When you are struggling with addiction it affects everyone in your life, especially your family. Fortunately, getting treatment for addiction and mental health disorders can help both you and your family to begin to heal. However, finding treatment for addiction that suits your needs as a working professional can be hard. At Pacific Sands Recovery Center, you can get the help you need to recover in all aspects. Seeking help will benefit your family by decreasing stress, improving communication, and stabilizing your family’s finances. Ultimately, taking the step to get treatment will improve your life, your family members’ lives, and your relationships with each other.
How Treatment for Addiction Affects Your Family
Family is a primary social structure in current society. You affect your family and they impact you. This means that your untreated addiction will greatly influence your family. It can impact their stress levels, mental health, and your family’s financial stability. Fortunately, this also means that the improvements you make will help you and your family to function in a happier and healthier way.
Relieving Stress
A family is a system, and every system has a homeostasis or a point of balance. As humans, you and your family members have behaviors that help to maintain this balance. However, when you are struggling with addiction, you can create patterns and behaviors that are not healthy for other members of your family. For example, a child in a home with a parent who has a substance use disorder (SUD) might clean up after their parent to keep the peace. However, this behavior is not healthy and can cause stress for the child.
Additionally, abuse and neglect are common among parents struggling with addiction. When you’re using drugs or alcohol, you are in less control. Because of this, you can cause stress and harm that has a long-term impact on your loved one. According to the publication Social Work in Public Health, a parent with SUD is three times more likely to abuse their children. This can include emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Regardless of the type of abuse, it can cause long-term damage and increase levels of stress for your family.
Enhancing Mental Health
When you are struggling with addiction, there are many ways in which you can impact your family’s mental health. This is because mental health is impacted by several factors including genetics and environment. While genetics will vary, a person’s living environment or home can impact their mental health positively or negatively. Your addiction and behavior that is due to addiction change your home environment and this impacts your entire family that calls it home.
Research published in Current Drug Research Reviews has shown that family members of individuals with SUD have diminished mental health. This includes anxiety, physical ailments, depression, phobias, and interpersonal sensitivity. By leaving your addiction untreated, you are causing short-term stress. However, you are also increasing your family’s risk of developing a mental health disorder now or in the future.
Improving Finances
As a working professional struggling with addiction, you may or may not be struggling financially. However, addiction commonly creates financial instability. This is due to the continual need for more substances. Over time, addiction costs a huge amount of money, including the cost of substances and treating injuries or problems that arise.
Most families combine their finances. Therefore, by using money to buy substances, you are creating potential financial issues for yourself and your family. This might include using money that was meant for college or another activity. Fortunately, as you heal from addiction, you can learn to manage triggers, stay sober, and stabilize your family’s finances.
Getting Treatment for Addiction Can Help Your Family
Addiction not only impacts your professional life, but it also impacts your entire family. Fortunately, getting treatment for addiction can help you and your family to begin to heal. As you enter addiction treatment, you will go through detox and begin healing physically. However, you will also enter into individual and group therapy which helps to address many aspects of addiction.
One of these aspects of addiction is family. A family is complex. Learning to understand how addiction has impacted your family is the first step. Then, by working with a therapist, you can identify what you can change to help both you and your family after treatment. This will look different for each person. However, since you will be returning home after treatment, family dynamics and concerns are discussed as a part of learning how to maintain long-term sobriety.
Additionally, being sober and growing into your best self will ultimately help you and your family. When you are healthy and happy, you are more patient, kind, and caring. You will be easier to communicate with. Families are based on these relationships and your ability to communicate and be there with your family is integral to your family’s health. Therefore, your growth as an individual helps the entire family by improving these important relationships.
Untreated addiction impacts the whole family negatively and can create issues for your loved ones for the rest of their lives. Fortunately, your choices today and moving forward also impact your family. At Pacific Sands Recovery Center, we understand that addiction is a disease that needs to be addressed at the root. We offer individualized treatment plans for working professionals that will help each client to heal and grow as an individual. Additionally, we help clients learn skills that are vital to both their professional and personal lives. To learn more about our program and how we can help you, call us today at (714) 492-1119. We are here to help you heal and thrive.