• Are you worried drug/alcohol use is gradually becoming out of control for your loved one? 
  • Do you wonder if a loved one’s behavior has progressed to addiction?
  • Is addiction slowly ripping your loved one away from you?
  • Is the stress affecting your ability to navigate the situation well?

What once brought pleasure or relief to your loved one has turned into a problem. Their  excessive substance use, or addiction, is disrupting the functioning of your family. 

You’ve worried. You’re concerned that if you talk about the problem, another argument will begin. You’ve tried avoiding the topic. But that only delays the inevitable. 

Ideally, family is a container of safety, support, and belonging. But because of your loved one’s substance use, your connection with them is slowly slipping away. You realize you’re living with a stranger, but you want them back.

At social gatherings, you’ve felt embarrassed by their behavior. You can’t trust them to keep a commitment anymore. You secretly wonder how things got this way.

The slow, gradual progression of addiction is happening in many families across the country. It’s normal to be confused about how best to help, or what to do. 

Most families have a way of addressing basic problems

Every family has challenges, like health problems, the death of a loved one, or job loss.

Every family has a way to deal with challenge or problems. Generally, everyone feels the stress, but uses a different strategy to deal with the problem. 

Relational patterns and unspoken rules emerge that structure how a family solves basic problems. On some level, it works for them.

But addiction in the family is different

Addiction slowly impairs brain functioning. Unfortunately, families don’t see the slow, gradual change. The family’s normal way of dealing with a problem, challenge or stressor doesn’t work so well with addiction problems.

Slowly, your loved one’s brain is fixating more and more on the substance that gets them high, and less on relating to their family in the same way. 

Because of stigma, shame and mixed messages, families deal with the addiction alone.

Addiction thrives in the dark. Solutions exist in the light.

We’ve been conditioned to keep addiction secret

There’s been hundreds of years of shame and stigma about addiction in our culture. These patterns of shame invisibly trickle down onto each generation. The patterns are impersonal, but unless children learn differently they assume the patterns are personal to them. They carry them into their adulthood. 

Families can feel embarrassed, responsible, or shamed because these patterns are alive today. Keeping addiction secret is a strategy for the family to cope with shame.

But keeping silent contributes to the trickle down of patterns from one generation to the next. Keeping silent contributes to addiction thriving.

You may feel if you reach out for help you’ll be blamed by well-meaning professionals.

We’ve been conditioned to use shaming addiction language 

Historically, the labels “family of addicts,” “codependent,” and “enabler” suggested families are part of the addiction problem in the family. This language removes the personhood of family members doing their best to care for a loved one suffering. 

These labels do not accurately represent all family efforts, especially in crisis. 

The language of labeling can lead family members to shaming themselves, avoiding reaching out for help or both.

On the positive side, a label can create understanding. For example, a young adult who grew up in a family with addiction first learning about codependency, and it explaining much of their childhood.

Language that shames one person can inspires another.

Shame shuts down families learning the rules of addiction

Historically, addiction was seen as a moral problem. Shame was used to motivate good behavior. But today learning the rules of addiction starts by acknowledging the culture’s rational thinking sees addiction as a disease with immoral behavior being a symptom.

Irregardless of the slow, gradual progression of the culture’s rational thinking from moral problem to disease, shame patterns still exists and families feel them.

For good reason, families mistakenly believe the cultural shame is personal to them.

Shame creates an escalated physiological response in the body

A natural response to stress is nervous system activation of fight, flight, or freeze. 

Symptoms of a nervous system escalating in a fight state are:

  • Frustration
  • Irritation 
  • Fear
  • Anger 
  • Rage

Symptoms of a nervous system escalating in a flight state are:

  • Worry
  • Concern
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Panic

When an individual’s nervous system escalates above rage or panic, the body shifts from a feeling of activation to collapse – into a state of freeze. 

Symptoms of a nervous system which has escalated into freeze are:

  • Helpless
  • Hopeless 
  • Numbness
  • Disassociation
  • Shame

External mixed messages about addiction contributes to internal confusion.

Recognizing and calming your internal state is key

Decisions made from an activated state reinforce old thinking, old language and old behavioral patterns.

The first step to helping your loved one is recognizing your nervous system activation and learning to calm it so you can make your best decisions. 

A first step is creating internal conditions that best support you navigating your external situation. This video course sets you on the path to your best decision making.

https://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/course/first-step-skill-building-for-success/

After gaining skills to see and understand your particular context, and skills to practice catching patterns and getting out of them, you will increase the effectiveness of your time, money, and efforts to get your loved one sober and keep them sober.

The next step is recognizing your challenges are a human experience and you are not alone.

Online structured group coaching provides you control over shame

We’ve advanced from online Facebook groups. 

Now, a robust platform of functionality enables online anonymity for as long as you need. From the start, the platform automatically sets tight boundaries. In each interaction, you regulate how much of yourself you reveal: listen only mode, type a question, turn on your mic and ask a question, turn on your video and dialogue. 

In the online group, you control the pace in which you build trust with likeminded others. You breakthrough the trickle down of cultural shame. You learn more about addiction, and decision making for your next best step to address your situation.

With addiction in the family, there are plenty of things that you do not have control over. 

In the online group you take control of your change:

  • From feeling the barrier to reach out, to taking steps forward at your pace
  • From feeling shamed, to feeling empowered
  • From struggling alone, to brainstorming possibilities with likeminded others
  • From trying the same strategies over and over, to practicing new ones
  • From hearing just one path to recovery, to multiple pathways to recovery

Human connection naturally reduces shame, normalizes the struggles, relaxes the body, and creates conditions for optimal learning. You incrementally control your pace. 

The culture won’t break the old shame patterns about addiction anytime soon. 

It’s up to you.

But I don’t have the time

No one puts, “address the addiction in my family” into their schedule. But if you don’t take the time, the slow, gradual process of addiction continues uninterrupted until chaos. 

Addiction doesn’t care about your busy schedule.

Do what makes the most sense for you. Change starts with you.

But I can’t put in the effort right now

When there’s a problem, the easiest thing to do is to repeat your same approach. But, you’ll likely get a familiar result. 

The effort you put in now contributes to the outcome of your family years into the future.

There are two ways to put in effort, external and internal:

  • External effort: asking questions, doing your best to listen, researching options, talking to others, consciously digesting it, and doing what makes the most sense to you
  • Internal effort: shifting how you relate to your loved one, which means navigating boundaries, trust, and how you connect with the personhood of your loved one vs. connecting with addiction

Each is helpful. But together, they’re powerful. 

I’d like my whole family to be onboard

That would be ideal, but it’s not always realistic. Don’t let the unwillingness of others stop your efforts to begin the process of moving towards health. 

Right now, you lead the change, and over time, “plant seeds of change” for others in your family.

Online options to consider

Making no change enables nothing changing in your family.

However, you feel comfortable, reach out for help. But recognize that with some avenues you’ll have obstacles of language and shame to overcome.

Patterns in our society enable addiction patterns continuing

Families are burdened by the consequences. Part of the burden is the kind of language used when families finally do consider looking for help and seeing/hearing these labels:

  • how to help an addict
  • living with an addict
  • parents of addicted loved ones 
  • parents of addicts 
  • addicted parents

You won’t hear me use this shaming language when we talk. 

You may be exhausted. But don’t give up. 

Call 720-314-3543 and leave me a message.