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The headlines ring with stories of opioid addiction and overdose.
Parents complain about their children's screen addiction, law
enforcement decries the flood of fentanyl, scores of Americans
overdose and die daily, and teen alcohol poisoning and
marijuana-induced psychosis rates continue to rise. Disabling
depression and anxiety are diagnosed at alarming rates in families
across the country. Now, more than ever, families struggle to live
with, care for, and protect their family members suffering with
addiction or mental illness. Kenneth Perlmutter, a California
psychologist with 30-plus years in the field, has written Freedom
from Family Dysfunction specifically for family members who love
someone battling addiction or mental illness who want to break the
cycles of codependency and relapse plaguing their dysfunctional
systems. The combination of compelling vignettes, lively dialogues,
and step-by-step instructions makes this guidebook an indispensable
tool for the parents, partners, adult children, and the clinicians
who treat them, to heal the powerlessness, pain, and impossibility
of life with someone they've been trying to help, sometimes for
decades. Perlmutter takes a systemic and inter-generational view,
combining current knowledge with his deep personal experience of
addiction and family dysfunction to guide readers toward
understanding their systems, their positions in them, and the
forces that keep things stuck. "Stress-Induced Impaired Coping
(SIIC)" is the term he's coined to describe his ground-breaking
model of family system pathology and recovery. He invites families
to see themselves not as dysfunctional, but as wounded, as they
work toward connection, closeness, and the restoration of systemic
mental wellness and sustainability. Best of all, the method works
regardless of whether the one identified as "the problem" makes
changes or not. Family members who take up Perlmutter's method
will: * create closeness by pursuing connection over being right *
reject "tough love" * learn to communicate authentically and to set
boundaries confidently and fairly * rebuild trust, authenticity and
equality in family relationships * reduce chaos, anxiety and
distress in the mind and in the home * shift the entire family
system itself toward wellness
The headlines ring with “opioid epidemic” as Americans
accidentally overdose on prescription pills. Parents shriek how
their kids are “addicted to their screens,” law enforcement
decries the flood of fentanyl increasing the lethality of street
drugs, and teen alcohol poisoning rates continue to rise. Now, more
than ever, powerlessness and despair fuel the nightmare experienced
by family members with someone they love suffering with addiction
or mental illness. Directing the family members of someone
suffering with addiction or mental illness to “let go” or
“let them hit bottom” is like telling them to stab themselves
in the eye. Recovery books, even those written for family members,
extol such directives, thereby causing more pain for family members
enduring the powerlessness, futility, and demoralizing
impossibility of loving someone trapped by substance abuse, mood,
eating, thinking, or trauma-related disorder. IT STOPS WITH ME
provides a model for understanding family system turmoil and a
method to guide families toward serenity, sanity, and wellness for
each member and the system as a whole. Creating connection,
rebuilding trust, and defining a sustainable personal posture that
feels right, lie at the heart of the theory and techniques shown.
For the first time in many families, a happy ending seems possible;
and, best of all, the outcome does not depend on the behavior,
recovery effort, or mental health of any one family member. The
author takes a systemic and inter-generational view, combining
current knowledge of epigenetics with his deep personal experience
of working with and being one of the super-sensitive people that
experience addiction and inter-generational family system
pathology. IT STOPS WITH ME guides readers toward understanding
their system, their position in it, and describes specific steps to
take to help everyone get well through the mindful pursuit of
closeness and clarity following a core practice: “Open Heart,
Clear Boundaries.” Most books about addiction focus on the addict
or the disease. If they do focus on the family, they try to either
repair or “fix” the addict, or marginalize the addict (“get
rid of them”), so the family can recover. IT STOPS WITH ME is
different. Using Dr. Perlmutter’s ground-breaking model of
“Stress-Induced Impaired Coping (SIIC)” readers are shown how
to do more than just take care of themselves; they’ll be guided
to deepen or restore relationships with everyone in the family
while pursuing wellness for the system itself. More than 3000
family members have been treated employing the now-proven SIIC
model. This has taken place at a handful of national level
treatment centers and in Perlmutter‘s consulting rooms.
Perlmutter invites family members to understand their
biologically-derived attachment and reactivity styles in order to
move toward one another, deepen empathy and understanding, and
create connection -- the book’s driving theme. IT STOPS WITH ME
illuminates the environmental, emotional, and behavioral
characteristics of these wounded family systems, often inaccurately
branded as “dysfunctional.” As the author illustrates, far from
dysfunctional, these wounded systems function quite well to: ❖
keep their terrible secrets buried, ❖ hold members in rigid
roles, ❖ suppress difficult emotions (or delegate certain members
to express them) ❖ get rid of anxiety and uncertainty; and, most
importantly, ❖ make tolerable the often-fraught experience of
life in the family environment. Believing that one’s family is
not so much dysfunctional as seeking to make tolerable a chaotic,
cold, or unpredictable family environment, makes it possible to
move toward one another, improve self-care, support the recovery
effort for all members, and choose new ways of thinking and
interacting. IT STOPS WITH ME puts into words the brutal and often
relentless experience of those close to someone who has required
intensive treatment for addiction and mental illness. Descriptions
of family members being simultaneously powerless and determined to
“fix things” are vivid and relatable. As they read along they
will say “Yes, that’s how I feel,” or “yes, that’s what
happens to me [when my loved one acts out].” Readers caught in
the grip of family system madness, propelled by the addiction or
mental illness of a loved one, will recognize themselves. IT STOPS
WITH ME serves as a gentle companion for family members caught in
systemic distress and provides them specific strategies with
scripted examples to obtain relief and serenity, regardless of what
their problematic loved ones may or may not be doing. And further,
it shows how to stay in relationship with the problematic loved
one, opening the door to recovery for the entire family. By
examining, understanding and healing the system using the SIIC
model and its specific guidelines, family members will find their
authentic voice, interrupt the cycles of loss, and create the
conditions under which their loved ones make a project out of their
lives and their recovery. This book shows them how.
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