We are Lou and John and we live in the UK, we are both therapists. I have a thriving counseling practice John is a doctor of psychology. We just want to explain to you why we have brought – what were two diverse websites and put them under the same umbrella. – John
I think that there are a whole raft of reasons but I think one of them is the fact that, traditionally, the drinker worked on his stuff and the family waited until they were ‘cured’. And I think this is not just the drinker’s problem, it is actually an issue for the whole family, and the whole family is affected. Therefore the whole family should be affected, not just by the drinking but also by the recovery and they should be part of that recovery. And in recognition of that we brought the two websites together so that there’s help for the drinker and help for the family in the same place.
And we do genuinely believe if you’re a family or a partner of drinker then you need to step back from the situation. Certainly you should do recce about what’s working and what isn’t. But actually begin to care for yourself. And just that’s where we focussed bottled up for families for 10 years. But we began to realize that the greatest gift that we can give our community was to really help their drinker into a place where they can get help for themselves. And so we have made it a one-stop shop. But also for a drinker, if a drinker is beginning to get help then to get immediate help for the family, and take the heat off the drinker while he gets his act together and help them support you. So we feel that the package is a much better and much more rounded therapeutic approach.
If you’ve been with a drinker for some time and been looking for help you’ll be well aware that there isn’t an awful lot out there and certainly not an awful lot out there that you can be involved in, and that’s one of the things that we have been trying to do here. We’ve tried to make something available, something that is effective is therapeutic but also that’s easily accessible. One of the things that we have noticed by looking at statistics on our website, is that people come to it, not in office hours, no they tend to come late in the evening or early in the morning. They’re looking for help when they need it, rather than when they can make an appointment for it. Because these crises don’t make appointments, just happen.
Certainly, in the UK, if you wanted help you’ve probably had to hang around quite a few months, that’s the situation in the UK. So it’s instant and accessible help. Certainly, for me, my life didn’t really begin until my drinker was fast asleep and I wasn’t in crisis mode and I could think about what I was doing. The other thing, of course, is that I’ve lived with a drinker, you’ve have been a drinker and then therapeutically we’ve gone on a journey as well. So we have the experience from both sides and getting into the head of the drunk has really been very helpful, certainly, I think to understand the best ways forward.
Also with us what-you-see-is-what-you-get. We made a decision that, when we interacted with the community, we wanted to be ourselves. We didn’t want a performance, we wanted a relationship and so we do talk to you and there are videos. But it is us sitting here, we’re actually in our kitchen at the moment. This is us and we want it to be ‘heart-to-heart’, we want to build with you and we want you to know that we are real people. We might be trained therapists but we’re people just like you are. And that’s what we want to do, we want to interact as people with you as a person. And that’s why we keep it informal. We’ve done it deliberately, you do get a few more ehhs and umms, but what you get is the reality of us as people, and we hope that you find that powerful and that makes it a deeper and better connection for you.
So do come and join us we had a wonderful community in the website that we had before. The forum will build up as you go along but come and meet each other it’s all very confidential, nobody knows who you are but to reach out to each other is really powerful as well. So, there’s much we deeply believe will help you and we want to do just that so come and join us. Okay!
