Empathy vs. Boundaries: Striking the Perfect Balance

Empathy versus boundaries. Now, empathy, when it's done correctly, can be extremely helpful for yourself and for other people. But when empathy runs dry and isn't really practiced mindfully, I guess I would say then it can run into enabling, and it turns into enabling, which then turns into resentment on your part, which then actually robs you of your ability to have empathy anymore. So it's important if you're gonna. If you are, like, a very empathetic person or if you just want to at least communicate to someone that you have empathy, that you sort of understand the line between helping and enabling, between empathy and boundaries. And that's what we're gonna talk about in today's video. Just before we went live, I was chatting with Campbell, and I said, campbell, what you got to say on this topic? And she said, empathy and boundaries ride together on the same bus. And I thought that was a good metaphor. In my mind, I pictured, like, I don't know if you guys remember riding on the bus. I rode on the bus, still on the little green seats, you know? And in my mind, it's like I pictured empathy and boundaries sitting on the little green seat, like, two, like, besties, like, talking about everything together. And I think that's a great metaphor, because when you can use these things together and they work in sort of coordination, then it works really well. But when you practice empathy without boundaries, it leads to a big old mess. Let's talk about how that happens first, and then maybe we'll talk about how to, like, get that train back on the track, get those two in the same bus seat together. Being friends again. Pretty often we get new family consults, and what. What is going on. A lot of times is the family. They'll be telling us the history and everything, which is totally normal. And you can tell that the family member has. Has a great amount of empathy for the person. Usually not. Not necessarily because they have the empathy for the addiction, but what they have the empathy for is usually, like, some past struggle this person has gone through or some current struggle this person has gone through. Like, for example, like, if the. If they know that the person has a lot of anxiety or if they know the person has a history of childhood trauma. Or sometimes if it's parents. The parents have a lot of empathy and maybe even a little guilt wrapped in there about maybe there was a divorce, and they feel like maybe something they did is causing the addiction. And that's all well and good, to have empathy and understand someone's perspective and to feel for them and to care for them. But when that empathy crosses over to enabling, what happens is that empathy turns into this compelling feeling inside that makes you feel like you need to somehow fix the situation for them or make it better or make up for a certain situation. That's when we cross over the line into unhealthy empathy. So empathy should be a thought, a feeling, a statement, a communication. It shouldn't necessarily be a bunch of behaviors involved in fixing, making excuses for giving money for all that kind of stuff. What happens is you feel like you're compensating for whatever difficult thing that this other person is facing in life, because you really do see where that would be really hard. And it. And you do care about them and you can understand things from their point of view. So you try to mitigate it somehow, like I said, make up for it, fix it, or some kind of way. But when you do that, it leads not to a great place. Because typically when you're so empathetic that you're fixing everything for someone, they never learn to fix the thing for themselves. And that's when you move over into enabling. One really easy way to remember this and sort of like a little formula that I have, but when you're helping someone, you leave with a really good feeling. Always doesn't matter helping anyone, you really get a feeling. So you know you helped because you feel good about it. When you're enabling someone, you usually leave with a not great feeling, usually some level of resentment because you're. When you're enabling, it's like forced helping. It's like helping that you felt like you had to do for some reason and you didn't really want to do it, but you did it, but you don't want to, so you have resentment about it. That's how you know you're over into the enabling category and not into the helping category. Think about it. Think about organizations you've helped in the past, people you've helped in the past. You feel great about that. You feel good. Like, even if you go and you donate things to Goodwill, you feel good because you're like, well, these things are going to a good home. And maybe they'll help someone, you feel good about it. But contrast that with the last time that you helped someone, usually because they, like asked you for something or because you noticed that they were going without in some kind of way, or they weren't taking care of themselves in some kind of way. And then you jump in there and you start trying to fix it. What happens to you is you eventually maybe not in the first five minutes. But eventually you become resentful of it because what you're going to notice is you're doing and doing and doing, and they're not doing and doing and doing. And then it's really bad because then they start expecting you to do it. And then, you know, maybe you helped with