Recovery Strategies for Those Who Love Someone with an Addiction

I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on recovery strategies for those who love someone with an addiction. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to identify what causes and maintains addiction. If you love someone who has an addiction, you want to understand what's going on, but it's also important to understand what you can and cannot control. We'll explore the impact of addiction on family members and identify cognitive, behavioral, trauma, informed approaches to recovery. Recovery requirements for family members. It is really important for people who love someone with an addiction to understand what might be causing or maintaining that addiction for somebody. It helps them understand what they can and cannot control. And I know I've already said that, but so important. There are a lot of things you cannot control. That person with the addiction is hurting. I. I am not disagreeing with that. But you cannot make them stop. You cannot take away their pain. There are certain things they've got to do. You can be supportive of the next right behaviors, but there are certain things you can't do. And the fact that the person that is using or when they relapse often has little to do with you. So the blame that you feel, the guilt that you feel when somebody relapses. If I would have seen this sooner, if I would have said something, if I wouldn't have done XYZ to trigger them. There are a lot of ifs and. And stuff that you can go through, but ultimately it's on the person with the addiction. They have to take responsibility for their part in their relapse. And it's not on you generally. I mean, if you're living with somebody with an addiction, an alcohol addiction, and you bring home a bottle of vodka and set it out on the kitchen counter, well, yeah, that's. You know, you played a part in that because you directly triggered them. But generally, it's important to recognize that people with addictions relapse or use in order to escape untenable pain. Whether it's pain from physiological withdrawals, pain from the guilt of what they did during their addiction, or pain from something else that happened that led to them trying to numb through addictive behaviors. Whatever it is, it very rarely has a direct relation to something that you did. So being able to say, you know what? This is not my fault, is really important. It's important for family members of someone with an addiction to be able to define their rich and meaningful life. What does a rich and meaningful life look like for you? Yes, you would love to have that person in it and happy and healthy that may not be completely in the cards. You know, they may not ever reach complete recovery. So what does your rich and meaningful life look like? And can you have. How can you have your rich and meaningful life and have this person that you love that is struggling with addiction? My cousin has struggled with opioid addiction for decades, and unfortunately, you know, there's only so much that anybody else can do, and he has to be willing to take some certain steps. So it's been really important for my aunt to be able to define, you know, what is my rich and meaningful life. How can I live and. And appreciate and embrace all of the other things that I've got? Because she's got grandkids, she's got other children that, you know, she needs to spend time with and. Or wants to spend time with. There's a lot of other things that were important to her and that really helped her get some perspective. So she wasn't just constantly focusing on this one thing and feeling completely powerless. It's important to explore the impact of their current, your current behaviors, environment, and relationships on your rich and meaningful life. Go back, going back to my aunt, what was she doing? How was she using her energy and her behaviors like staying up all night, worrying and fretting and getting angry about, you know, things that she couldn't control. In what ways was that impacting her rich and meaningful life, her environment, you know, where she was living, the people she was living with? How was that impacting her ability to live her rich and meaningful life and her relationships? There was a lot of tension and stress among the different family members until they all kind of got on board with a family recovery model, which allowed each one of them to pursue things that were important in their rich and meaningful life. It's important for family members to identify goals and strategies to work toward their rich and meaningful life. Okay, this person over here has an addiction, and this is how I'm going to interface with them. This is what I'm going to do to use my energy to support them in their recovery as to the best of my ability. And this is how I'm going to spend the rest of my energy. We've talked in other videos about how we can conceptualize our energy and our time. Like a piece of pie or like a. Like a pie. And what? No one thing should take up that entire pie. It's really important that we look and we say, okay, I've got nine things in my rich and meaningful life, so how am I going to Divide up my energy. So I'm nurturing those things, and I'm not just focusing on this one thing while everything else disappears. And it's important for family members, and I use the term family really loosely. Family is not necessarily a blood relative. It's a significant other. And it's important for significant others, family members, to increase and maintain motivation to achieve the goals that are important in their rich and meaningful life. And it is excruciatingly hard to say, you know what, I've done everything I can here. Now I'm going to turn my attention to something else. When you see this person struggling, when you see them hurting, but they are not ready, they are not yet motivated to engage in, in the recovery process. So, you know, generally, you know, what we're talking about here is somebody who is either an adult or an older adolescent with an addiction, Obviously younger children, if they've developed addictive behaviors, there are other things that we can do. However, it is really important to recognize what you can and cannot control and what you have the right to control. Let that sink in for a second. We all have boundaries. You don't want somebody telling you what you have to do, what you have to think, how you should feel. Well, the person with the addiction doesn't want that either. You know, yes, they would like to feel better. However, they need to be able to be motivated to or to motivate themselves to. To do that for themselves. So it comes down to, you cannot fix them. That's just the way it is. You can't fix them. Whether you're a therapist or a significant, significant other of somebody with an addiction, you cannot fix them. You can