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

When your Loved One is coming home, it's time to collaborate and negotiate about expectations and plans. It's important to hear what consequences they suggest for certain actions or inaction, and to keep communicating openly over time. This is a ripe moment to have a talk about the various possibilities and what might occur in the near future. This is a PERFECT time to use the leverage you have (they want to come home, they are not currently using substances).The CRAFT model that we teach at alliesinrecovery.net is a therapeutic process that teaches us how to be in relationship. Shift your loved one's trajectory with substances and recovery by shifting your own patterns.

In part 2, Linda offers tools to help calm the parasympathetic nervous system. As Kayla says, it's part of gaining coherence, a prerequisite for connection. Linda Aber is a mother whose psychology journey deepened when she adopted two children from Russian orphanages. She is an  Attachment Parent Coach, Certified Nurtured Heart® Approach Trainer, Certified Theraplay® Group Specialist, Certified HeartMath® Anxiety/Anger Reduction Practitioner and Family Life Educator CCFE.

Linda Aber is a mother whose psychology journey deepened when she adopted two children from Russian orphanages. She is an  Attachment Parent Coach, Certified Nurtured Heart® Approach Trainer, Certified Theraplay® Group Specialist, Certified HeartMath® Anxiety/Anger Reduction Practitioner and Family Life Educator CCFE. In part 1, she joins our hosts to discuss the parasympathetic nervous system, CRAFT, and parenting.

CRAFT can work from far away. Pay attention to yourself as well as your loved one – if something increases your anxiety afterward, that’s not a great tool. Changes may not be enormous – keep trying things, and keep stepping back more and more. Shift your behavior and notice what works. This helps you keep going, and not do harm.

CRAFT is like a menu. The better your awareness of patterns from watching yourself and your loved one – over time – and experimenting to see what works, the better you understand what to choose. Laurie talks about her learning process with her son, and how it led her to understand what she could and couldn’t live with. You can learn to open your eyes, to check with yourself in a very deep way, and notice what you may not have before. The more you know about what you’re looking for, the more effective CRAFT becomes, the better your decisions in the the moment. Eventually you can say, “This isn’t working, so here are your options,” and your loved one can choose.  

In this closer look at Module 5, you’ll learn a tenet of CRAFT – rewarding positive behavior and removing rewards for negative behavior. When it comes to “using,” the moment-by-moment details become important. Your job is increasing your awareness by witnessing and noticing your loved one’s behavior. “Using” is really a larger term including before, during, and after interacting with a substance. Everything else is “not using.” When there are periods, maybe tiny ones, of not using, move in with gentle, quiet rewards of connection. It’s important, too, to learn how to calm your system enough to do this process. It’s all trial and error, so don’t judge yourself for not doing it right. But do notice how what you’re doing makes an impact. Check out Module 5 for more.

Learn about AIR’s groups – the REST group with Laurie, and the support group with Kayla – and how they became part of AIR. CRAFT isn’t easy, and can’t be done alone, in your head. These groups provide essential information, support, and feedback. You don’t have to be alone in an overwhelming, painful process.

How do you shift from being in somebody's face to a more open conversation they're more likely to truly hear? Start with Module 4 at the Allies site, and work on skills that improve your communication, increase your ability to self-soothe, and take the heat out of conversations. You can learn to engage in a way that improves the relationship -- you become part of the treatment process, not something your loved one is rebelling against.

CRAFT as choreography? Our hosts step into the metaphor of a dance with your loved one. This isn't a traditional dance -- it's a look at the steps to see what works and what doesn't, to CRAFT a new dance and change your role. The idea is to learn new tools, practice them, and see where they fit in. Be patient. It's a process.

It can be easy, particularly when those outside a situation offer advice, to overlook the history of trauma that may exist for a family member. CRAFT takes the idea of healing out of a therapy model, to a community-based model. It's a long-term process of learning new tools and ways to interact. It begins with family members understanding themselves, their patterns and reactivity, so they're equipped for the long-term work of healing -- with the support of Allies in Recovery all along the way.