A Caregiver's Guide On The Tolls Of Loving An Addict

Of course you love them and you want to support them while they figure out this whole addiction. But their addiction has left you drained, anxious and resentful. You're literally running on empty. And then you come over to this YouTube channel and you hear me saying to be more positive and to be a better listener and to allow them time to figure this thing out. But sometimes there's literally nothing else to give. You've probably heard the saying that you can't pour out of an empty cup and literally your cup is empty. So in this video, I want to talk to you about how to fill your cup back up so that you can be a loving, caring, supportive person. For those of you who are new here, welcome to the YouTube channel. Put the shovel down. My name is Amber Hollingsworth and I'm a master addiction counselor. Now not only do I have the professional experience in the training, but I have also been in the family members shoes. Which is why on this channel I like to present things to you from both perspectives. The person who's struggling with addiction and their loved ones. In this particular video, we're going to be focusing in on the family member's perspective. Because your wants and needs matter too. Because I want you to stay five steps ahead of addiction. And you can only do that if you have the emotional resources to keep going. If you're trying to help a loved one who has an addiction, consider subscribing to this channel. I'll make sure you have all the information, help and support you need to get your family out of this situation. Now I know when it comes to the family members perspective, you always hear about self care. You have to practice good self care. And I don't know why, but I'm a little put off by the term self care. I think cuz it sounds a little cheesy or corny or I don't know, I just don't like the term I guess. But I'll have to admit it is pretty dang important. So let's talk about it just a little bit. I think it helps to break self care down into multiple categories. It helps to think about self care as the way that you fill up your own willpower gas tank. And it can be helpful to think about in multiple different categories. One of the most important ways that you can practice self care is to give yourself a break from thinking about the addiction problem all the time. It's quite natural to develop an anxiety around it. Some of us even get obsessively focused on it. And it can if we let it take over our whole entire lives and it becomes pretty much all we think about and sometimes all we even talk about. That's unhealthy for us and everyone around us. If you've gotten to that point, it's actually a decision that you're going to have to make to not let yourself go down that rabbit hole. This is exactly what I have to tell people. In early recovery, you have to be in control of your cravings, which means when you feel yourself going rabbit hole, you have to redirect yourself back out of it. You have to make the choice to distract yourself from the situation. The more you obsess about it, the more you think about it, the more it's draining from you. Yes, you need to think about it to some degree, but not 24,7. It's okay to take a break, which means you need to pay particular attention to your own well being. You know, like your physical health. Of course, eating good and exercising, that pretty much helps with everything, right? So you got to take care of that. But also make sure you're engaging in your own hobbies and interest activities. Do you like to read? Do you like to go to yoga? Do you like to go to girls night or trivia night or whatever it is that you like to do? Don't stop doing that because you think you need to be home to babysit the situation, which is what so many people do. They give up their whole life because they're trying so hard to keep control of the situation. They feel like if they leave that their loved one is going to have a relapse. If you struggle with that, I made a video about it and released it just recently. I'll link it up here in case you're interested. You can go back and watch that after this one. But don't stop your whole life trying to control, control that situation. You're only going to leave yourself exhausted out of emotional resources, and it's not really going to help anyways. Even if you're there, they're going to sneak around and do what they're going to do. So it's kind of an illusion that we trick ourselves with feeling like we're in control because we're there, but we're not really in control. You also want to take care of yourself financially because a lot of what happens when you have maybe an addicted child, an addicted parent, an addicted sibling, an addicted spouse, it can have major, major impact on your finances. Maybe because you're paying part of their responsibilities, maybe because they're using your money to engage in their addiction. Other ways it can impact your finances is because you're so exhausted your work and your productivity's down. But the thing of it is this. If you don't have enough financial security to feel like I'm going to be okay, then you're going to be constantly stressed. That financial strain is going to be literally eating through your willpower tank non stop and causing you to be even more on edge. You'll probably have to make some decisions in there about how much to help, how much to not help. And I'm not one of these people who tell you you cannot help someone who has an addiction because there's other things that go into enabling besides that. But what I am telling you is don't help someone to the point that you're putting yourself in major financial distress or you're causing major financial conflict between you and other family members. Like for example, this happens a lot. If it's a child and one parent wants to keep paying all the kids bills and I say kid that they're an adult, the adult child's bills and every and all their responsibilities and the other spouse gets really resentful because now they can't retire early. You have to take care of yourself in that financial way if you want to keep your stress managed. And you also want to make sure that you watch your emotional resources overall. And one of the ways that you do this is not only do you set limits around how much you're going to think about it, but how much you're going to talk about it. For example, if you have a loved one who tends to get intoxicated and call you, or your loved one wants to constantly talk to you about their problems and maybe they're playing the victim and maybe they're letting their stress out on you. You