Built on the Model of the Person from Divine Mercy University. Formation, accompaniment and care, measured every session.

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Catholic · Emmaus course

Intensity Is Not Intimacy: Addiction, the Family, and the Road to Recovery

Why do people trade their closest relationships for a bottle, a bet, or a screen? Family therapist Craig Nakken shows how addiction grows as a relationship, how it pulls in the family, and what recovery asks.

With Craig M. Nakken

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Length
1 hr 20 min
Lessons
1
Level
Intermediate
Version
Catholic
Price
Free

About this course

Families living with addiction often believe they caused it. Counselors often treat the behavior and miss the relationship underneath it. In this course, family therapist and addictions counselor Craig Nakken, MSW, offers a definition that changes both: addiction is a pathological love and trust relationship with an object or event. The person slowly stops trusting family, friends, self, spirit, and community, and starts trusting the drink, the bet, or the screen instead.

Mr. Nakken walks through the three stages of the addictive process, shows how an "addictive personality" takes over the self, and explains why families label, blame themselves, and get pulled in. He closes with recovery: surrender, a real change in how a person relates to others, mutual vulnerability, and a life turned over to the principle of care.

Curriculum

  1. Module 1

    Intensity Is Not Intimacy: Addiction, the Family, and the Road to Recovery

    • 1.The Family in the Wake: How Addiction Takes Hold of a Person and a Family
addiction counselingfamily therapysubstance use disordersprocess addictionsgambling addictionaddictive personalitystages of addictionfamily systemscodependency and family guiltrecoverytwelve step spiritualitysurrender