Sometimes we deal with
clients who have a habit of rationalizing and blaming others. And then after we
talk to the family we realize that much of the client's problem might be genetic. Or at the very least, learned from their family.
Yesterday I was dealing with
the family of a client who was discharged for lack of motivation. In addition, he was found found in possession of drug paraphernalia and empty drug
packaging – a violation of our cardinal rules. The paraphernalia
possession was the last straw with this client. For several weeks he'd been
doing little but laying around - instead of seeking employment. And whenever he had a chance he would
socialize with female clients – which is not against the rules – but becomes an
issue when it's excessive.
Before being discharged from
the treatment program he was offered a chance to move to the regular halfway
house, a program that's helped hundreds of thousands of people over the past
22 years. Which he declined. Instead he elected to leave and go to another
halfway house.
But today his whole family
started blowing up the phone wondering how we could be so mean as to
"discharge him" because he'd been "doing so well." It would take a few
hundred pages to cover my conversation with them. But not very far into it I
realized that one of this client's problems was that he learned much of his
behavior from his family. They had all kinds of reasons why the client was
right, and everyone else was wrong. There was never any mention of
responsibility on the part of the client. There was no chance at all that he
had done anything wrong, the poor thing. He was just a misunderstood victim.
One thing I know about
addicts and alcoholics is this: we'll never get sober until we start accepting
responsibility for our own behavior. When we start looking at everything and
everyone else around us as being a problem we'll never take a look at
ourselves.
Even if that's what our parents taught us.
