A far-ranging examination of how the effects of addiction and trauma in the family can reverberate for generations

Trauma and addictive disorders are often a result of psychological injuries experienced as a child. These injuries typically produce long-term and harmful generational consequences on loved ones and other family members. Claudia Black presents a searing portrait of a broken family system, exploring how addiction and trauma develop and how their damaging repetition uproots and frequently destroys one's family tree. Filled with vignettes highlighting the various causes of trauma, Dr. Black helps readers understand its physiology and psychology and gives them healing, proactive steps to build healthier relationships.

Claudia Black, PhD, is internationally recognized for her pioneering and cutting-edge work with family systems and addictive disorders. Her work with children affected by drug and alcohol addiction in the late 1970s fueled the advancement of the codependency and developmental trauma fields. Dr. Black's passion to help young adults overcome obstacles and strengthen families built the foundation of the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows. Not only is Dr. Black the clinical architect of this innovative treatment program, she is also actively involved with the treatment team, patients, and their families.

A teen's guide to understanding why you use--and how to stop.

Do you drink more than you should, or use other substances to numb yourself? Is your substance use affecting important aspects of your life like school, work, relationships, and family? Do you lie about drinking or using? Have you ever wondered why you use?

Many teens use substances to dull or cope with pain resulting from an underlying trauma--such as loss of a loved one, bullying, sexual assault, or verbal and physical abuse in the family. The pain inflicted by trauma can have devastating effects, often resulting in feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing. These feelings only serve to reinforce your substance use, tossing you into a vicious cycle of self-medicating. But there is a way out; a way to better understand and address the reasons why you use, so you can begin your journey toward recovery.

In Your Recovery, Your Life for Teens, internationally renowned addiction specialist Claudia Black presents a comprehensive program for exploring how your life experiences have influenced your substance use, and addresses the problem through guided self-reflection. You'll be equipped with a variety of skills from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, and grief work, so you can calmly and confidently gain the upper hand in your battle with substances. You'll also discover tools to help you tolerate difficult feelings, release toxic shame, regulate your emotions, and come to terms with the fact that your use is interfering with your life. Most importantly, you learn how to forgive yourself and set new priorities for a healthy and fulfilling life--without drugs and alcohol.

The road to recovery can feel long and difficult; it demands extraordinary dedication and effort. It also requires a lot of help, and help is out there. With this compassionate guide, you can begin your journey knowing you're on solid ground.

In Changing Course--now fully revised and updated--Claudia Black extends a helping hand to anyone overcoming the complex trauma of growing up in an impaired family system.

Don't talk. Don't trust. Don't feel.

Being raised in a dysfunctional family system, whether unpredictable and chaotic or overly rigid and joyless, can set the course for chronic emotional pain in adulthood. Changing Course is a gentle, affirming guide to healing from childhood experiences of loss, abandonment, fear, and shame.

Through carefully crafted questions, charts, exercises, and real-life stories of people impacted by various types of family impairment, Dr. Black skillfully presents an interactive process of healing from childhood wounds. You will learn four essential steps you can use to let go of old hurtful beliefs and behaviors and develop new skills for both redefining self and negotiating relationships.

Claudia Black's bestselling classic on the experience and legacy of being raised in an addictive household.

In an all too familiar scenario, played out in millions of homes every day, children who grow up in addictive families abide by certain rules: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. The rigid survival roles and youthful coping behaviors they take on, such as the responsible child, the adjuster, the placater, and the acting-out child can eventually contribute to problems of depression, loneliness, and addiction in adulthood.

Using poignant personal stories, thoughtful explanations, and helpful exercises, Black helps readers gain personal insights and develop new skills that lead to a healthier, happier, more fulfilling life.

While continuing to recognize alcohol as the primary addiction within families, this newly revised edition of It Will Never Happen to Me, which has sold more than two million copies, broadens concepts to include addictive disorders involving other drugs, money, food, sex, and work.

People today are struggling with an unprecedented rise in mental health concerns such as depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, behavioral addictions, suicide, and more. The greatest barriers to getting help are their shame, their self-loathing, and the belief that their situation is hopeless. Undaunted Hope destigmatizes these disorders and invites readers to take the first step to help: asking for it.

Through the narratives of twenty-one alumni from Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, world-renowned treatment facilities, readers may see themselves in parts of the stories--and ultimately find the courage to ask for help. Each storyteller reveals the origins of their struggles, the chaotic course of events leading up to treatment, what help entailed, and how their lives became richer, fuller, and more hopeful once they were willing to take the first step toward healing.