provide tools. You can be there to be supportive of them making the next right choice, but you cannot fix them. They have to fix themselves. You can only fix you. And if you become sick, depressed, anxious, angry, or, heaven forbid, addicted as a result of your feelings of powerlessness and pain over their addiction, then you're not going to be able to be there to help them or work towards your rich and meaningful life. So you need to be able to fix you. But what does that look like? Well, before we get there, let's talk about codependency for a second. A lot of people think that if you love somebody with an addiction, you're codependent. That is not true. Codependency is when you engage in certain behaviors in order to try to change a person or fix a person or control a person with an addiction, and you continue to do it despite it causing you problems. In one or more areas of life, like your health, your mental health, your occupation, your other relationships. So we're really looking at codependency in many ways as sort of a addiction of, in and of itself. You can love somebody with an addiction and set boundaries and maintain boundaries and say, you know what, this is not healthy for me. I am here to support you if you decide to do the right thing. But this is not healthy for me to continue to try to chase after and control you when you're wanting to continue to go down a different path. Codependent behaviors can often be understood through a trauma informed lens. Somebody who is codependent often has grown up in a very chaotic situation and it was up to them to fix things. They had to be grown ups, far younger than they were supposed to be, or there was so much chaos in, in their, in their existence, in their life growing up that they had to, they had to try to fix it and other people couldn't or wouldn't do it. So we want to look at the behaviors that people are engaging in and say what happened that caused you to develop these behaviors again? And we talked about this in the last workshop. We don't want to say, never say what is wrong with you? Nothing is wrong with you, quite honestly. The question is what happened to you and how did these behaviors develop as a way to help you survive? There was a purpose to them. They developed for a reason. Not because you're broken, but because you wanted to survive. So thinking again, going back to why addiction develops in people, and, and I have it in the title of this slide, it is not your fault people, other people developed addictions because of pain. Okay, we're just going to use that term very generally here. It could have been due to physical health issues like physical pain. They were trying to numb physical pain or sleep disorders. They had insomnia, so they were trying to help themselves sleep or they couldn't wake up, so they were trying to help themselves wake up with stimulants or both. That's not un, terribly uncommon either. Very, very, very hard on the body. Or maybe they started using recreationally and then they started developing dependence to it. And then that dependence grew into tolerance. And then when they weren't using, they started to experience withdrawal symptoms. That's not unusual either. It, some people go from recreational use and they start having a bad time, so they start using a little heavier and then because of that more heavy, consistent use, it becomes an addiction. It become, they become physically dependent and then they start experiencing withdrawal symptoms. When they're not using. So then they self medicate with I think the phrase is the hair of the dog that bitcha. Relationship issues are another reason people may experience pain that they're trying to numb. They may have attachment trauma, they may have insecure attachment, they may fear abandonment, they may be terrified, they may have low self esteem and they feel unworthy and lonely and unloved and oh how that must hurt to feel like that. So they medicate. The bottle won't leave them or the drug won't leave them. The drug won't abandon them. The drug is there and it numbs the pain. It doesn't necessarily make them feel loved, but it numbs the pain. And then mental health issues. A lot of people self medicate mental health issues with drugs. They have this symptom and they don't really recognize that it's a mental health issue because have a symptom and they're like well if I take this it makes that symptom go away. So then they start self medicating and again they start to develop a tolerance and it can be adhd, anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, grief, trauma, schizophrenia. I've seen people with each one of these disorders present in in clinic with an addiction that developed as a way that they tried to deal with it before reaching out for help or they tried to deal with it because they reached out for help and the help didn't help. So they were like, well I guess it's up to me to figure out how to fix it. We do also need to recognize that in addiction impacts the entire family. The person with active addiction. And I really want to emphasize this. Active addiction. There's a lot of discussion or argument or whatever word you want to use in the recovery community about whether people ever recover from addiction. However, what we're talking about here is when people are actively symptomatic with their addiction, they are using, they are engaging in addictive behavior. So they may be on a, what we call, you know, a white knuckled sobriety where they aren't using but they're still engaging in all those other behaviors. That's not helpful either. That's still in my book, active addiction. But I digress. So the person who's not in recovery is often inconsistent and unpredictable. And you're going to see how this all pulls together on the next slide. They're inconsistent and unpredictable. They're self centered and unresponsive to anybody else's needs. They're emotionally unavailable and dysregulated. They prioritize the addictive behaviors over all other things. Because when they're not using, it hurts too much. They may be manipulative and engage in gaslighting. You know, oh, I didn't do that. Even though, you know the person came home drunk or the person used or the person did something, they will deny it. They will make you think you're trying to make you think you're crazy. And they're untrustworthy, they're lying, they're manipulating. They are protecting their addictive behaviors at all cost. They're protecting the one thing that helps them make. Helps make them feel less pain. And they're unsafe. You can't trust them. They're unsafe. And people who love someone with an addiction May feel very hurt by this. It's like, but I want to help them stop the pain. You may want to, and you may have a huge heart. And however, your heart is not going to stop their pain. Okay? They have trauma they need to process. They