Member's Only Live Call With Kim (10.25.23)

Hey everyone. Welcome to this week's live. We have four questions. So I will start with the first one and then as you guys have questions, feel free to pop them into the chat and then I will go ahead and answer them as they come up. So last time we did it we had a little extra time so that we could kind of do some follow up questions. So I thought that worked well. So if you guys want to go ahead and do that, then feel free. All right, so the first one and I'm not going to name names just because a lot of people have asked that that not happen. So I'll just go ahead and not name names. So if you know it's. But I'll give it, I'll read the question so that if it's your question, you know it's your question. Okay, so the first one. Over the past year my husband has started bringing our two young adult children into his drinking escapades. 19 year old daughter, 21 year old son. I truly feel the kids know it's a bad idea, but also see their dad as an underdog and want him to feel loved and accepted by someone. My daughter, specifically 19, has fallen into the scenario and they've had several weekends but several weekend boating trips with drinking buddies of my husband's. In my opinion it is a dangerous situation for a lot of reasons. We are now approaching snowmobile season and my anxiety is already starting because this hobby too is primarily an excuse to go on week long drinking trips. These also include two children and and middle aged buddies. What can I do? Which I also imagine with the snowmobiles, that's also a, it's not a, I mean it's a pretty dangerous sport if you're not sober. So I can see how just in general that would be a pretty anxiety producing situation along with boating. So the next part of this question. I'm also especially anxious right now because my kids have a mutual friend who is supposedly trying to quit using meth, cocaine, weed, but continues to drink and make bad choices. I would like my husband to support me so badly when I see this train wreck happening to kid's friend is reaching out to my daughter and wanting her to come drink with him during the day. As of right now, she hasn't gone. Both my kids seem to think that the drinking is fine but the drugs are bad. So that may be why she hasn't gone since she has to realize it's only a matter of time before he's back into the same stuff. But I'm afraid with her dad, as an example, that, that kind, that, that's the kind of man she'll gravitate towards. Help. Okay, so right here I think we've got two parts of this question. The first one is I just want to normalize the fact that this is an anxiety producing situation. So you're going to be anxious and that's completely okay. That doesn't mean that you're codependent. That doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. We may have some codependency sprinkled in here, but feeling anxious alone doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. So I would say what do you do with those things as you set realistic expectations, what you can control, what you can't control. And specifically with your daughter, because I think that's kind of more of where the question is geared towards. You want to make sure that you can maintain your relationship with her. Because if we have a higher quality of a relationship, we have more influence. And so with influence, that's where we start to get our leveraging power with, with a, in a relationship. I don't mean it like a manipulation. Just if you're upset with me then whatever I say is going to have less power versus if you're not upset with me. So we want to. So with your daughter specifically, I would encourage that relationship. Don't criticize her friends, don't criticize her dad. Just be. You can ask open ended questions, but be curious, be interested. And for your own anxiety, I would really just have realistic expectations on what you can do and take care of yourself to the best of your ability. Okay, the next one. My husband. My husband is in the bargaining stage but continues to drink in secret. Even though I know he is still drinking. I still don't always know when he is drunk because he's very good at hiding it. Then I get confused by his behavior and feel stupid when I later realize what is going on. Is this common? How can I recognize the sign sooner? Yes, it is common. So we've got lots. It's pretty common in the fact that spouses or partners will sometimes feel duped where they'll be like, oh man, I'd say it's 2020. I can see why they had such a hard time or I can see why they were so emotional during that conversation or I didn't even realize that's why he was so interested in whatever. So that part is really common. Try not to beat yourself up for it. But I would also say on this, just kind of don't don't pay as much attention or try to convince yourself not to pay so much attention on is he drinking or is he not drinking? And focus more on the behavior and is he being kind? Is he being appropriate? Is he annoying you? Is he being a jerk? So. And go towards the behavior that is kind. And so if he is drinking during that time and you don't know it, then you not acknowledging it isn't going to hurt anything. But if it gets to the point where it's inappropriate or you can smell it, or you