About Jeff

My mission here?

To provide families, experiencing any stage of addiction, practical strategies that first, empower getting their loved one safe and second, rebuild connections.

I’m at my best when working with people open to new ways of thinking about addiction, specifically recognizing that the old way of thinking is not solving the problem, and realizing that the strengthening the family’s role in solutions is a significant complement to current solutions.

That’s why I’m passionate about providing a pathway and safe online spaces to get information easily, hear the experience of others, process it at your pace, integrate it, and if you choose, engage others in the family in whole family healing.

The ultimate goal is family members sharing with other family members-a new conversation, where families get their loved one safe, while remaining connected over time. Yep, with clear boundaries.

The story driving the mission.

I’ve been fortunate. My personal experience with addiction in the family comes from my childhood. However, because a combination of cultural stigma, my grandfather’s addiction, my mother’s trauma, family secrets, and and my unconsciously carrying the grief and pain of it, it wasn’t until becoming a therapist that I understood how my impact had limited my life choices.

My mother’s shame kept her silent about her own trauma in relation to work and church friends. My mother’s whole life was organized around hiding the pain of an unhealed trauma between her and her father.

Although my mother’s addiction (eating disorder) was not recognized back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, because of her own allergies she became an expert in food allergies: writing cookbooks, coaching others and was a keynote speaker for doctors at medical conferences.

My guess at her strategy was attempting to heal her internal trauma with the external healing of others. In the 80’s, she was on the cutting edge of food allergies.

Although I had no horrific family violence from addiction, she created a family structure exactly like the impersonal family patterns that trickle down through generations of addiction. My family of origin oriented around my mother, her triggers, her control, and her feeling safe.

A snapshot of the roles and relationship dynamics are shown in the spotlight diagram on the right.

I’ve spent much of my life healing from impact that for 30+ years, I didn’t even know I had. But, now, thanks to online learning, coaching and community interactions, the sooner you recognize addiction’s impact, the sooner you can take steps to heal it in your family, for this generation and the next.

Ideally, this message inspires you to look through a new lens to see your situation anew and make new choices, rather than the cultural shaming message that prevents you from taking another step to learn how addiction in the family is actually an opportunity to create the deepest relationship with yourself and others in your family.

 

I follow a “simple” philosophy.

Families are in the best position to stop addiction:

• Early stage-recognize problems early and take actions to change them
• Concern, Crisis, Intervene loop-take actions to move beyond
• Early recovery-create conditions that enhances healthy connections
• Latter stage recovery-navigate the practice of creating optimal conditions

Best longterm decisions are made in a calm state:        

• Nervous system regulation
• Attachment theory
• Brain science
• Mindfulness

The practice of both/and increases solutions and longterm outcomes:

• No “silver bullet”-no one strategy will produce optimal results for all
• Multiple resources produce better results than one alone
• Knowing the options and hearing from likeminded people inspires actions
• Family change reinforces individual change (your loved one in addiction)

Addiction slowly rips family relationships apart, for generations.

The relational aspect of addiction provides tangible action steps.

No change in the relationship reinforces nothing changing.

Expert? Guru? — — Hmm. . .

More like someone who loves to share what I’ve learned with hopes that it’ll help you move forward.

Here’s the deal. There’s quite a lot of information out there. Most telling you what you need to do, often with complicated jargon, which unconsciously may still invade my thinking.

Who has time to decipher all the info?

If you can’t act on the information, then it’s not helpful.

My goal is to make things simple, create an environment that supports you making your best decisions, where you start to see immediate results. You can take action at the bottom of this page.

Here’s what I believe:

Historically, families were shamed and seen as part of the problem.

Addiction language and old thinking reinforces the history.

I think about addiction in the family as a river journey. 

Granted, the family didn’t sign up for addiction. But their accepting this is a journey that impacts everyone sets them up for better longterm outcomes.

The river emphasizes the need to plan, learn new skills together, practice them together, slowly become proficient together, and master the challenge together.

Our efforts healing together connect us.

TFRS’s online platform provides safety, self-paced process, criteria for your best decision-making, and potential for your family’s healing at their pace.

The future of a family empowerment focus to lower the the addiction statistics is limited only by how we think about addiction and potential solutions. But it starts with you. One family at a time.

