Is Someone Else's Addiction Ruining Your Life?

You know, addiction can be an all consuming thing, whether it's for yourself or you have a loved one that has it. But today in this video, we're going to talk about how to take your own power, your own joy back from addiction so that it's not in control, but you're in control. And to do that, we have a guest speaker, as I like to call them, expert witness. With us we have Pam Landhart. She is from the Thrive parent support group and she's here to share with us her techniques and methods on how to, how to get back in control, how to take your power back and not let addiction just suck every ounce of your joy out. You got a tall order here, Pam. This is a big, this is a big order for you to feel.

It really is. And you know, at the same time, I don't know anybody who wouldn't say, oh yeah, I really want, I, I really want to get my joy back. I really want to get my power back. And I mean, I, I think everyone feels. And before we get really deep into this, I just want to validate and acknowledge that. I don't talk about this without personal experience. I have personal experience as a mother who, of a son who's in recovery. And I don't talk about this flippantly to not validate the pain and the suffering for family members, whether you're a spouse or a parent or maybe are a adult that has a parent that is suffering and struggling with substance use. But what I learned in my experience was that I did have power and I did have choices. Right.

And you were telling me a minute ago, Pam, you were telling me you used an old movie reference called the Blob. I really like that. Will you share that with us?

Well, I'm kind of showing my age because I think that was a movie in the 60s, right. So I, I often share an analogy of this movie called the Blob. And if you haven't ever watched it, you can probably look it up on YouTube. But it was this parasitical like blob that would just eat up everything in its path, right? So, and as it ate whatever it was in front of him, it would grow. So it started out as this little thing and by the end of the movie it was just, you know, consuming a whole city. And so it would just grow and grow and grow. And I really think of addiction like that, where it's very parasitic, parasitical. You know, it's the addiction if we remove, you know, and just think of it as its own little entity, it it wants to devour everything like the addiction wants to devour, and that's what gives it power, you know? So it. It's clicking along, and it's obviously consumed our loved one. And now it's going to attack, and it's going to attack family members and friends and people in the community. And so as we give up our power to the addiction, it grows and it consumes our family. And so what. What I know for myself personally is that I had to stop feeding it and I had to stop giving it its power. And I know we talked about, like, that. That idea of powerlessness, and I. I never felt that way. I never felt like I was powerless. I always, even early on, thought, I am not powerless. I do have choices. There are things that I can do.

Right. It reminds me a little bit of. And I do know the movie the Bob, just seen him. But there's a. There's a game that I play. I don't play many games on my phone, but there's one. It's called Holes. If you guys are watching y' all tell me if you know. And it's like this big sinkhole, and as you play, you suck more stuff in and it gets bigger until you're, like, sucking in giant, like, buildings and cities or whatever. And the whole thing is like to be the biggest sinkhole or whatever. But that's what it's like. And that is. You're so right on target when you say that about addiction. It has to be fed to stay alive. And I think the key to learning how to beat addiction, this isn't even just about how to keep your joy, but about how to beat addiction is stop feeding it. It's a parasite, and it needs certain things in order to grow. And it consumes everything the person has pretty quickly. And so then, even though it's inside the person, it needs to. It needs to feed off of the family and the friends and the co workers. And so when you stop being a source for that, then not only are you starving out the addiction, but you're. You're making a decision not to let it suck you into the blob or the sinkhole or however you want to think about it. How do you do?

Yeah, And I, you know, I had gotten sucked in. And some of you watching might be sitting in your chair right now thinking, I am completely consumed. And I remember for us, it was, you know, my son was really young when he started using substances. He was, like, 12. He went to his first treatment program when he was 15. And I just remember, like, that moment, you know, sitting on my chair, and there were days when I just wouldn't be able to even function normally or properly. And I hear this all the time with family members that I'm stressed, I'm gaining weight, I'm not moving. I'm, you know, I can't show up for work, I can't show up for my other family members. And I was there. I was in that space, you know, sobbing, just like, how am I going to do this? And, you know, there was a moment when I remember thinking to myself, okay, addiction is taking my son, but I am not going to let addiction get the two for one special.

