Boundaries 101: How to Love an Addict Without Burning Out

Loving someone with an addiction is incredibly difficult and heartbreaking. Of course you want to help them, but you've also got to protect yourself. And as you probably already know, this can be very, very challenging. So I want to give you some tips and pointers on how to avoid the top three most common boundary mistakes and give you a little guidance on what to do instead. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth, and you are watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel designed to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction. So you are always five steps ahead of it. We're here to help you get your life and your family back on track by helping you see addiction from every angle. All right, so let's get into our topic. Now, these top three boundary mistakes are probably not what you're thinking. Now, you're probably going to be a little surprised by these top three boundary mistakes, but hear me out. There is logic to the reasoning here. Okay, so the first top boundary mistake is setting too many boundaries. Now, I know that's probably the one you're gonna be like, what? Are you serious? I'm not setting enough boundaries. What happens when you have an addicted loved one is you start trying to control their addiction, because their addiction not only impacts them and ruins their life, but it impacts you, and it starts to ruin your life. So naturally, you want to start trying to control that. So you start setting too many boundaries about what they do and don't do. And that's where the biggest mistake comes in. Because in actuality, boundaries are really limits on your behavior, not limits on someone else's behav. When you do this wrong, you end up getting in this giant power struggle. You end up setting all these boundaries that you really can't even enforce anyway, only makes you more upset and ruins your credibility with the person. You either end up feeling like you're letting someone walk all over you because you're not holding the boundaries appropriately, or you end up feeling like you have to be a total big old, you know, something that starts with a B in order to keep those limits. And neither one feels good. Now, you may be wondering what I mean by when I say too many boundaries about little things related to their using. Here's a common one. I see a lot of people set a boundary around if you use one more time or if I find whatever substance in this house, I'm going to do X, Y, or Z. Now, the problem with this is, is that most of the time, you're probably not really willing to Back it up. For the most part, when we set these kinds of boundaries, we're setting it because we're at the end of our rope, we're exhausted, and we're just trying to communicate to this person, hey, this is it. I'm to the end of my rope. One more time and you're. You're out, buddy. One more time and I'm done. One more time, I'm cutting you off. Whatever. You're trying to set this sort of last line in the sand here. And not only that, but usually when you set it, you may not be being honest with yourself about are you really, really ready to be done if you find the substance in your house? If they have one relapse, most of the time you're not. The issue is, is that when you're saying this, you're thinking to yourself, like, okay, they're going to know I am done, and I mean business this time, and they are not going to cross this boundary. Let me give you a little hint. I hate to tell it to you, but they are going to cross the boundary. So when you set a boundary, you need to be not just prepared to back it up, but fully understanding that you are going to have to back this up. Don't delude yourself into thinking that they're going to know I mean business and they're not going to do it this time. They are definitely going to do it this time. Okay, so go into it knowing that you're going to have to hold this boundary. The issue with the thing about if you have alcohol in this house, if I find drugs in this house, is that if you're letting someone live in your house who has an addiction, they are going to have it in your house. And I know that that's frustrating. And I know a lot of you are like, are you saying we should put up with this? What I'm saying is, is if you are knowingly letting someone with an addiction live in your house, then you are knowingly letting them have that substance in your house. In the best case scenario, you set this limit and they don't have it in your house, but they have it in your driveway in their car, or they have it behind your house under the tre, something like that. But if you're trying to tell yourself that an addict is not going to engage in their addiction in the place where they live, then you're not being honest with yourself. And the issue with something like one more relapse is like, let's say someone's done good for six months, they've been great. They've been working a program, they've been sober. Things have been wonderful. And then they have a lapse. You're not going to want to be like, you're out or I'm done with you, because they've been doing really good for six months. So instead of setting these, like, no tolerance limits, I usually suggest setting a vaguer limit, which I know might be surprising because most of us think, well, we need to be more specific and we need to tell them exactly what it is. That's not actually the case. You'd be better off to set something like, listen, I know you're trying to work through some things. I know you're figuring this out, and I know you're going to figure it out. But if this unmanageability starts creeping over into my life or into the other people who live in the house lives, then I'm going to have to take action on it. Just keep it vague. That leaves you room to make a game time decision about how and when you want to set those limits. Now just remember, boundaries are about you and what is okay in your life as long as you can remember that. And be really honest with yourself. Because sometimes people are like, yeah, Amber, I'm saying that because of myself. When they're really just trying to kind of find a loophole or a way around and still trying to control the person. So you got to be incredibly honest with yourself here. Okay? But it should be about you. It should not be trying to control their behavior. Now, the next big, giant boundary mistake