yourself are just tired of this anxious situation, then you can just say, hey, it's really hard for me to be able to kind of figure out when you're drinking and when you're not drinking. So I've noticed I've become really cold and withdrawn because I'm just not sure which version of you I'm going to get. You can say statements like that, but ultimately try to get out of the detective role. All right, so we'll go to one of the viewers and then I've got two more on paper, so we'll switch to one of these. So let's see. Hi, Kim. My spouse, cannabis user, is in his third week of sobriety. Not even close to recovery, but on a good path. Do we. Do we do guided meditations together? I'm sorry? We do guided meditations together almost daily. And I was wondering if you would have any idea of the meditation types or topics I could look at. Look up that might help him in his introspection. Not something labeled as addiction which would put him off. I don't have any, any suggestions off the top of my head on that, but I think I would look at anything that is geared towards autonomy, anything that's geared towards integrity, anything that's geared towards kind of that, holding yourself accountable. So if you think about autonomy, you know, the, the combination of responsibility and freedom, or if you think about any of those things, I would kind of want to support his brain and thinking about how he can better like himself and feel more in control of his life. But I agree with you. Stay away from everything that has to do with addiction. An author, anything at all that even smells like addiction, I'll stay away from that. All right, so next question. I would love an in depth video on teaching how to navigate money. When you have an addicted spouse. When the money is. When. When money is crazy amounts for pills. I am really at a loss as how to handle the situation I found myself in. I make more money and pay all the bills. My addicted husband works. But his addiction now is double what he makes. And our financial situation is about to change and I will be making the same as him. My fear this whole time has been trying to manage him not spending too much on drugs to save financial destruction. What do I do when we can't pay the bills if he spent the money on drugs? I've been waiting for everything to be destroyed in our lives. I feel like I'm watching a train wreck about to happen for about two years now and his drug use, and I'm sorry, and his drug use has continued to increase. My question is when and how often do I say anything to him about it? I mention it in not in a very non confrontational way so I don't appear to be nagging. We're at the point here. I need to use savings to pay some bills. Obviously the next thing will be that savings is gone and we just don't have any resources to pay for this. How do I say, how often do I say something? What is the best strategy? I don't want this to all backfire on me. Not because I don't want it to, to be to blame, but because I don't want everything I do or say to become the reason why we go backwards with the, with the progress we've made. Okay, this one I think is really, really hard because you're right. You've worked really hard in staying out of the bad guy role. And you, you have made progress. I don't know what the progress is, but you are very protective of the progress which tells me you've made progress that you're really grateful for. So when we look at, when we look at addiction, safety always comes first. And what I'm, what I'm looking at here is his, his addiction, his pill use is progressing, which is what happens with addiction. You know, there's, we can't count on much with addiction, but we can't count on two things. It's never going to stay the same and unless they stop, it's going to get worse. And so what I'm seeing here is you're kind of at the very end of even I would say you're, you're at the very end of kind of manageable because you're having to dip into savings. And you're right, once the savings is gone, it's gone. And you know, and he's already overspending what he's making. So, so I think this is a good time to split finances. And, and I know that that's going to cause More problems in the relationship. I know it's going to will put you in the bad guy role, but I think it's super important to recognize that being a bad guy and being put in the bad guy role are two totally different things. I can be completely appropriate, do everything looking out for everyone's best interest, and someone can still accuse me of being selfish or whatever. That doesn't mean I am being that way just because I'm accused of that. So I think in this situation, your husb going to accuse you of being controlling. He is going to accuse you of being the bad guy, but that doesn't mean that you are the bad guy. Because it sounds to me that if you don't do something drastic with the deposits of the money, then he is going to make it to the point where you can't pay the bills. So based on this information, you make more than him. But it sounds like your income's about to change. But he's spending more than he's making. So even if he doesn't contribute to the, to the household, it's, it actually seems like you're, you're financially going to be better off if you open up your own account and pay