True detachment is actually a sign of a psychopath – having no feeling for other people whatsoever.

So, not only is detachment not possible, in many cases, it’s not even healthy.

The American Psychological Association defines detachment as a feeling of emotional freedom resulting from a lack of involvement in a problem or a situation with a person. Or, the ability to consider a problem on its merits alone.

Expecting a family member to be able to do either of these things with a loved one abusing substances is both unreasonable and unrealistic. It sets family members up to fail, which I don’t think helps them or their loved one abusing substances.

And the reality is, healing from family addiction requires family members to fully feel their feelings, and most importantly to grieve.

In fact, it’s family members attempts to avoid the painful feelings around their loved one’s substance abuse that drives much of their codependent coping mechanisms or their enabling behavior.

The reality of their loved one’s problem, and the loss of time and opportunities and experiences and healthy connections to the substance use has to be grieved.

Navigating a loved one’s substance use effectively requires families to be both resilient and be in a fairly resourced state. And for that to happen, family members have to feel their feelings. Feel their love for their loved one. Feel their anger over the substance use. And feel their grief over what that substance use has cost both them and their loved one.

In the family addiction space, detachment is often tied to allowing your loved one to experience the natural consequences of their use. And their is definitely value in that. But there are also some exceptions to that rule, as you know if you watched my previous episode on enabling.

But even if you do allow your loved one to experience the natural consequences of their use, as is often the healthy thing to do, the idea that you’re going to find some kind of emotional freedom in that as the American Psychological Association’s definition of detachment suggests is frankly irresponsibly misleading, in my opinion.

Like, seriously, you’re going to feel some kind of emotional freedom if your loved one’s substance abuse lands them in jail? My mother committed multiple felonies and ended up in prison, and there was no emotional freedom to be found in that experience.

Even though that experience was a sort of bottom for me in which I finally realized that I needed support around her problems, her going to prison was a deeply traumatic experience. If there was any gift in it, it’s that I finally got the support I had so desperately needed for so long, but didn’t realize it.

Your loved one’s substance use is going to stir up all kinds of difficult emotions. And when it comes to navigating those emotions, I do not believe detachment is a healthy approach. Those things need to be felt.

Even if you’re letting your loved one experience the natural consequences of their use, your feelings around that are going to need to be processed, to be felt, if you’re going to be able to be resilient and remain in a reasonably resourced state in the face of those consequences. Otherwise, you risk – emotionally at least – getting taken down with your loved one’s use.

So, I’d love to know, what are your thoughts about the concept of detachment. Let me know in the comments. I promise I’ll reply.

So there are three elements required to address this dynamic:

1. The first is boundaries.
2. The second is humility.
3. And the third Effective Support.

As for boundaries, what boundaries actually look like in this situation is: not engaging. In other words, don’t get offended – at least not overtly – and don’t try to defend yourself. Don’t engage in the argument. Recognize from the outset that an argument around blame will go nowhere. Also, don’t try to blame them back, no matter how responsible you think they are for their problem. Because that goes nowhere either and will likely only escalate the argument and drive them into further use.

I’m going to give you a suggestion for what you can say, but it’s important to say this with as neutral a voice as possible. Because you can engage in the argument even with your tone of voice, and you don’t want to engage in any way, shape or form. You may be angry at being blamed, and that’s understandable.

But it’s important to vent that anger elsewhere so you’re not escalating the situation on your end. And I’ll talk more about your understandable anger in a minute.

But for now you can say something like:

“I know you’re frustrated/overwhelmed/stressed/angry [or whatever feeling they might be demonstrating], but I won’t engage in a blame game. I’m happy to discuss this when you’re able to have a healthy and respectful dialog.”

However you decide to phrase this, what’s important is to neither accept nor deny fault. It doesn’t matter in this specific moment where the fault lies. This strategy is about playing the long game. They want you to play a blame game, but you want to play the LONG game. Because the bottom line is blame games don’t help, and they don’t encourage growth or change in anyone.

If your loved one keeps pushing, walk away from the conversation however you can. The fact is, your loved one likely WILL keep pushing because they’re looking for a reason to drink or use, and you not engaging in the blame game denies them that. You can just keep repeating “I’m happy to discuss this when you’re able to engage in a healthy and respectful dialog.” And then shut the door, get in the car, whatever you need to do to create distance.

