AI Edits from The Hidden Pain of Loving an Addict (Why Families Feel Trapped)
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[00:00:00] There's a kind of heartbreak, only a family knows. It's not just watching somebody you love destroy their life. It's watching someone do it again and again. It's holding onto hope long after everyone else gives up. It's writing the check, it's planning the intervention. It's taking the midnight calls only to be lied to.
Manipulated, stood up time and time again. It's the sleepless nights, the double life, the chaos, the silence, the endless cycles of crisis, fear and guilt. It's not loving the addict, not loving the addicted individual. It's loving them so much that we start to lose ourselves. ~This is a quote you guys, a direct quote by a, from a book that Kim has just read that I'm getting ready to read and it's coming on Sunday is by Brooke McKenzie, and it's called.~
Oh Lord. It's called We're You're Waiting On You. And this book is the essence of what happens to all of us in addiction. And I think it does a great job from just hearing what Kim is saying in today's topic of letting us figure out what we're waiting for and what do we need to do for ourselves while we wait to [00:01:00] ourselves and for ourselves, which I think is something that's often not talked about in the world of addiction.
~So I'm glad we're doing this today. ~It's, when you think about it, it's pretty easy to spot what addiction looks like, especially if you know what you're looking for. You can see the behavior changes, you can even see the EV evidence left beside behind. But it's really hard to spot it in families because it looks different.
We don't see pills, we don't see bottles. We see generally, a lot of times families that are really from the outside put together and it, you guys, being a family of somebody that's struggling with addiction, you know how much effort that takes. So if you think about it. When you think about it from the family standpoint, they, you guys are engaging in very predictable patterns.
And so these patterns they show up in different ways and we can even fluctuate from one pattern to another based on how we respond. And so we really need to adjust that. So the patterns, what they can look like as, they can look like they're overly controlling. They can be controlling conversations.
We can beg, we can plead, we can have volatile emotions. We can take on responsibilities that aren't ours. We can [00:02:00] go against what you swore you would or would not do you. It's desperation that's morphed into panic, morphed into guilt, and it depletes you. It depletes the families when you engage in these patterns.
And so you start to lose yourself oftentimes, so silently, you don't know what's happening. It's one dream, it's one hobby, it's one event that you just. Stop going to, or you stop engaging. And because it takes too much effort, you don't have the time, you don't have the bandwidth. Your brain or your heart is just not there because we become so obsessed with what's going to keep them safe, what's gonna keep them alive.
And when we do that over and over again, then we get stuck in these patterns ~I just listed more. ~And then as we do that, we lose ourselves just ~a little bit at ~a little bit at a time. So when you think about this how can we stop these patterns? I think there's a couple ways to stop 'em, but I think the first thing is you have to recognize that ~you, ~we live in this, what I call salty world, and the salty world is we are sad, we are angry, we are lonely, we are tired, and we are yearning for this to [00:03:00] end.
And because of all those emotions that we're feeling, that's how we get into these patterns, is to try to protect ourselves from them. I think what we have to do is figure out. What is our relationship with addiction? And then change that response. Ask ourselves, what role am I playing? Am I Colombo the investigator?
Am I searching? Am I checking? Am I sniffing? Am I the silent enabler? Because I'm crippled. I don't know what else to do. ~It's easier to give in. Is it I have a spouse or someone else in my family that's fighting with me, so I'm just like, ~it's easier to give in ~than fight. ~Or am I, and we see this the most, the anxious controller.
~And this is I'm gonna manage their recovery. ~I'm gonna make them get a sponsor. ~I'm going to give them to bring the receipts to me. ~I'm gonna do all these things that we do, but they don't really do anything but suck us dry. I think addiction relies on people seeking short-term relief. Family seek relief by trying to find certainty.
And the certainty is, I know they're using or. I can't find any proof. So they're not, so both of those are like non-truths that we live in, I think. But it makes sense. Or even even if I can get 'em in with the right counselor, if I can just say the [00:04:00] right thing at the right time. If I can manage their money, if I can tell 'em that they can't live here anymore unless they do all of these box checking.
