The Folly of Perfection

I had two very interesting conversations this week with two unrelated people and situations.

One regarded a failure in the medical treatment system that caused a great deal of pain in people’s lives. The other related to the various styles of addiction treatment available today.

Many people, too many times, slip into a mode of believing that the system and the experts we often rely on are perfect, they are not. They are flawed, I suppose, because we are human beings, and although we try our best, we make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are very impactful in people’s lives. Yes the system is not perfect but we can continue to make it more effective.

There are four basic types of recovery approaches:

For LaLa, the most effective means of care was with an individual addiction counselor. This is often either a counselor, psychiatrist, or psychologist that specializes in Substance Use Disorders (SUD’s). Many times it might be a combination of people, especially if medications to aide in recovery are involved.

The most commonly thought of form of treatment is a residential program. These are intense treatment plans that run anywhere from 28 to 90 days. Some faith based residential plans are up to one year.

Sometimes people cannot afford to leave their family or work for thirty or more days. A great alternative to residential treatment is Intense Outpatient Programs (IOP’s). These programs provide many of the same benefits as residential programs without having to live at the facility. In the state of Connecticut, state insurance is very supportive of outpatient programs.

Another well-known treatment for individuals and families are support groups, which can be very effective. When we think of this what instantly comes to mind is Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, these do work well for some people. Generally this type of treatment is loosely categorized as twelve step programs. There are hybrids of twelve step programs that are evidence based because of the tools they use and teach. One of these is called Smart Recovery. They offer group meetings that are led by licensed counselors using evidence-based treatments like Motivational Interviewing, CRAFT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Group. You can read a more in depth evaluation of treatments at “Starving for Knowledge.”

These all work, but none of them work perfectly. People are involved, things go wrong, people have bad days and we make mistakes. The important thing is that we keep working at finding what helps us or our loved one the most. That is a big part of the benefit of having so many different options available. We or our loved one can get help.

I am certainly no expert, but it seems the more I learn about addiction, mental health, and treatment along with the constant stream of new evidence that comes out of research shows the importance and power of connections in recovery. Connections to people!

A while back I had lunch with a marriage relationship expert. I had known about some of his strategies and commented that they had been incredibly helpful to me in working with addicted individuals and their families. He made an interesting statement, “Relationships are relationships, the principles of healthy relationship are the same in every kind of relationship.”

Dr. John Gottmann, renowned marriage relationship expert says there are only three reasons people get a divorce: “I think you don’t like me, I think you don’t love me, or I think you don’t respect me.” I would expand that thought to say that those are the three reasons for the breakdown of any relationship.

One of the things I always had difficulty getting help with while Lauren (LaLa) was alive, in this world, was learning and changing the things I was doing that were not helping. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that I caused Laurens addiction or mental health issues. But I am acknowledging that there must have been things I could have done that would have been more effective in helping LaLa and our family. As a family we are grateful that Lauren knew we loved her in-spite of all that was happening. A post called “Why We Chose Love” explains the story in detail.

What I know now is that one of the things we did, and could have done more of is to constantly work at building a better relationship with Lauren. I do not know if it would have changed the outcome, but I do know it would have helped all of us through the process.

Dr John Gottman and others have several books on relationships. It might take a little effort and adjustment to apply what is learned through them to your specific situation with your loved one and it doesn’t matter whether you are the addicted individual, or someone that loves them. Building better relationships will always pay off in big ways in the recovery process. We are designed to be connected.

Dr. Gottman’s website is The Gottman Institute on it he mentions lots of ideas and books that are helpful in relationships. He also talks about building better emotional connection with those we love

Working at relationship with an addicted loved one is probably the least costly and yet most effective tool we can use to help someone we care about in their battle to recovery

This weeks featured image is from Brooke Shadens recent exhibit at the Joanne Artman Gallery in NYC, it is titled “Reflection: Sown”.