Parenting Adult Children With Addiction

If you've got an adult child with an addiction, please, please, please watch this whole video because I'm going to give you some crucial advice. And without this advice, the chances that your kid is going to get long term recovery and that you're going to get your life back is slim to none. In fact, if you've got any kid with an addiction problem, adult or not, watch this video, because what I'm about to tell you is relevant regardless. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth and you're watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel designed to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can develop a strategy to get your life and your loved one back on track. Because I know you're sick and tired of being held hostage by this addiction. Okay, so let's get on to our topic. The crucial advice that any parent with an addicted child should know, especially any parent who has an adult addicted child. If you're in this situation, then there are strong chances that you're being held hostage by your child's addiction, whether or not they're living in your home. Now, if they are living in your home, it's probably worse, but even if they're not living in your house, you're probably being held hostage. My guess is that you're being asked to handle the responsibilities that your adult child or your not adult child should be handling. That you're being asked to pay bills that you shouldn't pay, that you're being asked to raise children that you shouldn't be raising, that you're being asked to do all kind of things, clean houses, pay bills, make decisions, intervene with legal problems. You know what I'm talking about. The list goes on. You're being sucked into taking care of your child's responsibilities. And my guess is the reason why you're so held hostages to that is because somewhere in the back of your head you're telling yourself that your child isn't capable of doing those things, that maybe they have a mental health problem that doesn't make them capable, that maybe they just don't have the money and what will they do? They'll just be on the street? Or that they have this other special circumstance that makes it where they just can't do those things. By believing that you are transmitting the message to your child that they're not capable. If you believe it, I can guarantee they believe it. And the key to getting successful long term recovery is becoming the kind of person that you like, that you respect, you have to act in a way that is consistent with your value systems. And the thing of it is, if you're taking care of all of your child's responsibilities, what are the chances that your child is ever going to be a person that they respect, that they like, that they care about? Some of you may know Campbell. She's one of the counselors in our and she particularly specializes in seeing the parents of addicts and alcoholics. In fact, she's got two sons in recovery herself, so she knows a little bit about this matter. Campbell is incessantly talking to parents about serotonin and allowing your child to have serotonin. So much so that we tease her about it in the office. We say, here we go with the serotonin talk. But it's true. She really believes it because serotonin is the chemical in your brain that is, it's a happy chemical. But we get serotonin when we feel proud of ourselves. Particularly when we feel proud of ourselves in the context of something we're doing in relationship to our social group. Like we feel proud of ourselves because we feel like we've made our parents proud. Or we feel proud of ourselves because we're doing a good job of providing for our families. Or we feel proud of ourselves because we got accepted into college or because we got our first apartment or because were a new dad or something like that. That feeling is so essential and necessary for recovery. And if you don't start backing out of taking care of all of those responsibilities for your child, you're robbing them of the very thing that can help them be better. If you're always taking care of everything, you're not allowing your child to get serotonin. Now if this is an issue you struggle with, telling you you need to be talking to Campbell because this is her arena. She is the absolute expert around this. In fact, she's way more hardcore and better about it than I am. And the reason is, is because she's had to do this twice. So she has walked the walk. It's not just talking the talk. She's faced this fear head on. And she'll be the first one to tell you not only is it going to improve their lives, but it's going to improve your lives. Because let's look at the flip side of this. Taking care of all of your child responsibilities, continuing to give them money, continuing to bail them out of jail, continuing to help them relationships that they've broken. You know the list. I know you know this list because you wrote the list right you see, not only are you not allowing your child to build the good brain chemical serotonin and feel proud of themselves, which is essential for recovery, but you're probably also in the meantime building a lot of resentment on your end. You probably don't feel very proud of yourself. You probably feel kind of guilty about it and bad about it, and you probably have these bad feelings towards your child because you're spending your retirement paying their bills because you, you can't go on the cruise and vacation you want to go on because you're raising their children or putting their children through college. So not only are you leaving your child with a lot of bad feelings, but you're leaving yourself with a lot of bad feelings and you don't have enough serotonin. So it's time to stop being held hostage by those fears. It's time to start allowing your child to step up to the plate so they can feel proud of themselves, so you can feel proud of them, so you can feel proud of yourself. That's how you stop the cycle. When you have an addicted child, particularly an addicted adult child. Now, if your child is a young adult and maybe never has even learned to take responsibility for themselves or pay their own bills or make their bed every day, or, you know, go to work consistently every day and get a paycheck and manage that money, all those sorts of young adult skills, and you know that your young adult child may need treatment, then I'm going to suggest you look for a young adult specific program for addiction. Because those programs, they're not just talking about how to not use drugs, but they also spend a lot of time and energy teaching young adults how to be adults. Because usually if you're a young adult with an addiction, you've probably started using drugs and alcohol when you were really young, like a really young teenager, and you probably never even developed those skills. So one of the things that's going to help you to let go of that is by knowing that your kid is in a treatment program where they're learning that. And so the best, easiest way to do that is they start picking up the rope and you start letting go a little at a time, sort of like a taper program. Now, I'm not telling you can't help them at all, but they should be helping themselves as much as you're helping them. And if that's the formula that you're following, they're going to be proud of themselves. Even if you're helping them a little, they know they're doing their part. And you're not going to feel resentful about it. And if you're doing that, then you're actually helping. If you're not doing that, you're doing more than they're doing, then you're enabling. If you want to know more about enabling, you want to take a harder look at that, watch this video next. Because in that video we really take an in depth look at the whole idea of enabling what it is and how to stop it.