have stuff they need to deal with. And it may be more than you can deal with. You can be supportive and you can love them till the cows come home, but some of the things that go on in their head maybe just too much. And you can't silence those voices. You can't silence those memories. So again, it's not your fault. You're being there. And it's not that they're rejecting you. They are saying, I can't deal with life. I can't deal with the pain. I love you, but I can't. This hurts too much. The addicted person's behaviors often depend on whether you're standing between them and. And their use. If you are getting between them and their addiction, they can become very aggressive, Verbally aggressive, Sometimes even physically aggressive. Because again, that's the one thing that stops the pain. They. If you're threatening to make them stop using, you start laying down the gauntlet. You stop or else. Then they may become more manipulative, they may become more aggressive, they may become more withdrawn. There's a lot of ways it can go, but ultimately, if you are threatening them, Telling them you they have to give this up or else they're sitting there feeling like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place because they don't know how to stop, or they don't feel like they can stop because the pain is too bad, but they don't want to lose you. And then they're just like, well, this is a lose lose. What the heck am I supposed to do? Their behavior is going to differ based on whether they're intoxicated, withdrawing or sober. If they are not using, if they're sober, if they're not experiencing withdrawals at the moment, their behavior is going to be very different than if they're in the throes of withdrawals. And their behavior even then is going to be different than when they're intoxicated. And I think we've all seen that even in people who aren't addicted to people who are inebriated act very differently when they're inebriated, when they're hungover, and when they're sober. Other life pressures is all are also going to impact how they act and react to you. If they are feeling stress coming from lots of different places, if they feel overwhelmed, if their stress response system is just completely overwhelmed, then they are probably going to react with a lot more fight or flight or maybe even just learned helplessness and withdrawal than if they feel like they can deal with life on life's terms. So that's one place that can be helpful for somebody who is in early recovery. For loved ones to help say, okay, how can we help you manage life on life's terms? We're not going to do things for you you can do for yourself, but how can we help you walk the walk? Their behaviors will also depend on available effective coping and support. They may have lots of coping tools, but if they can't use those tools effectively or if the tools don't work, then trauma, for example, Cognitive behavioral therapy is great. However, for most people, it's not enough to deal with PTSD and cptsd. That's why we have things like emdr. So you can help people get grounded and use particular cognitive behavioral tools. But they may still need things that they don't have in their toolbox. And support is not always supportive. People can be very well meaning but not empathetic and not providing the support the person needs at that point in time. They may enable the person or they may sort of be dismissive of the person, or they may offer unsolicited advice that's just not helpful. Instead of hearing what the person needs, they're like, this is what you need to do. And they're. The addicted person's behaviors are often also going to depend on their motivation to recover. If they're not motivated to recover, they're going to behave very differently than if they are. It doesn't mean that they're going to be perfect. If they are motivated to recover, they're going to try and they may slip. They may even Full out relapse. But that behavior is going to be very different than if they look at you and they go, whatever. And have no intention of even trying to recover. So let's talk about how all this behavior creates chaos in your life, adds to your stress, and impacts you as a loved one, as a significant other of somebody with an addiction. All right, so the big one, the HPA axis, your stress response. Oh my gosh, can you imagine. Well, you can. How much stress you're under worrying about that person feeling angry. When you see that person hurting themselves, you know that they are, you know, doing things that are not good in their life. And it, it hurts you to see that you. So you get angry, you get worried, then you feel depressed and hopeless and helpless. And all of those distress feelings, some might even say trauma feelings, are just palpable constantly because when they're in their active addiction, it's not like it's every other Saturday, it's every day. So this is one of those things that you may feel that you can't escape from, especially if you're a child and your caregiver is the one with the addiction. Or if you are a caregiver and your child is the one with the addiction, you can't say, well, been nice knowing you, but I need to set some boundaries. And you know, if, if you want help, come on back. It's a lot harder to do that when it's your child, and it's definitely harder when it's your parent. Especially if you are a young child and you can't take care of yourself, you may not be able to escape from that. So when that HPA axis stays disregulated for too long when you're. That stress response stays on for too long. We see the body. Just like the body becomes tolerant to alcohol and it takes more alcohol to get the person drunk, our body becomes tolerant to cortisol and glucocorticoids, our stress hormones. So it takes more stress hormones to get a reaction, which leads the person to start to feel flat all the time. Because stress hormones also help us feel happy. Excitatory is the term that they use. It's not just anger and anxiety, but any of those excitement feelings require that some of those stress hormones. But if the body's not responding to them anymore, or at least not responding to low levels of them, then it's hard to feel much of anything. Additionally, we start seeing alterations in the brain structure, including the. Some of the emotion processing areas, including the hippocampus and the amygdala the amygdala remembers fear processing. When the person is stressed all the time, the amygdala kind of takes charge and it says, hey, this is a really stressful situation. I gotcha. And tends to become more dominant in the autopilot or what we call the default mode network, which is a whole lot of blah, blah, blah. Long term stress leads to difficulty feeling much of anything. But then when you do experience something, it's an extreme response. And part of that is due to changes in your nervous system. And those changes in your nervous system have far reaching consequences. They can increase pain, they can increase illnesses, they can trigger autoimmune issues. