A New View
What We Believe about Whole Family Recovery
Every problem is a family problem.
Understanding “The Problem”
“The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.”
- Mother Teresa
Home believes the suffering loved one’s challenges are symptomatic of unaddressed family woundedness and “dis-ease” posing as “THE problem.” Your suffering loved one is the canary in the mine. Their symptoms are messaging that relational patterns are deeply out of balance, destructive to family wellbeing, and in need of repair.
What if we viewed their symptoms as an alarm bell to WAKE UP and pay attention to the underlying dynamics that have led us into dysregulation and eventually, crisis?
Reframing “The Problem”
“Why can’t parents see their children’s pain? I’ve had to ask myself the same thing. It’s because we haven’t seen our own.”
- Gabor Maté
Much of traditional family work within the behavioral healthcare field is focused primarily on the “identified patient” (a term we do not subscribe to). While many believe that the one with the diagnosis, or the addictive process, is “THE problem,” this perspective is shaming, blaming, othering, and therefore deflecting of accountability. It does not tell the whole story and it does not work.
It’s easier to label someone and say, “If we could fix them, we’ll all be fine.” However, that perspective maintains the narrative that the problem exists outside of ourselves, that it has nothing to do with me, and it projects all that is “dysfunctional” onto someone else.
Until individual family members do their own work and heal family patterns nothing truly changes: symptomatology persists, relapses occur, and disconnection prevails.
Becoming The Change
“I can do nothing for you but work on myself... you can do nothing for me but work on yourself.”
- Ram Dass
HOME invites a new perspective; to radically turn the mirror on ourselves and to recognize that nothing changes if nothing changes. And that family members must BE the change they want to see. They must do the very thing they are asking their loved one to do – “The Inner Work” of compassionate self-honesty, profound self-inquiry, and transformative self-healing.
Our individual healing is family healing, and it shines a light on what is possible for others and for generations to come. This transforms the trajectory of the collective.
HOME empowers family members to be change-makers and chain-breakers, reorienting to a legacy of intergenerational health, their most valuable asset.
“I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I travelled down a whispering well
To know myself through them.”
— Dar Williams (After All)