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LoveWithBoundaries

From Fantasy to Reality on Valentine’s Day: Loving Yourself with Healthy Self-Care

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Ah, Valentine’s Day, the fantasy-filled holiday that comes right after we’ve managed to get ourselves through another year of Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

Have you ever wondered whose bright idea it was to have those three holidays in a row? For many people, the 3-month period of December through February can be the most difficult and depressing time of the year, and this is especially true for those whose significant relationships are problematic. For people with addictive behaviours, as well as those who love them, their most important relationships are also often the most troublesome and rocky.

[Read more…]

From Fantasy to Reality on Valentine’s Day: Loving Yourself with Healthy Self-Care

by

Ah, Valentine’s Day, the fantasy-filled holiday that comes right after we’ve managed to get ourselves through another year of Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

Have you ever wondered whose bright idea it was to have those three holidays in a row? For many people, the 3-month period of December through February can be the most difficult and depressing time of the year, and this is especially true for those whose significant relationships are problematic. For people with addictive behaviours, as well as those who love them, their most important relationships are also often the most troublesome and rocky.

[Read more…]

From Fantasy to Reality on Valentine’s Day: Loving Yourself with Healthy Self-Care

by

Valentine’s Day

Ah, Valentine’s Day, the fantasy-filled holiday that comes right after we’ve managed to get ourselves through another year of Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

Have you ever wondered whose bright idea it was to have those three holidays in a row? For many people, the 3-month period of December through February can be the most difficult and depressing time of the year, and this is especially true for those whose significant relationships are problematic. For people with addictive behaviours, as well as those who love them, their most important relationships are also often the most troublesome and rocky.

THE TRILOGY

Think about it—first comes Christmas with all its potential addictive pitfalls. It begins right after Halloween when TV ads try to sell us the concept of the perfectly happy family, stores begin putting up their colourful Christmas displays, and we hear those bells start to jingle. Compulsive shoppers spend far over their budgets, people-pleasers agonize over the right gifts to get so that everyone will be happy with them, gamblers worry about that elusive big win that will allow them to provide the fantasy Christmas for their loved ones, to make up for the grief they may have caused them over the rest of the year. Food addictions run rampant as junk food becomes even more plentiful and overeating abounds. And people with substance abuse issues try to hide from it all by getting high or drunk.

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Are You Trying to Solve the Unsolvable? The Best Way to Know the Difference

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Have you been busy trying to change what you cannot change?

Are you doing your best to control what you simply can’t control?

If so, please know—you’re not alone!

It’s strange but true—a great many people all over the world are continually trying to change something that is not in the realm of things they can change. When it’s drastic enough, we see it on the news—generally as some kind of violence toward somebody else. For most of us, however, this tendency goes relatively unnoticed—except perhaps by those you’re trying to mould into the way you think you need them to be. If you’re someone who believes that others need to be different in order for you to feel better, then you’re likely feeling hurt, frustrated, confused, and resentful much of the time. You probably feel as if your life is often spiralling out of control and you don’t know what to do about it.

The Amazing Serenity Prayer

During the many years I attended 12-Step programs for my own addictive behaviours, I heard the Serenity Prayer recited over and over again, quickly and by rote, at the end of every meeting without exception. Everyone had it memorized and we’d all just sing-song our way through it. But I became curious about what this prayer was really saying—what the message behind it actually was—so I began to look at it in some detail, line by line.

I discovered some very intriguing ideas: If we don’t feel serene or calm, we are not fully practicing the amazing guidance of this short but magnificent prayer. If you are the loved one of someone with an addiction, or perhaps an addict yourself, then serenity is not something you’ll have very much of. The roller coaster ride of addiction—however it’s manifesting and affecting you—is never fun or easy. And not only will you not have much, if any, serenity in your life, it will truly become something you’re wanting very much to attain.

To gain this peaceful serenity and resolve what we can about our situations, we first must be willing to accept what we can’t change. When we look deeply enough at what those things are, we realize that this means absolutely everything outside of ourselves: the weather, the past, how fast time is going, how temptingly delicious chocolate tastes—and most especially other people, who we simply cannot change unless they let us. And, of course, when it happens that way, it’s not really a case of us changing anyone else anyway!

Next we need to look at what we actually can control. After all of my years of wishing I could exert control over the world and pretty much everything in it, I finally had to admit that the only thing any of us can control is—drum roll—ourselves. What we can control and therefore change includes our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, and our reactions. We can solve problems that WE each have, but not the problems someone else has—because those are their responsibility to solve. [Read more…]

Holistic Self-Care When Loving an Addict

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Recently, while working with a client (I’ll call her Jane) who is the loved one of an addict, she made a significant discovery. We were talking about the importance of Jane’s self-care, an important subject I frequently discuss with all of my clients. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I don’t feel like I know how to take care of myself—I don’t know what I want or how to ask for it.”

“I don’t know how to set healthier boundaries because I don’t even know what those boundaries are,” Jane explained. “I’ve been steamrolled over for my whole life, mostly by family and friends who expect me to take care of them. No one takes care of ME! How would I know how to take care of myself? No one ever taught me that!”

I could appreciate Jane’s frustration. I was actually gladdened by her anger about this situation—because anger is a step up emotionally from the depression she’d been feeling. Many loved ones tell me they never get angry—or if they do, they don’t show that anger to anyone for fear of the rejection they’ll receive. Instead, they spend their time pleasing others, doing their bidding, squashing down their own feelings instead of sharing them—which often leads them to a place of anxiety, resentment and quiet despair. And because they don’t talk about these feelings, they’re unaware of how common they are among other loved ones who are caught in those same people-pleasing traps—often for their whole lives, remaining miserable and unhappy while those around them seem to benefit from the care being shown to them.

Something is very wrong with this picture! [Read more…]