Recovery Skill: Relationships

Making, keeping and maintaining good, healthy, positive relationships is a core component for your recovery. Which is why in this video we're going to talk about how to actually do that. You might have even heard me say that connection is the opposite of addiction. Connection and relationships truly is the way out of the addictive cycle. You see, in the addictive cycle, it's all about loneliness, isolation, low sense of self worth, broken relationships, shame, guilt, remorse, a whole bunch of negative, nasty, not so fun stuff. Which is why in recovery we want to move towards the opposite of all of those things, which is building happy, healthy relationships. Now one of the ways that this is pretty commonly done at the onset of recovery is people start building positive, healthy relationships in their recovery support groups. So they surround themselves with other people who are in recovery who are trying to do the right thing. And one of the reasons why that can be so healthy and healing is because it really feels like a very like true non judgmental environment. And there's just something healing about being around other people who really get you on that level. So as always, I definitely recommend building yourself a positive recovery support network. But in this video we're actually going to be talking more specifically about some of those other outside relationships like family, other friends, work relationships, all of those regular day to day relationships that are really important for you to make and maintain. Now the way I'd like for you to think about this information with relationships is I really want you to kind of divide it into two categories. The first category being relationships that are probably like not so great that you need to do something about. And the second category being more about maintaining and making healthy, lasting relationships. Let's start with the repair and rebuild side. Now the first thing you may want to do on the repair and rebuild side is to decide what relationships you have in your life that have been damaged, but not just the ones that have been damaged, but the ones that have been damaged that you'd actually like to keep. Let's focus on those first. Now, I'm not gonna lie, there is a lot of hard work involved with repairing relationships after the destruction that addiction causes. There's no doubt been a lot of lying, sneaking, hiding, mistrust, promises broken, a lot of relationship damage. But it is definitely possible to dig out of that hole. Now of course it is a big complicated subject in we actually teach you the real step by step process in our rapid relationship repair course. And these three things are going to get you well on your way to rebuilding those relationships or fixing all the damage that's out there. The first one is you got to kind of like admit to your wrongdoings. Now I know this is painful and uncomfortable, but for the most part, the other person already knows you've done it. But it is very, very healing for them to hear you actually say it because kind of likely it's is that they know you've done it. You know you done it, but you've been denying it for a long time. So just saying it and admitting it, yeah, I did take that 20 bucks from you when I thought. When you thought I did or yeah, I really was drunk when you accused me of it. You know, so and so night or whatever. Hearing that I'm telling you goes such a long, long way. And I know you may be scared of doing that because you don't want to bring up an argument or any negative feelings. It's kind of like, why do I want to harsh up the flow when things are going good? It's because even though things seem like they're going good, that like that toxicity is still hanging out back there. And it's like this roadblock that's going to keep that person from really connecting to you and trusting you on a deep level. It really is important for you to admit, acknowledge what's happened in the past. The second thing you want to do after you sort of admit it is you want to make some amends for it. Now I know if you work a 12 step program, they have a whole logical, very well thought out process which I highly recommend. But not everyone wants to do the steps. So I want to give you just a little like hints and clues here about how to make some amends. Amends is about owning your part. It's about communicating to someone not only that you get what you did and that you take ownership and responsibility for it, but that you also get and understand how your behavior impacted them or the other person. So for example, you might need to make an amend to a loved one because you took something from them or because you broke their trust a thousand million times or because you gaslit them or you were constantly lying to them. So you can say something like, hey, in the past, I know I did X, Y or Z and I know it caused these problems for you, or I know it affected you in the following ways. Now, what's hard about this is because you may be thinking, yeah, well, I'm not the only one who made mistakes. And they made mistakes too. But this is not about them. This is about you. This is about you cleaning up your side of the street and the Reason you're doing this isn't so much for the other person's forgiveness, which is bonus, because usually you get that, but that's just a bonus. The reason you're doing this is because you don't want to carry around that shame, guilt, remorse, or secret anymore. Those things are like little toxins inside your body that cause infection when you leave them there. I'm telling you, causes all kinds of psychological problems, relationship problems, and you want to get rid of it. It's like having a splinter in your foot and think, I'm not gonna get this out. I'm just gonna keep walking on it. Right. And the more you walk on it, the more infected it's gonna get. You can try to ignore it, but it's gonna be getting worse and worse and worse when you do that. So you want to admit you want to make an amends. And when I was coming up with these three, because the first two started with A, I thought I needed to come up with another one, start with A because it just made sense. So the third one is adhere. Adhere means adhere to what you said you're going to do. So I'm going to refer you back to video part number two in this mini series, which integrity after this one, if you want to go back and watch that one because you haven't seen it or you need to watch it again, that's all about doing what you say you're going to do. Because in order to repair the relationships. Yes, you need to acknowledge what happened. Yeah, you need to, like, make it amends or apologize for it. But most importantly, you need to create a consistent, dependable, trustworthy pattern moving forward. Seriously. That's probably the most important of the three steps