Right? That's right.

So, like, there was sort of this moment of awareness where, you know, you kind of think about the movie Mr. Mom's another movie I talk about where, right? And he's. He's gaining weight and he feels like a slug, and, you know, his house is a mess. And. And all of a sudden one morning, he's like, I'm done, and I am done. And he put on his little, like, Superman cape, and he started changing his attitude and changing the way he was interacting with his family. And he just made a decision. And, you know, I don't know if I can tell you exactly what led up to that decision, except that I knew that my relationships were suffering. I knew that my physical health was suffering. I knew that, you know, my friendships were suffering, because who wants to be around Debbie Delmer? You know, who wants to be around Eeyore, right? And. And I. I kind of have a tigger personality anyway, so it was like, wow, this was really stealing a lot of things from my own life and harming a lot of my relationships because, you know, I was in that victim place. I was like Michael Keaton, feeling sorry for myself, feeling like a mar martyr, feeling like I was powerless. And, you know, of course, you put out energy, right? You put out this energy to the people around you, and that sort of perpetuates the isolation. And, you know, one thing I mentioned, it perpetuates the guilt and the shame that we put on our loved ones as well. They know. Even though sometimes I know, like, you might feel when they're in active use that they can't grasp, you know, that what's going on around them. They can't. They really.

Oh, they definitely can. Right? And. And you were. You were saying that earlier, and I thought that was so interesting because you were like, the more you're like that, the more guilt and shame you're you're putting on to them. But the thing of it is, is what actually happens, it really is guilt and shame on the inside. But when you're acting depressed or angry or like Eeyore, psychologically, what they do with that is they become mad at you, right? And then they don't even care. And then that helps them not even care that they're hurting you. Right? And so what they do is, it's like this, like, way that they combat that bad feeling is like, oh my gosh, she's such a nag. She's such a pain. Like, who cares? And if you stop, I call that the being the bad guy roll. Like, if you stop doing that, then they actually feel the real pain of the fact that they're hurting you. When you just step out of the way, it's there. And that actually will cause people to change for the better. Right. It's kind of like the. When you're talking about the day you became aware, I'm hurting myself, I'm hurting everybody around me, you know? And then you made a decision. It's a very, very parallel process for the addictive person. Right. So everything that Pam is telling you, not only is it what you need to do for yourself, it's what you need to do for your entire family.

Right?

And.

And you know, when we. What? I don't know that I've ever met anybody in recovery who is, who has not indicated that their family started to make some changes first. Right. And so we need to lead the way with what I call our personal recovery. Right? And when you think of recovery, what it means, really defined is a return to wellness. You're returning to something that you lost. And so as I'm sitting on that chair in my living room, my relationships are suffering, my health is suffering. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is, this is great loss. And I'm sure many of you watching can probably name a list of all the things that you personally have lost because of your loved ones. Substance use, right? And I was like, I need to stop this right now. I need to stop experiencing these losses. I want to return to my health and well being. And we know that what that does in our brain is it reduces the amount of stress hormones, it produces endorphins, and then it gives us this great sense of peace. So now all of a sudden, our energy is changing, right? What we're putting out there is different and, and the addiction is confused.

It will respond to that, right. It's almost like it's the craziest thing. Sometimes I think about it in session. The energy. Who's controlling the energy? Right. Is the addiction controlling energy or you're going to control it? And even when I have people struggling with addiction, they come and they sit on my couch, I have to be mindful about that. That sinkhole, that energy, because it'll suck me in no matter how many years of training and experience it can get me in. It's almost like being, like, controlling and being like, no, I'm going to be the alpha energy here, right? Like, I'm going to set the tone, I'm going to set the energy. And when you hold steady like that, it'll come conform and. But it's so easy to get sucked into.

Well, and, you know, it's. What we know is that it can work that way in the negative, but it can also work in the positive. Right? So, like, what I know in my own life is that when I decided to get my life back, you know, which was when my son was about 16 or 17, and, you know, I remember sitting in front of an advisor one day and he just said, you know, we can be. We can be right in our principles and ideas, being totally wrong in our way of being towards other people.

