For family and friends
Are you the parent of someone attending TUBA?
Young people attending TUBA get help talking about and understanding what it has meant to grow up in a family with substance abuse problems. And to get on well.
Maybe as a parent or other adult, you wonder how we talk to young people about it.
Here are some things we are very aware of:
- We are based on how the young person has experienced and experienced it, and are careful to put other interpretations down their world of life.
- We respect the child’s mixed feelings towards the parent who has an abuse problem. Both the loyal, loving and compassionate feelings and the angry, powerless and unjust feelings. The young person often needs to be met just to have such conflicting feelings in relation to the affected.
- At TUBA we are not concerned with placing blame. Abusers are not villains. People who develop abuse are not particularly bad people. We do not condemn anyone who drinks.
- Getting the abusive parent to stop abusing is rarely the solution to the child’s difficulties. Often, many failures and breaches of trust have occurred. The young person needs to get the focus away from the parent who has a substance abuse problem and onto himself to get better.
- It is difficult for us to work with a young person who is not self-motivated or has begun to see how burdened he / she is by his or her parent’s abuse problem. Therefore, sending a young person in conversation with us may seem counterintuitive before he or she is motivated to go here. We recognize that it is painful as a non-abusive parent or other relative to watch a young person suffer. Experience shows that young people benefit most from treatment when they see and feel that they need to speak.
- Young people from families with substance abuse problems usually have to spend part of their young adulthood to overcome the stresses. Therefore, TUBA’s target group goes up to 35 years. It is better to seek help when you are motivated than to have a tedious experience with psychotherapy because you are not ready to speak yet.
- If it is too difficult for you that your child is not ready to seek help, it is a good opportunity yourself to get help on how to best support him / her. On the whole, it is a great help for the young person if the parents make sure to have someone to talk to.
Are you siblings to someone who goes to TUBA?
If you and your siblings grew up with parents who have or have had a substance abuse problem, it can cause mental health problems in one or more of you siblings. Although you may not feel that there have been problems during your upbringing, it may well be experienced differently by your siblings. You are welcome – together or separately – to contact us at TUBA and have an introductory conversation and hear more about what we can do for you.
10 useful tips
We have put together a number of good tips for you who know a young person who has grown up in a family with abuse.
- Say what you see and ask if you can speak – ‘I know you’re having a hard time at home’
- Strengthen the other person’s feeling of being ok and strong – ‘I see you’re fighting, it’s well done’
- Offer your companion – ‘I want to be there for you’
- Understand that starting to talk about it is a long process. Recognize the other’s pace. ‘It’s ok if you don’t want to talk about it’
- Problem Solving Help – ‘What can you do when you get home and your mom is drunk?’
- Give hope – many young people who have grown up in families with alcohol and drug problems get a good life themselves
- Recognize the young man’s loyalty to the family
- Recognize the divided feelings towards the parent who has an abuse problem – both the loving and the angry feelings
- Know your notification duty
- Seek support yourself if it becomes difficult for you to support