As I already mentioned, I KNOW this is not easy. But this is why Effective Support is also required to address this dynamic. And you may need to strategize about how you’ll walk away ahead of time.

Not engaging isn’t going to make you feel like you’ve fixed anything. What it IS going to do is not make things worse. And as I mentioned, you’ve actually had a positive influence, because you’ve made it harder for your loved one to find and excuse to use. A small, but important victory. Because the more difficult it become for your loved one to justify their use, the more willing they may become to look at positive change.

When it comes to humility – and this too requires Effective Support – it’s important to be humble enough to ask yourself if there’s a grain of truth in your loved one’s accusations. This can be just as hard, if not harder, than not engaging.

Because when I’m suggesting you ask yourself if there’s a grain of truth in your loved one’s accusations, first of all, I’m not at all assuming there is. There absolutely might not be. But sometimes there also is. And IF there is, it’s important to look at that. AND it’s important to look at that WITHOUT blaming yourself for their use. Because that is information that you can use to help improve the relationship on your end.

Looking at any shortcomings you may have in the relationship does not mean you are to blame for their use. It means you’re open to growing and changing for your sake, for the sake of your relationship with your loved one, and for the sake of their potential recovery.

If you watched my free video series, the 5 Actions Required for Substance Abuse Recovery, you know that building healthy relationships is one of the things required for successful substance abuse recovery. If you’re willing to look at your part in unhealthy relationship dynamics, this will help them as well.

They, of course, have to take responsibility for their part, but relationships heal when both sides are willing to learn and grow. And if you find that there is an element of truth in their accusations, then reflect on that and see how you might be able to shift that behavior.

You will probably need Effective Support if you’re going to do this well, and that is one of the reasons Effective Support is so important to this process.

The first two elements are all about changing dysfunctional relationship dynamics that develop with family addiction. And that can’t be done effectively in isolation. We’re often too wrapped up in the dynamics to be able to bring more clarity to the situation.

The other reason Effective support is an important element in shifting this dynamic is because you need to be able to do something productive with your anger.

First, you’re going to need to be able to vent that anger to an understanding ear. But second, if you really want to shift dysfunctional relationship dynamics, then you need to take it a step further. You see, anger is important information that should not be ignored. It’s telling you that you need to set a boundary and that you need to take care of yourself around a problem.

And if you really want to be able to excavate that information and determine how you need to take care of yourself and what boundaries you need in order to make that self-care possible, you’re probably going to need an outside perspective in the form of Effective Support. Because without that Effective Support, you’re probably going to get taken down by those same dysfunctional dynamics, and by all the objections your fear around this situation is going to bring up. Effective support will help you ensure that those fears are not the only voices at the table, and it will therefore help you creatively problem solve around what your anger is trying to tell you.

There are links to multiple forms of Effective Support on my resources page, but if none of those sources appeal to you, I encourage you to take a look at my online Family Addiction Support Community. I’ll put a link to that in the notes below.

So in short, when your loved one blames you for their drug or alcohol use, the most important thing is to not engage. And have the humility to see if those accusations contain some information that you can use to help improve the relationship on your end. And for either of those things, you’re going to need Effective Support.

To close, I’d love to know your thoughts. How might you phrase your response to being blamed for your loved one’s use? And do you already see shifts you can make to improve your relationship with your loved one? Let me know in the comments. I promise I’ll respond.

NOTES:
The Family Addiction Support Community

I hear these kinds of things all the time from family members. In so many words, their loved one blames them. Short of that, their loved one abusing drugs or alcohol will constantly pick fights to keep their loved one’s from being able to focus on their substance use, set boundaries, or otherwise support their own well-being.

This is just one of the many ways in which a loved one’s substance abuse creates dysfunctional relationship dynamics in the family.

The bottom line is this, however: your loved one makes their own choices.

Your loved one makes their own choices.

But there’s this truth, too. No one chooses addiction. No one chooses addiction.

