ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Will White has been doing this work since last century, and he means that literally. Licensed since 1989, he has worked in group homes, boarding schools, mental health centers, and in 1996, co-founded Summit Achievement, a wilderness therapy program he ran for nearly 27 years. When he tells you the landscape of behavioral health for young people has shifted more in the last five years than in the previous three decades combined, he knows what he’s talking about.

The externalizers of a generation ago, the kids who broke things, slammed doors, and announced their pain loudly, have largely given way to a different kind of struggling young person. One who is anxious, inward, and frozen. Who won’t leave the room, won’t leave the house, and whose parents keep quietly rearranging life around them in an effort to keep the peace. Will has watched this pattern closely, including at Mountain Valley Treatment Center, where young residents had become so overwhelmed by anxiety that the outside world felt completely out of reach. The treatment models that worked before are not always the ones that work now, and the gap between what young people need and what is actually available to them is widening.

That gap is exactly what Will set out to address when he helped launch The Trade, a new nonprofit program in rural New Hampshire for young adults (all genders) ages 18 to 30. It’s not a therapy program in the traditional sense and if you have a young person stuck in that uncomfortable in-between of not ready for college, not ready for independence, but also not well-served by just being home, it may be exactly what you did not know to look for.

I wanted Will back on the show (he appears way back in episode 14) because his view of the bigger picture is one I trust. In this conversation, we talk about the seismic shifts in behavioral health, what is driving the rise in anxiety, and why less talk and more doing might be what this generation actually needs. If your young person is stuck and none of the usual paths seem to fit, this one is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• The shift Will has watched from externalizing kids to anxious, frozen ones, and what he believes is behind it
• What The Trade is and who it’s built for
• Why apprentices get paid from day one, and what receiving a first paycheck does to a young person
• The over-accommodation pattern Will kept seeing in parents, and when caring starts to make things worse
• What Will leaves exhausted parents with, from someone who has been doing this work for four decades

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Trade website
• Will White on Hopestream episode #14
• Trish Ruggles, Therapeutic Consultant at Pathfinder Consulting
• Mountain Valley Treatment Center website

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

I have sat with hundreds of moms who came to me at completely different points in their child's substance use, and the gap between them has always struck me. One mom is barely breathing, convinced the worst is already happening. Another is quietly telling herself it might just be a phase. Neither one is wrong, exactly. What they both share is that they are navigating one of the most consequential situations of their lives without a real map.

That gap, between what parents fear and what is actually happening, is exactly what this episode is about. Medicine has always used staging to give patients and families a language for urgency, for appropriate response, for what comes next. Parents of kids with substance use issues have never been handed anything like that. We are expected to assess, decide, and respond without the framework that clinicians spend years building.

So in this episode, I am borrowing that idea because staging is one of the most useful concepts in medicine. It tells you where you are, how serious things actually are, and what kind of response fits the moment. I walk through four stages of substance use, what you might see on the surface, what is happening underneath, and how your role as a parent shifts at each one.

What I want you to hear in this conversation is that you have more influence than you have probably been told. There is a 94% chance your child does not believe they have a problem yet. That is not a reason to give up. It is actually the case that makes you, the parent, the most important factor in whether they ever get help. This framework is not meant to frighten you into action. It is meant to give you the kind of clear-eyed picture that lets you stop reacting and start responding strategically.

If you have been operating without a map, this one is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• The four stages of substance use and what each one actually looks like from the outside
• Why a quiet kid at home can be at a higher risk level than you think
• How today's substances change the risk math at every stage
• What your role as a parent is, and why it matters more than you have probably been told
• The shift that moves you from reacting to responding strategically

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Dr. Anna Lembke episode
• Dr. Gabor Maté episode
• Worried Sick free ebook

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

There is a specific kind of searching that happens at 2am when you are a parent in the thick of it, typing symptoms and half-formed fears into a search bar because you cannot say them out loud to anyone in your life. My cofounder Cathy Cioth knows exactly what that feels like, and in this conversation, we sit down to answer the questions we hear most from parents in our community, including the ones that tend to arrive with a quiet residue of shame just for asking.

We start with one that stops many parents cold: does your child actually have to go to formal treatment to get better? The answer is more nuanced than most of us were told, and the data behind it may genuinely surprise you. From there, we get into PAWS, post-acute withdrawal syndrome, the thing nobody warned you about when your child finally got sober and you expected life to start looking better, and it did not. Cathy and I are nine and ten years out from the hardest seasons of our own journeys, both trained in CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), and nothing in this conversation comes from a textbook.

This episode is the conversation you may wish you could have had years ago, before you knew what you did not know yet.

You'll learn:

• Why formal treatment is not the only path to recovery, and what the research actually says
• What PAWS is, why it blindsides so many families, and how to recognize it in your child
• How to reward non-using behavior in a way that feels genuine rather than transactional
• Why natural consequences belong to your child, not to you, and what it costs to keep carrying them
• When doing nothing is the most potent intervention available to you

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Jo Collete Episode
• Recovery Research Institute
• Dina Cannizzaro Episodes: 297, 288, 173, 138

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.