Nov 17, 2023
Many people look forward to the holidays, but for others this time of year isn't as joyous and can be filled with painful reminders or sad memories. Studies have shown an increased number of people rely on drugs and alcohol to cope with various problems they feel are amplified during the holiday season. According to the CDC, the most dangerous time of the year for drug-and-alcohol-related deaths are during the holiday season.
For this month's blog we tapped Jessica Swan, Executive Director of Recovery Consulting. Recovery Consulting offers a variety of addiction recovery support services and addiction recovery consulting to help develop and organize their client's life, family, or institution.
Happy Holidays!
We call addiction a family disease, which really does describe what happens to the family when someone has a substance use disorder (SUD). When one person lives with SUD, the whole family lives with it. During the holiday season, difficult and conflicting feelings can arise as we learn to live with the disease. Some families romanticize the holidays, yet the season can be accompanied by anxiety, fear, and exhaustion. Families feel more stressed, have lower communication, and become driven by anxiety. This time of year is hard for many people, but it becomes even more challenging when living with or loving someone with SUD.
Drawing on the research of families who live with chronic illness and the family systems perspective (Bowen, Minuchin), we discovered that families develop common characteristics and behaviors when living with a loved one who has a long-term illness. SUD is a chronic brain disease that not only drives the individual to compulsively use a substance and chronically poison themselves, and continue to do so despite the damage it causes, but also causes the person to behave in difficult ways, with out-of-control behaviors, emotional dysregulation, and diminished insight into one’s contribution to interpersonal problems (ASAM, 2021).
The family of a loved one with SUD responds in predictable ways, driven to maintain homeostasis because the family is a biological system (Rambo & Hibel, 2013), interconnected socially, bound by love, values, and culture. The family passes down both behaviors and DNA, generation after generation, adapting based on its environment, and responding to SUD out of fear and love, over and over and over. Within the family system, a set of responses develops, driven out of fear and love, to try to help an individual working in that system to stay alive. Roles adapt by becoming more rigid over time, and by the time the person with a SUD enters treatment, the family itself has become ill due to prolonged stress and trauma responses, or what is commonly called codependency. Not only is SUD heritable (a family-DNA disease), but also the responses to it are passed down (a family-nurtured disease). Here, we begin to see where the term “Family Disease” develops. During the holidays, we often see a recurrence of the family disease, and SUD recurrences can happen, too, due to increased stress and anxiety, changes in routines, changes in the weather and seasons, and celebrations with access to drugs and alcohol.
“When families are healthy, the person with chronic illness does better”
Some families are more capable of responding with healthy adaptations due to their resiliency and skill sets, and to quote some older research that holds true, we know that “when families are healthy, the person with chronic illness does better” (Patterson & Garwick, 1994). The insights we have gained from the research have been parlayed into our treatment programs to help families more effectively respond to their family disease. When we work to get families into recovery, we teach them healthier coping strategies, such as mindfulness, self-reflection, and communication with each other in more open, honest, and direct formats. We teach families to develop self-compassion, also a tool taught in compassion fatigue, and we coach families in how to express new boundaries to help each person begin to focus on their own needs again. We help them identify feelings and to learn to sit with the feelings, how to understand them, and how to nurture self-care. We teach them that having fun without substance use is possible, and families learn to laugh again, taking life just a little less seriously. Families learn that they can heal - that they do not have to stay sick any longer.
TIPS
As the 2023 holiday season approaches, let’s consider implementing these helpful tips taught during SUD family treatment to help us reduce stress and anxiety and promote healing and health for our families.
- Is stress high? Make time for a walk, deep breathing, or take five minutes for a mindfulness exercise.
- Communication low? Try some “I” statements and building some appreciation and gratitude for your loved ones and your life.
- Anxiety driving you day in and day out? A self-compassion break is needed, with a hand on your heart and a hand on your belly, taking a few deep breaths.
- Are you excited and romanticizing the holiday season while simultaneously feeling stress, fear, and exhaustion? Time to get honest, ask for help, and maybe even try out a support group for families! Boundaries will help here, too.
- Does your loved one have a substance use disorder? Try out a new tradition this year, with a no-alcohol event, celebrating in new ways that support recovery for everyone. If SUD is active, remember supporting recovery behaviors and no longer supporting addictive behaviors, and offering to find help with them, when they are ready (See AID).
Families can recover from this pervasive disease with a little conscious effort and intention. By creating a calm and safe environment to encourage love and connection for healing in this biological system, the family disease need not come home for the holidays!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Swan, MCJ, MAC* has extensive experience in clinical addiction counseling, research, development, training, evaluation, and reporting for legal professionals, nonprofits, governmental agencies, and communities across the nation. She writes addiction recovery curriculum for treatment programs, offers counseling for individuals and families with substance use disorders, and provides addiction recovery consulting for organizations. Jessica specializes in helping high-level professionals and their families, including professional athletes, doctors, judges, lawyers, and pilots. She has extensive experience working within the Justice System and its intersection with mental health and substance use.
Jessica is a national leader and educator in the addiction recovery field, teaching on the neurobiological disease of addiction, SUD treatment, and recovery. She has trained multiple disciplines on the neuroscience of substance use disorders, family recovery from substance use disorders, and integrating families in treatment and recovery. She currently contracts with The Farley Center, providing Health Practitioners’ Monitoring Program (HPMP) evaluations, family assessments, and recommendations for treating professionals, and she provides a family treatment program for The Farley Center. She currently provides training and facilitation for law firms and judges across the US, and she is Executive Director of Recovery Consulting. Jessica is the President-Elect for the Virginia Association of Addiction Professionals.