After Grand Canyon trips, Jeff started to use the river metaphor with families.

Addiction plays by its own rules, so does the river. Families get beat up with addiction, same can be true on the river, especially when they are not prepared. No family would show up at Lee’s Ferry, the put-in to the Grand Canyon with no lifejackets or no food.

But with addiction this unpreparedness is the norm, and it’s not the family’s fault. The river metaphors go on and on. The similarities are considerable.

The main difference is that families do not choose the “addiction in the family” journey.

The many faces of Jeff Jones, on the river.

River trauma and resource.

I have a spiritual connection with the river. The river has been my biggest calming resource and a source of trauma. Both.

At Lava Falls, the largest navigable waterway in North America, I’ve flipped my boat and went through the rapid under my boat. Going 60 seconds without air was a traumatizing incident. It took a couple more runs through, and time to heal.

The importance of the river as a resource and the spiritual connection in my life inspired me to heal from the traumatic incident in Lava Falls. I realized my connection to the river, and what it meant to me.

In families with addiction, trauma can occur, as well. Healing happens.

Trauma and healing. Both.

But what about academic experience and credentials?

Like you, I’ve watched addiction gain momentum and grow at an alarming rate.

Credentials insures a standard of understanding, prioritization of important factors, a method to prioritize factors, and a decision making process. However, our country’s addiction statistics climb quicker than our credentialed system of care can address the problem.

The system of care is overwhelmed and our current approach results in minimal services for families.

Families are primary decision makers and recipients of their loved one’s addiction or recovery.

I believe we need to think outside the parameters of our current approach. We need compliments that support and guide families in making their best decisions about early stage, middle stage or later stage addiction in their family.

My paths of study towards addiction in the family

Mediation and facilitation working with distressed families, groups and individuals.

• Divorce, restraining order settlement conference, small claims court
• Community work groups, non profits

After one particular mediation, one of the attorneys asked, “Are you a psychologist?” I wasn’t then and I’m not now, however this question inspired me to build on my skill set creating conditions around conflict that allowed people to come to their best decisions.

This attorney’s question inspired me to get a masters degree in counseling.

Counseling and addiction: working in private practice, agencies, and treatment centers.

• UCD-HSC, MA in Couples and Family Counseling — 2006
• Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado (LPC) — 2008
• Certified Addiction Counselor III in Colorado (CACIII) — 2008

As a therapist, I was struck with the lack of community resources for families with an addicted loved one. With addiction treatment, I noticed the lack of standardization of family services. Some treatment centers could not afford to have family services. Other treatment centers creatively funded family services. No standardized approach. All were left to define their own approach to family services.

Local services were the self help groups of Al Anon, county public health or nonprofit programs (schools, workplace, etc). Money is not the only challenge.

Cultural stigma kept families in isolation, shame and repeating old patterns. The most expensive burdens put on family were the carrying of unhealed emotional wreckage for years.

Intervention and recovery coaching: working face to face, on the phone and online.

• Applying skills from numerous intervention trainings — 2010 to present
• Certified Intervention Professional — 2014 to present
• Recovery Coaching training — 2010 to present

Culture enables addiction, but trickles down onto families. Mistakenly, they can feel at fault. In the 1980’s therapy adopted the shaming language of codependency reinforcing the blame of families.

Families doing their best in an untenable situation to help a loved one struggling have been negatively labeled by professionals. Why then would families reach out to help a loved one, when they risk being seen as the problem?

The mixed messages I was familiar with growing up were playing out on a large scale in the culture.

Families are major stakeholders in the addiction crisis. Families are in the best position to influence the solution. But carrying the cultural shame is an obstacle to their empowerment.

Coaching in a safe environment encourages the wisdom of the family to naturally emerge, at its own pace.

My professional journey making meaning of addiction in the family:

The belief system cycle has been a valuable tool for me in the journey. It’s a simple image that shows “current” thinking comes from beliefs about the past. Out of this thinking, a behavior or action is taken, which produces a feeling about our situation.

Feelings reinforce the old beliefs. The cycle repeats.

In my journey of academic learning about addiction, it became clear that old beliefs are necessary to have evidenced based practices guiding our standard of care. Tried and true reinforces our statistics staying the same. There is little room for new thinking.

This cycle reflects the inner world of an individual in early stage addiction, as well as the activated response coming from family members trying to help a loved one.

