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 trus...

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 wha...

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...

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 ove...

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 come...

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

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 yo...

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, Certifi...

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 syste...

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...

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....

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 somethi...

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 equip...

Our hosts discuss their joy in witnessing the progress of families in their groups. If you’re helping your loved one, start with yourself and your own healing. Healing is, Kayla says, not best done alone. And with Allies in Recovery, you don’t have to do it alone. You get to be part of a group of people doing the work, and get support not just for concepts, but for implementing the powerful tools...

When your loved one is returning, communicate and collaborate -- about your expectations, concerns, and plans. Keep on collaborating over time, so that if concerns arise, your loved one can take responsibility and have agency, so that you're not running the show on your own. Without their "skin in the game," little can change. Model engagement, which is also part of the treatment process.

Don't assume someone is lying or "in denial." At Allies, we believe  family members and loved ones are aware of what's happening -- even when they don't really want to know. We can see things as complicated -- or  ambivalent, a struggle between two orientations -- and know it takes time to move through a process.

Holidays. Winter. How do you deal? Start by shifting expectations about how things might go, and who might be there. Have conversations about “soft” expectations with your loved one in advance. Consider alternative plans, and take care of yourself. Stick with people who support you. How can you shift yourself, your belief system, and your behavior? Share duties, and consider an alcohol-free holida...

If you find yourself swept away in the undertow of negative thinking about what might happen and how you might prevent it, the number-one tool to use is stepping back, noticing that you're doing it. Number two is deciding to shift it, starting with "no negative talk." And third is hitting the metaphorical "reset" button, finding something to soothe yourself. At first, it may not go well, but over...