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's talk about pain. You have that HPA axis dysregulation going on. So your nervous system, your stress response system is kind of taken over and it doesn't, it's not turning off. You're hyper vigilant, you're hyper aware, you're anxious all the time. Well, that means you've also probably got a lot of stress, a lot of tension. That tension tends to throw stuff out of whack after a while and you start getting muscle spasms and pain and stress headaches and those sorts of things. Progressive muscular relaxation is super helpful because by intentionally tensing and relaxing the muscles three or four times in each area, it's sort of like giving yourself an internal massage, if you will. But it can help loosen some of those muscles just a little bit. It's not going to be a panacea, but it can help. Massage can be really helpful for pain and, and muscle tension because it helps relax the muscles as well as promote the release of endorphins. So that can be good and it can be, I have one of those, they call them percussive massagers. But that is amazing after a really hard workout for preventing soreness the next day. But it can also be really helpful for just general pain. You just want to be careful where you use it. I find that I can't use it anywhere over my rib cage because it's so powerful. I can feel it in my chest and it makes me cough, but that's a whole different issue. But massage. So you don't need to go pay for an expensive massage as my take home. Any kind of massage can be helpful. And then meditation. Meditation triggers the relaxation response. Meditation, because you're focusing on your breath, because you are slowing yourself down, helps trigger that vagus nerve which triggers the relaxation response, which triggers relaxation and the release of GABA and some of those other calming neurochemicals which can be helpful and also trigger the pain reduction. Obviously pain. Your doctor can also help you with other interventions. Illness is also increased when that HPA axis is active. Think about times when you were really stressed. Did you get sick easier? Probably. So when you are stressed for a long period of time and that HPA axis isn't working, it also has impacts on your immune system, it increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, high hypertension, autoimmune diseases, and it can trigger autoimmune flares. So it's important to understand this and think to yourself, if I want to be able to be there for the other people and things that are important in my rich and meaningful life and for this person, as much as I can, I need to heal my HPA axis. I need to heal my body so I can actually like literally be there. HPA axis. I mentioned glucocorticoid resistance. You start responding differently to cortisol. Well, cortisol is so important, not just for stress, but it helps regulate a whole bunch of other stuff in the body. It is highest when you wake up in the morning. It decreases throughout the day. When it gets to its lowest point, the body recognizes it's time to start secreting melatonin. So there's a, a yin and a yang and a, you know, changing of the guards or whatever you want to call it to our hormones and our systems in our body. So when one system, like the stress response system goes rogue, it impacts all the other systems. And circadian rhythms are not only responsible for our sleeping and our waking and our part of our energy, but it also reg regulates our sex hormone, releases our hunger, our satiation. So there's a lot of stuff. And our blood sugar, oh my gosh. When your HPA axis is disregulated, you're going to have a lot more difficulty regulating your blood sugar. So what can you do? Well, again, there are lots of things, but couple things that are easier. Routine. Your circadian rhythm is not just set by light. Light is actually sort of the backup your when you sleep and when you wake. So keeping a relatively consistent sleep wake pattern, eating meals at relatively the same time every day, and engaging in what we call a sleep routine that cues your body in that, hey, it's time to start winding down and going to bed can all be helpful. Boundaries are also important for circadian rhythm management. And you may be going, what in the world? For people who love somebody with an addiction, you may be tempted to answer the phone. At 1:30 in the morning and get yourself dressed and go down there and bail them out of jail at 1:30 in the morning. It's important to recognize when that's healthy and when that is not healthy for you. Can they stay in jail? Can they wait it out till the morning and then you can go get them once you've had your night's rest. Should you, and only you can decide this, but should you sacrifice your sleep and your health in order to enable them, in order to keep them from feeling any discomfort for a short period of time? Obviously you probably can pick up on my attitude about that, but you know, obviously the individual, individual circumstances are going to impact it a little bit. But you do need to consider setting boundaries and saying, I need to do this for my own health and well being. Because if I get burned out, if I get tired, if I get sick, if I get exhausted, I can't be there for you. Ultimately, I won't be able to be there for you at all. So I need to set these boundaries to protect myself physically, emotionally, cognitively. Fatigue is another impact of loving somebody who is struggling with an addiction, engaging in that radical acceptance, accepting, I'm tired today. I was stressing about what was going on with them yesterday, and I'm tired today. I'm going to accept that fact and say, you know what? Today's not an a day. I'm going to radically accept the situation and go, I wish it were different. You know, I wish that they were, you know, in full recovery, but they're not. I'm going to radically accept that it is what it is and then say, how can I best use my energy to move towards my rich and meaningful life? And compassion, compassion goes along with fatigue. Compassion for yourself and compassion for them. We tend to use a lot more energy when we get angry and try to fight and control and struggle with and wrestle with something that we can't control. So having compassion for yourself, instead of getting angry and wrestling with, with the fact that you feel depressed or anxious or angry, acknowledging it, you know, don't get involved with what Hayes calls dirty discomfort. Have compassion for yourself and say, yep, I, I'm feeling pretty ticked off about this right now. It's probably not the word you'd use, but it's the only word I can use on YouTube. And then having compassion and