Have You Lost Yourself In Your Loved One's Addiction?

Have you lost yourself in your loved one's addiction? That's what we're going to be talking about in today's video. In fact, we're going to be talking, we're going to be talking about the three step process that probably led to how you lost yourself and the three step process for how to get yourself back or get out of that, or get off that roller coaster, as I call it, and reclaim yourself, your emotions and your identity. Because when you live with someone with an addiction, like alcohol addiction or really any other addiction, you start getting in this like survival mode basically is what happens to you. Because this person that you care about so much, they've changed, they've developed this addiction which is now threatening the safety of your relationship, threatening the safety of the family. Sometimes, you know, maybe if it's like you're married to this person, you may be living in fear about, what if I have to get a divorce? What does that mean? You know, how do I protect my kids? You know, and you just, you get in the situation to have to make so many difficult decisions, none of which feel like the right decision or a good decision. And if it's your kid, you have these whole other set of fears where it's like you're scared to death. You know, what if they get hurt? What if they hurt someone else? What if they end up in jail or prison? Essentially you are just running, you're just acting every single day out of fear and survival. Because the whole process really brings you down into what I call like the reptilian part of your brain. And you are, you're not really thinking strategically, which is what this channel is all about. It's about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get back to living the life that you want to live and get your family back on track. But in order to do that, you got to get out of that reptilian part of your brain, that survival part, and into the strategic part. When you're going through this with your loved one, you're likely experiencing so many difficult emotions, sometimes all at once, sometimes one right after the other. And it can feel like, oh my gosh, who am I? I've lost my own stinking mind. Am I bipolar? Am I crazy? And you may be feeling sadness, depression, worry, anxiety, desperation, resentment, anger. You just have all of this stuff going on inside of you, changes from second to second. You could just be thinking about something and just provoke a whole different emotion. And it makes you feel like, ultimately makes you feel like you lost Control of yourself. It's like, who am I? Who have I become? And not only that, but your addicted loved one probably pretty regularly tells you that you're crazy and you've lost your mind control. And so then you really doubt yourself even that much more because you realize on some level that you're not the person that you are before, that you're acting in this way that's just not consistent with your value system and just not like yourself. It's all of those emotions that lead us to make impulsive and desperate decisions. And because of that, that leads us to guilt. So the three step process of how you got into this giant mess is you're living in the survival part of your brain and you're experiencing a range of crazy emotions which is then causing you to act irrationally, to make decisions out of desperation and fear. And most time a lot of those decisions are impulsive. Now, all of that culminates a lot of times into an intense feeling of guilt. And that is actually. That feeling of guilt is actually what prompted this video. Because this was a few months back, we have a viewer named Marianne who requested a video about how to deal with the guilt that you feel. I recently had someone write in and I re. And this week we had another comment. So we've just had a lot of people asking about how to deal with your guilt over how you've reacted to the situation because you look back and you're like, can't believe I said that. Like, wow, that was really bad decision. Or, you know, like, I can't believe I let that happen. And you just have all of this guilt because you feel like maybe you've yelled too much, maybe you feel like you've enabled too much. Maybe you feel like you just feel like an idiot because you allowed yourself to get manipulated. A lot of the guilt comes from feeling like you made a bad decision. Like, maybe you feel like now you've watched a whole bunch of my videos and now you're thinking, oh my gosh, I've done it wrong this whole time and I really should have reacted this way, or I really should have made this decision and not that. And you get in this terrible cycle of beating yourself up. Now some of those bad decisions could be like, oh, I kicked them out and I really shouldn't have, or I didn't kick them out and I really should have. Recently, I've had several parents I've talked to who've allowed their. Most of these are parents that kind of have allowed their child. Now obviously they're usually either adult or college age or older, sometimes child to talk them into some things that they wouldn't have ever been able talked into before. Namely, some of these kids have talked their parents into allowing them to use marijuana. Now I know a lot of you watching this video, you're gonna be thinking, oh, like it's not that bad. Whatever it is just like any other substance, all of the substance doesn't matter what it is. Pain pills, like prescription, other prescription medicines, alcohol, whatever, they can all be not that bad. But