Status Updates From It Takes A Family: A Cooper...

Chapter 11: Don’t Forget the Children

This section covers the following:

• Brain development and toxic stress
• Children need consistency
• Secrets and shame
• Children create off-base narratives
• Changing the family legacy

Chapter 10: Families Pay a High Price

This section covers the following:

• Impact of chronic stress
• Hopelessness
• Stress hurts learning
• Enabling in survival mode
• Learned helplessness
• “Families in crisis” (p. 103)
• Strength-oriented recovery

“As Leo Buscaglia so beautifully wrote, ‘Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around’” (p. 95).

Chapter 9: A New Look at Enabling Addiction

This section covers the following:

• Enabling to save ourselves
• Rooted in family survival
• Separation doesn’t guarantee an end to unmanageability
• Enabling definition
• Examples of enabling the disease vs. recovery
• Pink cloud
• Quality of our future determined by actions
• Leo Buscaglia quote (p. 95)

Chapter 8: Tiny Tasks

This section covers the following:

• Mistakes made when trying to change behavior
• Competing motivations
• Skipping recovery behaviors
• “Action before motivation” (p. 76)
• The process of change: 3 steps
• Family intervention
• Example of the bottom-line
• Learning from “those who lived it, lost it and regained it” (p. 84)

Chapter 7: A Closer Look at Relapse

This section covers the following:

• Relapse intervention planning in SFR
• Keeping recovery central
• Emotional unmanageability
• Quitting on their own: 96-98% relapse (p. 64)
• Rationalizations laying groundwork for relapse
• Recovery plans need family/outside support
• The story of Monica: Relapse and recovery
• Families can relapse

Chapter 6: Motivation Isn’t the Answer

This section covers the following:

• Motivation for the short-term
• 3 Myths about change:
• Education, attitude, and “knowing better”
• Positive and negative social norms
• Guilt vs. shame
• SFR to model recovery and behavioral expectations
• “What we do, not what we think” (p.55)
• The story of Greg: Motivation alone is ineffective

Chapter 5: A Misunderstood Disease

This section covers the following:

• Alcohol as a vice vs. addiction
• Disease vs. defect of character or loss of willpower
• Complex genetics and lifestyle
• Finding compassion
• Function of denial
• Reward and anti-reward centers
• Prefrontal cortex and limbic system
• “Self-control is a limited cognitive resource” (p. 45)
• Learning how to be sober

Chapter 4: Introducing Structured Family Recovery

This section looks at “The Williams” family as they demonstrate effective usage of SFR. It also suggests rethinking “family involvement” as a “systemic solution” instead of simply motivating loved ones into treatment.

Chapter 3: How It All Started

This section describes the beginning story of Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert “Bob” Smith (starting the AA program) and their wives Lois and Anne (starting the Al-Anon program).

It’s important to note that the men did not meet by happenstance but instead through a family intervention, especially as Dr. Bob was “objecting mightily” (p. 24).

Chapter 2: Stick with the Winners

This section reviews the 8 essential elements found within Physician Health Programs (PHP). “[PHPs] are the first to demonstrate that integrating all eight elements into a single, long-term program of support is the formula for producing durable, lasting sobriety” (p. 19-20).

“Relapse is caused by underestimating what it takes to stay sober” (p. 7). “There is no cure, only a daily reprieve that requires ongoing management” (p. 8).

The rubrics for evaluating the quality of treatment (p. 9-10).

The disease directs most alcoholics and addicts’ thinking processes to believe that they have changed with little effort and time and to convince their families of the same (p. 12).

Family-Centered Recovery:

“The missing element needed to improve treatment outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders was their families” (Forward).

“This book is about addiction and family and lasting sobriety, and ultimately, about working together to find that place where everyone is okay and safe and happy” (p. 4).