The FAMILY RECOVERY INSTITUTE provides solutions for family members wounded by mental illness or addiction and the clinicians who treat them

Our approaches guide members toward individual and systemic recovery while interrupting the cycles of disorder, disconnection, despair, and denial with which we, as members of wounded family systems, are all too familiar.

See if you recognize any of the elements of your family experience in this brief vignette

Feeling good arriving home after the 30th wedding anniversary party thrown for himself and his wife, the silver-haired, athletic Dad listened to the voice mail just as he was getting into bed: “Dad, I owe the wrong people. Can you help me out? I need $200 sent to the Western Union on Pico in West LA. This is the last time, I swear.”

‘I can’t believe this,’ the Dad thought as his mood sank. ‘He was in treatment yesterday. Will this ever stop?’ he bemoaned to his wife. Sighing deeply, the Dad shakily texted: “I’ll send the money. But promise you’ll go straight back to treatment.” After hanging up the wife said: “We have to get him off this rollercoaster – but how?”

Many parents, spouses, and adult children know all too well this kind of story and relate to the Dad’s powerlessness and simultaneous determination to fix things. Family members with addiction or mental illness in their midst feel held hostage, trapped, lied to, betrayed, enraged, and powerless. Increasingly isolated and alone, they become irritable, impulsive, controlling, depressed, lost, burned out, compulsive, and taken over. Desperate for relief from the feelings and the drama they soldier on, employing some combination of escaping, fixing, achieving or blaming to try and make it stop.

Please peruse our website to learn more about the model and treatment approaches we employ, the workshops we offer, our Founder, and the training services we provide to clinicians working with wounded families in any level of care.

Click below to find out more about

Our Founder
The Institute
The SIIC Model