that I see a lot is that you get angry when you get to the point of having to set a boundary. So you're setting the boundary in anger. And usually this happens because we've broken our own boundaries so many times and we feel like this mix of guilt and resentment. And in order to actually be firm on our boundaries, we almost have to get ourselves worked up to anger. But when we set the boundary in anger, our energy, our tone, everything else is conveyed to that person, which ends up hitting their fight or flight response, which makes them more defensive. And you know the story around, around we go. So you may have to get to a point where you are angry in order to set the boundary, but wait until the point that you are calm in order to communicate the boundary. If you have to communicate the boundary. Okay, so. Because when you go in angry, it's just not going to go well, no matter how reasonable it is, no matter how fair you've been, no matter you've given them 20 miles, it's just not going to go well if you go in angry. And the third big mistake that I see people make, and it kind of connects with the number two is, is when you don't express any kind of empathy, when communicating a bound is not expressing any empathy when you communicate the boundary. It's really, really helpful if you will acknowledge how this boundary is going to impact them, if it's going to cause them an inconvenience, if it's going to be difficult, if you've always done it before and now you're changing the rules of the game. If you will just acknowledge that again, will that will usually make the person a lot less defensive and the boundary will go over a lot smoother. Now that kind of leads me to this little bonus mistake. Okay, I feel like I need to throw it in there. I know I said three, but I got to give you this one. The bonus mistake is expecting that they are going to like or agree with your boundary, because you got to get yourself mad to set the boundary. You throw down the law and then you're upset when they don't understand, when they don't like it, when they don't like, agree with you. But come on, you're setting a rule and limit, and people don't like to have rules and limits. So go into it knowing that they're probably not going to be very happy about it. Now, you can damage control that by expressing the empathy, not going into angry, but in the end they're not going to like it. So just come to terms with that. Before you go into that conversation. I got a couple of other suggestions for you when it comes to communicating boundaries. And these actually come from one of our family recovery specialists, Kim. These are actually her. She actually puts these boundaries into three different categories to help you understand where and when and how to set the boundary. First off, she would say, don't set a boundary around everything. There are actually two other categories. Only one of the categories is a boundary, and that's usually having to do with what you can and can't do, which we've talked about. But there's also a request, right? A lot of times in relationships we have a request of someone. Like, for example, let's say you're in a marriage and you want to request that your partner take out the trash. Now you can set a boundary around that, I guess, if you want to, by saying something like, if you don't take out the trash, then I. I'm not going to do the dishes. But you can see how that will get you into a power struggle situation. Not everything requires a boundary, meaning not everything requires like a consequence or if then statement. In fact, sometimes just giving a request, hey, it would be really helpful if, hey, this would be nice if. Or letting someone know that when X happens, it has this negative impact on you can actually be more effective than communicating a boundary. Because sometimes when we communicate a boundary, it just hits that control button with the other person, it hits that defensive button and it just doesn't land very well. But when you make a request and you're just saying, hey, it would be super helpful if. I would love it if. It would be wonderful if. Then when they don't do the thing which there's a likelihood that they won't, or when they do the thing that they're not supposed to do, and there's also a likelihood that that's going to happen, they're actually going to feel more guilty about it. When you've made this request and, and kindness and empathy, totally reasonably and they don't do it, that guilt is actually going to get through to them much better than when they're defensive. Because when they get defensive, all they do is go into their head and they justify their actions and they rationalize and they think of all of your flaws. And to be honest, it just really isn't the learning moment that you want it to be. In this other category, Kim calls this one Kim, that's the one. That's our family recovery specialist. She calls this an information update. Sometimes you just want to give a person a piece of information. Hey, I'm just letting you know this is happening. Or X, Y or Z, or this is my plans or this is my thinking. You're not setting a limit, you're not trying to control them. You're just keeping them in the loop of information. So if you can kind of separate what is an information update, what is a request, and what is a boundary that will help you to avoid making the mistake number one, which is trying to set too many boundaries. The thing of it is, is every boundary you set, it's kind of like setting a rule. And now you got to back up the rule, which usually only makes your life a lot harder. So, yes, there are some things you have to set a boundary or a rule around. Like safety. Yeah, that's a big one. Safety. You got to set boundaries around safety. So there is a time and place for that. But don't stress yourself out by doing it in a way that's going to backfire and by putting yourself in a position to constantly have to manage everything and play the bad guy role and stick with what you said when maybe you don't even want to. Leave yourself room for a game time decision. Leave yourself room to change your mind. Leave yourself room to have some flexibility and that will actually make you feel a lot more in control of the situation. Now if you want to learn more on boundaries, I have an entire playlist on boundaries. I'm going to link it up here for you so you can watch that next.