Yeah, and that's exactly what that is. ~And we talk about that all the time. ~I call it placating or box checking, which is just false, but we feel better when they're doing it. And I think that's it's a false feel good. It's a false feel better. So basically we have to realize that we're seeking comfort that's false and isn't really bringing us the comfort that we need.
So ~it, ~it seems like Campbell, what you're talking about then is that you really have to have a mind shift in the fact that we're not gonna seek the false sense of comfort that these predictable patterns provide. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We have to believe, we have to figure out that these will not bring us the comfort that we want.
~We have to figure out what that would look like. But ~I think before all ~that, and this is something like ~that, we don't really, people don't do, they just start trying to manage themselves in the in relationship. But I think there's a couple things. ~What do, what? ~Do I really understand addiction? Do I understand the science behind it?
Do I understand the impact? Do [00:05:00] I understand what I'm dealing with before I start to try to deal with it? Do I have power and influence? Do I have the ability to change the situation or am I just being dragged along, like behind a ski boat? Do I have the resources? To deal with this and people feel like they have to have the resources, but the answer can be, I just don't.
So then I have to figure out, do I have the ability to learn about levels of care and how to manage that with the resources I have at hand? ~Do I have. ~This is the big one. Do I have the heart or the ability to even have a boundary or hold a boundary? And so people start doing everything we've talked about before right here before in this video.
But they haven't really analyzed what am I gonna do? What can I do? And then they've done all this work, but they haven't, they don't have the ability to do anything. And I think this is where. We find our, that things are most helpful like Beyond Boundaries is good for that. And Amber's [00:06:00] challenge is good for that.
Like these things that are, and those links are in the description you guys, but that's what therefore for you to do that pre-work to understand who am I and how am I gonna show up with this? And then how and when do I choose me? I think that's a really big one. ~I. ~We can hyperfocus on them, but it's not going to solve it.
And we lose ourselves so terribly, which goes back to that sad, angry, lonely, tired and yearning thing. Kim, will you often say we have to go towards ourself and ~when I was. As I'm reading this book, ~they talk a lot about, that addiction seeks comfort. It seeks relief, through substances or process addiction or whatever.
The person that's struggling with addiction, they're seeking relief through their addiction, short-term relief and family members, we seek relief too. So we're seeking the relief from the anxiety or from the stress or from the fear. So you often say when that topic comes up, you have to go towards yourself.
Can you explain what that means? Yeah. I think in a nutshell it means don't let the addiction be [00:07:00] the maypole around which you completely dance, and that you have to remember, because we give it all up in, in this process we become depressed, we become anxious, we cut ourselves off. We don't eat well, we don't socialize.
~We don't even seek joy. So many. So many times in an effort to either deprive ourselves to fix it or because I don't have the bandwidth to do any of those things. And I think ultimately ~we have to be able to go toward ourselves to, we have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired of the role we're playing in addiction.
And then as we can give ourselves permission to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, then we have to go toward ourselves, which means be able to have lunch with a friend. Every other week be able to go for a walk, begin to reclaim who we are because we forget that and we don't feed it, and then we don't have any battery, any emotional bandwidth for when the real work is gonna start, which is, how do I get this person into treatment?
How do I keep this person into treatment? ~How do I help this person manage, not manage, but. ~How can I be a support for their early recovery? And we're done. And this is [00:08:00] where so many families, like they take their loved one to treatment or sober living or whatever, and then they're like, whew.
And then they're not ready because they have taken their eye off who they are and they haven't charged that battery. It's okay. You guys, it's okay to watch a movie. It's okay to exercise. It's okay. I'm gonna even interrupt and say it's not. It's not only okay, but it's imperative because once we lose ourselves, we become.
From my experience of personal experience and working with lots of people, we become either a silent shell of who we once were or we become this angry, vicious, ready to attack person and we can vacillate between the two. Oh yeah. But when we start to remember what we what brings us joy, what brings us peace, what makes us excited, and we actually, addiction is still there and it's still a big part of our life.
