Why CRAFT Connect?
A mother’s journey with her daughter’s substance abuse and mental health disorders.
CRAFT is a set of skills that teach you how to encourage your loved one who is struggling with addiction and or a mental health disorder. It is focused on behavior change that can help everyone in the family. But that is not what prompted my husband and me to join a CRAFT support group. We joined because we were in crisis.
We learned of CRAFT during a family weekend at a residential treatment program in which we had recently admitted our daughter, who was 20 at the time. At that point I was willing to do anything to help her and to “fix” our family situation.
At first, the format of the CRAFT Connect family support meeting felt a little structured and superficial. Could reading from prepared materials be enough to address our family’s needs? But as we read through the materials, one short paragraph caught my attention:
Today, as a result of CRAFT, we no longer feel overwhelmed. We are beginning to understand our loved one’s disorder. Our relationship as a couple and family is much healthier. We are now able to speak more directly and honestly about how we feel. We are all continuing to make progress.
In my notes from that first session, I see where I wrote “HOPE” in red letters next to these words. Written by the CRAFT Connect peer facilitators about their own experience, this statement expressed the true “fix” that I was seeking.
At the time it felt that our daughter’s journey to residential treatment was a sudden and short-term crisis in our family. But deep down I knew that we had been struggling for years. What we have come to know as diagnoses that include terms like borderline personality disorder, anxiety and depression, eating disorders coupled with substance abuse had actually been shaping our family dynamic for years. I quickly surrendered to the structure and format of CRAFT because in my core I knew that I yearned for my daughter’s recovery and for our relationships -- with her, as a couple, and as a family -- to be healthier. And I didn’t know where to start.
As I write this one year later, I have remained active in the CRAFT Connect Family Support group. It is not the place where I’ve “fixed” anything. It is the place where I have come to see our family situation through new lenses. And, through the new and very specific skills, I find ways to connect with my loved ones as I practice relinquishing judgement and starting with compassion.
No matter where you are in your family journey, I invite you to learn more about CRAFT and try connecting to CRAFT Connect Family Support group. You may not find quick fixes. But you may find ways to let go of some of the things that make you weary and heartbroken on your journey.