Oh, my goodness.

And so for me, this was really about how do I want to show up for my family, how do I want to show up for my son, how do I want to show up for the other people in my life, my. My living parents who. Who needed me for. For our friends in our community. And what I knew was that, A, I wasn't even showing, you know, because I was like, I didn't want to leave my house, but B, when I did, I. You know, how it's like, who wants to be around that? You know, And I didn't like myself. I didn't like my way of being. And so I just had to make that decision in that moment where I was gonna, you know, I was gonna change. I was. And it is. I see this so often in families. You know, it just is painful and it's all consuming. But when par. Spouses, I. I think about, especially with spouses, how, you know, easy it is. Women tend to want to mother, you know, control and manipulate and get really good at that in the addiction as well. And so when we go back to what are we. What. What can we control and what power do we have? Mm, right.

Absolutely. And I. And you were telling me earlier, Pam, about. For you, it almost happened, like, in an instant. Like in. There was. There was a moment in time. So tell us. Tell us a little bit about that. You know, because some people say it was gradual. It's just like recovery. Sometimes people get recovery, like for addiction, from addiction all at once. And then other times it's more gradual. But for you, it was like a moment.

Yeah. And I remember, you know, my son was 16, and he had been through a couple treatment programs. And, you know, we were at this place with his substance use where we couldn't force him to go to a treatment program.

Not.

Not that that would be a good idea anyway, if you're listening, bad idea. And we were trying to engage him, but he's 16, right? So he's figured out that, like, oh, I don't. I'm the boss of me. I don't have to do what you tell me to do. And yet his substance use was bad enough where we were actually really afraid he. He would die. And, you know, of course, that's a really, really difficult place to be. I know many of you are in that place right now where you're like, he could die. And so for me, it was this. This part of that process. And part of that moment was, and if he died, what would that last day look like? What would that last moment would look like? How would back? And what would I have lost along with him? You know, I was dying with my son, and I. I was like, I, no, this is not what. What my family needs. This is not what is good for me. And for me, I have. Have a faith. And I was like, this is what. This is what God wouldn't want of me. I wasn't doing anything meaningful or purposeful in my life at that time because I was so consumed by what was going on. And you know how it is, too. Like, it's all you talk about and.

You know, everybody around you out. You wear them out. Yeah.

My husband would come home from work and he'd, like, he would tell you. Now he didn't even want to come home because it was like he didn't know what he was going to be getting into. So, like, there was this sort of, you know, pivotal moment where I was. It was like Mr. Mom in that. In that movie, you know, where Michael Keaton's just made that decision in a moment. And that for me, it was really more like a moment where I knew that I was not living the life that I was meant to be living.

Right.

We are not meant to live in that place of, you know, suffering. And while suffering is. Is sometimes what happens, how we respond, which is what, you know, with. It's what we talk about all the time, right, in your videos and with recovery, like, it's not about what happens to us, it's about how we respond to what's happening around us.

That's right. And even though, even though for you, it kind of happened in a moment where you made a decision, my guess is, is that you'd been simmering with those thoughts for a while of becoming more and more aware of what it was doing to you and how it was affecting you. You made the decision all in one moment. But it, it was probably my guess, a little bit of a, of a buildup. And, and also my guess is, you can tell me if I'm wrong, Pam, but it's a decision that you have to make again and again and again, right?

Well, change isn't linear. You know, when we talk about this, when we talk about ambivalence and stages of change and how, you know, we, we want something, but then sometimes it's hard, you know, to actually act on that. And how do we move forward? And we'll take two steps forward and one step back. And, you know, you know, that's definitely just our humanness. Right. We're just human beings who. But I think for me, it was, I do have a tendency to be pretty dogmatic and determined. So it was a decision and it was a choice. And once I made that choice, I was like, okay, I'm. I need to revisit that every single day. You know, how am I going to show up in a way that, that honors, you know, the people around me and that honors my son. Right? So.