But when we stop becoming so entangled with it and we start to pull back who we are slowly starts to reemerge and that's essential as far as our [00:09:00] recovery. And if we can't get that, then we rob ourselves, our families, and our loved one of who we really are and what we can actually provide. ~And now as you're saying that, I just thought of something.~
We actually also, by doing that, if we have other people in our immediate system, spouses, other children. As we do that, we're so focused on the disease that forces other people to defend it in a weird way or to want to ignore it. And also like with other children in the home, like they feel like chopped liver because mom's up in bed 'cause she's so depressed about John's drug use that, who am I?
And so everyone feels left out and everyone feels angry because this. Us who are over hyper focusing on this and losing ourselves, we become their problem. And they don't want that. And they want really they want their own partner in this. They want their own support in this, which would be us.
I think it's imperative on that level too, so that [00:10:00] everyone in the family can see it for what it is. We say this all the time when we. Talk about it, force it, talk about it, force it, the other person will defend it. It's not that bad. Boys will be boys. You're overreacting. You don't have any proof, ~which either makes us say oh, home, and we go get more.~
But we really need to just, what they're saying really is pull back, go towards yourself. You can give this a break and you need to give it a break in order for it to figure out it has to die. Yeah. Or go away. Yeah. ~I think for you guys, this is a great book. I can't wait to read it. Thank you Amazon for Sunday delivery, but ~I think it's really important to understand where you sit in this disease at the beginning, in the middle, at the end.
And we talk about it in the membership, which is we go from reeling, which is I'll do all these crazy, frantic things. To learning, which is those five questions I talked about. And then to planning and then we can get to thriving. And I think what Kim is just implicating there is we need to bring a [00:11:00] little bit of thriving.
A little bit of thriving in at least while we're learning and planning. Probably not in reeling 'cause we're just reeling. ~Yeah. ~But instead of waiting for that. After they go to treatment or this problem's over is bring some of that in as we go through it for stamina, peace of mind, and family stability.
~All right, so that's a big topic. It is an often not talked about topic, so give that some thought, read the book, think about it. We talk about this all the time in our membership, so if we can help with those things, click on those links and let us help. ~All right, Brie, do we have any questions?
All right. This is from Chloe Albert. I was trying so hard not to be the bad guy, but then my daughter called me at 4:00 AM drunk at a bar looking for money. I avoided the first two phone calls, answer the third. She lives in New York and said no, and hung up. Hate it. She's been in an IOP for legal stuff, but has that has been resolved, right to the bar.
~She went, I'm exhausted. ~Yeah, so that's a good example of taking care of yourself. Like it's okay to turn your phone off. It's okay not to answer that call. Your peace of mind is what we're talking about [00:12:00] protecting here. ~So as you answered that call, not only did you disrupt your sleep, but it pissed you off, you said no in the end.~
~So it would've been better to just not answer the phone and have her deduce the answer is no, while you sleep through the night and wake up with some level of peace in the morning. ~So I'm a big advocate of turning your phone off. If there's bad news, you're gonna find out in the morning. You don't need to know in the middle of the night.
But that's what I would recommend on that one. 'cause you're, when we answer, we train them to continue to call us and we continue. Do we train them to continue to try to get whatever it is they want out of us? Money, resources, whatever. Yep. And also it, you're taking on someone else's responsibility.
So you figure when the more we do that, ~like Campbell said, ~it trains them, but it also puts us, it puts us in a panic state because then we feel that responsibility is ours. That problem has now been tagged to us and most of us are. Pretty responsible individual so that we feel like something's tagged to our side, then we wanna do it and we wanna do it well versus being able to really differentiate in your mind, that's not mine, that's not my responsibility.
So the loved one then has to feel the consequences of that. And then you protect your own peace. And I know we could have a whole conversation on that topic alone. But that's just one side of it. [00:13:00] Also, in that. Situation that she just described is your codependency went into high gear.
And remember, codependency is an anxiety order just based upon fear. What will or will not happen if I do or do not do something. So I imagine what crossed her brain was if I say no, will she get money from somebody un unsavory? Will she steal? Will she. Make a bad trade to get the cap, the whatever it is she's trying to get with her money.
