It may be one of life’s most challenging situations, realizing a loved one needs rehab but will not agree to go. You are willing to be supportive and help where you can, but keep hitting that same brick wall of resistance. However, when a loved one won’t attend rehab, some steps you can take may facilitate a change of heart. If you stay committed to the process, your loved one may agree to treatment and a sober lifestyle.
Obtaining an education about treatment and addiction is helpful when supporting a loved one struggling with addiction. You may have already faced the obstacle of denial blocking a loved one’s decision to seek help. If a loved one won’t attend rehab, the reason may be fear of the process and the unknown. Be patient understanding, and listen to find the key factors that may motivate the change and share your new knowledge concerning treatment.
Know How Addiction Impacts Them
Struggling with the challenges when a loved one won’t attend rehab, you must be friendly, non-judgmental, and listen to your loved one with an addiction. Asking open-ended questions about how life has changed with a substance use disorder can help break denial. You must set boundaries, keep them, and avoid arguments. Be a constant close friend, spend more time with your loved one, and build a foundation of trust.
According to Get the Facts about Drugs, Don’t Think Twice, significant factors impact the life of a loved one with an addiction. Discussing how addiction impacts their life with compassion and love can be beneficial. These 2 factors are fundamental but a good starting point. Silence is okay; just be ready to listen to your loved one once they feel they can open up and talk.
The impactful circumstances of addiction to address when a loved one won’t attend rehab:
- Hurting yourself and your family financially
- Participating in stealing things of value to get drugs
- Family may have to take out a second mortgage or sell valuables to get their loved one into rehab
- Family may have to cash out college funds or retirement funds to pay for rehab
- You damage your closest relationships
- You have lost trust in family and friends
- It is challenging for people to communicate with you
- Addiction disrupts every aspect of the family
Educate Yourself and Them on Treatment Services
When a loved one won’t attend rehab, it may be out of fear of the unknown. Speaking to a treatment center professional or healthcare provider helps to obtain the knowledge you can share with your loved one. Describing the assessment and detox process will help make a pathway toward a positive outlook on seeking help. There may be less hesitation in seeking treatment once the fear of the unknown is gone.
Fear of detox might be another factor in the refusal to seek treatment. Explaining how medication-assisted treatment can lessen the discomfort of detox may be beneficial. A certain stigma remains with some people in what they believe about the treatment processes. Explaining that treatment centers have professional teams with compassion and understanding for their patients could help lift the stigma.
Realize You Can’t Force Them To Go
Court-ordered rehab is possible in some circumstances, but you must realize that you can’t force them to go when a loved one won’t attend rehab. For peace of mind, be patient, understanding, and compassionate, but do not go beyond set boundaries to try to force recovery.
Badgering a loved one is not beneficial in supporting your loved one. Recognizing this is a personal decision to seek help by eliminating expectations allows you to maintain a sense of reality.
Prepare for Pushback from Your Loved One
Once the family and support system learn positive and healthy methods to support their loved one, enabling and other dysfunctional family behaviors end. In the past, when the addicted loved one would push back and react adversely to a “no ” as the answer to their demands, the loved ones would eventually give in.
After that ends, the refusal of treatment is the only remaining weapon. Preparing for this reaction will help the supporting family and friends to stay strong and remain focused on never enabling the addiction again.
Use Purposeful Ultimatums and Hold Your Loved One Accountable
Threats are not helpful when a loved one won’t attend rehab. On the other hand, providing healthy reasons for going to rehab could motivate positive thought processes. Positive incentives are motivational, but resorting to threats is detrimental.
Delivering purposeful ultimatums such as, “You can go to rehab, or we will not be able to speak to each other anymore.” Discussing accountability with your loved one and helping them realize their responsibility to seek treatment could motivate a positive response.
Staging an Intervention
When a loved one won’t attend rehab, staging an intervention may answer your prayers. Using a professional third party to organize friends and family to impact the addicted loved one with expressions of love, describing hard feelings, and maintaining the problems the addiction presents.
When the addicted loved one hears their support system describe hurtful and dysfunctional behaviors brought by the addiction, it makes a huge statement. If acceptable, offering a clear-cut and pre-planned treatment option to end the chaos is very successful. Hence, spelling out the consequences of a refusal of treatment closes the deal.
Get Ideal Treatment for Your Loved Ones Near Tennessee
No matter how long it takes, eventually, your loved one who won’t attend rehab may see the light and seek treatment. Tennessee Valley Recovery is a beautiful place to begin a sobriety journey. The center offers many treatment options and therapies to treat the illness of addiction.
Contact Tennessee Valley Recovery and speak with one of the qualified treatment professionals today.