So who, or what is to blame for addiction? Well, there isn’t an easy answer, but there is a whole list of factors:

1. The first is genetics. While we haven’t actually identified a gene specific to addiction, we do know that our different levels of sensitivity to stress is genetic and stress is a huge factor in addiction, as the substance use is usually some kind of coping response.
2. This means that everything that causes stress is a factor. And one of the things that exacerbates any stress someone abusing substances experiences is the dysfunctional relationship dynamics that their own use generates and creates a vicious cycle.
3. Next is insufficient support. So when you couple number 2 with the fact that our society has evolved in such a way that people’s support systems are at least 50% smaller than they were in the 1950s, and in some cases those support systems are non-existent, these things together constitute a huge driver of substance abuse problems and a huge driver of why and how they persist generation after generation.
4. But that lack of sufficient support also extends to our health-care system. Health care in the US is very expensive. You have to have resources that many addicted people don’t have in order to be able to access it. And the challenge with substance use disorders is that every issue that our health care system has is magnified exponentially when it comes to treating substance use disorders, because addiction medicine and addiction treatment is very poorly regulated.

   On top of that there are huge systemic obstacles that make it prohibitive for anyone who wants to practice addiction medicine to actually do it. This even further limits access to qualified treatment professionals using evidence-based methods.

5. Some of the blame can also go to our cultural attitudes about alcohol consumption. I mean, why does anyone have to explain why they don’t drink? No one asks anyone to explain why they don’t smoke. The pressure to consume alcohol is enormous. Such a huge portion of adult social activities revolve around alcohol. And you’re viewed as strange or a party pooper if you don’t drink. This creates a significant and totally unnecessary added burden to anyone trying to abstain.
6. And then there’s the pharmaceutical industry that for so long pushed opioid-based pain medication insisting that it was not habit-forming when it most definitely was. And even when the pharmaceutical companies were sued for knowingly pushing this false narrative and these drugs, the award money has not gone to supporting addiction treatment in so many cases. Much of it has gone to law enforcement, despite the fact there is no evidence law enforcement has a positive impact on substance use.
7. And speaking of law enforcement, this brings us to the War on Drugs. Criminalizing drug use and incarcerating people for possession has only exacerbated the problem.

   But even those areas of the US that have tried to decriminalize drug possession are considering rolling back those decisions as crime only increased – because – going back to reason number 3, our treatment is unregulated and cannot effectively address the problem.

   The places that have successfully decriminalized drugs were only successful because they took the money they saved and invested it in treatment programs and support programs for those recovering from substance abuse. But in the US at least, we do not have an addiction medicine or treatment system that could viably and effectively address the addiction crisis on a large scale. We should decriminalize drugs, but we need an effective addiction treatment system before we do.

Why is all of this relevant to you getting blamed for your loved one’s use?

Because it’s important to know that it’s not you, first of all.

And it’s important know the factors and identify where you want to try and push for change.

In my own work, I focus on helping families disengage from those dysfunctional relationship dynamics – one of which is your loved one trying to assign blame for their behavior to you. But I also help families use evidence-based methods to have a positive influence on their loved one’s use. This is something that the treatment system is way, way behind on.

Finally, we need families to be aware of these methods so they can both employ aspects of them themselves, and pressure the treatment industry to use them more widely. You can check out a brief overview of those methods in my previous Hope for Families TV episode.

And if you’re interested in learning more about those methods beyond my previous Hope for Families TV episode, you can check out online Workshop, The 5 Ways to Have a Positive Influence on a Loved One’s Drug or Alcohol Abuse. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

So, I’d love to hear from you: which of these things do you suspect is the biggest factor in your loved one’s drug or alcohol abuse? If you feel comfortable, share in the comments. I promise I’ll reply.

What I didn’t understand at first is that a lot of the content I was encountering around mindset was actually toxic positivity. Brushing legitimate negative emotions – emotions that need to be processed – under the rug by “just thinking positive.”

You just gotta be positive and look on the bright side. You know, raise your vibration. That last one makes me want to hurl sometimes.

In too many of its manifestations, mindset work was just a toxic framework for sweeping legitimate difficult emotions – emotions that need to be processed in order to effectively move forward – under the rug.

I finally learned that you can’t BS your way to a positive mindset. Feelings have to be felt. Emotions have to be processed or we remain stuck.

And the concept of gratitude often gets conflated with this kind of toxic positivity. You know, just be grateful, look on the bright side, it could be so much worse.

And I know for a fact that for families struggling with a loved one’s substance abuse, this kind of gratitude is NOT helpful. It’s just not.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a use for gratitude. It just has to be an honest gratitude. So, I want to share a story about how this kind of gratitude was so powerful for me.

Over a decade ago, I was leaving a very toxic, emotionally and psychologically abusive marriage. And I was scared to death. My ex-husband had way, way more money than I did and he was using it to try and force me to accept his demands in the divorce. And I couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer for hours and hours of more work to try and fight it all.

