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1 found at the bottom of this page Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute, homestudycredit.com. This course dealing with families and addictions. Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education
to foster your professional growth. The Institute has provided quality
education since 1979. The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. dealing with a family member’s addiction. As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting. However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute. Also each track is very content dense. So feel free to replay the track to review the content either for your own purposes, or if you feel appropriate play the track in an individual or group session for client education. Also permission is granted to reproduce this CD. We encourage you to duplicate give copies of this CD to colleagues, clients, etc. as you deem appropriate. We feel the information on our CD's is valuable. Thus, we have an interest in distributing CD's in as many ways as possible, to benefit the greatest number of people, who have a need and are receptive to this practical information. The questions in your Answer Booklet are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it. For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Answer Booklet prior to listening to that CD track. By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer. So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Answer Booklet, read on to the next question in order to give you a “heads up” to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question. Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your answer booklet. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing trick or hard about these questions. They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD. For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “therapists” or “mental health professional.” However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations. When you hear the word “therapists,” if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term “therapists” cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example. I will also use the term “client” for the purposes of brevity. However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose “client” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. On this CD set we will discuss such topics as: Manipulation, Mistrust, and Misdirection; The Threaten, Punish, and Relent Cycle; Resistance, Recycling, and Relegation; Family Survival Skills; Establishing Communication Within the Family; Positive Anger; The Caretaking Trap; The Blame Game; Mirroring the Addict; Five Negotiation Styles; Structuring the Intervention; Intervention Checklists; and Formulating a Relapse Agreement. So let’s get started. Manipulation, Mistrust, and Misdirection On this track, we will discuss how addicts use manipulation, mistrust, and misdirection to convince family members that everything is all right. First, we will discuss manipulation. Every addict is a master manipulator. Although the signs and symptoms of addiction are in the open, the addict can divert the attention of the people around them. Ann, a 36-year-old high school teacher, began seeing me after a relative suggested that her mother, Pamela, needed treatment for alcohol addiction. Pamela drank close to a liter of gin every day, often passed out by midafternoon, and was often bruised from falling. Ann said, "When I was little, I was told my mother had depression. So when she didn't take care of the house, or didn't show up at a school functions, it was her depression." Because Ann was manipulated to believe her mother's problems were depression, she could not see the symptoms of Pamela's alcohol abuse. The second tool addicts use to divert attention from their symptoms is misdirection. Misdirection by the addict is a technique that directs family members' attention toward what the addict wants them to see, and away from what he or she doesn't. There are four common forms of misdirection used by addicts. The first is attitude. Brigit's husband, Peter, was addicted to amphetamines. Brigit said, "When he lost his job, I started asking him if it was connected to his amphetamine use. He got really angry, and told me that it was my lack of support and arguing with him that was causing all his problems." By shifting the focus of the conversation onto Brigit's lack of support and arguing, Peter pushed her into defending herself, and succeeded in dropping the real issue of his addiction to amphetamines. Another form of misdirection is "doing the offbeat". Harry, a 42-year-old cocaine addict, missed his mother's birthday because he was high. He showed up first thing the next morning to mow his mother's lawn and fix her screen door, telling her "I wanted to celebrate your birthday just the two of us. If I had come yesterday, everyone would have snubbed me." Harry also used the third form of misdirection, creating an impression of honesty and openness, with his mother. When she approached him about his cocaine addiction, he said, "Wow, Mom, I've been wanting to talk to you about this, but I was scared. I've just been so damn depressed since my divorce, it seems cocaine is the only thing that makes me feel good. I'm so sorry for worrying you… but everything will be all right, I promise." Harry's mother was convinced she had made a breakthrough with him, but really Harry has just redirected her focus onto the problems surrounding his divorce and “doing the offbeat” by mowing the lawn. In addition to attitude, "doing the offbeat", and creating an impression of honesty and openness, the last form of misdirection I have found is the misdirection of time. See if you have experienced this one with a client. Mary's husband, Paul, was an alcoholic. Mary said, "when he came home drunk the third night this week, I was furious. But the next day, he took our kids to the zoo like he had been promising, and they were so happy that I didn't have the heart to bring it up." By extending the amount of time between his behavior and the discussion with Mary, Paul effectively gave Mary's anger time to dissipate. Even though Paul's addiction was not a secret to Mary, his use of misdirection of time convinced her to react in ways that supported his alcohol abuse. So in summary, the fours forms of misdirection are: attitude, "doing the offbeat", creating the impression of honesty and openness, and the misdirection of time. In addition to manipulation and misdirection, the third tool used by addicts is their family's mistrust of their actions. Brigit, whose husband Peter had an amphetamine addiction, became very mistrustful of Peter. She told me, "I watch him constantly now so he can't get anything past me. I don't let his addiction bother me." Brigit didn't realize that her behavior was still causing her life to revolve around Peter's addiction. I asked Brigit to go through the "Uncover Your Feelings" exercise with me. First, I asked her to write about Peter, his behavior, and her worries about him. I encouraged Brigit to write as much as she needed, to get all of her concerns out on paper. Next, I asked her to switch her focus onto herself. I asked Brigit, "What are you feeling right now? What do you think?" Brigit wrote, "I feel like I spend all of my time worrying about Peter; what he'll do next, how much money will be missing from our bank account next month… I feel like I never have time or energy for what I want to do." On this track, we have discussed the three tools used by addicts to keep their
family members controlled and involved in the addiction. These three tools are
manipulation, misdirection, and mistrust. On the next track, we will discuss
the threaten, punish, and relent cycle.
QUESTION
1 Answer Booklet for this course Forward to Track 2 Table of Contents Top |