And I like that you said show up because it is, it's, it's a choice. But then that choice becomes an action, right? And the, the action is what will actually make the feeling better. We have somebody in the comments. I'm going to put it up here. Gina says, how can you do that when you're in utter despair? Which is a completely fair question. Gina. The thing of it is, it's a choice that you make to get out of despair, and then next comes the action. You decide to act differently. A lot of people, and we talk about this in counseling a lot, they say, when I feel differently, I'll do differently. When I'm not depressed, I'll go to the mall, my friends or whatever, but you have to get up and do the thing for the feeling to change.

You know, years ago, I worked for Dale Carnegie training, and there's a little saying that he says, act enthusiastic and you'll be enthusiastic.

That's right.

So the verb comes first and the feelings follow. And I just want to speak to the utter despair. And I. I really. I'm so sorry that you're in that place right now. And. And I. I honor that. And it is really, really hard. And for me, too, it was, where do I get my hope from? You know, where do I find that hope? And I want to tell you that it was the recovery community that was my primary source of. I would look to people who had stories that were 100 times worse than my sons, and they were in recovery. So aside from, of course, for me, faith, which was very important. It was more like, who are the people out there that are doing it right? And looking also to those family members, the mother, mothers and the fathers and the spouses that were living their life in spite of the difficulties and not just in substance use, but we can apply that to any other. You know, you see people whose loved ones have cancer or are living with disabilities. There are many mothers in our organization that have kids with severe disabilities, and they're trying. You know, they, like, every day they get up and they show up and they are filled with joy because they choose that instead of looking at the despair and the death, you know, we can look at, like, the death statistics, right. You know, when we hear those a lot right now, there's a Dopesick is the new movie on Hulu, and a lot of people are watching it, and it's. And it's pretty depressing and pretty discouraging. So, like, I would say, get yourself out of that place where you're looking at the negative and figure out for yourself where you can find that hope. Who can you look to? What can you look to? So that you're not always feeding your spirit with the negative. Right?

You can control the influences you allow and that. That what Pam's talking about is you can control the people you put yourself around, the things you watch on tv, the things you listen to you. And you can, to a large degree, control the thoughts that you listen to. You decide whether to entertain those thoughts. You know, the thought can pop in there, the negative one, and you decide how far down the rabbit hole you want to go with that. And if you really just stuck in. Campbell calls it the trough, like what Gina is talking about. If you're really in it and you can't just, you know, you're not ready to. To have that one moment like Pam's talking about, what you can say is, you know, what? I'm going to go to this one event I've been invited to and for this event I'm just going to enjoy myself. Maybe you can make a little decision, right, to, to allow yourself to have a moment and then maybe another moment, right?

There's a, there's an app my daughter just downloaded called Fabulous and it's how do I change little small habits every single day? So, you know, maybe for today it's, I'm gonna get up and drink my water. I'm gonna go take my dog for a walk. I think music is like really super powerful. So I'm gonna put on a song that, that, that lifts my spirits, right? So I'm gonna listen to something that is encouraging and life giving. Really. There's a lot of podcasts that are super positive, you know, so what, and, and here's the thing about that I believe about recovery is that it's very person centered and, and you know, you know, I believe in self efficacy, right? So like, you know innately what those things are that will bring you back to your place of joy and it's going to be different for every person. But ask yourself today as you're listening to this, like, this is where, where I go with this is what are things that I did before the addiction that I have given up and I have stopped doing because of the addiction and start there because those were the things that brought you joy and gave you energy and brought you peace and we subtracted those. So I believe recovery is about addition and it's about putting the positive things back in your bucket that you've taken out or let go of. And as we build up our positive recovery activities in our bucket, it pushes out the negative, right?

There's only so much room in there, right? And so you're deciding what goes in. You can be in control of that. That's why I love it. And sometimes you have to give yourself permission, right? Because sometimes it feels like it's somehow wrong, right. To feel good or to have fun or to go to an event. Can you speak, can you speak to that at all, Pam?

