Coming Up for Air — A Toolkit to Help with Your Loved One's Recovery from Addiction & Mental Illness

How do accumulated negative feelings and trauma impact you and your relationship with your loved one? How do you get past them, to a better place? In part, it's about breaking the contract of the usual interactions and cycles -- learn to step back, re-assess, and let our loved ones handle things without so much of our intervening. Kayla and Dominique discuss how that can be done.

Ever felt baffled or enraged by communicating with a loved one? Check out this popular episode from 2021, hosted by Laurie MacDougall, Kayla Solomon and Isabel Cooney. What is "reflective listening?" How does it work? What are the benefits for you, and the person you're listening to? And why does Kayla believe in it so much that she'd use it if someone were pointing a gun at her?

Burnout happens when you've got nothing left in the tank. When you're the superhero "yes person," it can happen easily, bringing fatigue and anxiety. When it does, you have one job: take a real, significant break to refill your tank in whatever way works best for you. Start by saying no, giving yourself room to rest.

When you have expectations about someone else’s behavior, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. If you’re focused on yourself, you get to avoid that disappointment – you get to have agency, think about what your values are and who you want to be, then act accordingly. How do you engage with your loved one and have a more positive relationship, one in which they feel you’re someone to trust? When you work on having good boundaries and not overstepping them, the outcome can be beautiful for the other person. Even small manifestations of positive movement in the relationship are worth celebrating.

A listener asks if her comment, meant to be positive, made her loved one drink. It’s dangerous to refer to someone’s status of using or not. Even if you’re trying to acknowledge them in a positive way, you can’t know what they’re thinking or feeling, and what might make them feel acknowledged or send them into feeling bad. How do you limit your talk to yourself in these circumstances? Focus on what you know – “I’m doing well; I’m feeling connected; I’m working on myself.” This avoids linking your happiness to their actions.

A listener asks how to acknowledge a loved one's use without accusation or denial. How can you be assertive without engaging in the same old patterns and conversations? It's about avoiding reactivity and regulating your system, planning your communication in advance. Aggression and passivity are products of reactivity. Aim for the middle ground of stating the facts and speaking from a calm place, which gives you more power -- over yourself, over your emotions, and over your interactions. You are yourself a tool for behavior change -- stepping out to create discomfort, and stepping in to give support and encouragement when things are good.

What sets CRAFT apart? It focuses on gaining awareness of your own behavior and reactivity, and equips you with the tools to do it. Simultaneously, you learn to notice what works for your loved one and to make healthy, positive choices that can create change in time.

CRAFT wants you to change. Yes, you're in it for your loved one. But CRAFT offers a structure to help you look at what you're doing that works and doesn't, to choose from the tools you learn, try a new way of being, and let yourself make mistakes without judging. It's a process -- not a fast one. And Allies in Recovery offers another vital piece: support as you engage in change over time.

The end goal of CRAFT is treatment, but what does that mean, and what does it look like? In addition to more-expected forms, treatment is anything that engages your loved one, that provides meaning and helps them look at themselves. What's our role in presenting these options when a loved one says they're ready to hear them? Do the research and put together a treatment list for when that time comes. 

How AIR began, and how it became a true community of family members helping other family members and refining CRAFT tools through experience.