money or you helped with babysitting, or you helped cover someone's shift or something like that, and now they're asking you to do that, like regular more than once. Then you end up having this resentment towards the person, which in the long run will make you become a not very empathetic person. And this is what we see inside of families where addiction is happening. So it. So usually if it's your loved one, your spouse, your kid, your parent, or whatever, and you do feel for them, like I said, you care about them, you love them, and you start fixing things for them because you have that empathy for them, then you. You fixing it, but you usually have bad attitude about it. So the way you interact with that person becomes kind of toxic. And if you guys have watched these videos very much, you know, I call it the bad guy role, then you find yourself in the bad guy role. And that comes from this energy that you're carrying around, that comes from this resentment because you're doing things that you don't want to do and. And you ultimately feel taken advantage of. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of something called the drama triangle, if you haven't. Kim and I did a video on this a while back, but they talk about these sort of these three roles. The persecutor role, the hero role, and the victim role. And so what happens is, if you jump in there and you're the rescuer and you fix things for someone eventually, which is an unhealthy role, eventually you fall down the victim role, because then you start feeling like you were taken advantage of. And then you move over to the persecutor role, because then you get attitude about it and you usually kind of say something nasty, or you put little passive aggressive comments in, or your energy's just cold, or you start avoiding the person, it's going to come out of you in some kind of unhealthy way. We've all been there before. Put your hand up in the comments or chat, if you know what I'm talking about. If you've done this, I'm gonna put both my hands up. I have more. I'd put more up because I've done this. And it's it's hard not, not to fall into this, especially if you're sort of raised this way. You may have even been overtly taught this maybe through, like, a religion or just through, like, your family history and culture and. And what your family taught you was right and wrong. And like I said, it's always okay to help, and you will feel good about it and you'll have a good attitude about it. But when you are, like I said, when you're using that empathy and you're doing more than you want to do, and then you have that bad attitude, guess what? Then they have an even worse attitude back at you. And now you're really mad. Now you're like, oh, I did this and this and this, and now you're sassing me. Then you get, now you got, like, the toxicity of the power struggle and the bad guy role, and we're all up on the drama triangle with the victim, hero, rescuer, perpetrator, all that kind of stuff, all those unhealthy roles, and you lead yourself into a really bad boundary situation. So I feel like an easy way to think of empathy is think of it like a feeling, a feeling that you have a care or concern, and you should use that care and concern and empathy to communicate that to the person. I don't think you're ever going to go wrong communicating some kind of empathetic statement to a person. Wow, that must be really hard. Gosh, you know, like, I don't blame you for being upset. You know, like, I can see why that happened. I can see why it's hard to pay the bills. Whatever it is, use that empathy. You have to communicate very empathetically with the person not to fix their situation. When you communicate empathy to someone, you actually change their brain a little bit in a really good way. You actually turn down the volume of their emotions, like, if they're feeling, like, in crisis or they're stressed out or they're anxious. And it's almost like it soothes that uncomfortable emotional state, which then allows their brain to kick in and allows them to actually think and sort through and solve their problems more effectively. So I do think you should use your empathy with people. I just don't think you should use it to fix their situation. Now that's not me telling you can never help someone. Remember I told you help is always a good thing. You help anyone you want as much as you want. Give a million dollars if you want to build them a house, give them a car, whatever. But if you'll stay in that formula that I gave you, you'll have a good feeling about it, and they'll have a good feeling about it because you're going to be doing it from a good place in your heart and not doing it from a place of feeling obligated for some reason. And if they're helping themselves, if someone's trying to better their own situation, if someone's trying to dig out of a hole, even if they created, it doesn't even matter because we all create our own holes, right? Like I've dug my own holes a million times, right? You can still have empathy for someone who put themselves in a situation because we've all done that before, right? If they're taking steps to fix it and you're coming alongside them and you're sort of matching them one for one or something like that, you're going to be fine. You know, if. If somebody's working hard and maybe they've like dug a big financial hole and they need some help paying some kind of bill, but they're working hard and