going, that's okay. It is all right to be angry. Give yourself permission to feel your feelings. And you don't want to unpack and stay there for a week, but give yourself permission to Feel your feelings and be compassionate and say, you know what, I'm tired, I'm angry, I'm depressed. However you feel today's not an A day, but that's okay. And give yourself a hug. I mean, you don't have to, like, literally give yourself a hug. Although that does help release oxytocin. You can have compassion for yourself and go, you know what? It's okay, it's okay. And then sleep problems. Well, your circadian rhythms, if they're disrupted, is going to make it harder to go to sleep and stay asleep and everything. But it's also important that you evaluate your sleep hygiene. You've already got enough working against your sleep patterns right now. Don't do things that you don't have to that are going to disrupt your sleep, like getting on social media right before bed when you know that that's going to irritate you, or turning on something on TV that you know is going to trigger you. That doesn't make any sense. Sitting in the middle of, you know, shining bright lights and blue light until right before bed, not going to be helpful. Drinking caffeine an hour before bed, not going to be helpful. So if you're not familiar with all the different things that can, can impair your sleep, I do have a video on sleep hygiene. But be aware of those things and try to do the best that you can for yourself to heal yourself or to keep yourself from getting sick so you can be there for that person and everything else in your rich and meaningful life. The affective impacts and I, I remind people that feelings are like smoke alarms. You don't want to get rid of your smoke alarm. You don't want to get rid of your feelings. Now, you may not, again, you may not want to unpack and sit with them for, for a week, but recognize that they're there. Don't disable them, don't numb them, don't avoid them. Recognize and respond to them. I'm feeling angry because this happened. Okay, you're recognizing your feeling, you're recognizing why it exists. And then you can evaluate, is it actually a threat. Just like when the smoke alarm goes off, you hear it and you go, I'm feeling scared because the smoke alarm went off. Is this actually a threat at this time in this context? So I'm feeling angry because this happened. Is this actually a threat at this time and this context? How can I use my energy to improve the next moment? Well, if you determine that there's no threat or whatever it is just ain't worth Your energy, let it go. Figure out how to let it go. Just say, you know what, not worth my energy. Be gone. If there is a threat, then how can you use your energy to take action? Addressing guilt. A lot of people, as I mentioned several times, take responsibility for the actions of the person with the addiction. Check the facts. If you. If you're saying it's, it's my fault, it's part partly my fault, it's all my fault. Whatever. Check the facts. Is it. What did you have to do with that? Respect boundaries and accept only the parts that are yours. Like I said, if you brought home a fifth of vodka and set it on the counter, all right, you know, that might be in. In your ballpark, but many times a person with the. With an addiction will blame you for making them use when they're looking for an excuse, when they're looking to manipulate and have a reason. So it's important to accept only what is yours. Did you actually make them? Unless you, you know, got a funnel and. And made them funnel alcohol or whatever, you didn't make them do it. You didn't make them. And use your energy to learn from it. Whatever it was that happened that may have triggered that person's relapse, that may be triggering your guilt. Use your energy to learn from it. So the next time it happens, that guilt isn't so strong, you're like, oh, been down this road before. This isn't my fault. You know, I don't take any responsibility for this part of it. Fear of loss? Well, yeah, if somebody has an addiction, it's exhausting. And there's definitely a fear that they will overdose, that they will abandon you, that they will, you know, get hurt in some way when they are under the influence. There's a lot of fears there. And it's important to recognize as a loved one, as the person without the addiction, what the fears are. What do you fear losing? Do you fear that they're going to abandon you? They're going to leave you and, you know, just go off and do their thing? What is it that you're fearing? Is it a possibility in the present? You know, is it something that's going on in the present? And how probable is it? And is this bringing up abandonment issues or loss issues from the past? For a lot of people, you've got, you may have abandonment or loss issues from the past. And this person, you're watching them, you know, drink themselves into oblivion, and it may be triggering feelings that you have about something else. I remember my father died of cancer. But I remember watching him just, he's on chemo and he's smoking and I'm like, dad, that kind of seems counterintuitive. There, there was nothing I could do, obviously. But watching him do things that in my mind, whether I'm right or not, in my mind as, you know, a 20 year old, I'm looking at it going, you're killing yourself. And it was, it was terrifying and to watch and I felt very helpless. So in the future, if I'm engaging with somebody who I see, you know, clearly engaging in addictive behaviors that are hurting themselves, I have to recognize that some of those memories may be being triggered in me and I may be reopening trauma wounds from the past that I've got to deal with. So you need to recognize that some of the things that you're feeling may not have anything to do with this particular situation. It may be reopening some of those trauma wounds from the past. You may also fear loss of finances or reputation. Whether the person has a gambling addiction or a porn addiction or a drug addiction. These are things that you may fear losing. And you know, you lose your finances. That means you may not have stable housing. You know that there's a lot that goes with it. It's not self centered, it's. It's self preservation, figuring out, you know, what can you do to protect yourself as much as possible from abandonment. Well, there may not be a whole lot you can do with this particular person while they're in active addiction. You can again, set, set your boundaries, be supportive when they are in active recovery, and nurture relationships with other people so you don't feel like you're completely isolated. What can you do to protect your finances and your reputation to the best of your ability? Anger and depression at not being able to fix or control the situation. Yeah, you know, it's, it's frustrating. You see somebody