Role of Counsellor in Addiction

For people recovering from eating disorders, drug and alcohol problems, gambling addictions, and other behavioural concerns, substance abuse Online counsellors offer a crucial support system. Online Counsellors help patients on their path to addiction treatment by developing a relationship based on trust and offering them the tools, support, and judgment-free advice they need. 

The assistance that Online counsellors in this sector provide to addicts with crisis and long-term addiction management concerns can range from rapid medical intervention to long-term recovery support.

Create therapeutic alliances with patients 

It takes a lot of trust between patients and their Online counsellors to make the difficult decision to seek addiction treatment.  Online Counsellors should therefore be careful to establish a strong therapeutic connection with their patients.  A therapeutic relationship is created when clients trust their therapists enough to feel vulnerable while working through their issues. Strong partnerships like this make sure that clients have faith in their counsellors and understand that they have their best interests at heart. This enables patients and counsellors to collaborate while facing hardship. 

Patients should gradually feel at ease speaking openly during sessions, feel relieved following an appointment, and experience a desire to return.

Strong therapeutic alliances can be made by:

• letting patients know you care about their health 
• Attentiveness during sessions
• letting patients know you understand their issues
• Recognizing and expressing the fundamental challenges affecting recovery

The formation of therapeutic partnerships is essential for addiction recovery.  Online Counsellors can better support their clients on the road to recovery by providing an environment where patients feel welcome and at ease expressing their struggles.

Encourage Patient Recovery 

Recovery from addiction is challenging because many people who struggle with alcohol or drug addiction don’t identify their own patterns of abuse or feel conflicted about getting help. Since online counsellors have limited control over a patient’s incentive to change, the patient’s motivation to change has frequently been a source of frustration in substance misuse therapy. 

To empower the counsellor to elicit and boost motivation and to determine a style that will best serve the client’s requirements, the counselling community is revisiting current approaches to motivation. The NCBI found that the most favoured qualities for online counsellors were non-possessive warmth, friendliness, sincerity, respect, affirmation, and empathy. These qualities were also recommended in the general psychological literature. Contrary to this, aggressive counselling involved challenging

Help patient develop a relapse prevention plan 

Because addiction is a chronic disease, most people who are diagnosed with it will relapse at some time throughout their treatment. According to some studies, between 40 and 60 per cent of addicts relapse at some time in their lives, which is comparable to several well-known diseases including diabetes, asthma, and hypertension. 3 Relapse, however, does not imply that therapy has failed; rather, it is a sign that the patient’s care must be modified. After deciding to seek addiction treatment, it’s critical that individuals are well prepared to prevent relapse in the future. Relapse prevention calls for more than just the ability to resist temptation when it presents itself, and prevention must begin early in the healing process.

Plans will be individualized for each patient based on their needs, but must include the following:

• A thorough description of the patient’s drug abuse history, including any relapses,
• warning signals and the best strategies for patients to handle them
• a thorough list of relatives, friends, and therapists who can serve as a support network
• Emergency measures for relapse 
• Patients can make certain lifestyle adjustments to put their health first.

Take the support of family members to provide guidance –

One of the hardest parts of supporting loved ones in recovery for family and friends of patients is dealing with the addiction. Daily interactions with loved ones may unintentionally enable the addict, and many family members prefer to ignore the issue out of concern that confronting the issue will drive their loved ones away. 

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As a result, it’s critical that family members receive adequate information about how to manage their loved one’s addiction during addiction therapy. Counsellors can assist families of patients in several ways, such as by facilitating family therapy sessions or by assisting them in finding a support group. The assistance of family and friends is crucial for addiction recovery. As a lifetime process, healing requires the assistance of family members.

Refer patient to an outside support group:

Addicts in recovery have access to a wide range of outside resources, which are helpful when used in conjunction with counselling therapy. Online Counsellors can provide their patients with additional outside support by directing them to organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. By attending meetings, patients will be surrounded by people from similar backgrounds and can further share their tales, insights, and problems in a non-judgmental setting. These community-based programs offer an additional degree of accountability to those seeking rehabilitation.

More than simply guiding an addict through treatment is part of the counsellor’s job in addiction treatment. Counsellors need to be deeply compassionate individuals who are passionate about forming bonds with their patients. From giving patients a secure environment. 

Online counsellors can help people with addiction There are many different types of addiction, and in recent years, behavioural addictions and substance dependency have both become more prevalent. You can gain useful knowledge and techniques in addiction therapy to help you regain your life and potentially repair any harm a chemical or behavioural addiction may have caused. 

You can access therapy sessions anywhere there is a dependable internet connection thanks to the many websites and applications that offer online counselling. We investigated the most well-known programmes and evaluated each one according to 14 crucial characteristics that are crucial for those seeking online counselling. 

There are different online counselling platforms through which addiction can be resolved some of them are mentioned below:

• Online therapy.com 
• Faithful counselling 
• Rethink my therapy