they're paying the other bills and they got a job and they're trying to get caught up, you're going to feel okay about that. What you're not going to feel okay about is when you're paying somebody's electric bill again this month and you've paid it the last three months and they're not even working, you're not going to have a good feeling about that. You're not going to have a good feeling about it. If you're covering someone's shifts, like maybe you work with someone and maybe they're a single mom, right? And you have empathy for them. You're like, man, I don't even know how she does it. She's got three kids, she's a single mom, right? And she has one of the kids are sick one day or whatever, and you cover for that person, you'll feel fine about that. But if it keeps happening over and over and you feel like the person isn't trying to help the situation themselves, that's when you're going to get into like a not good place in your heart about it, which is going to lead to not great behaviors and vibes. And then you feel upset with them, and then you feel upset with yourself for feeling upset with them. And then you feel upset with yourself because you feel like you were weak and why did you cave in? And you shouldn't have done that. Now everybody just feels bad and they can feel that coming from you having those good, healthy Boundaries will allow you to care for someone more effectively and more properly. For example, here's, here's an example that I sometimes give to like young people who I see in counseling or. And this doesn't have to do with addiction, just. Just like a regular. Like I can remember I was counseling this young girl one time, she's like 18 or 19, and she had this little house. It was a small little house, but had like two bedrooms. And she was living in the house. She's going to college and she had a friend who she worked with, but who had no family support. I think they worked like a fast food place or something like that. And she wanted to let the friend move into her house with her to help her out because she really didn't have anywhere to go. This friend of hers and we were talking about, and she said, well, I'm just going to let them live there for free. And I said, well, let's talk about that. That could be a problem. And she's, you know, this is a young girl and she's thinking, why could that be a problem? I said, because it's going to start out by being a problem. Because if this other young girl is living in your house for free, she's going to feel like. Not like it's her home, you know, she's not going to feel as comfortable just being there. She's going to feel uncomfortable. She's gonna, she. It's just gonna make her feel weird because she's gonna know inside that she's not paying anything. And like, let's say you let her stay there and then she starts leaving her dirty clothes somewhere. Now you really gonna be mad. You're like, oh, now you're taking advantage of me. I'm letting you stay here. What if she like quits her job or something? Now you have this bad feeling towards her. You're like, I'm gonna stay here for free with no rent. And now you quit your job. You see how this can lead to bad feelings? When. Another example of when a boundaries issue can come up is like, if you need some help for something and you want to help, and you want to ask other people to help you for free, that's what friends do, right? You can ask a friend to do something for you once, maybe twice, and you're okay. But if you know you're going to need help with something more than one time, even if you have a friend who's willing to do it, who says, I'll totally do it for you for free, it's nothing if it's a little thing and they can just do it this one time, totally no big deal. That's what friends are for, right? But if, like, for example, my, you know, I have some people in my family who do like technology or whatever and I could say, hey, could you like, build me this website or whatever? They might even be like, I'll build you this website or whatever. That's a bad deal because that's a huge undertaking, that's a giant project and, and they're going to end up having a bad feeling towards you. You're going to end up feeling guilty about it, and then maybe something they built on the website isn't exactly like you wanted it, but you're not going to want to ask them to fix it because they already did it for free. It just creates all this uncomfortableness between you guys. So allowing friends to help if it's one time or whatever is totally fine. Even if you feel like helping out a friend if it's one time, it's a small task, it's no big deal, like, totally do it. Get a piece of advice about something. But if, if it's an ongoing thing that's going to keep happening, that is almost always going to lead you to a bad feeling. And ultimately it doesn't ever help that person in the end the way you want it to because it feels like, well, I'm just going to give them a leg up. But then they don't ever gain the skills that they need to gain to get themselves out of that situation or to keep themselves away from that situation. You know, we're. We get ourselves in bad situations because we make mistakes. We all do that. But it's the muscles and the skills that we develop. All of those come from working our way out of bad situations. So when you're, that's what enabling means, right? Like you are enabling someone to stay stuck. And not only is it not helping them, but it's not helping