on the repair relationship side. But now let's move on to the maintaining or creating good, healthy, positive relationships. Like, sort of like starting from here. Moving forward, there are some real key ingredients or actually there's skills that are important to develop or at least work on or nurture as you go along in your recovery process. First and foremost, a relationship skill you need is honesty. I know that sounds basic, and I know you're like, amber, you don't need to tell us that. But when you're trapped in addiction for a long time, you start living a life of dishonesty, and it almost becomes like second nature. Like, before you know it, you're lying about stupid stuff you didn't even need to lie about. And you're even thinking, like, why did I lie about that? It's just second nature. You've been protecting secrets. You've been keeping things from so many people. It's actually a really hard habit to break. Even after the addiction or the substance goes away. Honesty isn't easy. Now, little hint here. I don't mean being. You know, sometimes people use honesty as a weapon and they'll say, well, it was the truth, she need to hear it. I'm not talking about being mean to someone. I'm talking about owning up to the real truth of what's going on. Not just what you did or what you said or, you know, whatever about being honest, but also about what your intentions were and what the motive behind what you did was. Because sometimes people will maybe admit they did something, but they'll try to minimize it by saying, well, I did that because this or I was trying to spare your feelings or something like that. And it's really hard. This honesty thing really kind of like begins with yourself. First, foremost, you got to know what the truth is to be able to tell it to someone else. And believe it or not, it's not such an automatic easy process. It takes a lot of self awareness and like some deep down digging and thinking, which we talked about in part one of this miniseries. If you want to go back and reference it. A second skill that you want to focus on when it comes to recovery is humility. In fact, if you can do really good with the humility thing, the honesty thing is going to come a lot easier. One of the natural coping mechanisms, or defense mechanisms, whatever you want to call it, that builds up when you're struggling with an addiction is we build these resentments and we build these self pity ideas in our head and rationalizations. And we do that because that's how we basically justify our behavior at the time, which kind of takes us pretty far away from humility. It makes us feel justified in rationalizing why we made the choices that we made. And again, these things become habit, like a reflex, like an instinct. You're not trying to do this, but you've done it for so long that it's kind of tough. And when you're faced with something that's not so great about yourself, it can be easy to blame another person or another situation or any kind of thing other than accept and own your part of things. Now, humility doesn't mean putting yourself below anybody else. In my mind, humility means that you are no better or no worse than anyone else, that you are on an equal playing field and that you're okay with that. Now, along with humility, when you get good at that. You'll probably pretty naturally get good at empathy. Now, for some people, empathy comes pretty easily. In fact, some people really feel like they're overly empathetic. I've certainly met a lot of people like that that can kind of run you into trouble too. But one kind of empathy, humility thing that I think is really important for recovery is sort of like giving other people grace, like seeing other people's character defects and their flaws and the fact that they're not perfect and kind of give them a little grace for that and being empathetic for their situation. So they're not perfect and they're not wonderful. But you can respond with empathy and humility instead of allowing yourself to get annoyed and frustrated and building resentments. If you go to any kind of 12 step support meeting, you have probably had this experience. There's probably someone in those meetings or in your family that literally just drives you crazy and they just hit your buttons and they just like this, make your head want to pop off your shoulders and whatever that is. And the reason that usually happens is because that other person is demonstrating or allowing a characteristic about themselves to come to the surface that you don't like in yourself and that you try to keep suppressed. You know, when we're stuck in those addiction cycles, we're so miserable and sick all the time and feel so terrible that we're just living in that survival mode, trying to get from one minute to the next. When you're in that survival mode, it's really hard to be empathetic to other people around you, because you're basically in survival mode yourself. You can't even access that part of your brain. So retraining, that is an important recovery skill. Now, the last thing I'm going to put on this important relationship skill thing that you need to develop is actually assertiveness. You know, so far we talked about honesty and humility and empathy, which is about caring for other people. But just as important as those things are, you gotta be able to take care of yourself as well. If you're not very good at getting your needs met, if you're a people pleaser, if you too easily say yes when you mean no, that can get you into hot water as quick as anything else. Now, it may look nice on the outside and you may seem like a hero, and other people maybe even validate that kind of behavior from you. But I'm telling you, when you do this too much, you're gonna end up in a bad way because you could end up doing a bunch of things that you don't want to do which leads you to resentment, which again leads you to self pity, which can and will definitely result in justifying some other kind of bad choice. Or if you're not assertive enough then you will agree to do things and then not do them and then the other person builds a resentment against you. And when they do that then you build a resentment against them back because then you're mad at them for being mad at you and they just expected too much of you and they're taking advantage of you. Anym anyway, you see where I'm going with this? So being able to recognize your own needs. Say yes when you mean yes, no when you mean no is going to help you to build healthier relationships. Not allowing people to run over you is a very important part of recovery. Because when we do that it leads to other bad behavior. You're not doing anyone a favor by allowing them to take advantage of you or run over you, or agreeing to do things that you don't really want to do. Even though it may seem easier in the moment, it's not going to end well.