when you put them into a person who struggles with addiction, it turns bad. So this is not me saying, you know, like, oh, that's such a terrible substance. I'm just saying it's a bad decision when dealing with someone who has an addiction because it just doesn't end well. Now that's not me telling you all this stuff to make you feel guilty because I know you already feel guilty enough. The first thing you gotta do to start digging yourself out of this situation or headspace where you don't feel like yourself anymore is you're going to have to give yourself a little grace, show yourself a little mercy, and realize that you have been in a very traumatizing situation for probably a long time. If you're watching my videos. And so because of that, your brain hasn't been working the same way it would normally be working. Guess what? That's just like, that's just exactly like what's going on inside your addicted loved one, right? It's a parallel process. They found themselves making decisions they never thought they would make. Being impulsive, being emotional, being react reactional, and all of that is because they're coming from this survival part of their brain which is freaking you out, causing you to come from this survival part of your brain. And it's just like around and around we go. And you've got to step off of that roller coaster at some point. But you can step off of it without beating yourself up too much. You're just gonna. It's the same thing I would tell someone that has an addiction because the beating yourself up, whether or not you think you deserve it, it's not helpful. And by continuing to do that, you're just gonna keep yourself in that really bad emotional state which is just gonna cause you to, to make more bad decisions and be reactive and be impulsive and feel like you don't have control of yourself. So it's not a matter of whether or not you should or shouldn't feel guilty. It's a matter of it's not productive. And that's what we talk about on this channel all the time, is we do what is effective. It's not about what's fair. Not fair. It's about what works. So beating yourself up doesn't work. Now, if you feel like you've done some things that you regret, one thing you can do if you just can't seem to let go of it, is you can talk about it out loud to someone. A lot of the clients that come to our office, they're so funny. Like, literally on the way back, sometimes, like before they even sit down, like on the couch of my office, they're like, let me tell you what I did. Confession. I know this was not helpful. I said this. I just lost it. And it's funny. And then they. They sort of tell me and I'm like, I get it. And then we just move on. There's something therapeutic and healing. If you're struggling with guilt about saying something out loud, it. It allows you to move on from it. It works the same way for the person that's struggling with an addiction. Saying it out loud to someone else allows you to kind of get some closure and some healing on that and to move forward. Because otherwise what happens is you're keeping this secret or what you feel like is a secret about yourself inside. And that secret becomes toxic. It makes you feel shameful all the time, and it just cause a bunch of negative, nasty stuff that you don't want. So if it's in there and you can't just move past it, just say it out loud to someone, someone who's gonna understand and they're gonna say something to you like, you know what? Guess what? I did. I did some worse than you did or whatever. So that you can understand what happened. You can move on and stop. Just stop beating yourself up about it. I can't. You know, I've talked to a lot of parents who. Who tell me they've done things in the past they feel extremely guilty about, and spouses and even like children whose parent was addicted. And they look back and they feel guilty about how they reacted somehow. It's just not helpful. So one thing you can do is I call it confession. It's really just talking about it out loud to someone maybe in your Al Anon group, to your family, recovery coach to your counselor, or just someone else who gets it. If it is something that is really heavy on your heart and you did or said something, or you react in a way, or you made a decision that affected your addicted, loved One in a way that you really, really regret. If an apology is needed or necessary, it's okay to do that. In fact, saying, you know what, I reacted this way and I really shouldn't. It goes such a long way to role model for them. It's okay to be like, you know what, I made a mistake or I changed my mind or thought about, and I wish I would have done it differently. And when you start saying that to them, they start reciprocating. Well, you know what, I shouldn't have said this first. Right. It's like if you can show that vulnerability, it allows them a lot of times to show their vulnerability. Now you may be in a situation that you feel like, oh, if I tell them that I did something wrong, they're going to use it against me, which could totally happen. I'm not going to tell you that. It would never happen. If that happens, if you know for sure that's going to happen and you just don't want to give them that weapon to use against you, then just don't do it. And, and you can maybe do that at a later time when they're in a better headspace or when they've made some progress in the recovery and you want to go back and make an amends, that's fine. If you acknowledge that to them and you didn't think they were going to throw in your face, but later they