Is Someone Else's Addiction Controlling Your Emotions?
Do you feel like your loved one's addiction has turned you into a person you don't even recognize anymore? If so, that's pretty standard. It's easy to get on the emotional roller coaster with your addicted loved one.
Are you behaving and doing things that you can't believe you're doing? How do you get control of yourself and get back to being yourself, so you can live the life that you want to live?
How has your behavior changed?
How has your emotional life changed?
Are you constantly worrying?
Are you constantly obsessing and checking?
Those are pretty normal things that happen when you have a loved one who's addicted to drugs or alcohol. If your loved one lives with you, you're probably fixated on trying to figure out the lies from the truth and gather evidence. The more you do this, the more you lose yourself. It's like the person is chasing the substance, and you are chasing the person. Before long, everybody is being controlled by addiction.
What behaviors do you want to stop?
What emotions do you want to get control of, or at least minimize?
This is possible. Whether or not your loved one gets better from addiction, you can choose to get back in control of yourself.
When you take action to get control over your life, you greatly increase the chances that your loved one will get better, but regardless, you're doing this for yourself.
The first thing you're going to do is decide which of those behaviors you don't want to do anymore.
Can I give you a few suggestions?
- I think you should stop spying.
- Turn the tracker off.
- I think you should stop trying to find evidence and sneaking and snooping.
- I think you should stop trying to control your loved one's mood because you believe if you do certain things or you don't do certain things that they're going to either use or not use.
Initially, that may feel like you're putting your head in the sand, but you're not. You already know what's going on. You're not being dishonest with yourself about what's going on. If you've been watching my videos, or you're in our Invisible Intervention Program, then you're already taking the strategic steps that you need to take to help them get into recovery, or at least on the pathway to recovery.
Outside of those things, you need to back up from it and let it go.
Don't try to prove that you know they're lying. You're just trying to get an admission out loud, which is making YOU crazy.
Are you going to let it consume every thought that you have?
Are you going to let it mess up your friendships?
Are you going to let it ruin your relationships with your other family members because they're splitting between you and them?
The key to this is gaining emotional distance. If you stop fueling the thoughts in your head and obsessing about it, it will quiet down. I know it feels scary to let go of that, but maybe it'll help you to know-- what I'm asking you to do is the same thing that you're asking your loved one to do. You're asking them to stop beating an obsession. You're asking them to ignore the screaming, raging alarm bells going off in their head.
If you're familiar with my videos, you know that I'm not the kind that says, "Just kick them to the curb and forget about them. They're just never going to get better than that."
That's not what I'm saying here at all. What I'm saying is you have to put your oxygen mask on first. You can make that decision today. You can decide that you're going to stop doing the things that fuel the obsession and addiction.
Of course, the thoughts are going to pop in here and there, and you may even find yourself relapsing back into hysterical emotions, snooping, spying, and controlling. If you find yourself doing that, I want you to grab back ahold of it and get yourself back in alignment.
You don't want to make someone else's addiction the center of your universe. When you do that, you're feeding their addiction, and you're losing yourself too. Make the choice today that it's no longer going to happen to you, and start putting things back in your life that you used to enjoy. Find your hobbies, talk to friends, have meaningful conversations, go to activities, go to the movies, do the things that make you happy!
Once you start doing things you enjoy, it will automatically push out the space you're giving to addiction. You have to start by doing something different. Get out there and do those things you used to do, even if you don't feel like it.
Amber Hollingsworth
