Analyzing Behaviors, the Meat of CRAFT Connect.
A mother’s journey with her daughter’s substance abuse and mental health disorders.
When my husband and I first attended CRAFT Connect, the intro sessions were exactly the grounding we needed: Understanding what CRAFT Connect had to offer, interacting with CRAFT Connect Partners, acknowledging the value of self-care when living with a loved one in treatment, and gaining practical skills to improve communication. In those first weeks, we were able to learn new concepts and skills and act on them right away. It was tangible and felt positive.
Then we got to the sessions on behavior and things got harder. Whether you are active in CRAFT Connect or exploring if this program is for you, this purpose of this particular post is to say “Stick with it!”
A typical CRAFT Connect season includes four sessions organized around wanted and unwanted behaviors. In these sessions we learn the skills that form the key ideas of CRAFT Connect Family Support:
● Motivation to change can be influenced by family members.
● Your loved one will need to find something powerful to replace unwanted behaviors.
● Positive reinforcements and natural consequences are more effective than confrontation.
The behavior sessions are the most challenging and the most meaningful for me. Challenging because focusing on behaviors like substance abuse requires mindfulness, clarity, thinking things through, and the self-regulation to not react in the moment. Meaningful because learning to breakdown and analyze behaviors of people in my life has given me new pathways of connecting with them.
I typically want to get to the core issue in things, to try to fix the underlying issue rather than look at what I consider to be the symptoms. While that may be positive over time, it makes daily living quite complex, especially when living with behavioral issues. CRAFT Connect is teaching me that analyzing behaviors can help me better perceive what is going on in a situation, including what I am doing to escalate it. And, it creates space as to what may be going on from my loved one’s point of view.
Analyzing behaviors is the path through which I am able to loosen my grip on being judgemental with my loved ones. It is where I find new and different ways of supporting my loved ones. This is the meat of the CRAFT Connect promise and where the “magic” happens*.
Candidly, the behavior part is also the point at which some attendees start to drop out, perhaps because it is less tangible than the initial sessions. If you are active in CRAFT Connect, I encourage you to hang in there through the behavior sessions. Lean on your CRAFT Connect Partners. Find time to delve into it on your own. Both you and your loved one deserve it.
And, if you are considering CRAFT Connect, I want to reassure you that CRAFT Connect Family Support is a safe place to do some of the hard work of building a fresh start within your family and with your loved one. A year and half later, I can look back at the first Analyzing Behavior worksheets I completed and notice how far we’ve come.
(*) For a shot-in-the-arm encouragement about getting through the tough middle, listen to Brene on Day 2 of the Unlocking Us with Brene Brown podcast.)