How to Maintain Hope During a Relapse

Hey everyone. Today we're going to talk about how to maintain hope while enduring a relapse. So I'm going to talk about it both in 2 ways, one from the family standpoint from a substance relapse, and then also at the end I'm going to touch on a relationship relapse. And although they mirror the same steps, they, they can be a bit different. So the first thing I want to do is I want to be able to let you guys know that when a relapse is happening, it's natural to feel hopeless. It's natural to feel desperate. It's natural to feel infuriated, just infuriating sense of anger because again, from a family standpoint, you feel like you've done all of these things, you've endured this so many times and here we go again. So a lot of desperate desperation things come into it. And also from the person that's experiencing the relapse, they feel the same things because they've worked really hard because they've lost a lot of things when this relapse has happened. So I want to be able to talk about the hopeful side of a relapse where relapses, they don't have to mean the end of progress. It doesn't have to mean that everything you've worked for is completely gone. They can actually provide a lot of meaning. They can also help provide a lot of sticking power for sober times and long-term sobriety. So the first thing that we have to look at is I want you guys to think about— I say this many, many times, but hope is a cognitive function. And what that means is that we both feel it from a cognitive standpoint and we feel it from an emotional standpoint, but it starts in the brain. And in order for that to happen, 2 things have to happen. One, we have to have a plan. And second thing is we have to do the plan. So it has to be a doable plan, and then we have to be willing to do the plan. And that's it. That's, that's how we create hope, and that's how we maintain hope. And so the first thing I want you guys to think about is when you're creating your own plan and recognize your plan might look different than someone else's, and that's fine because where you are in this process might be different than where someone else is. And again, that's fine. So the first thing is, no matter where your plan is, no matter what it is, number one for everybody is No freaking out. So remember what I said in the very beginning, these emotions are going to be high. They're going to be intense. It's going to be natural to want to freak out. Don't freak out because if you freak out, everything's going to be bad. Everything's going to be worse. The second thing is hold steady to the boundaries that you've already set or that you know you need to hold and that have worked in the past. The third one is no shaming, no dumb questions, no blaming, and no emotional outbursts. And when I say dumb questions, what I mean by that is, Don't ask a question you know the answer to. Don't ask a question that has a bad response no matter what you do. An example of a dumb question might be, why did you do this? A dumb question might be, how are we supposed to come back from this? Those are dumb questions. We're not going to end up with a good answer to those because they're just bad questions. The third thing is I want— or I'm sorry, the fourth thing is I want you guys to assess for immediate danger. So once a relapse has happened, and what I'm talking about is let's say that the relapse is in play in this moment, assess for danger. Are the kids okay? Or is drinking and driving happening? Are the finances on the line? Whatever this is, assess for safety and then do whatever it is that you need to do in order to put safety as number one. Once we've assessed for safety, then I want you guys just to take a step back. Just stop talking, take a break, take a pause. And then after that, I want you guys to really lead with love. And when you lead with love, this can be validating statements. These can be prompting questions. It can be Hey, I know how hard you work. Something must really be going on in order for that to happen. It could be, I don't really know what's going on, but I, but I know that you must be hurting in order for this to happen. So you can hear the love, you can hear the empathy, you can also hear the prompting. It invites the person that's struggling with the relapse into the conversation instead of asking again the questions that aren't helpful or the blaming or the shaming or the big emotional responses, which again, I know can come naturally, but we want to stay away from that as much as possible. As much as possible, the next one that we want to do is just to reiterate: we don't want to talk if they're not sober. We don't want to talk if there's big huge emotions because again that's not going to lead us to where we want to go. We do want to have calm check-ins. So as long as we can have these calm check-ins, these calm touch points, we still maintain our influences, which is what we want. We want to be able to influence them. We want them to come to us when they have a moment of clarity, when they're ready to change, when they want to process what happened. But if we're coming at them with shame and blame and big responses. And this roller coaster that families have a tendency to stay on, they're not going to want to come to us. And so we're going to feel more isolated. We're going to feel more hopeless, more desperate, which sets us as the family members up for more failure for the things that we've worked really hard not to do. So again, we just kind of want to keep our influence where it is. The other thing