the bills with the money that you make. And he doesn't have access to that money. So. All right, let's see. Hi, Kim. My son will be released from jail in about six weeks. And the closer that time comes, the more anxious I am becoming about possible relapses after his year of sobriety. I can see that that would definitely be an anxiety producing situation. And I, and I think a lot of times families, people that aren't in this situation don't understand that sometimes jail actually feels like a break for some people because it's like, at least I know they're getting food. At least I know that they may still be using, but not as likely. So he's also dating a woman he has met at aa. So double the risk of aa. Although he will live with me. I can't do it again. Okay, just seeing if there's another question in there. Okay, so I'm not seeing another question come up again. So I would say at this point, kind of like what I said with the first question, you want to be able to increase your relationship with your son or at least maintain your relationship with your son. Because if we lose that or if anybody in this situation starts to see us as being controlling or condescending or any of those things, then we lose our influence. And so I think, oh, how do I handle my own anxiety. So I think going back to this is a similar situation. It's not the same, but it's a similar situation as far as these events are happening or about to happen. And, and because of your history with this person, with this situation, you know that the likelihood of bad things or anxiety producing things are higher. So I think the first thing we want to do in those situations is one, just normalize your anxiety. This is an anxiety producing situation. So you're human, you're alive, you're awake, you're going to feel anxious and that's okay. But then being able to say, what are some realistic expectations that I need? Maybe you need to go kind of far out on the realistic expectations as far as like, if I had to do something drastic, what would that look like? So that you're kind of prepared for this drastic moment before you're in it. And I don't mean like you know, psyching yourself into some scary thing, but being able to say, okay, if it got out of control, this is what it would look like and if it was out of control, this is how I would respond. And then being able to say, but we're not there. So this is how I want to interact on a day to day basis. So I think the best way to handle that anxiety is one, have realistic expectations, be really clear on what you can and can't control inside of you and then make sure that you're maintaining that relationship within the bounds of that relationship so that you can maintain the influence that you already have and hopefully being able to build on that influence. All right, so we'll read the last paper one and then see. Looks like we have another one on the chat too. So the following is my question for next Wednesday's member zoom call. Is it realistic or even possible to stay well while living with three addicts? Only one has alcohol related issues. All three have computer Internet addictions. To deny any related problems, the third does not care. I am in a woman's support group to work on my enabling issues. I am recognizing my patterns and am responding, relating to them differently. Good. Is it a challenge to stay on my side? It is a challenge to stay on my side of the street. I am concerned about being able to make realistic decisions for myself in my ability to stay well in this type of environment. Do you have statistics or success rates or failure rates on how other people in similar situations are able to manage or staying well? Thank you for your videos, time and consideration. So I would say on that one, from a general stance you'll plateau. So you figure if this is my ability to be healthy, if this is healthy as I can ever get as a person, if I'm living in a home with three addicts, I'm going to plateau somewhere. Somewhere this is better than this. But this is not as good as this. So I think being able to say, can you maintain a sense of sanity? Can you maintain a sense of joy, a sense of connectedness to yourself, to who you are? Sure you can. It's going to take a lot of intentional work. It's going to take a lot of intentional boundaries. But will you reach your ultimate goal? Goal of satisfaction or joy or spontaneous love? Probably not. Because what happens when we're living with someone in an addicted state is we, it's unpredictable. And as humans, we don't thrive in unpredictable situations, which, which I think is interesting. If you look at the studies, children that are raised in, I shouldn't just say children, but people that are raised in situations that are consistently chaotic, they are actually better than people that are engaged in inconsistent. So if I have this person over here that 30 days out of the month, things good, their house is good, everything's consistent, but we have a random three day period and the person never knows when this random three day period is going to come. This person I'm talking about over here is going to be more anxious than this person over here that is living in a home that is constantly chaotic or constantly toxic. Because as humans we need to have some