you. You're going to have bad thoughts, you're going to have a bad attitude, and no one is going to benefit from it. So the next time you feel tempted to do that, that's what I want you to remember. I want you to think, no, I care about you so much. I'm not going to r my relationship with you by doing more than I'm comfortable with doing now. Can you set that boundary in a very kind, loving way? Totally. Should you use a lot of empathetic statements when you do it? Hundred percent. Don't make the mistake. Most people make which is to do the thing but not express the empathy. Most of the time it's like we help someone out but then we have that resentment. So. So we're sort of sassy with the person or sarcastic with the person and it really should be the opposite way around. I want you to be kind to the person. I want you to express that empathy and if it's a one time thing every now and then totally help them. But don't always fix the problem. It will not get better if you're doing that. All right, Bri is on here with us. Bri is going to put some questions up here for us. Now there's a little, if you're watching live there's a little delay so you may want to go ahead and pop your question in there because every time I hit end the broadcast then like formal questions pop up. Debbie says what is the formula? Just came on. There's really, there's really a couple of formulas. One formula that I just sort of my way of understanding. Enabling is helping leaves you with a good feeling. Enabling leaves you with a bad feeling. That's how you're going to know which category am I in? If you left and you felt great about yourself, you, you helped. If you left and you felt bad about it and you have a nasty thoughts and you're mad at yourself for doing it and you're mad at them for putting you in the position that for you to have to do it, you're not. So that's, that's one. And then there's that second formula. As far as how much to help is you can help as much as they're helping themselves. If they take a step, you can take a step. If they take 20 steps, you can take 20 steps. There's no limit on the amount you can have help someone. There's no like. Well, as long as it's not more than $5. That's not what it is. It's they, they take a step and you take a step. As long as that's happening you will feel like you're helping them and you will have that good feeling. If you're taking all the steps, you won't have the good feeling. That's when you know you're in the wrong category. Hope that helps. What else we got, Bri? Emily says my 18 year old son isn't working. He has two tickets he has to pay for and, and we are not paying for them. I have expressed empathy and I have made it clear that we are not bailing him out. Five gold stars, Emily. He seems to have money for fun and marijuana. See, this is a perfect example. Emily, I'm so glad you said this, because if you go pay those tickets and then he goes out and hangs out with his friends all night on Saturday, you gonna be mad. You're gonna have a really bad attitude because you'll be like, what, I went to work. I don't earn the money I paid for your mess, and you're out there partying. And then. And then you know what you're gonna do, Emily? Then you're gonna be nasty about it, and then. Then you're gonna watch my videos. You're like, dang, we're told not to be nasty, but the thing that gets in our way is when we overdo and then we feel. We feel bad about it, and it makes us turn into that resentful person we don't want to be. So, lots of gold stars, Emily. How do you stop the unhealthy enabling after so many years of doing it? Oh, that's a good question. It's really hard to back out of it. So I know this isn't helpful for you, Beva. It's always helpful to start with a stricter, harder boundary and loosen up later than it is to start with a lax boundary and then bring it back into control. But sometimes we find ourselves in that situation. I think probably what I would do is it depends on how bad the enabling is. But probably the first thing I would do is just acknowledge that you're sort of changing the rules of the game and saying, I know in the past, this has been the deal, the arrangement, or I always did this or whatever, but, you know, I'm working on that. I'm going to cut it back and just explain it to them. Just say it. What you don't want to do is you don't want to say, look, I'm sick of dealing with your crap. I. I'm sick of paying your bills. I'm sick of fixing your tickets when you're out smoking weed, because then you're not expressing the empathy, right? And then plus they're mad at you because probably they're thinking, dude, you just did it on your own. I didn't make you do that, or whatever. So you want to give them the heads up. You want to take ownership of the fact that you put yourself in that situation, even if they are constantly the one asking you to do it, and you can say no. You know, you feel like they're pressuring you to do it. You. If you did it. It was your choice to do that. So you have to sort of own that. Don't blame them for your over empathy. And then if it's very extreme when we do see this sometimes, especially when it's like parents and kids, even like adult kids, like you've been paying everything for them for, like, ever, then you probably want to taper back. And if you're in a situation like that and you're not sure what to do. Campbell, who's one of our family therapists here, she's the expert at that. Like, how do