is we want to ask gentle prompting questions. I wonder why this happened. I wonder what made you stop. I wonder what it is that made you actually willing to talk to me about this. So you can hear again, there's those prompting questions. I wonder is a great way to ask a question without asking a question, because if you say directly, why did you do this? Or what happened in order for this to happen? Especially if you use the intensity that I'm using in my voice, you're not going to get very far. They're going to automatically be defensive, and we don't want them to be defensive. So instead, we're going to use that I wonder, or maybe just kind of that general calmer way to be able to get someone to open up. So in the big picture, what I want you guys to really think about is clean time still counts. So even if you have a relapse, whether you're the one that relapsed or rather you're living with someone that you love that has relapsed or is relapsing, clean time still counts. A lot of times it'll be, I'm back to day one, picking up a white chip again, and all of those things might be true and clean time still counts. The other thing is tie your hope to progress, not perfection. People are going to relapse. We're going to slip. As a family member standpoint, we're going to make mistakes. We're going to slip. The person struggling with substance abuse, they're going to slip. So again, tie it to progress, not perfection. And then the other thing, which I said in the very beginning, is remember relapses can be helpful and necessary. They can bargain somebody into a state of acceptance, which anybody that really lands in any kind of long-term sobriety, they do. They bargain themselves into some form of acceptance. I'll switch from light beer, or I'll switch from an IPA to a light beer. I'll only drink on the weekends. I'll only lie when this one little tiny thing is on the table. All of those are bargains. All of those are little slips that eventually they're going to find out that those things don't work. And it's going to put them into a place of sobriety. It's going to put them into a place of acceptance. But until they try every little thing, and us too, as family members, until we try all these little bargains, I'm going to check their phone. I'm going to go to the party with them. I'm going to be the DD. When we put all of these things in place, we eventually learn, hey, it's still happening. The bad things are still happening. They're just happening at a different rate. And so we have to bargain our way into acceptance. So when we relapse, just remember there could be light at the end of the tunnel. This could be an important part of the foundational piece that keeps us strong and keeps us sober for a long period of time. The other thing I want to touch on real quick before our time's up is remember relationships can relapse too. And what I mean by this is old narratives can come back, old patterns and habits can come back. Examples of this would be I knew this would happen, or you always. And so remember, it's easier for people to fall into behavior expectations when they're labeled with this. So an example of this would be, we don't wanna call a child, we don't wanna label them something that we don't want the child to consistently do. You don't wanna say to your kid, you're such a wild child, when they have a hard time with impulse control, because what they're gonna hear is, I'm a wild child, and that gives them permission to be a wild child. So the same thing with our relationship patterns, we don't wanna use language like, you always do this, or I knew it was a matter of time until you would do this, because it almost gives permission for the behavior that we're trying to change, and we don't want to do that. So instead, we want to be able to recognize within ourselves something happened. An old narrative might have come back in my own head. I might be accusing you of something that's no longer relevant in this relationship. That's an example of a relapse, a relationship relapse. So we want to be able— same thing, same plan as before. We don't want to freak out. We want to be able to go back to behavior patterns that have worked in the past, behavior patterns that have anchored us to sobriety, that have anchored us to the relationship that we want to have. We want to lead with love, just like I said before. We want to reflect on what went wrong and change, change patterns if they need to be changed. And we want to engage in self-regulation. Now, self-regulation is its own thing. So, but in here, just for those of you that might not know that term, it's just being able to get from your fight or flight place in your brain back to your prefrontal cortex right here where you can make executive smart logical decisions that really encompass more of who you are, not who you are in a reactive state. So that's again, quick little— when you want to maintain hope in a relapse, just kind of come back to these things. Your plan might look different than someone else's. I would expect it to look different than someone else's, but in order to keep that hope, you have to have a plan ready to go that you are willing and able to do. And that's how you get to maintain hope. In this type of situation, so any questions that we have? No. All right. Looks like there's. Let's see. What should you do if you see a relapse coming? Good question. So if you see a relapse coming, what you want to do is you want to prepare for it, just like if you see anything else coming your way, you want to prepare for it. So this is where you