sense of safety, we need to have some sense of predictability, some sense of normalcy. And when we don't have that, we end up with anxiety. So to answer your question, is it possible for you to be happy and. Well, yes. Is it possible for you to reach a place where you can be as happy as you possibly could be? Or even on the upper 50% of that I would say yes on the upper 50% of it up on the upper 25%, probably not, because again, you'll plateau. All right, question from over here. Sarah. I found a dab pen in my 16 year old's backpack. Today he is honoring my boundary of not having anything illegal in the house to take it. Good. I did and so was planning on. I did so and was planning on just not saying anything about it. Another question. I still make sure my 16 year old gets up in time to walk to school. School. Is this enabling? Okay, so the second question. Yes, I would not wake up your 16 year old. He needs to feel the consequences of whatever behavior he has. Is it Enabling, maybe. Is it just kind of not letting him grow up? You know, could be that as well. If he's not getting up because he's smoking, then it's definitely enabling. Or if he's, you know, using dab pins. And dab pins are, can be pretty, pretty strong. So. So I think being able. He is respecting your boundary of not having anything illegal in the home. So that's good. I think, I think that if you acknowledge that you saw it, then you'll have to do something about it. I think if you leave it, then what you're doing is you're just waiting for things to unravel more so that you have a better position on whatever position you're going to take. And what I mean by that is if I have one little tiny thing that I'm like, hey, this isn't okay, then it doesn't have as much power as if I have a whole plate full of stuff that says, hey, this isn't okay. And so with your 16 year old, I'm not sure if you already have the plate full and this is just one more thing to add to the plate or if this is just the beginning of filling up the. Filling up the plate. My guess is it's somewhere in the middle because you're looking for it and because you've already had the conversation of what, what is and isn't allowed in the home. So I would say at this point with the dad pen, since we're not really sure what we would do with it, I would say you can leave it or you can take it and throw, throw it away. And if he says, hey, mom, you took my stuff and you threw it away, you can say, you're right, I did it. Maybe, you know, I said he couldn't have anything illegal in the house. I meant it. I know that that's legal, but that also just doesn't feel good in my heart to know that that's in your backpack and then just stop waking him up in the morning. You can certainly let them know, hey, you know what, I'm just, I'm going to start letting you wake yourself up in the morning. I've got other stuff I need to do in the morning, or I'm kind of tired in the morning, or I'm forgetful or, you know, you don't get up the first a couple times I wake you up anyway, so that's just something I don't want to do anymore. So separate the two issues. We've got the dad pin, we've got the Morning. Separate them. All right, let's see. Cindy, what are the statistics on relapse after a year of sobriety that included inpatient, outpatient, regular AA in a jail time for six months? In the past, he maintained as long as legal issues were pending, but relapsed once he has clear of legal issues. This is the first time he went through treatment and stuck with aa. I don't know the statistics on that, and I think age is a factor on that as well, Cindy, So. But I don't know the statistics on that. But I would say what it sounds to me is he does really well when there's some accountability. So I don't know if this is something that his life will naturally give as far as like the accountability. A job where he has to be legal for or he has to be sober for, drug test, parole officer, anything like that. But I would say again, going back into just kind of maintaining your relationship with him, keeping that influence as strong as it can, and not reminding him that he did really well when he had a whole bunch of stuff hanging over his head, that's not going to help with the influence. If he says something like, hey, I'm really concerned. I know I did really well under this, this and this situation, and this isn't that you can have a conversation with him about it, but if he doesn't bring it up, I wouldn't acknowledge it. But I don't know the statistics on that. All right, let's see. Any other questions on here? Don't think so. I think we got them. All right, so we have just a few people watching, so there's certainly enough time for someone to throw another question in or to give a follow up. If not, then I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about a relationship development stage that a lot of people may not realize that I think is pretty relevant for people that are in relationships with people that struggle with substance abuse. So I'll just kind of talk a little bit on that, and if you guys have a question, then I'll just pause what I'm talking about and go to answer the question. But I just want to give you guys a second to maybe type in any questions that you might have or think about some of the stuff