What Will Help You Play Your Role in Helping Your Loved One Heal?

In BALM Principle 1, we learn the family has a crucial role to play in their loved one’s recovery and in Principle 4 we talk about being your loved one’s BEST chance at recovery. In addition, we say that regardless of the outcome of their recovery journey, if you practice the 12 BALM family recovery principles and walk the 7 Steps to Be A Loving Mirror, you the family member WILL play your crucial role of being their BEST chance at recovery. So what is it that takes place in BALMers that allows this to happen?

Outer Actions

• The family member is no longer nagging, enabling or judging their loved one.
• The family members listen to their loved one without answering back impatiently or rolling their eyes.
• They have stopped the incessant questioning of their loved one’s whereabouts, motives, and actions.
• Things seem more relaxed and peaceful around the house. There’s a sense of appreciation of each other and compassion, not pity, for the challenging road the loved one is walking.
• Conversations are lighter and less edgy. There is a sense that the old ability the family members had to enjoy each other has returned, even when recovery is not present or is present and precarious.
• The family member finds her/himself able to look below the surface of the use disorder,  getting in touch with the deep abiding love s/he feels for her/his loved one.
• There seems to be less lying going on. When the fear of volatile reactions dissipates, the loved one begins to simply share what is going on, instead of hiding every little thing along the way.

Inner Education

Family Recovery

• what it means to be a family member in recovery
• how change happens
• what to let go of and what to hold onto
• why breaking out of the denial of how serious your loved one’s problem is can make all the difference
• how to get YOUR life back and helping your loved one get THEIRS back
• the role of love and connection in a family impacted by SUD and other use disorders
• using leverage and boundaries in helping a loved one find their way
• the importance of peace, objective observation, and emotional awareness in the journey to helping a loved one
• the unique contribution the BALM makes to the establishment of these qualities in a family’s recovery

Boundaries

• who boundaries are really about and why that matters
• why it is critical to not set boundaries until you are ready to stick to them
• how to get ready to set boundaries so you will not back down
• which boundaries are the best ones to set and which are best kept as preferences

BALM Conversations

• how to document and script a loving conversation
• how to have a loving conversation with a struggling loved one
• why choosing the right time and place for a conversation is so important

BALM Distinctives

• why getting support is a critical part of the process
• how the three relationships with Spirituality, Self, and Other empower one’s long term recovery journey
• what it means to BE A Loving Mirror
• why respecting your loved one’s journey is a critical factor in helping them consider recovery
• the importance of Information, Transformation, and Support in helping a family learn how to help their loved one

The Family Recovery Journey

When a family decides to go to ANY length to help their loved one get well, it takes more than finding the best treatment center. Treatment is the beginning of the journey. The family will hopefully be around long after treatment is over…So, going to any length also means becoming the family member who is willing to walk a recovery journey so that hopefully long life together can be joyful, loving, and fulfilling.

Families that walk the recovery path together often find themselves deepening their relationships with each other and with their struggling loved one. The more the family walks the Loving Path to Family Recovery, the more they see that it is truly an inside job with outside tasks and activities.

Our Invitation

We get all that it takes and we are here to walk it with you; lovingly, powerfully, compassionately. Our coaches are well-educated through their training and often through their lived experience.  Our teachers share their wisdom and experience in classes every day. And our community is filled with the loving presence of hundreds of families working together to help their families get their collective lives back.

Together, we invite you to learn how to Be A Loving Mirror through our classes, workshops, groups, recordings, workbooks. conversations, and coaching.

Learn more here

All the best,

Beverly Buncher
bbuncher@familyrecoveryresources.com