And so that's not only did you disrupt your sleep, but you really fed your codependency versus in the morning and she said, I tried to call you for money. Say sorry I was asleep. You kept your codependency way down here. Tracy, I don't feel, I feel if I don't overly help him, he will eventually be homeless and I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do. He's 35 and doesn't seem to be able to manage himself, but I am so tired. Yeah, so this is where I would do some thinking [00:14:00] that's slightly different, Tracy, in that I'm going to do some learning and some thinking about.
Rather than saying, I'm not gonna help you and homelessness be the option because I'm not gonna help you. You can be homeless. Or I have this sober living in mind. I have this treatment facility in mind. I have whatever that is, so that you can say no and not overly help because there's a, there is a viable alternative that you can stomach.
I'm not saying he will take it, but at least I think, I don't know any parent in the world would that would say be gone. I don't care if you're homeless. I think they would be able to stomach it like I had to. I, it looks like you're choosing to go out into the world, but if you change your mind, we will get you help.
~If you change your mind, we will give you treatment that's a lot more palatable than. Acha. ~So I think for you, Tracy, it might help you to do some of that analyzation of what do I know about addiction? What do I know about levels of care? What do I know about what's really required to beat this bad boy?
And then what are my resources and [00:15:00] what are I willing to allocate financially toward that end? And when we get there, those are big questions that we don't ask ourselves until all of a sudden the person's holy moly, I'll just stop get me help. And then we're like know those things ahead of time so that you feel better about what boundary you are gonna put down, whether that's not overly helping, you can't live here, whatever that is.
But if you continue to overly help him, he's not gonna change anything. ~Sadly and this is. Talking to Tracy, but also just to other people too. ~For all of us, we have, and Campbell talks about this a lot, but we have to work our heart into whatever the next best decision is for us. And so if from a heart standpoint.
We're not ready to stop doing what we're doing, that's okay, but on the backend for us to do a lot of personal investigation and figure out what do we need to do to get ready, or is this as ready as I will ever be? And then find peace with that decision, knowing that it is making the addiction easier.
Knowing that it's making change harder, but also being able to recognize that at this point I can't do anything different. Therefore, I'm not [00:16:00] going to shame myself for it. I'm not going to beg and plead and take on responsibility, responsibilities that aren't mine, but also recognize that I can be learning in the background and maybe I'll be ready for a different decision later on.
I think that's a huge thing and I think we beat ourselves up if we can't do something that maybe is being recommended or. Someone's telling us we should do, but we have to live with ourselves. We have to be able to put our heads on our pillows at night. And there is nothing, doesn't make you bad or weak.
Or if you can't hold a boundary or you can't do the thing, you can just not do the thing for right now. But to Kim's point, keep learning, keep thinking, keep talking. ~I keep watching. ~Sooner or later, most of us do get sick and tired of being sick and tired. It's just on this continuum. Is it really early or is it really late, or is it, to Kim's point also, I'm never gonna get there because I had another child that died of an overdose and I can't tolerate getting [00:17:00] there.
I'm never gonna get there because my first husband died. Like they, we run into these scenarios all the time. ~We're like, we're not even gonna talk about you getting there. ~You're not gonna get there and it's okay. So how do you live, rebuild your life around this blatant hole in the road that's your life that you can't do anything about?
And for a lot of mostly women that, that I work with, not all the women I work with, but mostly women fall in this category. That's, I can't leave because it will be World War II in my home and I can't expose my kids to it, or I can't financially afford to do it yet. And so in those situations, it's being able to identify what parameters are you stuck in, and then how do we rebuild within those parameters, knowing that eventually the end will come.
The kids will grow or something, no situation is permanent. And but being able to really look at it from a realistic lens. And this also again, supports not taking on responsibilities that aren't yours. And so this is, all of these situations are very delicate and personal, but they matters of the heart and the head.
