Games to Help With Addiction | Codependency Therapy
Games to help with addiction | codependency therapy – seriously?
Co-Author Laura Osborn, PsyD, CHT explains the role of games in addiction | codependency therapy.
Co-Author Kathleen Grant, MA, LMFT explains the role of games in addiction | codependency therapy.
Book that can help families in addiction | codependency therapy.
What’s in a Game? Play Therapy for Adults by Kathleen Grant, MA, LMFT, and Laura Osborn, PsyD, CHT, is a book like no other I’ve read in the genre of books that can help families recover from addiction. It’s like no other for three key reasons:
• it uses three serious games (which they will explain) to frame the therapy process (I know what you’re thinking – GAMES? Yes, games!), which sets an entirely different “tone” for the therapy process around addiction and codependency treatment and recovery; and
• it uses this approach in order to help all members of the family, for it’s not just the person with addiction (aka substance use disorder | SUD) who needs help, as importantly, it’s the other family members who need to be heard so they, too, can get help; and
• treating the entire family provides the best outcome opportunities for all concerned because addiction is a family disease.
[Note: Osborn and Grant’s book can benefit all types of therapy issues and outcomes, but I’ve asked them to focus on how it may benefit therapy issues and outcomes around addiction and codependency.]
1. You call these serious games. Please tell us what you mean by “serious games,” and how serious games can be used in the addiction | codependency therapy process.
The most general definition says that a serious game is a game played for purposes other than entertainment. Our purpose has been to create games to help a couple, family, or group see their issues with each other directly, with a minimum of therapist interpretation. They help save relationships by improving, communication between individuals and groups and aid them in coming to a common understanding. And last but not least, they bring an element of fun to a serious purpose.
The serious games we developed were adapted from games developed by Luke Hohmann. These games provide short activities, with clear beginnings and endings. They complement the longer, more diffuse kinds of interactions more typical in treatment. For therapists engaged in the ongoing process of people getting to know themselves and others, they can use brief games over and over again to coax out more information from partners and families at different times in the therapeutic process because these games:
• elicit detailed information for treatment planning.
• expose unwritten rules clients use in their relationships,
• defuse emotional reactivity that can swamp a session,
• uncover the strengths as well as weaknesses in client’s relationships, and
• can create a non-blaming structure that lets the parties hear each other and feel heard.
2. Briefly describe the three games you use and how they might benefit BreakingTheCycles.com readers.
The games discussed in this book are meant to evoke emotional information from participants. It helps therapists get to the information that they don’t know, as well as what they don’t know they don’t know. The way the three games we present in this book help therapists do this are as follows:
• Knowsy® is a game that is especially good at eliciting the detailed kind of information that is so useful to have at the beginning of therapy, as we plan approaches and interventions. Although Knowsy® is indicated for intake and early sessions, it can be usefully employed at almost any point in therapy that the clinician chooses, especially when sorting out priorities becomes an issue.
• Speed Boat is a game especially well-suited to the middle point of therapy, where energy and focus may lag. It creates a balanced picture that takes into account both strengths and weaknesses in a relationship. Grounded in the realities of the present, it opens the way to honest assessment and course correction.
• Remember the Future uses the lessons gained in therapy to lay out a roadmap for future. Often emotional reactivity becomes an issue as clients approach the end of therapy. Remember the Future is designed to contain and channel these emotions, both as therapy ends and into the post-therapeutic reality.
3. What do serious games do that many other therapeutic techniques do not?
They allow clients and therapist to enter what John Huizinga called the “magic circle,” in which the roles we usually play, along with their attitudes and vocabulary, can be discarded, and new ones can be adopted. There are obvious benefits for relationships that have become stuck in dysfunctional patterns of recrimination, blaming and avoidance.
Play occurs in a part of the brain that allows this shift from one version of ourselves to another, and a shift from our well-known reality to one that is different enough to allow for new understandings.
