A Guide for Family & Friends
Family support is vital to achieving Bipolar IN Order. As family members, we are advocates, but also emotionally invested loved-ones who want wellness and happiness for our family as a whole. We also want to see the success of each member of our family.
Each individual deserves self-determination as the foundation of personal growth and true change. We can not force or choose anyone's behavior, goals, or future. One family member’s diagnosis does not make the rest of the family perfect. Family members will have to set their own goals of growth and understanding too. Ultimately, there is only one person we can change, and that is ourselves.
The family embarks on an educational adventure by taking part in this journey. By seeking out information, taking workshops, attending therapy sessions, and participating with the team, the family is included and essential to success. Learning as much as we can about our own thoughts and actions and the effect these have on family dynamics will lead family members on their own journey of personal growth.
Integration or interactions with therapists, doctors, psychiatrists:
When asked to participate, family members can offer first-hand experience, having personally witnessed personality and mood changes and diagnosis-related behaviors and symptoms. Where one may not fully agree with assessments or treatments advocated by other team members, the family member can provide another point of view in accepting or rejecting ideas for treatment.
Everything that is accomplished in therapy should not be undone when the client arrives back in the family unit. The family can avoid becoming an unwitting source of confusion by participating with the integrated team from the very beginning.
Assessment Process
A family member can speak to the unique challenges and responsibilities inherent to the current family situation. The family member contributes insights and information to the team that do not always turn up in the other assessments.
Where there is a disparity between what the client reports and what the family observes on a daily basis, asking a family member could help to clarify the situation. Many family members remark that they wish the treating psychiatrist or therapist could come home with them. When someone being treated leaves out information, presents well, and is delusional regarding their own state of well being, the therapist is being asked by the client to treat a mythological person. The family lives with the truth on a daily basis. If we are willing to invite them in, our family can open up truthful and helpful insights.
Goal Setting
The unique perspective of a family member enables the client or the team to evaluate if goals are mindful of the client's living arrangements, relationships, and family responsibilities.
The family works to recognize what it will take to maintain appropriate balance and dynamics while undergoing personal growth and change.
Family relationship dynamics will become very evident when setting goals. This is why education and counseling in relationships is important to success. The family has to accept that change is anticipated as part of an organized plan. It may not appear that way when there are setbacks and missteps along the way. When setting goals it is important to admit that each individual within the family group does not have the same view of progress or of the future. These differences will have to be reconciled or at least acknowledged for optimum outcomes to be achieved by the entire family.
On-going involvement:
While the family may not consider themselves to be in treatment with the client, the contributions that they can make to the success of the treatment phase are considerable. Families that thrive do so in part because of their ability to move away from the concept of illness. An important part of the treatment process is accepting that well-being, health, and confidence will to return to the family unit. It is essential to establish trust and faith in each other as soon as possible.
The client is asked to acknowledge that family members are learning new information and undergoing a process of change almost equal to their own. For this reason, a spirit of cooperation, understanding, and acceptance of each others struggles and pitfalls is essential. Acceptance, openness, and improved communication skills will help to reduce the tendency to take on unhelpful roles, like surveillance or deception.
Developing patience cannot be understated. Personal growth doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to assimilate new information and tools, incorporate them into our thinking, and put them into practice. During on-going treatment it is important for the family to support the goals and to not expect the client to change lifetime habits immediately.
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