Strategies for Healing Hearts

Strategies for Healing Hearts is a non-profit seeking to restore individuals and families that have been broken/wounded by addiction and/or abuse.

We specialize in addiction and recovering from the behaviors that keep the addict stuck. Although we are passionate about seeing individuals and their partners recover from sexual addiction, we address all addictions in our office.

At Strategies for Healing Hearts we realize that partners and children are in the destructive pathway of addiction (no matter what it is), and often are left to deal with the ramifications of the addict’s choices. Entire families can fall by the wayside because of one individual’s actions.

Partners of addicts may find themselves in an emotionally/physically abusive environment, feeling trapped due to finances (or other external circumstances) and unable to find a way out. Children of addicts grow up in fear, adopting coping mechanisms that are often unhealthy.

Common characteristics of family members of addicts are:

• Isolation, fear of people, and fear of authority figures.
• Constantly seeking the approval of others.
• Frightened by angry people and personal criticism and/or becoming angry and critical.
• Have become an addict, married one, or both.
• Perpetually being the victim / seeing the world from the perspective of a victim.
• An overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Concerned about the needs of others to the degree of neglecting personal wants and needs.
• Feelings of guilt associated with standing up for personal rights.
• An addiction to excitement. Feeling a need to be on the edge, and risk-taking behaviors.
• Attracted to people that need to be rescued and taken care of.
• Avoidance of feelings related to traumas experienced. Denial of feelings.
• Low self-esteem. A tendency to judge self harshly, perfectionistic, and self-critical.
• Strong dependency needs and terrified of abandonment.
• Tendency to react to things that happen versus taking control and not being victim to the behavior of others or situations created by others.
• A chameleon. A tendency to be what others want you to be instead of being yourself.

Addiction (Alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, etc.) is a family disease which often results in a family member taking on the characteristics of the disease even if they are not necessarily addicted. Dysfunctional relationships, denial, fearfulness, avoidance of feelings, poor coping abilities, poor problem solving skills, and afraid that others will find out what they are really like.

Strategies for Healing Hearts seeks to restore families that are broken. Even when the family unit cannot be salvaged due to death or divorce, partners and children deserve the opportunity to heal from the internal wounds inflicted by addiction. We offer groups for partners of addicts, facilitating restoration through education, and addressing boundary and codependency issues. In our office we deal with marriage counseling with a unique approach called “Divide and Conquer” where we deal with the addict and partner individually instead of the marriage itself.

We give children and adolescents a safe place to process what is happening in their family, giving them tools to use in coping with the traumas. We believe when kids are validated, listened to and allowed to express their emotions concerning their lives—that it will help them grow up without the stuffed emotional damage that causes so many problems when they become adults.

We use sophisticated bio-communication software (and other energy medicine and technology tools) to ascertain emotional imbalances that will free family members to heal from the trauma of addiction and make different choices for their own lives. Our hope is that the generational cycles of addiction and abuse can be stopped and that lives can be forever changed.

Strategies for Healing Hearts is a faith-based nonprofit affecting the community with education and resources that will restore families that have been wounded by addiction and abuse. Tax-deductible donations are excepted to help fund counseling for those who are unable to pay.

For more information, please feel free to contact us.