I find Rational Recovery interesting because I do see parallels with the process our family went through. When my husband was using I got to the point of doing (in part) what RR suggest family do; directly confront the person with the expectation they can stop & will do so in order to maintain the family. I really believed this… But, I didn’t do it the RR way.. at the time I didn’t know much about addiction and was very angry at his behaviors and I really thought he could and should just stop. So I confronted him in anger and it wasn’t so much about inviting him back into the family as RR states (positive and expectant tone) ... but instead I was much more negative and threatening which elicited a very negative response from him... I would never do that again if I could go back in time. ..
I also agree confrontational interventions are not the best options … National Institute of Drug Abuse says non- confrontational methods work better, and this includes the Craft approach that I learned after the fact.
The other parallel I see is that while my husband used non 12 step therapy, CBT, root cause analysis.. the end goal was that he would not live a life in recovery.. but would be recovered and go back to a normal, healthy life. I see this with RR and I do agree with this. In fact, it was one of the main reasons for picking the treatment approach that we did.
I enjoy reading the RR threads also.. there is a lot of thought going into the process, and people are using it for various issues..even things like eating disorders.
Soverylost,
I think you make a very good point... I would love to hear from someone who is using RR on how this is handled. With my husband I know they addressed addiction issues and other mental health /personal issues separately - but concurrently. My husband wasn't diagnosed with any type of mental illness per say, but he worked through many issues that he felt contributed to his drug use.
I would be interested in hearing how RR addresses things ranging from depression to bipolar... I assume its being addressed; but outside of RR.