Mindfulness is one method to break this cycle.

Belief Systems/Worldview determines the rational thinking of people in a particular context.

My initial study focused on learning how we see addiction and solutions.

• National organization define addiction-chronic brain disease
• Few acknowledge old beliefs of addiction trickling into current thinking
• Stigma is fought against in some contexts and reinforced in others
• Overwhelm of the system of care to support families

I remained open and curious about different belief systems or worldview and how beliefs related to the story about the pathway addiction takes in our culture, our family or in an individual.

In contrast to national organizations, there are outlier positions, most represented by Bruce Alexander, Gabor Mate, Marc Lewis, and Maia Szalavitz. I learned that even professionals have belief systems that are reinforced by their thinking. It was a curious exercise, examining underlying beliefs and the rigidity (or fluidity) that drove their thinking.

Belief systems come from cultural messages and the worldview we’ve adopted.

Thinking relative to addiction in the family (past, present, and future)

• Traditional thinking about addiction comes out of beliefs (national organizations & our own)
• Cause and effect thinking is often used to understand addiction and solutions
• Difference in thinking about the pathway addiction has taken in an individual and in a family

Thinking about addiction comes from our worldview, belief systems of the past, cultural messages, and experiences we’ve had personally. Although black and white thinking is often seen as a symptom of addiction, I noticed rigidity of thinking about addiction from professionals as well.

Without mindful practice, our thinking comes out of old belief systems and drives our behavior.

Behavior relative to addiction in the family

• More assumptions vs communication in family about different perspectives
• Family members took action based on assumptions vs checking them out with others
• Family members had different strategies to cope, help, and do family together
• Congruent communication was lacking before acting on what people assumed others were thinking
• Lack of congruent interpretations

Without raising our awareness about our assumptions to understand the beliefs that drive the thinking that are diving our actions, we can easily get caught in this cycle. The belief system cycle relates to the family member’’s experience of the Concern, Crisis, Intervene and back to Concern looping stage that can last for years.

Without mindful practice, we can identify with our thoughts and not question them.

Feeling about addiction in the family (Expansion or contraction in my body, my thinking)

• In some families it’s not safe to share feelings, so not much is shared
• Other families everyone is sharing feelings, and often at the same time
• Some times one person in the family will be the emotional lightening rod for everyone
• Unconscious family rules arise (ex: don’t feel, or anger is ok but not empathy, or visa versa)
• Patterns of acting out feelings or numbing them
• Patterns can be passed down from one generation to the next

All families have rules. With addiction, family rules often unconsciously protect or buffer the addiction. Some rules pertain to how feelings are expressed (or not), who can express them, and how others in the family make meaning of them.

In general, as the crisis and emotions escalate feelings orient around the individual with addiction. Over time, family members can put less and less attention on their own feelings and more on another.

Families are not crazy, but addiction can have them feeling that way.

Without mindful practice, feelings about our life situation reinforce old belief system.

Working with the mixed messages about addiction.

The more I worked with addiction in the family, the more I could see patterns, but more importantly differences. The belief system cycle and the stigma and shame reduction map (click on map to learn more), provided clues on what strategies would be best with a given family.

The degree of healing in a family is dependent on their worldview/belief systems and their willingness, or lack of it, to expand their thinking.

Differences in worldview strongly influence what change looks like and how quickly it happens, if at all. Some will have interest in healing, while for others the word, “healing” may not even make sense.

Some families just need basic information, a forum to discuss, make sense of their beliefs and thinking relative to mixed messages. Then they’re on their way to making decisions that fit their belief system and that they’ll feel good about in the future.

 

For other families, “healing” isn’t even a word in their vocabulary. It won’t make sense. Their default thinking will automatically eliminate any potential to explore new thinking and options.

 

I’ve organized an online process to inspire family change/healing:

• Free information aimed at the family’s experience of each specific stage
• Guided coaching to help you make your best decisions
• Family coaching to support your family living into their personal plan

 

I’ll show you how to shift the dynamics in your family to increasing protective factors and a structure that is inhospitable to active addiction.

Let me know what you like on this page, or what you don’t like. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

It brightens my day!

You can email me at jeff@thefamilyrecoverysolution.com, or schedule at time to chat https://meetme.so/jeffjones.