What is SMART Recovery? Meet Cordelia Kraus

I’m so pleased to welcome Cordelia Kraus, who I met last August at a CRAFT training, to the blog to discuss SMART Recovery! Welcome, Delia!

1. Please briefly introduce yourself to those that don’t know you.

I’m a licensed professional counselor and a certified alcohol and drug counselor level one. I’m a certified CRAFT clinician. CRAFT meaning Community Reinforcement and Family Training, in private practice in Portland, Oregon. I work with adults struggling with addictive behavior and or mental health concerns. But, I specialize in working with families struggling with their loved one’s substance use.

I do live training with the Center for Motivation and Change and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and the Center on Addiction with their parent coaching program. 

I took over the SoberFamilies.com website in early 2019, which is a free source of articles and a few podcasts about CRAFT. I run a weekly Invitation to Change family and friends’ group.

Also, I do a CRAFT peer consultation group in Portland to support and encourage other clinicians specifically for SMART recovery. I’ve been a SMART recovery facilitator since 2014. I’ve created meetings in both community mental health settings, as well as community-based peer support group settings through the Alano Club of Portland.

It’s an incredible, vibrant, and welcoming recovery community here in Portland. And I’ve run both standard SMART recovery groups, as well as the family and friends’ SMART recovery groups.

2. What drew you to SMART Recovery as opposed to other group options?

In 2014, I had been out of school for a year. I was working with an addictions team. I recognized I didn’t have a lot of experience as a clinician. I didn’t have the valuable life experience of somebody who struggled with substance use. I wanted more support and to feel  I was more valuable to my clients so that I had something to offer. And so I started looking for other options.

The community mental health place that I was at offered 12 step groups and a dual diagnosis anonymous program, which is phenomenal. And at the same time, I recognized there are other options and perspectives out there. And so then I started looking at what it would be like to bring in a SMART recovery group.

What had me stay is the structure and the skills offered in this evidence-based approach. There is a sense of self-management. You get to decide what works and pull it through your own experience about what you are aiming for and want. There is a respect for anybody who’s attending the group. They are working on themselves at whatever level they would wish to do that. It allows a person to have respect for other people’s journeys or processes.

The skills are offered. The perspectives are offered. We’re able to use them; however, it best fits our needs. The other things are appreciating the person-centered language, and focusing on unwanted behaviors instead of having to identify as an addict or alcoholic.

 I can’t do anything about who I am, but I can do something about what I do. It’s having that compassionate person-centered, but so empowered approach. An evidence-based approach is what got me all fired up about starting the training.

3. SMART recovery has a four-point program. So how is this different from the traditional support groups? What do you see as the benefits?

SMART Recovery’s approach to behavioral change is built around the 4-point program.

The 4-points are:

1. Building and maintaining the motivation to change
2. Coping with urges to use
3. Managing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in an effective way without addictive behaviors
4. Living a balanced, positive, and healthy life

Part of that stance is recognizing that all four points need to be addressed in working towards recovery. It’s helpful to have a sense of how to have skills and perspectives of understanding. Using the four points, you can build a path that makes sense for you.

When you asked about the differences, there are, of course, many. I do want to say; one size doesn’t fit all. Twelve-step groups are incredibly helpful for many, many people. There’s a structure that’s in there as well, and traditions that can be helpful and useful.

Some of the differences are having this self-management part so that you get to choose which one of these points makes the most sense to focus on today.

If I’m struggling today, is it something about having lost connection with motivation? Am I not living a balanced life? Do I not have other things that are enriching in my life? Is it that I don’t know what to do with urges when they show up? That’s chosen by me.

Other differences we alluded to is a sense that it is science-based.  For readers, I recommend checking out their handbooks. They have a listing of the different evidence-based approaches that they pull from in their books. So you can see where their lineage is. Another difference is nonadherence to the disease model.

It’s this recognition that if it’s helpful for you to conceptualize addictive behaviors as a disease, then please do that. And if not, then please don’t. But this approach can work either way so that we don’t need to even get into that discussion.

There’s also not a religious or spiritual aspect. Again, it’s sort of the same stance if it’s helpful for you to bring that in, then please do. That’s not something that we focus on in meetings.

For abstinence, that’s also not required, not even wanting to stop. It isn’t required that we talk about abstinence in groups. That’s what the group will be discussing, but because it’s self-management, you can take these tools and use them, how you want to.

If we’re talking about abstinence in groups and you want to apply these ideas towards moderation, then please do that. There are also differences as far as the structural part. There isn’t a sense of sponsorship, service, or positions. That’s one of the things that I would love to see more of within SMART Recovery, a little bit more of the community piece of it. Because that’s very powerful as well. That’s something I appreciate about the 12 step approach.

So you can reach out to people and make friends, but there’s not a sense of mentorship. And then another piece of this is, of course, as a facilitator, one needs to go through a 30-hour online training. There is a fee to be able to access training, although sometimes they do have scholarships. And so everybody who is a facilitator has gone through this structured training. They have taken a few tests. It is not difficult, but there is a common foundation.