do, you can say, you know what? I was trying to be honest with you, I was trying to be vulnerable. And now you're using it as a weapon against me. And I feel like that's unfair. That's what I call a process comment. So you can call it out if it's happening. Because a lot of times it makes the person have to realize that it's like, yeah, I am using that against you. And it can put a stop to it. A lot of times, at least it brings an awareness to it. And the third thing that you need to do to get yourself back to feeling good about yourself and feeling less guilty is commit to doing differently. And a lot of times doing differently comes from allowing yourself to feel differently. Sometimes just learning about addiction causes you to feel differently about the whole situation. Sometimes getting some space from it is what you need to feel a little differently. Because if you're. I call it having that front row seat all the time. It's just so hard to keep yourself emotionally regulated when it's just one emotional crisis after another. And it's just so exhausting. It's hard to keep yourself steady so maybe that means get some distance from it, whatever you've got to do to get more control over it. One of the things that may allow you to get more control over it is making a decision that you're not going to obsess about it constantly. Maybe you're gonna. It's not that you're gonna ignore it, not deal with it, but you're not gonna let yourself go down into the rabbit hole all day, every day and obsess about everything that's happened and everything that you're scared about, because it's not gonna do anything except so much that you then get so emotional you make more impulsive or desperate, erratic decisions and then you end up having to go back on the decisions you made and then you feel guilty about that. It's like, I feel guilty for doing this and then I feel like I overreacted and I said, that's it, you know, set this crazy boundary. I feel guilty for doing that. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to like take back what I said and then I feel guilty for taking back my boundary because I'm not holding good boundaries. It's just like a never ending cycle. So it's time to get out of that. If you can relate to anything that I'm saying here, give this video a thumbs up so I can know that I am on track. Now you guys can go ahead and start putting up. If you're watching live or even if you're watching on the replay, go ahead and put your comments, questions and concerns because I am gonna go through those and answer them, but sometimes there's a delay. So go ahead and get them in there if you've got something that you want to say or you want to ask. In the meantime, while you're doing that, there is a link in the description. If you haven't taken my free persuasion masterclass where it's kind of a workshop where I go through some more effective techniques, there's a link in the description where you can take that whenever you're ready. Because that, that's going to teach you how to act strategically. Because when you make these impulsive, desperate decisions, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to get them to wake up, to address the problem, to do something differently, to see that, you know, they're, they're causing so much harm to themselves and to you and to other people. And it's just not effective the way when you're doing it from an emotional standpoint, it's not effective. You've got to do it from a strategic, logical. Here's what works and here's what gets people to see things differently and do things differently. You got to know the right techniques. Now you can only pull that off if once you get yourself stabilized. So you kind of have to do some of this emotional work and then you have to understand what really does work to be able to implement it. All right, let's see who is here and what really awesome questions and comments you have. Let's see, we have Queen Logic. Hey, Queen Logic. I've been seeing your name in the comments lately. Welcome to our little community. We have Linda. Some of your names don't pop up here because you're in our closed Facebook group and for confidentiality reasons. So if I don't say your name, it may be because it doesn't come up here. I see Sandy and Vicki. Let's see, Vicki has something says, oh my gosh. I went and got my master's degree just to understand my family dynamics and my role because I was there as an enabler. I couldn't understand how my or how my family members addictions work. So I bet you're not the only one. Some of you guys are. Feel like Vicki, I'm sure you feel like you've watched so many dang videos and you've read so many books, you've been to so many online meetings, you feel like you should have a master's degree or something like that, Right? You probably should be honest. Let's see what Sandy has to say. One has to stay strong with empathy, compassion and whole. Very strong to your boundaries. Truth is the key as well. Be really genuine and true to yourself and the dry addict. I'm glad you said that, Sandy, about the boundaries because it is so important. And if you're struggling with boundaries and you don't know what's a good boundary or how to hold a boundary, I do have like a whole video series on that, a whole playlist that you can find on our channel. So you can definitely check that out. But one really quick piece of advice that I'll give you to help you, maybe not to get into that place where you feel guilty is when I say set healthy boundaries, I don't mean set more boundaries because a lot of