It’s important to be able to distinguish between unhealthy messages you may be giving the addict in your life (enabling) and healthier messages (helping). Otherwise, we can run the risk of keeping the addicts we love stuck in their addiction.
Setting Boundaries with Your Addicted Loved One
As loved ones, when we stay in denial or decide to not speak our truth in order to avoid conflict, we are basically arguing for our addict’s limitations. Sometimes, when addicts hear someone tell them the truth about how their addiction is affecting other people, they make the choice to relapse – perhaps to show others how emotionally fragile they are. But this coping mechanism is usually a manipulation, designed to teach their loved ones not to bother them – so that they can make the choice to stay in their addiction.
Recovery from Codependency: Self-Awareness Is the Key
Here we all are, drawing closer to leaving 2021 behind and beginning a new year. These past 12 months have been momentous in so many ways – and I know that you don’t need me to go into much detail about that. For some of us, this year that’s ending has included much loss and grieving – of people we loved, of businesses and jobs that evaporated because of Covid-19 and other factors. For other people, there were opportunities for growth and well-being – with all kinds of shades of grey in between for so many of us.
But what holds true for all of us is that our lives are made up of a combination of experiences, how we perceive them and how we choose to handle them. Some days, during this past year, we felt like we were trudging through darkness with the weight of the world upon us, with no light in sight. Some days we either stayed as busy as we could or dipped even further into already-present addictions, not wanting to think (or perhaps feel) too much about what was happening. And yet, here we all are again, being asked about our New Year’s resolutions – something we don’t seem to be able to get away from pondering at this time of year.
For the past few Decembers, I’ve written articles about the difference between ‘resolutions’ and ‘intentions’ – and although I still feel this is a very important distinction worth discussing, I now want to explore it from a different angle – specifically from the perspective of codependency and recovery.
While there is nothing wrong with reassessing yourself from time to time and exploring changes you would like to make, the problems come when you allow yourself to over-identify with the “hype” of the season. It’s one thing to make the overblown and often unrealistic New Year’s resolutions that you think you should make at this time of year, and quite a different process to take stock of where you are, in present time, to see what you might like to be doing instead so that you can live your best life.
In short, it’s important to increase our level of self-awareness so that we can successfully make distinctions such as these. [Read more…]
Allowing the Addict You Love to Be Uncomfortable in Their Addiction
When an addict becomes “comfortable” remaining in active addiction, they will have no real incentive to do anything different. When we take care of their needs – financial, physical, and emotional – so that they are not required to do much, if anything, for themselves, then we also take away their chance at a real and lasting recovery.
Let’s Give Addicts Their Power Back!
In my opinion, our society has become the worst ‘addict’ walking our streets. Its drug of choice? An old, outdated way of thinking that’s actually keeping our world stuck in the horrors of addiction.
We’ve been taught to believe that addicts are powerless.
Twelve-step programs have, for decades, been our country’s go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These programs teach us to implement Steps that are based on the notion that there’s a disease to blame, and that the only solution is to “work the 12 Steps or die.”
This model of thinking was founded back in 1935 by two wealthy, white Christian men – and the 12 Steps they developed at that time include many shame-based and religious overtones such as “God,” “Him,” “shortcomings” and “defects of character.” Today, as 2021 draws to a close, many people seeking a road to recovery have a problem with such language. As well, in 2021, many credible doctors and scientists feel that these Steps are not helping and could actually be harmful for many of the people who seek them out.
This is not the first time I’ve spoken out about this situation. And it is usually at this point that my views become unpopular, because the majority of our society continues to believe that addiction is a disease and that addicts are powerless.
This way of thinking is so deeply embedded into our culture, it’s become a huge part of the fabric of our society: 12-step-based treatment programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors, recommended by therapists, and are unilaterally adopted by countless detoxes and rehab centers.
But our addiction to this mode of treatment – an addiction that we can’t seem to kick after all these years – makes us feel powerless and gives the addicts we love very little choice for recovery.
Surely, we can do better for those people who truly want to stop using. [Read more…]