you back out of that enabling thing? And she usually kind of puts you on like a taper plan. So it's not just like an immediate cutoff. If it's like a lot for a long time, you might have to step back from it. What else we got, Bri? How do you stop overdoing if not doing can have a negative effect on you? I think what you're saying, Kara and I could be wrong about this, but like, maybe, like, maybe like you have a husband who's alcoholic and you know, you're over helping by making sure he gets to work and doing everything for him, but if he doesn't go to work, you can't pay the bills. Is that kind of what you mean? Kara is like, if I don't let the, if I let the consequence happen for him, it also impacts me, which is the case pretty regularly, especially if it's like a spouse situation. You're going to have to figure out any ways that you can possibly to get yourself in a better situation, whether that's like separate finances or whatever you can do to mitigate it falling onto you. But then ultimately you need to face that consequence too. You need to be willing to face it because you're trying to outrun it. You're trying to fix this thing for this person, and you're going to run out of gas, you're going to run out of steam, and it. And you're never going to get out of the hole as long as you're doing that, which I get sometimes. It's scary, right? So get yourself as independent of a situation as possible and then start backing out of it. A new beginning says, what is it? It's done. What if it's done out of fear? That's very similar to Kara's question. What if it's done out of fear? The things that can make you enable are usually over empathy, fear, and sometimes guilt. Those are the sort of like the three things that are most likely to make you be helping in a way that you don't want to help. A lot of times. I know this is going to sound terrible, but for most people, that fear is like, what if I lose my loved one? What if they're homeless on the street? You know, those are usually like the big daddy fears. The thing I would say when I know this doesn't sound nice is you've already lost them. It's already happening. Like, if their addiction is so bad that you're like, if I fix this for them, they're going to be on the street then that your loved one that you remember isn't even in there. So the question isn't what if the bad thing happens? The question is, could we possibly get them back? Right? Like, you know, it's like sometimes people say, well, if I kick them out, they'll be out on the street. And it's not that I tell people, you have to kick a loved one out, because I don't. But I'm also saying, like, their misery isn't really any worse when they're on the street than when they're in your house. They're not any safer on the street than in your house. That that's all an illusion that you're putting on yourself. Now you might be sort of more miserable if they're on the street because you're actually going to be more worried about it than they are. And the reason you know that is is because if they were worried about that much, they would fix the problem. They would solve the problem. Like, when it comes to, like the homelessness, there are shelters everywhere, There are programs everywhere. You can call them and you can say, hey, found this program, this shelter where you go to it and they won't go to it. That's how you know you're worried more than they're worried. Fry Mango says. Fry Mango. Every time I see that profile picture makes me laugh. Feels like I'm being punished for trying to help my husband quit his 20 year weed addiction. He tries to band aid childhood trauma. He's sober one and a half weeks and will find any reason to get upset and blame me. He refuses to get any kind of therapy and address his childhood trauma issues. I think he has a pride issue and his mind thinks it's a sign of weakness. This is actually really common, what I would say to you first, if it's only been one and a half weeks, I'm going to give him a little extra room just to be kind of moody. I'm not saying like abusive or dangerous. Okay. I'm just saying being kind of moody and grumpy and irritable and impatient and whatever because it's dealing with draw. So at one and a half weeks in, the person is still going to be in withdrawals. I'm just going to give them some space. I'm just not going to have that many conversations with them. And then what I would say, even though you're frustrated because it's like, why don't you go get help at least to deal with the childhood trauma. If you just validate the fact that they're trying really hard to stop the marijuana, if they're one and a half weeks sober, if you can say, you know what, I know this is really hard. I know your anxiety is crazy, I know you probably can't sleep. Those are the empathy statements. This is where they come in, that's where they're helpful and I really appreciate you doing that. I know it's not easy. So if you can just appreciate the steps that they are taking, they're actually more likely if the childhood trauma wounds come back after they quit using, they're more likely to get some actual help for them. What happens a lot of times is once someone addresses their addiction issue, the. I'm not saying the trauma goes away, but the anxiety symptoms and stuff like that usually simmer down like a lot for a lot of people. It's not like the trauma is not there anymore. But for a lot of people it's manageable because the addiction has actually