If you take one course, choose this one

I'm currently enrolled (and luvin' it) in the online recovery education course offered by Mother Bear, Practice Recovery, and Family Outreach Response. There are two registration points Registration for the July course is happening now.

The strength of the Famililes Healing Together course for me is that it views psychosis as an understandable human coping mechanism and coaches families on how to help their relative from a strengths based perspective. I wish this course was available ten years ago when our family was in turmoil. Over the years I've had to piece together my own reading program and develop a strengths based relationship with Chris through trial and error. This course weaves it all together.

As a parent and mother, I want to be a problem solver. That's how most of us parents operate, isn't it? We try to fix our relative in the problem solving way that we tackle our own issues. Here's what the course moderator Krista MacKinnon emphasizes:

"You are not a problem to be solved and neither is your relative. Your deficits and your relative’s don’t need to be the main focus in recovery. Your strengths do.

A strengths-based approach isn’t about denying that problems are occurring. It is a fundamental shift in perspective that can help us identify inner and outer resources that can help us transform challenges into opportunities for healing and growth."

The current course started in May. Here are the lessons so far:

1. Introductions
2. Guiding Recovery Principles and Emotional Tools
3. Fundamentals of Mental Health Recovery
4. Looking at Roadblocks and Strengths
5. Recovery Attitudes, Challenges, and Turnaround People
6. The Continuum of Mental Health, Distress, and Psychosis
7. Hopelessness and Learned Helplessness
8. Making A Case For Cultivating Hope
9. Your Hope Practice
10. Looking at Strengths
11. How To Use A Strengths Based Approach
12. Relationship Building Amidst Psychosis
13. Communicating in the Midst of Psychosis
14. Boundaries

If you or someone you know would like to take this course, you won't regret it. You will discover how to practice recovery and transform pain.