Creating Sustainable Change
When a teen is struggling with addiction, there is no quick fix. Teens must make an effort to heal. This may include healing from trauma or mental health disorders. However, teens also need to build new skills that help them to maintain their sobriety and mental health.
Teens are in a time of transition. They are learning skills that will impact their success or failure in the future. Therefore, by creating sustainable change in and after treatment, teens are more likely to be successful in caring for their mental health needs and staying sober.
Whether a teen is struggling with addiction, mental health disorders, or a combination of the two, sustainable change is important. It gives them an opportunity to live a different and more productive life after treatment. However, this means making changes in the family system that will support their journey of healing.
Family therapy gets the whole family involved, helping both the adolescent and other family members to see how and why they need to change. Monitored and led by a mental health professional, family therapy will often lead to much better results than simple conversations at home. Family therapy at Sustain Recovery helps families to create lasting change. For adolescents struggling with addiction, mental health disorders, and a history of trauma, it is a way for whole families to heal and move forward while supporting the adolescent in need. If you are interested in learning more about our programs and how they help teens and their loved ones heal and move forward, call Sustain Recovery today at (949) 407-9052.
