Treatment is a gift
The holidays tend to be littered with gift giving, family gatherings, and celebrations for a multitude of reasons. What most people don’t realize, is that giving the gift of treatment can be a positive thing. You see, paying for treatment can be pricey. Most families don’t know this until they are in a crisis and needing to enroll their loved one in treatment. The cost can feel like a burden, specifically like buying a second home as an investment in the well-being and life of your young adult. Instead of paying for another semester of college tuition where they are unhappy and struggling, or giving a car as an obligatory right of passage, maybe this holiday season consider the gift of paying for treatment.
I say it’s a “gift” because those who come out on the other side tend to feel immense gratitude and appreciation. They are on a healthier trajectory, and the entire family system can sometimes begin to breath. No, I’m not insinuating that everyone that goes through treatment comes out like roses and rainbows. Going to treatment is just the beginning of a long journey for change. Depending on how old your loved one is, you need to factor in the years of “undoing” what the brain has been trained to do for so long. This process is a marathon, not a 5K race.
What’s the price point between those races? Well, typically a 5K may cost $35 or so if you register early bird. A marathon is a guaranteed $120 or more, and that’s months in advance of the race. How does this translate to treatment? Well, paying for an individual therapist would be like a 5K. It can be short term, it’s much cheaper than a residential placement, and there’s a lot of options to pick from (especially if you’re in an urban area). That’s not a knock on individual therapists! Residential treatment, like a marathon is all-consuming. It’s intense. It takes hours of each of your day to “train” and do the work. You often find yourself signing up for a marathon in beautiful destinations, and they certainly aren’t inexpensive. Do you feel amazing afterwards? It depends on who you ask. You’ll certainly feel the pain of all the work you put in, and yet mentally you’ll be brought to tears for the progress. Your loved one would have completed something they never thought they could have. Transfer the training for and completing a marathon to being in treatment and months of sobriety. Before you start the training, you don’t think it’s possible. It’s only after you finish the race that you realize your own potential.
For the holidays each year, I tend to gift myself a race registration. It gives me something to work towards, and I typically sign up for something I don’t think I’d be able to ever do otherwise. In working in the behavioral healthcare industry, I now have so much more appreciation for the creativity in finding funds to help a loved one when they really need it. This experience can be the most monumental investment a family ever makes. As you are doing your holiday shopping and gift giving, reflect on what is most important. Is another sweater in your son’s closet going to help him launch into adulthood? Or what about a no more cash to your other child who you suspect is using it to buy drugs? You may want to cross out the shopping list and consider hiring a Therapeutic Consultant to help you find a treatment program for your loved one.
Happy holidays!
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
