For Families Affected By Addiction

New Dawn Family Healing is a multifaceted experience that takes you on your own healing journey. We walk alongside you as you make your way out of the darkness of addiction and into the light of recovery.

We’ve witnessed profound healing in families regardless of whether or not the person with substance use disorder is in recovery. 

Aurora’s New Dawn Family Program creates an empathetic, evidence-based and trauma-informed group environment of safety and stabilization. Delivered by compassionate, credentialed, highly trained counsellors, our New Dawn addiction family program was created by expert pioneers in the field of family treatment.

Why Do Families Need A Therapeutic Healing Program? 

The insidious, pervasive and chronic effects of being in relationship to someone with addiction take a much bigger toll than many people recognize. Being in a heightened state of vigilance increases cortisol levels and dysregulates your nervous system. Over time many people become accustomed to living with an unhealthy level of stress. Feelings of powerlessness, anger and frustration are regular occurrences. Health problems develop and your mental health can become impacted.

Without intending to, your coping strategies play a part in keeping the cycle of addiction going. Now it’s time to learn strategies, behaviours and tools that will enhance your life.

With understanding, awareness and support you can transform your life. The generational trauma of living in addiction means family members often repeat learned behaviors and patterns in all their primary relationships. Replacing these ingrained patterns with recovery oriented behaviors breaks the cycle of addiction in the family. This ensures sustained recovery by creating a recovery-focused environment for everyone.

A New Outlook For Families Coping With Addiction 

Our leading edge New Dawn Family Healing program educates and empowers family members, friends and community members. We provide the tools you need to bring recovery principles and behaviours into the family or community system. All addiction shares the common element of compulsive behaviours that continue despite repeated negative consequences. This applies to substance use as well as process addictions, such as eating disorders, gambling, shopping addiction, relationship addiction and sex addiction.

Being in relationship with someone in active addiction can be incredibly frustrating, painful and frightening. Often you experience the consequences more acutely than the person with the addiction. Our experience has taught us that implementing change within the family, workplace or community makes a significant impact. Our professional, facilitated group program provides you with evidence-based education and practical tools for living. In a compassionate group setting, you’ll be encouraged to explore how you’ve unwittingly developed behaviours that keep you stuck in a traumatic response. A behaviour that has been described as codependency and that actively feeds the additive cycle.

Many people are surprised to discover there are predictable patterns of behaviour that emerge for those in relationship to someone with an addiction. It’s often difficult to recognize the behaviours youve developed that are causing you harm. You become convinced that if the person with the addiction would change, you’d be well.New Dawn Family Healing provides the opportunity to shift your perspectives and have a new outlook on life. Participants report a renewed interest in their own lives, relief to be in community and insights that allow them to make significant changes.

Your wellness is the focus. You can be well, regardless of whether or not the person with addiction is in recovery.

Let us show you how.

Supportive Family Addiction Treatment Program

Our facilitators create a powerful, empathetic group environment for families, friends and others who are impacted by those who suffer from drug or alcohol dependence and process addictions.

TRUST: Small groups, with participants who have gone through an application process, maintains integrity of the therapeutic process. Participants are able to identify their own patterns and gain new tools for living, in a facilitated and healing environment.

SENSITIVITY: We deliver our program with a respectful, trauma informed approach. We listen and hear you, compassionately encouraging you to explore, connect and engage.

COURAGE: Looking inward means taking the risk to be courageously vulnerable and our graduated process allows it to happen naturally. We invite you to gain new perspectives by examining your beliefs, behaviours and emotions in a supportive environment.

EXPERTISE: Developed over decades, by experts and pioneers in the field of family addiction treatment, our program content is relevant and potent. Delivered by credentialed and trained teams, we use evidence-based, trauma informed therapies, somatic therapy, and a psychoeducational approach.

CONNECTION: Essential connections arise from the group process and we often see participants develop strong friendships. Being seen, heard and accepted in a facilitated peer group validates your experience, and connects you to others who can relate.

HEALING: We recognize that healing takes place body, mind and spirit and invite you to explore what nourishes you. You’ll identify what brings you joy, commit to enhancing your life and develop a stronger sense of self. You can move out of survival mode into thriving.

PARTICIPANT EXPERIENCES

Claudette ~ “The facilitators achieved a remarkable feeling of safety and acceptance. They were knowledgeable and skilled. It felt comforting to be in their ‘hands’.”

Leslie ~ “What I loved most about the New Dawn Family Healing Program was the company of the group, breaking my isolation, and the encouragement of others. Im so very grateful for all involved.”

Roland ~ “Knowledge is power. It was really important to me to understand how all my good intentions went astray, how I was impacted and how I can move forward in a positive way.”

Natalie ~ “I was skeptical of the online format at first but was surprised to discover how intimate and real it could be, all from the comfort of my living room.”

New Dawn Family Healing: The Program

Using creative, impactful content and engaging group activities, New Dawn Family Healing program teaches you how family and community systems are affected by substance use disorder. All team members are highly trained and credentialed in trauma informed therapies and therapeutic modalities specific to the field of addiction recovery.We’ll teach you how you can introduce recovery principles into those systems. The subtle and pervasive impact of this neurobiological illness on relationship dynamics is profound. We give you specific tools to successfully manage your relationships.

Let us show you how to be effectively supportive as opposed to being part of the addictive cycle.

We’ll show you how to…
  • Set healthy boundaries that create an environment of recovery.
  • Develop self care practices that allow you to thrive.
  • Utilize 12 Step philosophies that create better outcomes for everyone.

New Dawn Family Healing Program is delivered in a purposeful, structured way. Information is developed in easily understood layers over eight weeks of once per week sessions.

Learning
  • Understanding the dynamics of an addictive illness.
  • Identifying the impacts of addiction on the family or community system.
  • Recognizing family dynamics, patterns and roles of family members.
  • Exploring how enabling develops, the purpose and nature of denial.
  • How disordered attachments are created as a response to trauma.
Exploring
  • Strategies for open, effective communication.
  • Developing emotional awareness and practicing emotional fluency.
  • Processing of grief and loss.
  • Learning about attachment and healthy disengagement.
Practice
  • Establishing new patterns of relating.
  • Developing self care practices.
  • 12 step education and philosophies.
  • Finding meaning and spirituality in recovery.

Healing Families, Friends and Communities

New Dawn Family Healing is designed to empower and educate people who have been affected by another person’s addiction. We use evidence based modalities, a comprehensive curriculum and transformative therapy.

With expert help the cycle of addiction can be broken.

The New Dawn Family Program is delivered virtually via Zoom. Without the added stress and financial strain of travel many more people have been able to access New Dawn and the impact on their families and communities has been profound.  We invite you to call and see if the program is right for you.