Additionally, these games:
• Expose the Unspoken Rules. Exposing and changing the unspoken rules applies to the relationships of couples, families, and groups. They may have tacit arrangements in place, which work like the thermostat in a house. When the temperature is above 76 degrees, the air conditioning comes on; the temperature is below 55, the heat comes on. When a topic arises that creates anxiety, the “thermostat” goes on and drops the topic, which reduces the emotional temperature to a comfortable level. These implicit agreements about what to discuss and what not to discuss act as a thermostat, keeping the house comfortable for the couple, family or group . . . or at least not painfully charged with emotional heat.
• Have Strong Visual Elements. We humans are highly visual creatures, with strong emotional reactions to the things we see. “A picture is worth a thousand words” expresses a long-standing truth about the way we learn and how we feel. The visual aspects to serious games engages this part of the brain, allowing participants to see and be seen in a way that conversation doesn’t always accomplish. The visual artifacts are meant to enhance experience.
• Stimulate the Healing Power of Play. Never underestimate the value of having fun! Families that play together stay together, or at least come to enjoy each other more and learn how to relax some of the barriers that separate them. Just as these games help identify maladaptive patterns among people, they also demonstrate the strengths and resources people bring to their relationships. Participants share their priorities, name the strengths they see in themselves and others, plan together for the future. All this fosters trust among the participants.
• Can Speed Up the Pace of Therapy. Therapy can sometimes feel painfully slow for clients. As therapists, our job includes helping manage the pace of therapy. Sometimes we wish to move people along faster (rather than letting them wallow in a negative state). Often it takes time for clients to develop insight and lower their resistance to therapy. The games shift the locus of control to them, giving them the tools to break down their own barriers.
4. Can you describe a scenario in which these games might be used?
Sure! Let’s take the family that wants to help Dad to begin the long, difficult road towards sobriety, This family is likely to be shut down and fearful. Both the identified patient (IP – Dad) and the rest of the family are likely to have very different ideas about what to expect from therapy, and quite divergent views about what their new roles and responsibilities will be. Knowsy® can apply here as well; another therapist might want to use Speed Boat, depending on what clinical judgment indicates.
• Knowsy® can be used to assess the family during intake; it can be used later in therapy to judge the degree of alignment about the meaning and outcome of treatment between the alcoholic and the family; it can be used as therapy is ending as a way to illustrate to the family the progress they have made in understanding each other.
• Speed Boat can help with a family that thinks they can drop the alcoholic off in rehab, pick him/her up later “cured” and either start or resume a happy family life. Speed Boat makes graphically clear the dense web of interconnection among all members of the family, and areas of weakness that will not be fixed by changing one person. Speed Boat can work well in the middle of therapy, especially when the chemically-dependent individual has been sober for a while, and the family members feel their “support” is less important. This game will illustrate the true needs of the family unit, and the illusory nature of support in this context.
• Remember the Future can be quite helpful for this family towards the end of therapy and treatment. Many families in this situation believe now that their loved one is no longer drinking, the problems they suffered before will just disappear. This game is an powerful way to illustrate that old issues don’t just disappear, and additionally, they are entering a new reality that will continue to demand things of them.
5. You have mentioned the ability to quantify the results of these games. Are you talking about measurements in a general sense or actual statistical measurements?
We have created a measuring tool (free to download from our website, with instructions on how to use) that is in effect a spreadsheet that maps concretely where the family unit as a whole is moving, and where each individual in that unit stands at any given time. For therapists dealing with insurance companies, e.g., that are interested in tracking progress, this tool is quite helpful. Depending on the client(s), showing them in graphic form here they stand and how they have changed can also be beneficial.
6. I know your book is written for therapists, but would you suggest family members buy it, as well, and then use it to identify a therapist who might consider this approach for working with their family?
Absolutely!
To order your copy, please click here.
To learn more about Laura and Kathleen and their work, please visit their website, Serious Mind Games.
Lisa Frederiksen
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Wonderful idea!