Guide to Healthy Phone Contact

As treatment progresses, patients are given permission and even encouraged to contact family members and concerned others by telephone. These contacts are vital in helping the patient reconnect with family and hopefully form new and healthier attachments. These contacts can also serve as a laboratory which can reveal unhealthy or manipulative behavior that has continued into the treatment process. The nature of telephone contacts and other communication you receive from the patient helps staff get a better view of how the patient is actually doing in treatment. Understanding these communications can also help us help you in learning how to be supportive without enabling, how to be involved without being enmeshed. We suggest that you consider whether or not the call is considerate and other-centered or inconvenient and self-centered. The alliance that we have formed with the family will help you process these contacts in a strong, supportive context as you move through the therapeutic experience.

The nature of your contact may seem to have little to do with recovery. However, recovery experts believe that relapse or resistance can be identified with a shift in attitude from maturity and understanding to an attitude of blame and self-centeredness. Accordingly, the patient's responses to you may speak volumes about real progress. Know too that we're not trying to create "perfect" people; we're interested in real recovery gains and healthy, mature attachments to others.