I was just terrified that I either had to accept horrible terms or have all my money run dry trying to fight it. In many ways, the process of leaving was harder than staying.

I just had to trust that things would be much much better once that process was over – and they were!

But in the middle of that process, oh my freaking god, I was stressed. I super stressed in the marriage, too, but making a decision to leave was the most stressful of anything. I mean, please don’t get me started on why women don’t leave. My situation wasn’t anywhere near as scary as situations other women face and it was still pretty freaking scary.

That said, one of the things I did during that year that I was going through the divorce was make a gratitude journal. I just took a simple weekly planner, and every evening before I went to bed, I would fill in the space for that day with things to be grateful for.

Some days, there were these really amazing things that happened – in fact, a series of things that actually prevented my ex-husband from being able to force me to meet his unreasonable demands, without me having to spend thousands more in legal fees.

But most days I had to dig much, much deeper to find something to be grateful for. Most days I had to dig for some small thing that, had it not happened, I would have had an even more difficult day. I mean, many of my entries were things like I made a stoplight when I was running late. And some of them were in the middle.

But however impactful they were, I wrote them down.

But the difference here was that I was not pretending that things weren’t as bad as they were.

I wasn’t using gratitude as a yes, but…. I was using gratitude as a yes, and… Yes, my divorce was incredibly scary and stressful. AND there were all these little moments of respite that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been making a point to remember and write down.

So, here’s what I know that practice of keeping a gratitude journal did for me. It kept my head from making the stress I was going through even bigger than it was. It was already big enough. And it just kept my head, in all its fear, from blocking out all those moments of respite, no matter how small. They were just as real.

So my gratitude journal practice just made sure that the fear didn’t overtake absolutely EVERYTHING in my life during that year. And that meant that I walked through that awful year in a more resourced state than I would have if I hadn’t been engaging in that gratitude journal practice.

And this is why I have this love hate relationship with gratitude. I often hesitate to suggest gratitude to the families I work with because I sure as hell don’t want to sound like I’m preaching some kind of toxic positivity BS.

But gratitude done right – and that is gratitude that isn’t being used to try and shove other legitimate feelings under the rug, but rather gratitude that is just to try and keep all the stress and fear from completely taking over everything – that kind of gratitude helped put me – and can help put you – in a more resourced state.

And frankly, that’s what ALL of my work with families struggling with a loved one’s substance abuse is designed to do. To put families in a more resourced state so they can respond to the problem more effectively.

So I feel like it would be remiss of me to not talk about how it can help – if used right.

Because here’s the thing: when I train families how to have a positive influence on their loved one’s substance use, one of the things I talk about is being proactive about managing your fear. Not that the fears aren’t legitimate – they are. We all know there are no guarantees.

But if you want to be able to have a positive influence on your loved one’s substance use, it’s essential not to let the fear take over everything. And establishing a gratitude practice is one way to do that.

The year of my divorce, there was even another benefit of that gratitude journal. My divorce was final the end of October of that year. So Thanksgiving – a day totally devoted to gratitude was coming right up. And one of the things I did after the divorce was final was review that gratitude journal. And I noticed all the people who repeatedly showed up in that gratitude journal with their kindnesses large and small.

On Thanksgiving, I sent each one of them a thank you message noting how frequently they showed up in that journal, the impact that had on such a stressful year, and how grateful I was for their presence in my life.

In other words, I shared that gratitude, which was just another really beautiful thing to be able to do and also something that helps keep our legitimate fears from taking over everything and puts us in a more resourced state.

So, some kind of gratitude practice might be something helpful for you to try. Not because it’s going to make your problems with your loved one’s substance abuse magically fade away. It’s not. But if you practice regularly, it can put you in a more resourced state.

And that’s the whole point of not letting the fear take over everything. Because being in a more resourced state will help you address your loved one’s substance abuse more effectively.

In fact, it’s never a bad idea to be in a more resourced state. Which is why I’m going to return to that gratitude journal practice.

And, as a final note, I’ll say that if a gratitude journal doesn’t resonate with you, you can always write little notes of gratitude and then collect them in a jar. You can review them at the end of a month, or even at the end of a year. And then reach back out to those that impacted you the most during that time and share the love.

So, I’d love to hear your thoughts about either establishing a gratitude practice, or a gratitude practice that you already use. I know we can all learn from each other, so feel free to share in the comments.