REST is changing the narrative and redefining the role of families who struggle with a Loved One's Substance Use Disorder. The challenge for the family is to learn to influence and direct a Loved One into treatment, recovery, or simply a better life. They achieve this through education, cultivating new skills and strategies, and at the same time learning to address their own needs. Rethinking and reclaiming popular catch phrases  like "powerlessness," "hitting rock bottom," "tough love," and "enabling," are core elements in empowering families to overcome stigma and shame, and discover better coping skills.

 

 Families are:

• not powerless over themselves and their responses

• not powerless over influencing their Loved Ones to the path of recovery and/or treatment

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Hitting "rock bottom"is :

• not one particular event in time but a learning process, a grouping of events that an individual has the potential to learn from

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If families can:

• enable bad behavior then they can enable good behavior

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"Tough love" is:

•  about setting healthy effective boundaries and following through

• tough on families and not easy to enforce

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