been putting all that on hyper overdrive because of the rebound effect and that kind of thing. And then if you ever get your moment and the timing is right, then maybe you can look at the video we did a couple weeks ago on art therapy. That's not artisan coloring and painting, it's artisan accelerated resolution therapy. Because that's the quick therapy that you can use to alleviate the symptoms of trauma. And you don't even have to talk about it if you don't want to. And you don't have to go to therapy every week and talk. Like it's like a quick one or two session things. So if you get that moment where you think they might be open to it, you might want to throw that on there as a, as an option or a solution because that's pretty acceptable for people, especially the ones that don't want to do like talk therapy and all that kind of stuff. Emily says, My 18 year old son barely lives with us. Spends most of his time at girlfriend's house because anything goes how do we talk about that? But we see that a lot in, like, the young adult situations where they're with their parents, and it ends up the parents end up feeling like, dude, I'm not the hotel. The boundary around this is if he's living in the house and he's just leaving a mess everywhere and he's not even helping, he's leaving, like, dishes with food in the room. You know, he won't even, like, take the trash out or do anything to help around the house. Then you set boundaries around that behavior. If that's what the issue is. If the issue is you just want him there more, you might be moving more on his side of the street. The issue in Emily, you're the one that said it was about your son had the fines to pay. The fines are where you want to set the boundary more than how much time he spends at the girlfriend's house. If he steps in and starts to address, like, working and stuff, that will help with the girlfriend thing. The other boundary you can set on that if you want to, is if it bothers you that he comes in late, you can say, hey, if you're coming home, I need you to be home before 11. Because we lock the door and we go to bed and, you know, we don't want to have to worry about it after that. You can say, I need you to be home by a certain time. If not, then I'll send you to spend the night somewhere. That's an appropriate boundary. But. But after they're like 18, 19, 20. Trying to control that is kind of stepping into their side of the street. Now you can ask them to communicate to you because I call that just good manners. I don't care how old you are. If I was staying in someone's house and I was going to be out late till 2, I would tell them I probably won't be home till like two because I'm a child. Not because of the boss, but because that's good manners. Sonia says, is coming off someone's bond a consequence or punishment for them? The agreement was get out of jail and go to rehab. No longer in rehab and actively using does nothing to better his life. Yes. Now, if you call the probation officer and turn them in, then you're probably putting it in punishment. If they've just chose, they know what the rule is. They know if they don't do treatment and they do all that other stuff, they could go back to jail and that just plays out. That is definitely a consequence. That's a good question. Anu says he's in treatment and he wants to come home. I don't feel safe with that. But if he goes to his parents, mom does drugs, what now? Okay, this is an example of what if I'm enabling because of fear. If you don't feel safe with that. When you say you don't feel safe with that, that makes me think like it's not safe. The person is abusive or you have kids in the house or they're bringing drugs in and there's kids in the house. There's a reason why you're saying that. And you have to always put safety in front of like what's necessarily therapeutic. The fact that he doesn't have somewhere else to go probably is part of the consequences of their choice. He can go to the sober living. There are plenty of other things that can be done to help that. So you can help him come up with some options. But I wouldn't necessarily fix that for him. What was the art therapy mentioned? It stands for accelerated resolution therapy and we did two videos on it in the past like couple of months. And if you go to the main channel it has tabs at the top. One of them says live videos because both the videos we did were live. You can find those two videos in. It's not that many weeks back. It's really kind of cool. You should probably watch the videos, understand it because it's like a whole different thing. Alexis says there is a course that my husband has expressed interest in and it seems like something that may increase his motivation for productivity and healthy lifestyle. However, it's a seven thousand dollar investment. My question is if you think some. Is that something you think you could positive could positively impact him towards recovery. Are too big of a risk since he's not yet fully sober. I think if he thinks it'll help him and whatever this thing is has something to do with personal growth recovery. It doesn't have to be specifically related recovery, but it's about being a better person moving forward. I'm not necessarily saying you should pay the whole thing for it, but. But if it's something that looks like it might be helpful and he thinks it's helpful, yeah, I would, I would say let's do it. Anything. If you can't afford it. I wouldn't