that I said. And if you have a follow up question or comment on that, then you guys have the opportunity to do that. So when we look at relationship development, a lot of times people don't realize it, but relationships develop very much just like humans develop. So there's very specific stages of relationship Development. Most people are really familiar with the first stage, which is infatuation. Love is blind. Symbiosis is a. Is a more technical term for it. But a lot of people aren't very familiar with the other stuff that comes after that. So after infatuation comes the stage of differentiation. Bri, can you hear me? Is that the weed eater people are here? Okay, so the. Just want to make sure I wasn't talking and all you guys heard was the art guy. So good. So we've got. Differentiation is where we feel a lot of anxiety over differences in the relationship. So things that you guys don't agree on. And for people that struggle with substance abuse, a lot of people get stuck in this differentiation because maybe they agreed on where drugs and alcohol fit in their life at one point in their relationship, or maybe it didn't start out being a problem. So then there's a lot of anxiety over how do we handle drugs and alcohol in our relationship. And so there's a lot of times this differentiation, what happens? It's a push and pull. And so one partner tries to convince the other partner to. To think like they do, and the other partner tries to convince the other partner to think like they do, so we can end up in these power struggles. So in a lot of ways, when we talk about staying out of the bad guy role, part of it is to kind of help you guys move through this differentiation stage. Not only. I mean, this is really. I shouldn't say part of it. That's really just a side benefit, but it helps you kind of move through this differentiation role. You as the partner, not the person struggling with addiction, to move into the next stage, which is not fun either. But that's exploration. And that's really the topic. The. The one that I wanted to kind of expose you guys to today is when we look at exploration, it's a really lonely part of a relationship because what we do during this part is we. We self explore. And so we try to figure out who am I in this relationship, not who am I as a partner, but who am I as the person I show up at work, or as a daughter, or as a friend or as a neighbor. And so when we're in. When we're paired up with someone that struggles with substance abuse. And you can see how this can be especially lonely because we're dealing with our partner who's probably in differentiation, trying to manage their own anxiety about how we feel about their substance use, while we are in exploration trying to figure out who we are partnered up to somebody that is struggling with addiction. And so we end up with a lot of dissatisfaction in relationships and we end up with a lot of misalignment and a lot of fighting. And so there's two things on this that I just kind of want to expose you guys to the information. One, it's totally normal. Rather you're in a relationship with someone, someone that struggles with addiction or not. Differentiation and exploration, this is just part of relationship development. However, it makes it so much more difficult and it makes you stay in these stages longer when we're power struggling over something like substance abuse. So I just wanted to kind of expose that information to you guys so that if you find yourself in your relationship feeling like you're just playing tug of war, you probably are playing tug of war for all, all of the substance abuse obvious things that we talk about. But also there's an underlying development issue in the relationship which is totally normal, completely human. One person's over here in differentiation trying to figure out how do I convince my partner to think like me. We all do it at some point. And over here we have another partner that's trying to figure out how do I handle this madness, how do I handle maintaining myself and growing myself while still arguing with this other person who's trying to get me to convince me to think like them. So that, that's just, just some information I thought that might be helpful. So let's see. I don't see one more question. Nope, that's the one I already answered. That was my fault. Okay, there we go. All right. Oh, okay. Is it helpful for my 16 year old son and I to have a good rapport in connection for me to mention possible outcomes of him not going to school or being hi when he's missing classes, etc? Yes, that is super important. If you have a good connection. And here's that. You know that influence word I keep talking about? If you have a good connection, he's. He's more likely to hear that it's harder to have a good connection and a good influence when you're dealing with a 16 year old who's problematically using so. But yes is the answer to that. If you can maintain that connection, if you can somehow relate to him on some level that he will listen to you, then your word and your influence is way, way better than if it's not. Okay, so let's see. Is it ever helpful to play detective? I struggle with knowing it's wrong, but also not wanting to be blindsided. I would say it's helpful to play detective on