This urgent and timely book presents the stories of the therapeutic work that occurs in Meadows' facilities, recognizing that trauma is most often the underlying issue to people's struggles. The groundbreaking work at The Meadows has been validated by the landmark Adverse Childhood Experience Study (ACEs) carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the past twenty-five years. These studies repetitively demonstrate the relationship of various traumas to mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral healthcare problems.

Claudia Black's seminal relapse prevention workbook has been revised and updated

People in recovery from addiction need to be award of the potential for setback and the range of challenges that can, and often do, lead to relapse. To assume or simply hope it will not occur is denial. A Hole in the Sidewalk supports the necessary work required for relapse prevention from all forms of addiction: alcohol and other drugs, nicotine, sex, work, spending, screen, gambling, food, and relationships.

Dr. Black provides robust tools for those who take their recovery seriously and want to maximize there knowledge and take actions to minimize the possibility of a return to active addiction. Whether or not someone has a history of relapse or wants to be proactive in their effort of avoiding potential stumbling blocks, this newly updated workbook is a major asset in their sustained recovery.

A new and revised edition of Claudia Black's groundbreaking workbook for adult children from dysfunctional families

This updated edition of Dr. Black's revolutionary self-help workbook provides readers with a step-by-step framework and a guide that takes them through a process to recognize how present challenges are influenced by growing up in a troubled family system, release the parts of the past they wish to leave behind, and take greater responsibility for how they live today.

Adult children tend to repeat the life scripts of their challenged, troubled families as a result of internalized beliefs and behaviors that were either modeled for them or were a part of their survival strategy. Claudia Black, world-renowned expert on dysfunctional families, articulates a seven-step process for readers to heal the wounds of their past.

This is also an excellent resource to aid therapists, counselors, and other helping professionals in their work with clients to help them become aware of how their family system affected them and grow beyond it.

Dr. Claudia Black's remarkable book designed specifically for children growing up in families ravaged by addiction.

Children who grow up in addicted families usually learn at a very young age that it is not safe for them to openly talk about their family experiences. This updated edition of My Dad Loves Me, My Dad Has a Disease gives children ages five to twelve the opportunity to work through their feelings of loss, loneliness, fear, and frustration, both verbally and through drawing exercises. Through sharing their thoughts and feelings, children can develop a better understanding of addiction and how it affects their parent(s).

Written from a child's point of view, this book has helped thousands of children and is a springboard for children to understand their own recovery process in a family ravaged by addiction.

A new edition written especially for behavioral health practitioners from one of the world's foremost experts on addiction and family system dysfunction, Dr. Claudia Black.

Addiction passes through families from one generation to the next. Family Strategies provides a wealth of information and guidance proven to be effective with families challenged by addiction--whether to alcohol or other drugs, gambling, food, sex, etc. Through authoritative direction and reproducible handouts, professionals are given the structure and resources to help families they work with successfully transition to recovery.

Best-selling author Claudia Black, PhD introduces readers to five different families facing addiction and demonstrates how recovering parents talked with their kids about substance use disorders.

Talking with your kids about alcohol use, drug use, and addiction can be difficult for any parent. For recovering parents, conversations with your children about substance use disorders are even more complex, urgent, and personal. In this revised and updated edition, foremost recovery author Claudia Black provides clear direction and gentle support for discussing your addiction with your children. In Straight Talk from Claudia Black, you will meet five very different families and explore with Dr. Black how each of the parents handled discussions about recovery, relapse, and their children's own vulnerability to chronic, compulsive behaviors. Dr. Black also addresses the latest research on genetics and addiction as well as practical prevention strategies for raising resilient children.

While you can't make up for the past in a few conversations, and you can't completely protect your children from the ominous scope of addiction, you can, with Dr. Black's intelligent and sensitive guidance, move closer to becoming the parent your children deserve--and the parent you most want to be.

A new edition of Dr. Claudia Black's comprehensive manual designed for addiction treatment professionals for use treating patients affected by depression

This fully updated and revised edition is meant for clinicians versed in identifying and treating depression within the context of treating addiction. What sets this book apart from other depression workbooks is that it holds a healthy respect for cognitive behavioral modalities while recognizing the role of effective and spiritual interventions related to depressive disorders.

Dr. Black provides didactic information and reproducible handouts. In many of the strategies sections, she presents ideas and formats for structured interventions. The use of handouts in the form of written exercises, checklists, sentence stems, structured dialogues, and/or art activities is an integral part of this therapeutic technique.