When it comes to treating addiction, different people consider different variables. While some may consider discipline or self-control, others prioritize social ties or spirituality. However, one thing that remains constant is having an attitude of compassion and love. Shirley Wantland is an influential mental health counselor and the co-founder and principal of Recovery Consultants. She favors the “less fear, more love” ideology in helping people recover from addiction and mental health challenges.
Compassion is a quality that is essential for everyone involved, including treatment providers, family members, and individuals with substance misuse or mental illnesses. Wantland believes that compassion is vital at all stages of recovery because it helps bridge the gaps between people and their families. When someone is suffering badly from any kind of addiction, and they still muster the courage to ask for help, they are already taking a massive step toward positivity. If you stigmatize them or make them feel less deserving, it kills their hope of healing.
Growing up, Wantland struggled a lot, spending her adolescent years trying to fit in since she stood out significantly from the crowd. Coming from a refugee family and being dropped in a new country without knowledge of the language or customs was extremely difficult. Those formative years helped mold Wantland into the person she is today and were crucial in establishing Recovery Consultants. She used her understanding of the significance of acceptance, love, and empathy to help her become one of the top-rated addiction treatment practitioners.
Recovery Consultants was founded in 2014 with the intention of assisting individuals and families with recovery from substance use disorders and mental/behavioral health issues. Wantland admits that at professional meetings, therapists and psychiatrists worried about how many of their clients fall through the cracks when they return from residential treatment. They wished there was more help to integrate the skills, knowledge, and experience. Wantland learned valuable lessons from these meetups and now takes innovative steps to ensure there are fewer chances of individuals going into relapse.
Through her work at Recovery Consultants, Wantland offers a three-pillar network: structure, support, and accountability for all the clients and families she works with. To address the issue further, she believes it’s difficult to manage your own (or a loved one’s) rehabilitation because you’re too close to it and can’t recognize your own limitations and blind spots. Working with an unbiased professional allows you to keep moving forward without the emotional baggage that comes with battling addiction and mental health for years or even decades.
Furthermore, she claims that most of the time, family members attempting to assist have a foundation of love and caring. Nonetheless, fear usually drives their activities, which results in fear-based consequences – and then they repeat the cycle with a different form of undesirable [fear-based] outcomes. Assisting families and individuals in aligning with love can make space for genuine rehabilitation and healing.
Shirley Wantland has one primary goal: to assist as many individuals and families as possible in navigating their recovery and healing with compassion, love, and understanding – to find solutions that genuinely work.
