Goal Setting In Addiction Treatment

Hello, and welcome. I'm your host, Joseph Devlin. And on today's episode, we're going to continue reading at a chapter seven walking with someone in treatment out of my book a step out of darkness. So let's get at it. As a reminder, I just want to let everybody know that I'm reading parts of the book and then I'm going to expand upon them. All right, so here we go. Now switching gears, let us say that your loved one steps immediately down to GOP instead of PHP or IOP. Your loved one will need to attend one individual session a week that lasts one hour. Now the question is, what else will your loved one engage in, in conjunction with the GOP for example is the individual also going to attend a group session at the treatment center. Typically, group sessions are an hour and a half long are they going to attend a 12 step meeting. This may include Al Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous sexaholics anonymous, Celebrate Recovery. As you can see, there are multiple anonymous groups one can attend, and we will go more in depth into 12 Step programs in chapter nine. Here's a side note for any school aged people who have an addiction. An additional option could be to involve a school counselor, if this is age appropriate. However, many schools contract out drug and alcohol counseling services. So maybe better, you may be better off contacting those services directly. It is important to realize that to 10 treatment, just one hour a week for an individual family session rarely is enough to effectively address the problem. Many people fall into the trap of thinking that their loved one is in treatment, and that this one hour week session is going to cure that this is a false sense of complacency. There are other changes that need to occur in the beginning stage of any level of treatment. And often overlooked tool is goal setting. I've mentioned before the necessity for goal setting in inpatient treatment, goal setting is a priority in all levels of treatment. And change can be achieved most rapidly in a successful outpatient treatment program. setting realistic attainable goals is key to successful achievement. Within the first three individual sessions, your loved one should have worked in collaboration with their counselor to outline treatment goals they may want to accomplish in the next 3060 90 days. Hopefully, they're also setting goals for the next six months. And then next year as well. Those who are future focused will look at goals for five years and 10 years. But this may be overwhelming for some people, as it can be difficult enough just to say sober one day at a time, it is important that your loved one is setting goals with their counselor, if your loved one is left to setting their own goals. This could lead to too they're trying to do too much too fast, and ultimately failing. I have known several clients who have left treatment facilities with instructions, and agreed upon goals to follow the directions of just five key activities every day, for example, going to a meeting, calling a member of their support network, etc. However, these clients ended up adding an adding to their list. And were soon attempting to do 20 Plus activities a day, it became too overwhelming for them. And they just stopped doing everything and went back to using. But as you can see, the major theme of this section of reading is the idea of goal setting. And we're taking you know, they were doing goal setting in the inpatient facility now we're in the general outpatient and time to set some more goals. And, as always, you know, we want to we want to build off of the previous goals. So the goals that the individual set and impatient, let's see what's carried over now that they're out in the outpatient setting. And all the goals are always our loved ones, you know, we want to encourage them, we want to support them. But a key of you being able to be there with them in a family session discussing goals is that you know, they may now be at home for a little while and you're starting to see some things that that are very successful for them. Some of those things that have been maybe triggers for them, but also some things that you've seen them really work through really well. Also things that you start noticing them doing so for example if they get off the phone call with somebody and you notice that they're very irritable okay, that you know, that might be telling you something if you notice that they're being more inclined to like cook now or or do some more exercise or they're enjoying jogging. This you might be able to help them see a goal that's right there in front of them. And as you see these things that you believe could be beneficial for your loved one. It's easy to make a gentle suggestion either before you go into the family session, but definitely in the family session as you can If you can kind of tweak that out, so you can put together actionable steps to achieve these goals. I also want to remind you that like, even though our loved one has been in treatment for a little bit, especially those first 45 days, and this could go on for several months, that they're still in, like a relative fog. And there's also very their self esteem isn't, isn't isn't at its highest at this point. And I remember working with an individual and, you know, their family came in, and naturally, the discussion kind of went to something like what they were going to do for their future. And the individual, you know, they were, they had some hesitancies on what they wanted to do. And they were like, you know, I honestly, I really, really don't have anything pinpointed just yet. And their dad said, hey, you know, just the other week, you know, we were having fun on the kitchen. And, you know, you mentioned that you'd like to go to culinary school. And this has been a passion of this individual's life ever since they were a little kid, they always love making food. And this opened up a really rich discussion for all of us. One thing I was able to share was I worked in the restaurant business for years. And you know, there's a lot of drugs and alcohol in that business. And but we were able to kind of, you know, delve into that and say, Okay, well, what does that look like? And you know, it was a realistic fear of the individual. They said, Well, you know, they knew that there was drugs and alcohol in that world. And, you know, but it was like, okay, so what are the boundaries, we can we can set what are the guardrails we could put up. And, you know, this really led to having some of those same boundaries and guardrails being set up for when they went back to school, because that's what they did, they decided to pursue their culinary degree, and they went on, they got it and they became a chef. And they're, they're passionate, and they're loving it, they're having so much fun, and they're staying sober. And that conversation could have happened. But by having the family there, that really accelerated the process of having that conversation, and