Engaging Families: Advanced Skills for Working with Family Members in SUD Treatment
Advanced
Navigate Complex Family Dynamics With Skill & Confidence
Ready to feel more prepared for the difficult moments that come up in family work?
Working with families in SUD treatment can bring up strong emotions, conflict, divided loyalties, privacy concerns, and difficult conversations about return to use. This advanced training helps professionals practice what to do in those moments.
Through role-play, family constellation work, boundary exercises, group practice, and real-world scenarios, participants will build stronger skills in communicating with families, managing conflict, supporting emotional regulation, and staying grounded when family work gets complicated.
This advanced training helps professionals practice handling difficult moments. Participants will work through real-world scenarios, role plays, family exercises, boundary practice, and group counseling activities designed to build confidence and skill.
The focus is practical: how to communicate more clearly, respond to conflict, support families through return to use, apply harm reduction with family members, and stay grounded when emotions run high. Participants will also explore how their own biases, stress, or personal reactions can affect the work.
In this course, you will…
- Apply experiential counseling strategies to explore and shift complex family dynamics in the context of substance use.
- Identify and respond effectively to discord and sustain talk using advanced Motivational Interviewing techniques.
- Facilitate constructive, strengths-based communication between family members and individuals with SUD.
- Provide psychoeducation on intergenerational trauma and its relevance to family functioning and substance use patterns.
- Describe harm reduction principles and apply them in family counseling conversations.
- Guide family members in understanding and preparing for return-to-use scenarios using supportive, nonjudgmental language.
- Demonstrate at least two conflict resolution techniques appropriate for use in family counseling settings.
- Model and teach emotional regulation strategies for both counselors and family members during high-stress interactions.
- Identify and introduce relevant peer-support and community-based resources for families impacted by substance use.
- Reflect on and manage personal bias, emotional reactivity, and divided loyalties when working with multiple members of a family system.
ENROLL TODAY!
Option 1: Event Registration Link
Prerequisite:
Previous training or experience working with families in recovery. This course is designed for professionals who already have a foundation in family engagement and want more practice navigating complex family dynamics.
Teaching methods used:
This live, interactive training uses real-world scenarios, role play, family constellation exercises, boundary exercises, group discussion, mindfulness practice, and a fishbowl-style counseling group role play. Participants will practice advanced family engagement skills in a structured, supportive learning environment.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
- Peer professionals
- SUD treatment professionals
- CASACs, CPPs, and CPSs
- Clinicians working with families
- Supervisors supporting family-centered care
- Staff with prior family engagement training
CONTINUING EDUCATION:
- Provides 10 clock hours of continuing education.
- Appropriate for SUD professionals, clinicians, peer professionals, supervisors, and program staff.
- Participants must be present for the full training to receive credit.
GROUP DISCOUNTS:
- Available for 3 or more participants from a program.
- Email sandy@authentictrainings.com for company check processing.
REFUND POLICY
All registration is final. There are no refunds. If we are notified within 24 hours of the class, we can roll your enrollment fee to an alternative training or training date.
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Questions?
Contact us today if you have any questions! We would be happy to help you in any way we can.