Addiction and The Family System
Addiction and The Family System When we typically think about addiction, we associate it with an individual struggling with substances.
When we typically think about addiction, we associate it with an individual struggling with substances. The reality is that the disease of addiction affects much more than that. Everyone in the family system is impacted by this disease. Many times, family members experience similar feelings and symptoms as their loved one. Addiction brings about shame, guilt, anxiety, and loss of spiritual connection. These symptoms are developed from unspoken rules in the family system of don’t talk, don’t trust, and don’t feel. These rules create shame and contribute to the stigma surrounding addiction. Asking for help becomes a daunting task even if the consequences of the addiction are severe.
The stigma of addiction goes deeper than just the family. Our society contributes heavily to those same unspoken rules. So how do we move forward from this stigma and move away from shame? The biggest thing we can do is begin to talk. Talk about the addiction, the feelings you are experiencing, allowing yourself to be vulnerable in order to receive the help needed to battle the disease of addiction.
In speaking with families, their goal is getting their loved one into treatment, however, the process of healing doesn’t stop there. I am asked by family members, “how can I help or support?” The best thing to do is seek help and assistance for your own healing. Because addiction is a family disease, it is important for everyone in the family system to seek their own healing.
What does that mean or look like for the family member as their loved ones are in treatment? There are a variety of resources for the families. Individual therapy is an excellent place to start. It helps break the pattern of not talking in the family system. Sometimes that step can feel incredibly daunting, and please know you are not alone. Another important step is seeking connection. Al-anon, Nar-anon, and Advocates for Recovery offer support groups for family members whose loved one struggles with addiction. Codependents Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics are support groups that offer deeper work and understanding for common issues that occur in the family system.
One resource we offer at Healing Pines is CRAFT. It is a program for family members to build healthy skills and a develop an understanding of addiction that is run by excellent facilitators. If you are feeling lost or struggling to know what next steps can be for the healing process, reach out and ask. We are here to answer questions, provide resources, create understanding around the disease of addiction, and help lift the stigma so you don’t feel alone anymore.
Addiction and The Family System When we typically think about addiction, we associate it with an individual struggling with substances.
Substance use disorder (SUD) is a chronic mental illness where you may find yourself unable to stop using drugs or
Substance use can quickly become all-encompassing, negatively affecting your physical and mental well-being as well as your sleep cycle. Sleep
Taking just one evening walk through a beautiful forest, down a peaceful country lane, or even in your own backyard
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To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to