Well, you know, I think there's a saying that you're only as happy as your saddest child. Right. And you know, the truth is, is that again, I validate how hard it is in my case as a mother, you know, when I see my son suffering, like there's a lot of pain in that now, I believe in, in this practice of mindfulness and radical acceptance. So like, feel that, right? We don't want to ignore that. We don't want to tiptoe around that. We want to work through it. And, you know, hopefully you have a good therapist to help you with some of that. But on the other hand, we don't want to stay in that, and we don't want to live in that dark, depressing, sad place. And so for me, it was, you know, okay, I acknowledge that, the hard stuff, and I acknowledge sadness. But like what we talked about, which is I knew that, that I pick up on other people's energy. And just like I pick up on other people's energy, other people pick up on mine. And so, you know, how do I. How what is that going to look like? And you know, we, we can set the tone. And then what's really cool oftentimes is the people around us match that.

That's right. And I like it. So funny that you mentioned that saying the, the saying you're only as happiest as your most unhappy child. And because about a month ago, Campbell, we were working on her parent group, putting the things together, and she's like, you know that saying, I just hate that saying. I, I reject that. It was just funny you brought that up because that's exactly what she said. That, that, that doesn't have to be the case. And it also reminds me of one of our. Somebody that watched one of our videos just this past week had left a comment and they were basically talking about it. Obviously it was like a mom and she had several children and one of the children was addicted, but the two other children were so angry about the addicted child. And she was upset with them because she's like, why won't they do the craft approach? Why don't they list videos? And she was like upset at the two non addicted children. And I'm like, oh man, this is like, this is what we're talking about. When the energy starts, you know, everybody's energy is pinging off each other. Right.

Well, the other thing is, is that I believe that healing happens in safe places. Right? And so, you know, what does that mean to, to be a safe person? And if I'm looking to sort of assist my loved one or, or help them or guide them or I want them to come to me. You, you know, listening for that change talk. And, and how do you, how do you even use some of those craft skills or change talk if you're not connecting in some way with your person? And why would they want to come and connect with you if you're Debbie Downer, if you're, you know, like Again, that. That layer of guilt that it puts on them when. And. And the. And the power that it gives them, like, it oftentimes they'll attack us. They'll, you know, try to make us sad. And like, you talk about when we react to that, we put ourselves in that bad guy role where, you know, now they have a reason to go use. Right. Like, oh, my mom is. You know, of course they're not going to say this quite so nice, but I made my mom sad. What was me. I'll go, you know, bury my emotions in a bottle of gin or whatever. Right.

Translation is, I hate you. You're ruining my life. I'm doing what I want to do anyway, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's not quite so nice.

Yeah, yeah.

But like, we're, you know, again, like, how awesome is it if we can step out of that role of giving them a reason to go use. Right. Or get mad or, you know, whatever it is. So I'm like, I'm not gonna be. I'm not gonna be that. That reason. I'm not gonna be that reason.

And you're not gonna give it. You're not gonna feed the addiction. You're not gonna. I love what you said. I'm not going to be the two for one special. And then also the other thing is, is like the. The commenter I was talking about, if you have other children, what happens is, is the other children get very resentful. And part of the reason they're resentful is because all of your energy is going toward. In their mind, what they see is like the bad one. You know, it's like, oh, we're over here being good, but you're obsessed about that. And then there's more you. And then it just. So when you decide to unplug, you can help shift the entire dynamic to everyone around you.

Yeah. And what, you know, what person wants to be married to someone who is, you know, not who is living in that space of victim? And that I think that's really probably. I. I felt like a victim, you know, and in many ways we are, and I want to acknowledge that. But we get to choose. We get to choose how we're gonna respond, how we're gonna walk through this. And I. I just. I took off my victim cape and I put on my Superman cape.

I love it.

Yeah.

And, Pam, I know that you have coming up here, and I think just like. Like three weeks or something, you have a women's retreat that's coming up that's this designed to help People come back towards themselves. Is that right? Yeah.

