Substance Use & Addiction Training for Mental Health Professionals

Who This Training Is For

You don't have to specialize in addiction for substance use to show up in your therapy room.

This training is designed for counselors, LPC Associates, social workers, marriage and family therapists, clinical supervisors, graduate counseling students, and other mental health professionals who work with individuals, couples, children, or families impacted by substance use.

Whether substance use is the presenting concern or something that comes up three sessions later (because that's usually how it goes 😂), this training will help you feel more prepared to recognize what's happening and know where to go next.

What You'll Learn

Substance use doesn't happen in a vacuum. When one person is struggling, the people around them often begin adapting too.

In this training, we'll look beyond the individual and explore how substance use can impact relationships, communication, trust, attachment, parenting, finances, and the overall family system.

You'll learn how to recognize common family responses and better understand what may be happening underneath behaviors like fixing, rescuing, peacekeeping, over-functioning, withdrawing, and enabling.

Specific Issues We Address

We'll dig into real issues clinicians may encounter when substance use enters the therapy room, including:

• How substance use affects the entire family system
• Family roles and patterns that can develop around substance use
• The difference between supporting, rescuing, and enabling
• Establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries
• Communication and trust within the family
• The impact of substance use on children
• Supporting partners and other family members
• Recovery and the family's role in the process
• Safety considerations and knowing when additional support is needed
• Helpful resources and referrals for clients and families

The goal isn't to turn every clinician into an addiction specialist. It's to help you recognize what's happening, ask better questions, and feel more confident responding when substance use becomes part of the clinical picture.

What You'll Walk Away With

I want you to leave with more than another CE certificate sitting in your downloads folder.

You'll walk away with practical information and resources you can actually bring into your work with clients and families.

The training includes downloadable clinical resources, addiction goals and objectives, intervention ideas, family therapy interventions, a family therapy cheat sheet, helpful links, and additional tools to support your work after the training ends.

Basically: learn something, get your CE hour, and have something useful to show for it.

What to Expect

This is a 1-hour, self-paced online CE training, so you can complete it when it works for you.

You'll work through the training content and supporting resources, then complete a short quiz and feedback at the end.

And don't worry - we're not trying to trick you with the quiz.  The goal is to make sure you leave understanding the material, not questioning every decision you've ever made.

After successfully completing the training requirements, you'll receive your CE certificate.

CE Training Details

Course: Beyond the Individual: Substance Use & the Family System
CE Credit: 1 CE Hour
Format: Online & Self-Paced
Cost: $10
Instructor: Dr. Desiree' Stephens, PhD, LPC-S, ACS, NCC

This training was created to make continuing education practical, affordable, and actually useful for clinicians doing the work every day.

Real training. Useful stuff. CEUs included.