people reactively and emotionally set these boundaries. Like in our one of our Facebook groups today, someone was talking about how they told their loved one if they did this X, Y or Z thing, they would never talk to them again. Well, the problem with that is you're probably not really ready to hold that boundary. I call that like setting an extreme. If you do this, I'm kicking you out. If you do that, we're getting a divorce. If you do this, this I'll never. Whatever those are, these like all or nothing kind of boundaries. And I really strongly advise against setting those. That doesn't mean that you can't kick them out or that you can't divorce them or that you can't decide you're never going to talk to them again. You can totally do that. But what one way you're going to keep yourself from feeling guilty is not. You don't have to say that to the person because you don't know how you're going to feel at the time. And then if you've already drawn that line in the sand, but you can't hold that line in the sand, and then you gonna feel guilty because you didn't and see, it's just a mess. So don't. Don't set yourself up for that. I always say leave yourself room to make a game time decision. You don't have to give fair warnings all the time. All right. Hey, Laura. Maggie. Jane says writing it down can help too. Oh, my goodness. That's such a good piece of advice. Just like saying it out loud to someone really helps. Writing it down helps. There's something getting it out that helps. One of the ways it helps is because when you write, it forces you into your thinking brain, which when the thinking brain is more activated, the emotional brain is less activated. So literally the process of having to think about how to spell and write shifts your brain gear. So just the whole process is helpful and therapeutic. Good piece of advice. I'm glad you said that. Michelle says I definitely need space for a minute. I've been in over my head trying to get my daughter to call detox. You're describing me completely today. Michelle. I know you are not the only one out there. I've done crazy, desperate, stupid things before. We've all done that before. And sometimes we just got to take a step back and breathe and kind of collect ourselves and decide what to do next. Luna says long distance. Dealing with drinking and encouraging him to get to detox. But he knows he needs it more. But it's so expensive. So it's a setback. He talks negative and he doesn't want to live. Luna, are you saying that you are not. When you say long distance, are you saying, like, the person doesn't live with you, like you have some distance from them? If so, I really do feel like having some, some physical distance will allow you to make more calm, rational, strategic decisions. Although he's really making it hard with, if he's. If you're dealing with someone who's, whose way of sort of manipulating or not taking responsibility is to say things like, I'm a terrible person. I don't even want to live anymore. Some of that can be manipulative. It's not so much that you should never take it seriously. If someone threatens themselves, I have a whole video on that. But. But it definitely can hold you hostage. So get into your thinking mind. Decide what's really going on here so you can make those really good decisions. Somebody says, what else gets you into your thinking brain? Anything that allows you to shift out of your emotions. What won't help you do it is when you go into that spiral. I call it the rabbit hole. There's nothing good down there. And you just keep obsessing, remembering back on things that have made you upset or things you're scared about, that keeps you stuck. But anything that makes you think, think gets you shifted out of that emotional part. Talking about out loud, writing things down. Sometimes if you just shift gears completely and think about or do something else, like, a lot of people will tell me, you know what, When I'm at work, I'm fine. And I'm like, yeah, because you can't think about, then you can't obsess. And so you do. That's one way to give yourself a break. Go do something else. Go think about something else. You know, let it go for a minute. That will help you shift out of that emotional part. Really great question. Linda says, when do we just give up and put them out? Boundaries are constantly being pushed. That's a great question. And I do have a few, two, maybe three videos on that about when to kind of let go or when to walk away. LINDA and one of this isn't all the answers to that, because in those videos, I give you some different kinds of situations, but one of them is if you feel like you've totally lost yourself and you turned into some kind of crazy person that you don't even recognize anymore and you can't get yourself back. That's one reason why it might be time for you to back up and ask them to leave or do something different. You don't have to do that forever, but you may have to do that for a while in order to get yourself back. If, if having it so close is just destroying you, that's the reason why you might have to draw a hard boundary like that. All right, everybody, thank you so much for joining me. Up next, if you have not seen this video, I want you to watch how living with someone with an addiction causes you trauma. Because it's going to put a lot more understanding out there for you about why you feel so emotionally all over the place because you're really experiencing trauma. And in that video, I'll explain to you even more about that. All right, everybody, I'll see you next week.