putting out those fulfilling, you know, putting out those goals that really meant something to the individual, you know, helping to fulfill their heart's desire. So again, if you're, if you're questioning attending a family session, just remember, you're being an advocate for your loved one. I also touched on here in this section, the idea of like, involving, like a school counselor, if it's age appropriate. And, you know, depending upon your school system, you may have one available and it's an easy, you know, it's an easy addition to that support network, because I'm also talking about, hey, listen, continuing to engage in some form of a support group. And now let's start looking around and saying, Okay, who else can we pull into this, this support network, to help lift up and encourage our loved one, to move forward in life, because they can do this, they're having a lot of doubts and a lot of fears, and many people are going to tell them that they can't do it. And we want to get as much people speaking life into them as possible. So again, like this could be even at the collegiate level, like you can meet with a counselor there at the school. And if they don't have the resources to address drug and alcohol, there's other things that are going on, such as, hey, listen, I'm worried about my grades, I'm worried about fitting in, I'm worried about making connections. And that's just a great resource, to be able to have your loved one, just speak with somebody and share that piece of it. And then you can take care of the drug and alcohol with with a different counselor or another treatment center. One of the last things I really want to point out today is this is that when folks begin to try and do this alone, what happens is that they try and keep adding things on and adding things on and adding things on to do each and every day. Just to stay sober. So as I mentioned in here, it's like, Hey, listen, when you're leaving an inpatient facility, just come up with like, five things that you're going to do every day. And you know, and then when you're done with them, celebrate it be, you know, that, hey, we I was able to do this, I'm able to maintain this for, you know, one day, two days, one week, three months, one year, whatever it may be. However, if I'm not inviting anybody else to be a part of my support network, I'm only using my thought process to think like, Okay, this is the goal. And this is the next logical step. And this is the one I've got to do. And it just for that person is like, Hey, I'm going to add this, I'm going to add that I'm going to add this, and I just want to share with you like when when I got sober. You know, I looked at life and I was like, Man, I wasted way too much time. And I was a person who jumped in and went back to school. I was working full time, like I was looking to, you know, add a full time as well as a part time job. I was engaging myself in support networks. I mean, I was just I was going full force like this was something to do and I wish I had more people around me who could talk to me talk to me about this or even talk me through some of this now. I got through this fun A and it was it was good. But I do know what happened was there were there were bits and pieces of time where it was just like, well, I'm doing really good, I'm being successful, you know, like, Hey, I'm starting to repair some of the relationships around me, I'm making him money, and I'm paying this. And, you know, the thought comes in, like, maybe I just don't need as many people on my support network as I do. And it's only because I'm always going and was always going, and I never had time to really stop and think. But however, when I did slow down enough, those thoughts come back to you like the things that, hey, some of the things that you did, that you're not so proud of some of the things that you wish you were at in life, and you kind of you got nobody to really bounce that off of, you know, but luckily for myself, I had people, I was making a network of people at the same time. And so that I was able to outreach with people and invite them a little bit more into my life and letting them know what I was going through. And, you know, finding out Hey, one, eight, I wasn't alone, there was somebody else who was thinking what I was thinking. And that's one of the beauties of having a support network is that I never have to be alone if I don't want to be. And I often find even if the person I'm talking to hasn't been through what I've been through, you know, somebody who has, and so they can connect me to that person. And, you know, if you're not engaged in that, and I've seen too many people do this, throughout the years of working with people and just being around, you know, this addiction epidemic

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is that folks just say, Okay, I'm just gonna doo doo doo doo doo. And then they get tired. Things don't become like enjoyable anymore. It's just like, they're just checking a box to do something. And they lose like the joy of, of living. And they just, it eventually hits them that like, you know, what I'm just constantly going and constantly doing. And I know one thing that's going to bring me temporary peace and temporary joy, they go back to their addiction. So again, this is a great place for you as a loved one, if you're walking alongside them and their goals and what they're what they're looking to achieve, you can celebrate with them as they hit those goals. You can also help them reshape because there's times where you're not going to hit your goals that you're that you're aiming for in life, quite frankly, this has been on my heart, doing podcasts has been on my heart for a while to get this message out to people that they're not alone. And it's taken me over two years to really get the time to do it. And that goal needed to be moved. I'm just glad that it's here today. And I'm glad that I had people around me and we're saying you're going to do it, it's just going to be the right timing. So I want to leave you with this challenge today, I'm really going to encourage you to think about some some goals and write them down of goals that you want to accomplish, really, with your family, for your loved one to accomplish. And then for yourself, for goals for yourself that you would want to accomplish. And I want you to write them down. Because when you go to that treatment center, you're going to have some goals already in mind. That's going to help with discussions. If you're already in a treatment center. Maybe you've been sober, you know your loved ones been sober for a while you can reflect on these goals and say, Hey, this is another point of discussion for your with you and your loved one that can help grow and deepen your relationship. I thank you for being here with me today. And if you liked anything on the show today, please like and subscribe again. It just increases that algorithm so we can reach more and more people. And until our next episode. Remember, sobriety is a family affair.