very, very, very few occasions. Because typically, if you're looking, you already know. Maybe not all the details, but you already know something's not right. So it's helpful to play detective if and only if you're trying to build a case where you're trying to keep somebody safe. This might be a separation, this might be a divorce. This might be a custody issue where you're simply trying to gather information to make sure that somebody like a child is protected. It's also helpful the same type of situation, if you're trying to make sure that you're protected, your finances are protected, that something shady or shifty isn't happening to where your safety is then going to be on the line. Other than that, no, it's not helpful to play detective because what happens is you end up finding information that you're not quite sure what to do with. And then if you bring it up, what happens is the other person then accuses you of snooping, accuses you of being controlling, of going back to that differentiation place, accuses you of being all of the bad things. Or once in a while, they may play a really hard victim. Where I can understand why you would do this. I'm such a terrible person. What am I supposed to do? You should leave me. And either way, in both of those situations, you either feel pulled to say to you're not that bad, or, you know, I don't leave you because I love you. So you feel almost pulled to enable. And that doesn't happen nearly as much as the other side, where then you end up in this argument, or you end up holding information that you really can't do anything with because you don't want to be the bad guy, or you don't want to reveal the fact that you've been checking their text messages or checking their emails or whatever it is where you have this inside scoop to what's really happening, which then increases your anxiety. So it's not really helpful to play the detective role. All it does is mostly increase your anxiety. All right, Let's see if we have any feedback on that. Okay. All right, so we'll give it just a little bit longer, and then if we have some more questions pop up, we'll answer them. But if not, then we will call that for the day. And I think for you guys that are on here, I know we'll have kind of like some slow moments waiting for questions, but if there's. If there's a topic, a specific topic that you want to talk about, just Put it in the chat, and then that'll give me some ideas. And Campbell, too, to kind of have some things prepared for the slower moment so that we can come in prepared. Just kind of talking about specific topics that maybe you would want us to talk about. Okay, let's see. My kids have a friend who is involved with drugs. Do I tell that young man's mom? No. And coming from a mom, the mom in me is like, oh, yes, you should definitely tell that mom. But the right answer is no, because what happens is it makes it so that your. Your kids are not going to trust you. They're going to feel like you're gonna. You're gonna damage your relationship with your kids by doing that. The other thing is, chances are that mom's. That man's mom isn't going to believe you. And it's. And they're going to ask. They're going to put you in a lot of bad situations. You're going to be the middleman. And ultimately that. It's just. That's not the best. The best avenue to go. If. Now, there's a caveat to that. If your kids are coming to you saying, hey, Mom, I'm super concerned with my friend. I think he's going to overdose, or I don't know what to do, or, you know, he's. He's doing way too much scary stuff, then I would talk to your kids about, what do you want me to do with this information? I can see that you're really concerned about it. I can see it's important to you to make sure that your friend is safe and, okay, how can I help you? Because then you're aligning with your friends or your. Your kids, you're keeping that influence there. You're keeping that connection there. But if you just know because they're spending time at your house or because you know you're somehow you found out just because you did. Really holding on to that information for right now is the best option, even though it's very counterintuitive and thinking about it from a parent side, I would want to know. But it's not going to help you with your relationship with your kids. And most likely that other parent isn't going to hear that relationship isn't going to hear that information. Well, okay. See if Liz has anything kind of to come back on that before we sign off. Okay. All right, good. And again, it's not an answer that I want to give. Like, the, the part of me wants to be like, yes, yes, let's tell that parent, but it just doesn't, it doesn't typically work out well. So. Okay. Well, if there are no more questions, then we'll sign off for today. And, and again, just like I said before, if there are some specific topics or even things that you don't necessarily have question on, but you just want to know more about, put it in. You know, you can send, just like you guys do the emails. You can send a little thing in there, and then that way Campbell and I can be prepared just to give a little bit of information on that. So. All right. Well, I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day, and we will see you next week.