you love hurting themselves and you want to stop it. You know, that's a threat. Not to you personally, but it's a threat to somebody you love. So, you know, my husband might say, I go into mama bear mode and, and you go into protective mode of, for people you want, for people that you love. So if you can't fix or control it, it's natural to get angry. But it's also important to remember that you can't fix or control them. So you're in this kind of double bind. But acknowledging your feelings is really important. You may be angry at other people for their part. You know, the person who got Them hooked on it, for example, or the people who contributed to their trauma that they're trying to self medicate. Or you may be angry or depressed about the negative impact that person is having on you or your children. Another perfectly natural, reasonable feeling to have. The question is, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with it so it's not just sucking your energy every single moment that you're awake. How can you use that energy instead to work towards your rich and meaningful life? You can't fix or control the addiction. What can you control? You can't fix or control other people for what they did in the past. What can you control? You can't change this person's behavior. However, how can you buffer against the negative impact that they're having on you or your children? You may have grief over loss of the sober person. Maybe you fell in love with somebody and they developed an addiction 10 years into your marriage, okay, you, you remember that person that was sober and you're grieving the loss of that person. Because when they're in active addiction, they're kind of a different person. They act differently, they react differently. And it's important to allow yourself to grieve. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of the vision. You thought you'd get married and grow old together and everybody would be happy and live in Shangri La. Well, that ain't it. It's important to grieve that. It's important to recognize that the way you thought things were going to work out, it ain't working out that way. And it's okay to be grief stricken. And you may have grief over loss of time. Maybe you invested three, four, five years, decades in somebody in a relationship and now they are choosing the addiction over everything else. And you're looking back going, okay, what am I left with? I, I just gave you the best years of my life. I've heard that one before. So it's important to allow yourself to grieve. Yeah, you can't get back those years. You just can't. Maybe they were in active addiction for many years and you enabled them for many years and now you have regrets. Okay, well, there's going to be a lot of grief and anger work to do there, and it's going to be important to allow yourself to grieve that. So instead of feeling bad and grieving over that loss of time forever, you deal with it so you can use your energy to make the best of the time that's left. And I know I'm oversimplifying things trauma. Well, exposure to a prolonged or repetitive series of events of an extremely threatening nature from a wit from which escape is difficult or impossible. That is one of the characteristics of trauma as identified in ICD11 for chronic or complex post traumatic stress disorder. Abandonment. And, and I talked about this a little bit earlier, but I think it's worth reiterating because being in a relationship with somebody with an addiction very often is traumatic. You may be abandoned, they may disappear for days on end, or they may overdose or something, you know, horrible happens and, or maybe you're a child and your caregiver is just passed out drunk every night. So they're not there. They may be physically there, but they're really not there and able to meet your socioemotional needs. You're watching somebody you love slowly kill themselves. I mean, let's call it what it is. That can be terrifying. I already talked about overdose. Sometimes when people are in active addiction, their HPA axis is also dysregulated. So they may be prone to more anger outbursts depending on the person, depending on the drug. It may be when they're using, it may be when they're detoxing. Maybe when they are, you know, don't have the substance in their system and they are in emotional agony. Doesn't really matter. Ultimately, it is very common to see anger outbursts, sometimes to the point of becoming extremely threatening. And when children see this, it can be really terrifying to children because you know, that that amount of rage is just terrifying. We see suicidality. Sometimes people, they don't want to use anymore, but they don't know how to stop. They try to stop and the pain's too bad, so they may become suicidal. And it's important that we're aware of this and we help people get to, to help. But it's also important to recognize the impact that has on you as a loved one. When you don't know on a day to day basis, when they're not in the hospital, you know, whether they're safe. That's terrifying. It can trigger past trauma schema for you. I mentioned that earlier and you know, I don't know all the traumas you've been through. I don't know what exactly you are going through with the people that you love that have an addiction. So it's important for you to look at your own experiences and say through all this, what has been traumatic to me, what has felt threatening, what has felt overwhelming and caused me to feel unsafe and powerless? Only you can answer that. But those Are things that are traumatic and those are things that may trigger anger, depression, grief, you know, a whole range of emotions that may need to be processed. But a lot of times we just push it down, lock it up somewhere and go, okay, you know, I'm just, I got other stuff I need to focus on. I can't deal with that right now. You gotta deal with it. You gotta deal with it or it's going to rot you from the inside out. Not literally, of course. Complex ptsd, very common, especially in children who grow up in addicted households. But not uncommon in people who are in a long term chaotic relationship. Severe and persistent problems and affect regulation. Beliefs about oneself as defeated or worthless, accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt or failure related to the trauma. Sound familiar? And difficulties in sustaining relationships and feeling close to others. Well, it's hard to trust others when you know this relationship has caused you so much pain. And it's hard to have the energy to get close to others when you're so stinking exhausted from what you've already been through. So the symptoms make sense. See the symptoms from a functional standpoint, you may not want to keep them, but recognize where they're coming from. And that will help you figure out how to address them. Cognitive distortions are