can put limits around how much you're going to absorb the other person's stresses. I'm not saying that you have to cut them off completely, but you may want to like literally set a time window or a day window from which you deal with that kind of thing, which you have conversations with them about what they're going through and what stresses they're dealing with. And don' leave that door open 247 where that person is coming to you all the time, because you could end up not even being able to sleep at night, dreading that phone call, being exhausted, being scared not to answer it and scared to answer it. I've been there myself and it sucks. So it is completely fine to set a limit on that. Now, if you struggle to set limits, I have a whole playlist on this channel all about boundaries. And remember, boundaries are about protecting you, not controlling them. That's where the biggest confusion comes in about boundaries. And if you're the kind of person who tends to be a little conflict avoidant, or you have some people pleasing type tendencies, just verbalizing these boundaries can cause you some anxiety. There's a lot of tips and tricks on how to verbalize boundaries when you need to. But one of the things that I teach people in our invisible intervention course is something called an accusations audit. So it's when you have to tell somebody something that they're may not like, or they may have some resistance to, go ahead and start from their point of view. For example, if you're needing to set a limit, you can use an accusations audit by saying something like, look, I know I've kind of changed the rules of the game on you, and I've always done this in the past, but I've decided that I can't keep doing that. So you, you say their point of view first. You can even say something like, look, I know this is kind of bitchy, or I know that this is a little bit unfair or whatever it is you think they're going to be thinking. You go ahead and say that and then you set your limit. So you're acknowledging that you're changing the rules of the game. You're acknowledging that they may not like it, that it may not be fair, that it may cause them a lot of difficulty, but you're going to set your limit anyway. The next thing I want to remind you to do is give yourself a little compassion, grace and forgiveness. You are not going to do this perfectly. I know you're watching my videos and I'm telling you all these strategies and these perfect ways of saying things and how to not be the bad guy and all that kind of stuff. But you are a human being. And listening to me say it, who deals with it in a clinical role these days, is totally different than you having to deal with it in your everyday life. And not only are you dealing with it so much more often than I'm dealing with it, but what your loved one does has a negative impact on you, whereas it doesn't necessarily have a big negative impact on me. So please understand that I know that even I have all these strategies and all these helpful tips that you are a human being, okay? And you're going to mess it up. You're going to get yourself in a bad guy roll. You're going to lose it, relapse, you're going to not say all the right things. It's going to happen. And when it happens, there are things you can do to damage control the situation. But the first thing is you need to give yourself a little grace. Now I'm not saying you're giving yourself permission to just act willy nilly and act without strategy and say all the bad things. Be realistic here. You're not going to do it perfectly. The good thing is, if you practice my strategies, for the most part, you have enough credibility and credit with your loved one. You can spare a little every now and then if you need it. And lastly, it's important to maintain focus and perspective, helping support your loved one. Yes, it should be a priority, but it should not be your sole focus. Making it your sole focus is only going to lead you to more stress them to more stress. Both of you will have more resentment and you'll be less effective. Dealing with a situation is so terribly exhausting because you have to stay in your strategic, critical thinking brain all the time. And it doesn't leave a lot of room to for emotion, for relaxing, for just being a regular person. You're constantly thinking about how you're interacting with it, what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to. Are you enabling? Are you being in the bad guy role? Are you giving them enough time to think about it? It is constantly pouring out of you and in order to keep doing that, you have to keep filling your glass up too. And if you've listened to anything out there geared towards family members who have addicted loved ones, you've probably heard you need to get support and I owe you agree. But it's another one of those things that can feel kind of frustrating and a little bit cheesy sometimes. And occasionally it can feel insulting because it can feel like, hey, I'm not the one with the problem. They're the one with the problem. Why are you telling me I need to go to therapy or I need to go to a support group? They're the one with the issue and I get it. In some ways you're right, they are the one with the addiction. But you also have an issue, and that is you have an addicted loved one. And I'm not saying that's your fault, but it is a big old problem on your plate. So I like to think about support in a couple of ways. There's the kind of support you get from other people who understand what you're going through, who are like a shoulder to cry on, a voice of reason and understanding. And that is super helpful. But sometimes you also need some direct advice. You want to know what the heck do I do and not do in this situation? And so if you don't have that kind of support, then you may want to look for a counselor, a coach. We offer several types of support. We have a free Facebook group that is only for family members. In there you can get a lot of support from people who understand exactly what you're going through. We also have a family coaching community. It's like a membership that you can be part of where you can talk to our family specialists and get advice specifically about your situation to get yourself that piece of support. What other things have you found help you keep your sanity? Please list those in the comment section below because your solutions could help someone else in a very similar situation. Up next, I'm going to put that video up here for you about the one about being super scared and living in fear of relapse. If you haven't seen that one, it's a good one to watch. Next.