Roles In The Addicted Family System

If your family's been taken over by the craziness of addiction, this video is definitely for you. We're going to cover family roles in addiction and codependency. And I'm going to walk you through, step by step, how your family went from being a normal, functioning family into the chaotic system that it is now. And not only am I going to tell you how you got into this mess, but I'm going to give you a step by step plan on how to walk right out of this nightmare and get some control back over your life and your family's life. So if you're new to this channel and you've never met me before, I'm amber hollingsworth, founder of hope for families recovery center. And this channel is all about keeping you five steps ahead of addiction. So if that's something that you need to accomplish, make sure you subscribe to this channel, and I'll make sure you're always ahead of the game. So let's start off by talking about what family units are designed for. They're like little tribes designed to protect one another. So it might be helpful to think of each individual person like one of those little wheels inside of a clock, you know, where one wheel turns the next wheel turns the next wheel. Well, what happens if one of those little dials in there gets messed up? The whole clock's gonna break down. And essentially, that's what happens when addiction takes over the family. It doesn't just mess up the one person. It messes up the whole system. And if you're gonna put it back together, you, can't just fix that one piece anymore, because now you've got a lot of pieces that have been broken and need to be repaired to make this family work like it's supposed to. So we're gonna start by identifying what are the five stages? What are the five things that happen that get us from normal family into the chaotic craziness that addiction can bring. And then together, we're gonna figure out how to get out of this mess. So the first thing that you usually see start to develop in addicted family systems is these camps start to set up. We're going to call them camps because it's like, you got people on this side and this side. And so what's really happening here is everyone in the family system is scared. They're fearful. They're fearful about what's going to happen to the person that's addicted. They're scared. They're fearful about what's going to happen to the other members of the family and how they're being drawn into the system. And so people respond to that fear differently. Like, you know, you've heard the saying before, Fight or flight. Like the biological concept that when something bad happens, Some people either run towards it and other people run away from it. I always say there should be three. There should be fight, flight, and freeze. Well, the camps that set up in addicted family systems, that's really just a version of that, essentially. So some members of the family, they want to go at this thing full force, 100 miles an hour. And try to lock it down and control it. Those are your fighters. So you have the fighting camp, and then you have another camp who wants to either freeze and do absolutely nothing about it, or flee and run from it. And so essentially, it's really just two different coping mechanisms to deal with the same fear. So everybody's coming from the same root cause. We're just dealing with it differently. The people that are over here in the fighting camp, on some kind of level, Even if it's subconscious, Feel like if I can put enough rules down, if I can control this situation, if I can stay on top of it and make sure that this person, the addict, doesn't get by with anything, Then we can get this problem under control. So they come in full force, Trying to play sort of tough love. They're playing like the bad cop that I call them. And then you've got the other camp. Their primary way of dealing with that fear Is to avoid dealing with that fear. And so what happens is they kind of want to go over here and either put their head in the sand totally. And pretend like nothing's happening at all, or at least put their head, like, halfway in the sand. So people that got their head halfway in the sand, like, the way that might look Is they sort of say, yeah, it's a problem, but they minimize it. So if this is a parent situation and you have an addicted child, Usually what happens is you have the mom going in the fighting camp, and you have the dad going into the avoiding camp. Now, it doesn't have to be like that. Those roles can be reversed, but you will almost always see those roles. And if there's not a mom and a dad, these same roles will develop, Whether it's between a parent and a grandparent, Between a parent and siblings. If you're dealing with a couple where there's an addiction problem, Then the spouse of the addicted person Usually falls into the controlling camp, at least in the beginning, because there's this false sense of let Me get control of the situation. It's kind of like a containment reflex that goes on here. And you might think to yourself, well, at least the people in the fighting camp will admit that there's a problem. Those other people over there that are in the avoiding camp, they're in denial. Well, bad news. Both camps are in a little bit of denial, because even the people that are over here in the fighting camp, they're in denial because they think that's gonna work and it's not gonna work. Trust me, you cannot control addiction from the outside. You can't run off all the bad friends. You can't find all the drugs and the alcohol in the house. None of those things work. Trust me. I've seen many, many, many, many families try, and none of them be successful that way. Addiction is an inside issue, and you have to fix it from the inside out. So both of these camps are responding out of fear, and both of these camps are in a little bit of denial. So once you get to this point, in an addicted family system, not only has this family lost their relationship with the addicted person, but. But now they've lost their relationships with everyone else in the family. Because you have all these camps and all this fear is controlling, and each person in that system begins to feel lonely and isolated. And typically, what happens is many of those family members will start to seek relationships outside of the family unit to get their needs met better. Sometimes it's. I just don't want to deal with it, so I'm going to focus on this goal. I'm going to put blinders on, and I'm not going to pay attention at all. But essentially, no one is getting their needs met in this family system. So in stage three of the addicted family process, what you're going to see is you're going to see the breakdown or the loss of all the rituals and traditions that families usually have. You know, traditions are so important to families. I mean, the way you do Christmas, the way you do mother's day, the way you do thanksgiving, the way you do birthdays, all of those things, Weddings, funerals, those are so important. And before addiction comes in, whether you meant to or not, your family probably created some traditions around that. And sometimes those traditions even happen on accident. Maybe Aunt Pearl always comes down and she forgot, and there's a roller still in her hair. That's still family tradition. And so now every year she comes down, there's a roller in her hair, and it's like the funny inside joke. Families and people love that it creates Safety and unity. But when addiction comes into the family system, it really puts a stop to all that because it truly is running the show. I want