also common. Thinking all or nothing. Every time he comes home from a trip, you know, I know that he's been using, or every time he comes home late or whatever it is all or nothing. Thinking. It's important to use ex to find exceptions to what's going on so you don't feel like. So you don't assume things are always going to be one way or another. Negativity and pessimism. Well, when you're living in a chaotic environment, you're hypervigilant. And that hypervigilance prompts you to pay more attention to the threats to the rattlesnakes, not the bunny rabbits. So it makes sense you may be more negative and pessimistic and tragic. Optimism is one technique that you can use where you acknowledge the things that are going crappy and you force yourself to also notice the things that are going well. Hardiness is another technique where you identify, you know, all those things in your rich and meaningful life to which you're committed. You identify of the things that are going well and the things that are not going well, what you do, what you can control and what you can't control. And you view hardships as challenges. You know, when an obstacle pops up, you say, okay, what's the best way to solve this? What's the best way to use my energy to solve this puzzle and continue working toward my rich and meaningful life. Personalization is also very common. It's because of me. He drank because of me. He got angry because of me. It's my fault. And it's important to look for alternate explanations. What are three other reasons this might be happening besides you? Catastrophizing is another cognitive distortion that's very common in loved ones of people with addictions. So you need to look at facts and probability. The person is in active addiction and they haven't been home for two days. Another phrase that something really really bad happened. Okay, I I won't use the other phrase. Something really, really bad happened is the catastrophic belief. But what are the facts and the probability? Has this person disappeared for two or three days before and come back, albeit, you know, not healthy but unharmed? And what is the probability that they are actually in significant severe harm? There's only so much you can do, but it's also important to recognize the the facts of the situation. Mind reading and jumping to conclusions it's important to look at facts in context, not assume that somebody is trying to manipulate you or going to relapse or on the other other side going to do the right thing. But looking at the facts in context and what is this person's behaviors and what are the facts actually telling me right now? And also with facts and context is emotion based reasoning. I may be terrified that this person has relapsed, but if I don't have the facts, then I'm just jumping to conclusions. I'm using emotion based reasoning. I may have a ton of anxiety that this person has relapsed because they're late coming home. Do I have any facts? Maybe they got caught in traffic. So what facts do I have to support my rationale? Ruminations are also common where you just play a thought over and over in your head. It gets stuck. Practice thought stopping. Actually talk back to it. Go. Nope, not thinking about that right now. Or a thought box with worry time. And I put these two together because you don't want to just write your thought down, put it in the thought box and never attend to it again. Most of the time you want to process it. But you don't need to be worrying all day, every day. So take your worries, write them down, put them in your thought box and then at a particular time every day, maybe 30 minutes in the evening after dinner, that's your worry time. That's when you can worry about anything in that thought box. Many people find that that helps them because it doesn't say I can't worry. It just says there's a time and a place for that. Brain fog is very common in people because that HPA axis, when it's dysregulated, you're not getting good sleep. So in order to address brain fog, you're not going to make it go, go away completely because part of it is stress induced. But do as much as you can to get good quality sleep. Inadequate sleep will produce brain fog. Stay hydrated. They find that cognition is impaired when we become in dehydrated. Now, don't over hydrate, but just make sure that you are remembering to drink water and have compassion with yourself. Some days you're just going to be foggy and that's okay. Embrace yourself and say, I'm doing the best I can today. I. Today's not going to be an a day. People who've experienced trauma, people who love someone with an addiction. People with brain fog often have difficulty with attention. Okay, well, do your best to remove distractions. If you've got to focus on something, shut your door, pull down the blinds, turn off excess noise, whatever you need to do to give yourself the best shot of being able to focus. Work with your rhythms. If you are a morning person, do it in the morning. If you're an afternoon person, do it in the afternoon. But work with yourself instead of against yourself and chunk it. Do 10, 15 minutes. Break it down into small, very small manageable tasks. That way it doesn't feel so overwhelming. You're already exhausted, you're having difficulty paying attention, you got brain fog, you got a bunch of stuff going on, so chunk it. Every little step you do is going to get you closer to being done. And it doesn't feel so overwhelming. Most of us can say, all right, I can do just about anything for 10 minutes. Difficulty problem solving. Well, with all those other cognitive things going on and the brain fog, yeah, it makes sense. Problem solving is going to be difficult. You're in fight or flight mode, not in let's think about it mode. Okay, Give yourself a break. Recognize that you are in a stress state right now. So problem solving isn't going to be up on your list of things to do. So write things down. Sometimes when you write it down, you can see it and then you can more easily solve the problem and seek input. