Week 1: The First Steps
Find Your Footing, Creating a general summary of where you are
Prior to our first call, please take 10 minutes write or think about your current baseline. You are most likely in a very different place compared to when this whole journey started, with different strengths and more awareness. Pema Chodron refers to “acceptance” as “hearing your truth of right now.” In order to prepare for transition, it is important that you know your Truth Right Now (TRN).
Keeping a Solid Foot In – Handling Therapy Fatigue
What it looks like when you start to experience therapy fatigue, when your child starts to experience this and learn ways to respond and engage with your son as you navigate this common reaction to therapy.
- What does it mean to collect data and what are the benefits
- Learn to own your therapy fatigue and your reactions to it
- Using it as a time to agree and share a common struggle
- Gain insight into how to show up for yourselves and your son on calls during this transitional time
- Learn how to effectively navigate your son’s response to therapy fatigue vs. allowing him or his attitude to dictate how you respond
Week 2: How to do relapse better! Relapse Prevention Planning
What really is relapse and can we really prevent it?
- Emotional Relapse, behavioral relapse, substance abuse relapse
- What to expect, what to accept
- Identifying and acknowledging your role in relapse prevention and changes you need to make as a parent to do relapse better
- Creating your parenting position
Preventative lifestyle, creating a realistic safety net for everyone
- Creating a collaborative relationship
- Creating a container
- Identifying who truly can follow through with commitments
- Learning the skill of not letting things go unnoticed
- Know how to communicate, I believe, I think, I feel, I hope
- When and how to intervene
- How to hold your parenting position and comfortably execute your boundaries
The ultimate question, what control do I have?
- Remembering my values, committing to my non-negotiables
- What am I willing and not willing to do
- Creating measurable expectations
Week 3: Power in the parenting, not the piece of paper
The home contract, the value in identifying what to call it. Find your title, find your style
- Lifestyle Agreements/ Value-based home plans/Home agreements
- The success is in parent commitments
- The creation of a parental agreement; the ultimate approach to proactive vs. reactive parenting
- Focus on what I want vs. hyper focusing on what I don’t want
- The expression and execution of expectations
- Defining those measurable expectations
- Navigating relationships (yellow and red) and utilizing the concept of risk
- Relational consequences and earning vs. taking things away
What are the crucial areas to include?
- Substance use
- Technology
- Curfew
- Therapy
- Communication
- Driving Privileges
- Education
- Financial support
Week 4: He’s home! Now what? Challenges after discharge
Common Pitfalls to Avoid – Challenging Situations that Most Parents Accidentally Create
- Rescue trauma, rescuing and fixing
- Putting the power behind the paper
- Rigidity vs. Consistency
- Celebrating too early
- Emotional Parenting
- The suction into the depth of family patterns
- What do we invite as parents?
- Moving away from the dreaded drama triangle
Tools to learn to overcome these challenges
- Using “wise minded” flexibility
- Being cautiously optimistic
- Accepting challenges vs. reacting to them
- Acknowledging normal, yet undesirable behaviors
- How to effectively parent in two homes
- Macro managing vs. micromanaging
- 24-72 hour rule
- Letting go of the belief that answers are needed immediately
- Expanding the 80:20 rule into all relationships
- Learning to teach capability