And so we have to honor both the heart and the [00:18:00] head. Yeah, I think we too often in this field, focus on the head, what you should do, what you do, what you ought to do, what books tell us to do, what methods tell us to do what Al-Anon tells us to do a anything, but we have to be able to sit on that seesaw of heart and head.
That is unique and it's unique to us that no one else can know where that is. Only you can know that all right, Dale. I just learned how to mute my alcoholics texts. Oh, high five Dale. I function much better now. However, I'm still struggling to not let heard issues drive my thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts take over and I think that's a good point. What's the name of the book again? You're Waiting On You.
~Thank you, Kim. I was gonna say scroll down. You're waiting on You by Brooke McKenzie. I think. ~Those thoughts are gonna come in. Okay? And you can beat yourself up about 'em. Or you can say, I'm going to give this 15 minutes. I'm going to give this blank, and then I'm going to put it in this box. And this is a brilliant AA [00:19:00] saying, put it down for today.
Put it down for this hour, put it down. You can pick it back up. But I am gonna take a break. And that goes back to what we talked about. A minute ago, which is going towards yourself. I've thought about this for 10 minutes. I don't have a different thought on it. I don't have a resolution on it. I'm gonna go watch a movie and see if those thoughts can be quieter.
~They're not gonna go away, but you can always bring them back. ~I think give yourself permission to put them down for whatever amount of time you can put them down. But muting 'em is a brilliant idea. Yeah. All right. Married a long time. His question is, his oldest friend is dying. How do you support them without getting involved?
I think you used the Empathy Triangle, the Empowerment Triangle, and you just say, this really sad. I'm really sorry it's happening. If I can only imagine what that feels like, but I'm guessing you wanna know how do we support him in maintaining sobriety despite the fact that it's. Best friend is dying [00:20:00] or oldest friend, so like I think validated his emotions are real and then empower him in some way to do what is the right thing to do.
~I think in that, and I'm not, and I'm not sure very long time if it's sobriety that you're trying to support, if it's your husband or if it's the friend. But ~I think validation and acknowledgement goes a really long way. So let's say it is sobriety then to be able just to acknowledge, I'm a little nervous about how this might affect.
Sobriety or I'm a little nervous about how this might affect our relationship or our family or and again if that's not the thing, if it's not sobriety, if it's, I'm just trying to, again, detach myself from him and, I know that this is gonna be hard and he's gonna try to consistently come over to my side.
Then for you to be able to say, Hey, ~I, ~I know things have been a little bit different with us, I love you and I am concerned about you. I know this is a huge loss and we've made some differences in our relationship, and I'm hoping that we can keep that. I know it might be different, but you can hear in both of those scenarios, you're still supporting you and what you need and what you're thinking and feeling in that moment.
You could also use a phrase like, I imagine, or my thought pattern is my, what I'm telling myself is that would be really [00:21:00] difficult, and then even engage them in a, what do you think that would be helpful for both of us in this situation so that you're again, realigning with them and bread crumbing them to their own sort of thought pattern of what they could do to hold onto their sobriety or peace of mind, or whatever it is we're trying to protect, but.
I think you definitely have to acknowledge it like that. That's a massive loss when your oldest dearest friend dies. Yeah, and I also think when we find ourselves in situations like this, whatever the situation is, it's good. Instead of saying, how do I engage with them, the first question that should always happen is, how do I engage with me?
What do I need? How do I take good care of me? What am I working on? What's at danger? What's at risk? What might I do? How can I make sure that the progress that I am working on? Stays intact. And once we have that answer or those answers, then we show up more authentic to ourselves and we actually are more helpful to the ones that we love.
~Also, this just triggered this. I had a client, old or client come back yesterday for the first time in a long time, and she was really frustrated with her son's addiction and. How much time and energy was going into it and how it was limiting his life. Now that he's in sobriety, he's not going to family weddings and she was really mad about it, which I tried to get her to see was grief.~
And then she told me that her oldest and dearest [00:22:00] best friend had died last year. And as we were talking, I said, I actually think both of these are grief and that your focus on your son's. Withdrawal from the family to protect his sobriety is pushing on your grief about your best friend. And so ~to get, ~to be able to recognize what is this real grief and how does this ~gr ~real grief gonna impact me is a real thing.