want to kind of get your plan in place. So you want to remind yourself, I'm not going to freak out. I'm going to be able to stay in my own lane. And I really do think it's important to be able to hear the fact that relapses can mean good things. And so it might be that somebody has to go through this process in order to land on a more stable place in their sobriety. So I think being able to cognitively remind yourself of that from, from a behavior standpoint, I think being able to not walk into the bad guy role, not let them set you up into the bad guy role. What you're going to see is they're going to be more agitated. They're going to try to fight with you. Old behaviors are going to start to come back. Remember what I said about the relapse in a relationship standpoint? A relapse happens in the mind before it happens in the body. So you're going to start to see some of these relationship old patterns come back. Don't slip into it. Don't take the bait and just recognize that this, this is coming down the pipeline and your job is to handle it as, as self-regulated as you possibly can. If the person's open to feedback, you can certainly give a process comment. You can give a reflective statement. If they're not very open to it, then I would just keep your mouth shut and do your part. Let's see. What is the best way to decide on talking about the relapse? That's a good question too. base that based on how your loved one is engaging with you. If they're, if they're really defensive and argumentative and in any of those old patterns that might be coming up, that's probably not— I wouldn't talk about it at that point because you're probably just going to end up in a fight. If it's more— if they're not being that way and they're just a little bit more isolated or removed, or everything seems okay, there's just a couple things that seem out of place, then I would come at it with You could start with anything like, hey, I, I don't know if this is accurate, but this is kind of what I'm seeing or what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling, or I hope this isn't true, but this is one of the things that I'm telling myself. Another thing you could do is you could reflect on, hey, I'm noticing that your mood is a little bit different. Last time I saw this mood, we had a— there was a relapse on the table. I'm just curious if you're thinking about that. But again, in both of those situations, or in the talking situation, you have to be able to Your loved one has to be somewhat ready to engage. I'm struggling with how to connect with my child without getting into the danger zone. The last exchange ended in a not-so-great boundary-holding moment. Haven't heard from her. How do I check in? I think on that, I think depending on what the not-so-great moment was, you might need to leave space, as hard as that is, and also depending on the last time, you know, how long ago it was that you guys had any kind of exchange. If it's, if it's been a decent amount of time, then I would just send a quick little message that doesn't require a response. It could be thinking about you, saw this funny meme, you know, just checking on you. So just something that doesn't require anything, just a funny little thing. I think that that would be a good way to kind of just see if your child's willing to bite with the interaction at all. Let's see if I'm honest. Okay, life updates. So that's what, um, that's what Chloe had said. She's looking for life updates. I don't know if you're gonna get them, so I wouldn't ask directly. And that goes for everybody. Don't ask directly, especially if we're dealing with a parent-child and you want a life update. You're probably not going to get one if there's been any kind of situation what you just described. So instead, again, just throw— cast, cast your hook in the pond and see what happens. Denial is a very hard thing to break. Yes, it is. Let's see. If he does see the downfalls but can't do much. He does see the downfalls but can't do much. I'm not sure what that's connected to. Is there another part of that question, Bree? Denial is very hard to break. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. If sometimes, sometimes you can see the pitfalls and you can't do much. And that is where from a family standpoint, if I'm looking at it, if I think I'm understanding you correctly, that you're looking at it from the family standpoint where you can see your loved one is in denial. You can see the pitfalls coming and there's not much to do. You're right. You're absolutely right. What if they avoid you? If they avoid you, then shame— shame is a huge powerful emotion in this process, as you guys already know. And so one of the shame shields is to avoid. And even if we're not dealing with shame, if we're just dealing with anxiety, avoidance is another major tactic that people use to manage anxiety is avoidance. So if they're avoiding you, I wouldn't chase them. Again, just like I said before in the, in the other comment, just being able to give a quick little, hey, just thinking of you, here's this funny thing. I think humor is a wonderful way to try to connect with with people if they're open to humor. Most, most people are to some extent. So if they avoid you, read the room. Don't come in too strong. Recognize they're avoiding you because that's their way of communicating to you something is uncomfortable on their side. And so sit still, be approachable, keep your influence, and just wait. All right. Well, I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day, and we will see you next week.