by Madeleine Craig | Jul 31, 2021 | Chaos to Clarity, Family Addiction
One of the most unfair things about a loved one’s addiction is that family members often end up paying a very high price, a price beyond the emotional pain of your loved one’s behavior.
When it comes to your safety, and your finances, and your mortgage, you may need to speak to a professional: a financial advisor, a police officer, a lawyer, or a mortgage broker.
Your physical safety is a top priority, so if that is threatened, that is the first thing you need to address.
But, aside from the fact that these issues may, in particular, require you to seek professional advice, like many other issues that come with your loved one’s drug and alcohol use, you will, again, need to take the time to get honest with yourself about what you can and cannot continue to accept.
How far in debt are you willing to go? Are you willing to lose your home? If your loved one is your spouse, you may need to ask yourself, under what conditions am I willing to stay married?
Perhaps you’ll decide to seek a therapist or a coach to support you in determining what your bottom line is in any of these situations.
And sometimes these situations are unavoidable. They’re happening and there’s no turning back from it. You will need effective support to navigate these things. And you may still need professional support.
by Madeleine Craig | Jul 31, 2021 | Chaos to Clarity, Family Addiction
If you have already shared your feelings about your loved one’s alcohol or drug use, then boundaries, allowing natural consequences to occur, and self-care are going to be essential to you. Often these things communicate more effectively than any words you could use.
This may also be something you might want to discuss with a therapist and/or a trusted support person, but I’d like to suggest that it is not always helpful to try to force someone out of denial.
I say this because it may be impossible to know if your loved one’s denial about their alcohol or drug problem is actually protecting your loved one from another more serious problem they’re genuinely not prepared to face.
This is why the medical and recovery community is trying to change the language around this.
Melodie Beattie calls denial the shock absorber for the soul.
I have a friend in my family recovery program who really believed another friend of his absolutely needed to stop drinking. But then he realized that drinking might be the only thing that’s keeping her from killing herself.
Of course, the drinking could end up killing her, too. But the point is, denial is a protective mechanism. Sometimes we can stay stuck in it too long, but sometimes it really does keep us from walking off a cliff.
So be careful about forcing the issue.
I was in complete denial for years and years about how profoundly growing up with so much addiction in my family had affected me. It wasn’t until I had had effective support around me for quite some time and I had rebuilt some of my self-esteem that I was able to come out of it. That’s because, growing up, my life depended on acting like everything was OK.
I have no doubt that many other people could see the severity of my issues well before I could.
But the truth is, if I had seen how badly I had been affected by the alcoholism and drug use in my family, I probably would have just killed myself because I would have believed that there was no way to overcome that. I would have said, there is no getting’ there from here.
So I’m very grateful today that I couldn’t see it.
Hopefully now you can see how denial often gets a bad rap. Sometimes it can be a good thing. In fact, it could be saving someone’s life.
If your loved one is close to being ready to come out of denial, the other things recommended in this program, may be the nudge that will support them in doing that.
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