When facilitating, I try to make that point very strongly that the twelve-step approach is helpful for many people. And sometimes people get a little grumpy and will want to come into meetings and sort of knock it. I find it to be unhelpful within that group context.

There are some things about the twelve-step community and the idea of service that are phenomenal, that SMART doesn’t offer. Recovery Dharma, secular sobriety, or other perspectives are available so that you can create a path for yourself.

4. SMART also offers a family and friends program. What kind of support would family members experience from this group?

It is a slightly different perspective. That said, the family and friends’ groups, of course, are open to everybody, but it is from the perspective of family and friends. I would also like to say that because the facilitators are each individual, the groups tend to feel a little different, which is probably true for any community-based peer support groups.

Some of the family and friends’ groups that I’ve known of are more places to come in and get conversation support and talk about skills. The group that I ran was more skills-based. So we had a very structured check-in. We read in the handbook for a little while. We discussed something. We practiced, and we had a checkout.

The group that you may be looking at might be anywhere on that continuum, of much more structured, to much more conversational, depending on what the facilitator would like to be able to offer. What all of them I’m hoping would be able to lean towards is trying to practice some of the available skills and tools. And wrestle with them a little bit.

One of the things you can expect is to have a focus beyond yourself and your behaviors as opposed to talking about and focusing on trying to change what your loved one is doing. The first chapter in the family and friends’ handbooks talks about you identifying your behaviors that aren’t working well.

So within that context, if we’re talking about relapse, we’re talking about our relapse. If we start getting back into being sarcastic or yelling or searching our loved ones’, belongings or whatever it is that we’re doing, that we want to stop.

And it’s starting with that, connecting with a part that we can choose, that we do have power over, which is our own choices. And then being able to practice skills within that tend to influence our loved ones to do different things or to be able to change the family dynamics. But it is a strong focus on the self.

They can expect information about how to notice when things are going well. You can positively enforce them or use skills to be able to improve communication. How to listen better and listen deeper as well as communicate more effectively.

They have a lovely section on boundaries and how to conceptualize it less like a wall and more like a picket fence. We can, as two people, talk and sort of witness in a sense about boundaries for self-care. Three of the chapters are about how to manage our thoughts and feelings and how to be able to do something different than responding to them.

And they have information about change. There is a powerful page at the back that talks about what to consider before you stop trying, if you were considering disconnecting from or divorcing, or kicking your loved one out of the house or whatever. That’s something that you might want to go through and see if that’s a good fit. Maybe there’s something else you would want to try before you bring out that particular sledgehammer.

A lot the tools that are in the SMART recovery family and friends’ handbook are connected with the book Get Your Loved One Sober from Dr. Robert Myers, who created CRAFT. There’s a lot of places where they’ll refer to Get Your Loved One Sober. They pull in that work in a way that we can work on it as a smaller group, as a community.

5. With the different messages that family members receive around support groups, what suggestions do you have for parents and other family members as they seek help for their child and themselves?

 I’m sort of opening that question up, not only to SMART recovery, family, and friends but also the Center for Motivation and Change, and Dr. Robert Myers.

The biggest thing that stands out at this moment is leaning into the sense that you have this path for recovery, for yourself, as well as for your loved one. You are the expert about what works well for you. You’re the expert in your family.

And it is being able to hold different messages or advice pretty lightly. Bring it through the lens about what does work well. Passing it through that lens of your experience and noticing what is effective. By effective, I mean, it either helps move the loved one or the family towards change, or it helps improve the relationship. 

So making sure that whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re practicing is effective. And it’s aligned with the kind of person you want to show up as and the kind of parent you want to show up as. It is a difficult situation, because all the advice that’s swung around may work well for you, or it may not. One size again, it doesn’t fit all.

And you are trusting in yourself more about what works well. Please get care for yourself, help for yourself, and support. It does tend to be helpful for the loved one, but it’s also important for you.

And that your life is also valuable in this. It’s true that our loved ones tend to do better when we’re doing better. Yet, even if they’re not, having it be okay for you to invest in yourself is helpful for you too. Continue to invest in your self-care, and your own work, even if your loved one isn’t changing their behaviors.

If your loved one does get into treatment or early recovery, that’s not the time to stop your work. Continue with self-care and invest in yourself. It’s powerful to look at what you can do.

What would you feel comfortable with, looking back ten years from now, and saying, “I did my best,” regardless of what happens?

About Cordelia Kraus: I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor I (CADC I), and certified CRAFT clinician. Although I work with adults on a range of mental health and life concern issues, I specialize in working with those directly struggling with addictive behaviors and also hold special expertise in working with family members who have a loved one who is actively struggling or recently in recovery from addiction.

In addition to the experience listed below, I support this work by attending trainings, supervision, and peer consultation. Ongoing learning and absorption of ideas, tools, and skills related to psychology, mental wellness, and addictive behaviors is one of my hobbies. Check out what I’ve been reading and creating lately…

I live with my spouse, two children, two dogs, a cat, and a few dust bunnies.