This short YouTube talk (Amber Hollingsworth) advises families on selecting outpatient counseling for a loved one with substance use issues. Key recommendations: choose a counselor trained in both substance abuse and mental health, use outpatient care for early-stage (denial/engagement) or maintenance/post-residential support, and prefer clinicians skilled in motivational interviewing. Typical outpatient format mentioned: weekly office sessions to support transitions back to work/school and to sustain recovery.
Chapters
You might be thinking about outpatient counseling for your loved one. And outpatient counseling is wonderful. You need to make sure that you have someone that understands substance abuse problems and mental health problems, because it's really highly unlikely that someone has a substance abuse problem, but also isn't having something else like depression, anxiety, adhd. I mean, seriously, like, hardly ever, never happens. People tell me they're only just an alcoholic. I'm like, let me ask some more questions. I probably haven't found it yet. It could happen, but not very often. So having someone, a counselor that's trained in both, is super important and super helpful. When you would want to choose that level of care, which is sort of the lowest rung or lowest level of care in that continuum, you want to do that either I call it in the beginning stages or in the maintenance stages. So, like, a lot of times at Hope for Families, one of the things we're really good at is dealing with people who are in denial. They don't think they have a problem, and bringing them through those very beginning stages of change and getting them to sort of come around to the idea that, yeah, I got a problem and I need to do something about it. So if you're looking for help for your loved one and they're in that just sort of like very beginning stage, and they don't even think they have a problem, and you're starting from serious, seriously, ground zero, you got to get them to first decide that there is a problem. Outpatient counseling is a good place to do that. Finding someone that's trained in a technique called motivational interviewing can be very helpful because the whole technique is designed around getting someone more motivated to go to treatment. So you need. The counselor needs to be able to meet that person where they're at. If you've got someone in denial and the counselor goes in and they start talking to them about immediately about, you got to go to 12 step meetings every day or something like that, they're going to lose their person because that person gonna be thinking, you don't know me, and I'm not alcoholic, and I'm not going to know aa. So you got to start. We'll call this like a prereq. Before you can even get in the big daddy course, you got to do, like, the pre work. Like, before you get algebra, you got to take pre algebra. So think of it like that. The other time when outpatient counseling is the right level of care is for someone coming out of a higher level of care. So a lot of times when people are stepping down out of residential treatment or intensive outpatient treatment, they're probably going to have or need an outpatient counselor to follow up with them. And that's somebody that usually outpatient means you're going like once a week, you're meeting with your counselor in their office for about a week and this person sort of follows you. They know what's going on. They can sort of track things with you and help you get through those tough transition periods. So outpatient counseling is really good for the very beginning and then the maintenance. So once you've sort of stabilized and come out of treatment, keeping you on a good steady maintenance level as you transition back to work and back to school and doing some of those other things, just navigating those everyday life things, it's really important to find an outpatient counselor and look for someone that's trained both in substance abuse and mental health to have the very best, the best of both worlds, the best possible results.