Addiction causes grief, you guys, this is loss of dream, loss of vision, loss of desire, and so to recognize that is really important and give yourself the grace and space to grieve. All right. ~There's no such thing as a dumb question, Chloe. Maybe a dumb question. ~I should just wait for her to make contact with me again. I'm going, I find going back and forth trying to help her by not being the bad guy, focusing on myself so hard. So this is a topic Kim and I talk about a lot, you guys.
We focus so much on not being the bad guy, that we fail to recognize that we are going to be the bad guy with active addiction [00:23:00] regardless. Okay? You're, they're gonna drag you into being the bad guy, so as long as you use. Pleasant words, nice tone. Don't worry about being the bad guy. Saying no doesn't make you the bad guy.
If you say, man, I would love to give you some money. Unfortunately, I just can't. Yes, they will drag you into the bad guy role, but that is not you being the bad guy. Really focus on that. ~You guys, like we talk about this constantly in the live calls because people are like if I say no, I'll be the bad guy.~
But if you don't say no, you lose yourself. ~If you don't say no, you say down there in salty land. ~If you say, no, sweetly, unfortunately that's not an option or however you need to say it. That is not you being the bad guy, not answering your phone at night while you, because you sleep is not you being the bad guy.
Don't worry about their narrative of what you do or say, worry about, did I say it or do it nicely? Great. You can be clear and direct and nice at the same time. You don't have to be harsh. You don't have to be punitive. Then you are walking into the bad guy role. But just simply saying, I've noticed I'm [00:24:00] not sleeping very well.
I've turned my phone off at night, so I didn't see that text, which. You're not being the bad guy. She may say~ what if I'm in a, what if? ~What if I'm in an accident? Or what if I need you? Or Oh my gosh, what a terrible mom she's trying to pull me can have struggle at night. ~And that, and none of that's true.~
She's trying to pull on heartstrings, which again, people that struggle with addiction, they're not bad people. ~They're not everyone at the core is a manipulator. ~But when this disease takes over, the brain, manipulation becomes a way of life. And so for us, as the ones that love the people inside of the addicted.
One, we can still love them and be kind to them, but not become manipulated as quickly or as frequently as they want us to or at all. ~Or at all. All right. ~Tracy, what have you paid for multiple treatment centers and sober living and they keep messing up? Yeah, it's a big question. ~Yeah. ~You have to know in your heart of hearts, what resources do I have? I choose to allocate to this. I've seen families pour in hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing.
I've seen families not pay a dime and get good results. So I think this is a sort of like [00:25:00] you have to be able to answer. ~I don't, ~I no longer want to fund this. ~I, ~there's nothing wrong with that. I say all the time like they need to get the message of tag your it. This is the last one I'm paying for.
Unfortunately, I'm not paying for anymore. I'm unable to give myself financial, emotionally or physically anymore to your disease. I love you dearly, but you'll have to figure out how you want to get sober. There are lots of free places to get sober if they really need to get sober. ~And the other thing on that, Tracy, is wait for them.~
Wait for them to come to you. And it could, and this is definitely more than just a 32nd response, but if you're waiting for the desperation, if you're waiting for the willingness, you're gonna get further, faster than if you are pushing and pleading and demanding. Yeah, absolutely.
Lots of people pay for too much treatment too soon. And I know that's makes us feel better. It is an immediate comfort, but it's really not a long-term fix. I always say, wait for desperation. All right guys, we are out of time. Big topic today, so hopefully this was helpful to you guys and we will see [00:26:00] you.
~Amber will be here. Next one, one last announcement. ~Amber's doing the challenge again. ~And it starts, do you have the dates? Is it March 3rd? Is that right or not? March 3rd, I'm sorry, when. Do we know the dates? ~We'll put it in the description, but Amber's doing the challenge again. Yeah, the link is in.
~The link is in the description. ~The link is in the description. All right. And that's a really good thing for you to do for yourself. Yeah. All right. Bye guys. Bye guys.
