8 - Barriers to Our Own Therapy as a Family Member

Research shows that families who believe in a persons ability to get through an altered states experience have better outcomes and get through it faster. As such, please know that you as a family member have a lot of potential to help make things better. I commonly hear family say they want the individual with the lived experience to make the changes and go to their own therapy. But today we are going to talk about why you may hesitate to start your own therapy. Please answer the following questions about yourself as the family member.

Journaling:

If research shows that me having my own individual therapy can help the family as a whole, why do I not start that? Do I worry about what topics might come up in my own therapy? What specific topics do I worry about?

Are there regrets that I have made as a family member? Are there specific instances that I wish I had done differently? Please list them here briefly. You don't have to go into detail if you don't want to.

Can I offer myself kindness and compassion around feelings of regrets or mistakes? Do I feel others could offer me kindness around them? Can I remind myself that we all make mistakes and that is human and normal?

Can I forgive myself for choices I made in the past that may have hurt my loved ones? Is forgiveness a topic your family believes in? In what ways do you all show forgiveness to one another?

Are you afraid that you caused your loved ones altered state? Do you ever talk about this worry? Is it possible that your mistakes harmed your family members in some ways but that potentially did not cause their altered state?

What if we are not powerful enough to cause an altered state on our own? What if all families make mistakes and our family members don't all end up having altered states? What would that mean about mistakes and potential outcomes? Might it mean there is more to a situation than just the influence of family or potential mistakes?

What if the altered state being here is not about fault or blame but is about us now making changes to help it lessen? What coping skills might we ourself want to learn so that our loved one can eventually learn it for themselves from seeing us do it?

Do you get a chance to talk to your loved one with altered states about your own regrets or worries about impacting them? Might you want to check in with them about it? Would you want to reach out to their treatment team to see if you can join their discussions at some point to talk more about it all together?

Please know it might be very difficult to start talking with our loved one about this topic so please consider bringing it up gently if you do decide to talk about it. It’s very common to need multiple discussions before we can talk about it comfortably and openly. Being patient and calm can make it easier in the long-term. And asking our loved one if and when would be a good time to talk about it can help them not feel blindsided by the topic or pressured to have the talk when they aren’t ready in that moment. We want everyone to feel ready for the discussion or it should wait until another time.

Changing our focus:

Notice the feeling in your feet. Try wiggling your toes, arching your feet and moving them side to side. While you do this notice the individual feelings of the movement. Can you feel each individual toe or do some just seem all lumped together? Can you notice specific touch against your heel or on the top of your foot? Now do the same for your fingers. Notice how the movement impacts not only your feet or hands but also you legs and arms as well as your abdominal muscles too sometimes. Now notice the details of how your hands or feet look. Pay attention to lines, different shading, any wrinkles as you move. No need to judge, just observe. The point is to allow ourself to shift our attention to something else that is relatively neutral or even boring. That way we have more opportunity and practice at changing our focus for other times when we may want to in the future.