So, you know, one of the things is part of our organization, Thrive Family Support Support. We try to, you know, bring things to the table. Educational workshops, support groups, and. And I think, you know, retreats really helped me. You get away, you unplug. You don't answer your phone. You're disconnected from all the things that are going on around you now. I know sometimes we feel like our person can't live without us, and I can assure you they will. So it's okay. It's okay to take time for yourselves to kind of get back to that place of peace and joy and get out of the chaos for a while and rediscover, you know, who you really are and who you are created to be and what your purpose might be in life. So we love doing these retreats. We've done a few of them now, and. And I'm in Minnesota, and Amber, I, I, I don't want to shock anyone when they go to our website and they're like, I'm not going to Minnesota. Right. November. But we really don't live in the tundra, and the weather's very nice. And it's at a beautiful resort in Brainerd, Minnesota. It's about two and a half hours from the city. So we have people flying into Minneapolis, and they're getting on a little shuttle bus and going up to the retreat center. And if you are from Minnesota, you know where I'm talking about, Craig. Ins up in at Brainerd. In Brainerd. But we're going to have a whole weekend of just, you know, just rediscovering who we are. We have. We have a gal who does, like, beautiful coloring artwork, right? So we're. We have her coming in and speaking about, you know, like, how that art and how coloring. There's an artist in all of us, and that's not my thing, but it's been so fun to just learn how to bring something like that out and how it eases anxiety. And so we just have a lot of really fun things planned, and we'll be outdoors for some of it, depending on the weather. But I. There's nothing that helped me more on this journey than detaching from. Now, I don't like using the word detachment very much, but we were detaching from the chaos. We were detaching from the negative environment. We were detaching from my victim mentality, and we were reattaching to our spiritual self, our, you know, humanness and who we really were. Meant to be.

Right. The whole time you're talking about, in my mind, I just. I'm seeing like a plug. It's an unplugging. It's like I'm going to unplug from this outlet and I'm going to choose specifically where I'm going to plug back in. If you are a woman and you are needing to unplug from something in your life and plug into something better, this retreat might be just the thing for you. And it's not specifically. You don't have to have a son or a daughter struggling with an addiction. It can be related to addiction in any way if it needs to be. But it doesn't have to be. This is just about how to come back to yourself. Right?

Yeah. Well, and I, I mentioned that specifically, and I'm glad you brought that up, because a lot of people want to come with a friend and maybe their friend isn't impacted by substance use, but maybe there's been other, you know, hardships or, you know, I mean, gosh, if you're raising teenagers or if you have young adults, like, I, I mean, it's exhausting even without substance use. So, you know, some of you are in a place where you're just tired and you've just sort of lost who you are and you've lost your ability to laugh and have fun and find joy. This is just an opportunity. And it's actually really, really reasonable. We made it very affordable. So it's like for a double room, 275 a person. And that includes everything. That includes your food and your lodging. And so we really do like to make it reasonable for people to be able to attend. That's part of our mission.

And I put the link in the chat here in case anybody wants to go to the website and look at that and learn more. And I'm also going to put in the chat. Let's see if I can do two things at once here. Pam's contact, in case you have any questions or anything like that. You can contact Pam to find out more about that. And Pam also has services, coaching services and a free Facebook group and all kinds of other resources. If you are a family member dealing with an addiction, she's a wonderful resource for that. So make sure you reach out to Pam.

Yeah, we, we work together. Well, Amber and I, I, you know, there's.

Our philosophies are in alignment.

Yeah, we both kind of are, you know, work in that lane of craft and invitation to change and really just bringing out the, the value, the human value in our loved ones and, you know, creating an environment that supports recovery. And so this opportunity is for you to activate your return to wellness, spiritually, physically, mentally, and so invest in yourself. And I think that's. That's the other thing, Amber. Just. It's an investment and be okay with that. Right?

And if you're. If you're watching this, either live or on the replay, I want to invite you to leave in the chat or in the comments what you have done to help reconnect to your own self. Because it always helps other people to. To either hear your story or to try things, because, you know, you look at that and you think, I haven't thought about that. You know, I think that might help me. So make sure you. You share your own wisdom out there, because together, if we put our heads together, I know we have the answers in there. Thank you so much, everyone who joined us. Up next, I'll have a video for you. More about reconnecting to yourself and getting your life and your family back on track.