like take a loan out to do it necessarily put yourself in financial jeopardy to do it. But yeah. Do we have another one? Bri? Hi. Prairie Mama says child has special needs and needs to stay local to her school and after school care. She definitely is Living on the edge. But I feel like I need to help because of my granddaughter. Where do I draw the line? The most complicating situations you can find yourself in is when there's, like, another child involved, like a grandchild. It's really hard. But when a child is involved and still with the addict, it's not the same. Will you put that second part right? Yeah. The child becomes collateral damage. You can't just leave them on the street. I have a daughter that has an alcohol monitor. This is really complicated, and I can tell you that I've been there myself. I have a sister who's had an addiction for as long as I can remember. She has, like, six kids. They're older now, but, I mean, they were really young for a long time, and I would have a really hard time not fixing things. I'll get phone calls. Can you pay the electric bill? Can you help me get tires on my car? Blah, blah. And you, and you. Because immediately you think about those kids and you think, oh, my gosh, like, if I don't do it, I'm hurting the kids. And that will hold you hostage. It held me hostage for a very long time. If a kid is in a situation where it's not safe and it's not okay for them, then you should probably take action on that, like, call Child Protective Services, see if the kid can stay for you, see if there are ways to help the kid. But what you're going to find is you're going to find yourself in a situation where it's like you're constantly keeping her up. You're constantly doing everything trying to help the kid, but then the kid is still living in a bad situation. So it's really tough. Is it wrong if I don't tell him I'm coming off bond? I tried to tell him in a roundabout way. I don't think I know what that means, Sonia. Coming off bond, I'm assuming you mean, like probation. What does that. What does that mean? Like, it's. It's coming off someone's bond. Okay. I don't know what coming off bond is it like, you bonded, like them out of jail, and so you put your name on some kind of promise if they showed up to court or something like that? Is that. Am I understanding that right? Can you come off of someone's. If that's it, can you do that? I know that was a thing. The agreement was, get out of jail and go to rehab. No longer in rehab. Actively using. Doing nothing is better. If that's the deal you made with them. You've already, in my mind, you've already told them that. So you don't necessarily have to tell them that. Again, it's not going to make it any better telling them that you told them that to begin with. I'll do this as long as that. Now they're not doing that. Yeah, no, we bonded him out of jail to go to rehab. Yes, you're right. Okay. Right. So what happens if you come off bond? Like if you. I don't sort of understand, but I don't quite understand. I'm assuming like you sign something with a bail bondsman and if he doesn't show up or go back then. Then you have to pay the money. Can you withdraw your support? I'm not. I don't know how that works exactly. He will go back to jail. That's the choice that he made. So he knew the deal he made the choice that he was going to leave rehab and he wasn't going to do it. So in his mind he. He rather risk it. So if that's the choice he's made, I don't think you should feel over guilty about sticking with the boundary that you set. If you have. We have time for just a couple more questions if there are any. While we wait for that, I will remind you that we always have additional resources in the description. In fact, I think there's the link down there to our free recovery resources page. There's lots of downloads and guides and all kinds of stuff there that you might use. And I also put the link in for our free boundaries quiz. So we have one made for parents specifically and we have one made for spouses. So you can take the quiz and see how well you're doing on your boundaries. And if nothing else, just taking the quiz and reading through the scenarios will actually help you think through what would I do in that situation. Colleen says nephew is prescribed methadone 17 years. Can he ever be successful getting off? Sure. Yeah. Someone. People can be successful getting off. It's not easy to get off. I did a video on the channel this has been a good while back about a young guy from Canada who was on methadone for a lot of years and decided to come off and he did it the right way and then he like rode us back across Canada. It was like this whole thing, it was like really cool. But yes, that can happen. What I would say is, is he being successful on it? If he's on it and he's stable and he's going to work and he's doing okay and he's functioning, then I say he's okay on it. If he's on it, but he's still not functional and he's still relapsing all the time and this and that and the other, then we need to do something else because it's not working. All right, it looks like we got to the end of our questions. Thanks, everyone, for hanging out. I will be here, as always, next Thursday at 1 Eastern. And I will also put up here for you the playlist on Enabling to learn more about that, how to make sure you're not in the yucky category, you're over in the good helping category. See you guys next time. Bye, everybody.