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. Low motivation and learned helplessness. When everything you do there's that extreme word there seems to fail or not work out the way you want it to. It can feel depressing. It can. You can feel like, what's the point of me trying? Because it, quote, never works out. Look for the exceptions. And that can lead to a sense of learned helplessness where you just lay down and say, you know what? I give up. I. I just. I can't even try anymore. Part of that is your HPA axis and your stress response system and all that. Basically, the neurotransmitters are becoming somewhat unbalanced, but that's a different video. Some things you can do. Motivational enhancement. Make a list of the benefits and drawbacks to whatever you've got to do. Whether it's doing the laundry or exercising or changing a behavior, whatever it is. Benefits and drawbacks of doing it, and the benefits and drawbacks of not doing it. What are the benefits to not doing the laundry? Hey, you know, yes, it can be broken down into something that's that simple. But it's important to remember that whatever you're doing right now, the same has benefits to it. So if you're avoiding doing the laundry, one of the benefits of do of, of that is you're not exerting energy. You're not exerting energy, and you may not have the energy to give right now. Set smart goals. And yes, I know there's two S's there. Generally, smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time living, time limited. I added the extra S for small. That goes back to chunking it. Small, specific goals. Something that you can achieve, you know, depending on how you're feeling. Ten minutes, one day. Whatever it is, use your energy for what you can control. Be purposeful. Before you do something, think to yourself, is this a good use of my energy? Can I actually make a difference in this? And then going along with chunking, do 15, you know, 15 minutes, 10 minutes. Most of us can do that for just about anything. In terms of environments, living with somebody with an addiction can make an environment very toxic. You're walking on eggshells all the time. So it's important to figure out, how can you create an environment that feels safe, where you don't feel like you've got to watch everything you say, what, where you've got to think and calculate everything you do. How can you feel safe and comfortable in your environment? And specifically in your environment, what do you identify as making it toxic? Housing and financial instability. We already kind of talked about reach out to social services, Reach out to United Way if you need to. In order to find out what resources are available should the bottom fall out? Not saying that it's going to, but it. I always like having a backup plan. And unsafe conditions physically. You know, maybe your significant other is using illicit drugs and leaving them. Paraphernalia all over the house, and you've got a toddler running around. Okay, that's not good. So what do you need to do to make the environment, like, literally safe and then unsafe legally? If you get caught in the car with someone with particular drugs or if it happens to be under your seat, that could also reflect badly on you. So how can you make sure that you stay safe in your environment and relationships? Attachment trauma. Remember I said the person with the active addiction is off often inconsistent, unresponsive, inattentive, unvalidating, unencouraging. I know that's not really a word. And unsafe. Those are all things that contribute to insecure attachment and abandonment fears. So how can you be what you crave? How can you create a secure attachment with yourself as well as with other people who can give that back to you? Other people and yourself who can be consistent, consistently aware of what you need, responsive, attentive, validating, encouraging, and safe. There's also often a lot of increased internal conflict between your should and your inner critic and yourself, as well as external conflict. It's important to depersonalize some of this conflict and recognize behavior as communication. When this person is getting angry and being, you know, belligerent about something, they're trying to protect themselves, okay? Recognizing it as conflict and not personalize it towards you. Recognizing they're trying to protect themselves. Separate the behavior from the person. You love them, hate the behavior. See the scared inner child in both of you. You know, your inner child is going, I really want to help you. I really don't want you to abandon me. And they're scared inner child is going, I really can't take the pain, and I don't want to be abandoned. So you've got two scared inner ch. Inner children that may be showing up to some of these conflicts. Explore projected guilt and blame. Projected guilt is when somebody's trying to make you feel guilty or when you're feeling guilty about something that is not your fault. And consider the benefit of radical acceptance. They're doing the best they can with the tools they have. And once you've accepted that, I don't like it, but they're doing the best they can with the tools they have working towards the F word. And I know you're like, okay, that has way too many asterisks Forgiveness. Forgiveness is a power play. It doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean that everything's right with the world. It means I am choosing not to continue to invest in energy in being angry about this because I can't control it, because I can't change what happened. I am going to use my energy to learn from it and to move on. Forgiveness of yourself and forgiveness of them. Global interventions. These kind of address all of the areas that are impacted. Begin with the end in mind. Defining that rich and meaningful life. Pay attention to your health behaviors. Regulate those circadian rhythms. Make sure you're getting adequate quality sleep. Pay attention to your nutrition. Give your body the building blocks it needs to help you have the hormones and neurotransmitters and stuff to be happy. And health maintenance. Go to the doctor, make sure that your hormones are in whack and all of that stuff. And mindfulness. Being consistently aware and responsive to your physical, emotional, cognitive, environmental, and interpersonal needs. Being aware of what's important and what you need in this moment doesn't mean you're always going to get it. But being mindful, consistently mindful of it, is going to help you meet those needs before. Before you start having problems. Recovery involves understanding addiction and what you can and cannot control. Defining what a rich and meaningful life looks like for you, even if that means having someone in it that has an addiction. Exploring the impact of current behaviors, environment, and relationships on your ability to achieve your rich and meaningful life. Identifying goals and strategies to work toward that rich and meaningful life, which may mean mitigating some of the impacts that are caused by the person with the addiction. And increasing and maintaining your motivation to achieve those goals. Now, obviously, this was an hour. I could probably do 15 hours on tools and techniques that are needed and can be helpful in the impacts of addiction. But my goal in today's presentation was really to help you understand that being in a relationship with someone with an active addiction can be traumatic. And to recognize that, not minimize that. And recognize the impact that has on your entire body, not just your thinking, but your entire body, and steps that you might take in order to start toward your recovery journey. I am so happy you are all with.