Freedom from Family Dysfunction
Rowman & Littlefield (Verlag)
978-1-5381-2194-8 (ISBN)
Directing the family members of someone suffering with addiction or mental illness to “let go” or “let them hit bottom” is like telling them to stab themselves in the eye. Recovery books, even those written for family members, extol such directives, thereby causing more pain for family members enduring the powerlessness, futility, and demoralizing impossibility of loving someone trapped by substance abuse, mood, eating, thinking, or trauma-related disorder.
IT STOPS WITH ME provides a model for understanding family system turmoil and a method to guide families toward serenity, sanity, and wellness for each member and the system as a whole. Creating connection, rebuilding trust, and defining a sustainable personal posture that feels right, lie at the heart of the theory and techniques shown. For the first time in many families, a happy ending seems possible; and, best of all, the outcome does not depend on the behavior, recovery effort, or mental health of any one family member.
The author takes a systemic and inter-generational view, combining current knowledge of epigenetics with his deep personal experience of working with and being one of the super-sensitive people that experience addiction and inter-generational family system pathology. IT STOPS WITH ME guides readers toward understanding their system, their position in it, and describes specific steps to take to help everyone get well through the mindful pursuit of closeness and clarity following a core practice: “Open Heart, Clear Boundaries.”
Most books about addiction focus on the addict or the disease. If they do focus on the family, they try to either repair or “fix” the addict, or marginalize the addict (“get rid of them”), so the family can recover. IT STOPS WITH ME is different. Using Dr. Perlmutter’s ground-breaking model of “Stress-Induced Impaired Coping (SIIC)” readers are shown how to do more than just take care of themselves; they’ll be guided to deepen or restore relationships with everyone in the family while pursuing wellness for the system itself.
More than 3000 family members have been treated employing the now-proven SIIC model. This has taken place at a handful of national level treatment centers and in Perlmutter‘s consulting rooms. Perlmutter invites family members to understand their biologically-derived attachment and reactivity styles in order to move toward one another, deepen empathy and understanding, and create connection -- the book’s driving theme.
IT STOPS WITH ME illuminates the environmental, emotional, and behavioral characteristics of these wounded family systems, often inaccurately branded as “dysfunctional.” As the author illustrates, far from dysfunctional, these wounded systems function quite well to:
❖ keep their terrible secrets buried,
❖ hold members in rigid roles,
❖ suppress difficult emotions (or delegate certain members to express them)
❖ get rid of anxiety and uncertainty; and, most importantly,
❖ make tolerable the often-fraught experience of life in the family environment.
Believing that one’s family is not so much dysfunctional as seeking to make tolerable a chaotic, cold, or unpredictable family environment, makes it possible to move toward one another, improve self-care, support the recovery effort for all members, and choose new ways of thinking and interacting.
IT STOPS WITH ME puts into words the brutal and often relentless experience of those close to someone who has required intensive treatment for addiction and mental illness. Descriptions of family members being simultaneously powerless and determined to “fix things” are vivid and relatable. As they read along they will say “Yes, that’s how I feel,” or “yes, that’s what happens to me [when my loved one acts out].” Readers caught in the grip of family system madness, propelled by the addiction or mental illness of a loved one, will recognize themselves.
IT STOPS WITH ME serves as a gentle companion for family members caught in systemic distress and provides them specific strategies with scripted examples to obtain relief and serenity, regardless of what their problematic loved ones may or may not be doing. And further, it shows how to stay in relationship with the problematic loved one, opening the door to recovery for the entire family.
By examining, understanding and healing the system using the SIIC model and its specific guidelines, family members will find their authentic voice, interrupt the cycles of loss, and create the conditions under which their loved ones make a project out of their lives and their recovery. This book shows them how.
Kenneth Perlmutter, PhD, a California-licensed clinical psychologist, brings nearly 30 years of experience working with individuals and families facing complex psychological and behavioral health disorders. He sees individuals and families in his private practice in Marin County and serves as Family Systems Psychologist for the Mind Therapy Clinic, an integrative medicine psychiatric clinic with offices in Marin County and San Francisco. In 2008 he founded The Family Recovery Institute which provides family intensives and healing workshops. In addition, he trains clinicians and treatment teams in family systems theory and treatment methods employing his proprietary model of Stress-Induced Impaired Coping. As a professional educator he has served on the graduate faculty of San Francisco State University’s Counseling Department and as Associate Professor of Chemical Dependency Studies at Cal State East Bay. He has taught courses covering development across the lifespan, psychopharmacology, family systems theory, human sexuality, theory and technique of counseling, treatment planning and documentation, and supervision. Perlmutter has provided keynote presentations and breakout workshops at most of the major addiction and behavioral healthcare treatment conferences including US Journal Training, C4 Recovery Solutions, Foundations Recovery Network, Southwestern School of Behavioral Health, the Ben Franklin Institute, the Institute for Integral Studies, and the Thelma-McMillen Foundations lecture series. He provides customized talks and consultations for various treatment centers and clinics around the country by invitation. For the past two years he has had the privilege to conduct a three-day workshop for client families of the Rainbow Treatment Center on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Northern Arizona. As of 2017, this will be held annually. Dr. Perlmutter was appointed founding Credential Chair of the International Association of Family Addiction Professionals.
Introduction: My Experience in the World That Seems So Insane
1 Belief Systems: Uncovering the Wounded Family System
2 Rodeo Clowns, Life Jackets, and Being on Call 24/7: What Do I Become?
3 Looking Inside: What Keeps Us Stuck?
4 Intergenerational Insanity: The Impaired Coping Model
5 Deepening Our Understanding of the Family Deal: Early Influences, Failed Methods, Enabling, and Dependency
6 There Is a Solution: Small Shifts Produce Big Results
7 Touching It with Love: Choosing Connection over Being Right
8 “I Just Want Them to Be Happy”: Your Recovery Action Plan
9 Freedom from Family Dysfunction: Staying on the Path
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
| Erscheinungsdatum | 10.05.2021 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Lanham, MD |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 142 x 227 mm |
| Gewicht | 322 g |
| Themenwelt | Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Persönlichkeitsstörungen | |
| Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Suchtkrankheiten | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-5381-2194-8 / 1538121948 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-5381-2194-8 / 9781538121948 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
aus dem Bereich