you to think of addiction like a puppet master up here. And it's not just controlling the addicted person down here. It's controlling the whole family system like a puppet master. And so all of those good traditions and rituals and memories that you used to have start to fall apart, because with celebrations and holidays come sadness and come and usually bring a lot of drama with them, if you're looking at addicted family systems. So maybe on Friday nights, the family used to all get together and play games, but now dad comes home drunk most of the time on Friday nights. And so we're all scared to death of what dad's going to do is going to blow up. So we just kind of stop that family tradition. And so now that we're in stage three, you can see that you literally have a shell of the family that was once there. So usually somewhere in stage four, someone from the controlling camp, and maybe even by this time, even the people in the avoiding camp, One of the things that they're going to try to put this system back together is they're going to put some new rules in place. I call this the home contract. So it usually happens, like, right after something bad happens, like a dui or a wrecked car or a destroyed family moment or holiday. And so the family comes in, they're like, okay, from now on, to live in this house, you're gonna get drug tested, and if you're not in school, you're gonna pay rent. And they have all these what I call the family contract rules start to come into place. I just saw this again the other day. I got a new client call. It was this dad. And at the time when he was son, who was an adult son, was actually in detox, and he was looking for help for when the son got out of detox, he went through this whole long story. I mean, I listened to him for, like, 45 minutes, just telling me the backstory. And in the course of that story, this kid had been homeless, he'd been in jail. And in between those things, he had been back at home. And every time he would come back at home, it was like, okay, to live under this roof. You're gonna have drug screens, you're gonna have this. You're gonna have to be working, you know, you're gonna have to pay your own insurance, whatever it was. These are the rules. House. And so when I was talking to this dad for this New call. He was saying, can you help me? And the problem was, is the dad and the mom had already told their kid who was an adult, but I'm gonna call him a kid here because it's still their kid, that he could come back home. And they had worked with the therapist they had previously to come up with a written contract for this person to sign. And I was like, oh, no. I was like, yes, we can help you, but if you would have called me five minutes sooner, I would have told you not to do that. It just doesn't work. I've got a whole video on that about why home contracts don't work. If you want to check that out, it's a good one. And all it is is that fear running the show, and it's denial. And it's this thought that if I can put these rules down and they sign that piece of paper, they're gonna know I mean business. And surely they won't break the rules when they know for real I mean business because they signed that contract. Mmm. Addiction is going to break all the rules, all the laws. No matter how lenient you make it, no matter how minimal of a standard you put it will get broken. By this time, this family is in a giant mess. By the time we're in stage five, it is nothing but shame and blame going all over the place. The people in the fighting camp blame the people that have their head in the sand, and they think, well, if you would get on board and you would get on our side, like, we could do something about this. You're enabling them. And the people over there in the head, in the sand camp, they're looking at the other people in the fighting camp, and they're like, no, you're just fighting with it, and that's not making any better. And you're just making them want to use, and that's driving them to drink, you know? And so it's shame and blame back and forth. And that is actually a distraction, all of that chaos. Don't forget, you got this puppet master up here controlling this person and everyone around them. All of that chaos serves as a distraction to keep the addicted person sick. Not on purpose, but because as long as all that's going on, as long as everybody's busy throwing shame and blame at each other, then they're stuck in this cycle. And addiction will go on forever in these kind of conditions. At this point, it's not uncommon for one of the other family members to develop to have developed a substance use disorder in reaction to the Addiction. A lot of times, people that want to avoid it and don't want to deal with it, they may start trying to drink to deal with it or take Xanax to deal with it. And now you got two addicts in the family. What a mess. So I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, amber, yeah, we knew we were a mess. You had to tell us all that. But you did tell us. You're going to tell us how to walk out of that. Well, that's easy. We talked about those five stages that got you in the mess, and all you have to do. I said it was easy. It's not easy. Okay. But the process isn't complicated, but it is difficult. So basically what you have to do is you have to, like, reverse engineer this process. Let's rewind it back, let's back step out of it to get back into some kind of normalcy in your family. So if we're going to reverse back through those stages, the first thing we got to do is stop throwing the shame and the blame. Stop finger pointing. Guess what? Nobody caused the addiction. You can't make someone a drug addict, just like you can't make someone not a drug addict. So let's put the fingers down. Yeah, there's probably some things that have been done that haven't been helpful on every single side. But remember, people are doing what they're doing out of fear, and. And sometimes it's the best way that you know how to deal with the situation. You're just doing the best that you can. So next, as we're backing out of this process, then we need to get to that step number four, which is all of those home contracts and rules. You know what I say about home contracts and rules? I'm not saying don't have any boundaries for yourself and just let someone do whatever. But I like to say keep it vague. You know why I say keep it vague? Because that keeps the power and control back in your hands. You're not saying, if you do X, then Y is going to happen, because when you do that, you actually back yourself into a corner. But what you can do is say something like, hey, I just want you to know we're not going to live like this. We're not going to let this craziness affect everybody in the house any longer. And at this point, I really strongly want to advise you to seek the help from somebody who knows a little something about pulling this off. A recovery coach, an addiction counselor, a family recovery specialist, someone who can help you untangle this mess. So as we're backing our way out of it, let's look at our family system. Let's put some family traditions back in place. Maybe it's just family Netflix night. It doesn't have to be anything big, but that will help bond the family members back together, which will bring us back through step number two, which is to have relationships and connectedness and community within the family system. You know, you've probably been living in fear. Everyone's been scared. No one wants to bring up any kind of problem because we don't want to hit a button. It's almost like the family so on edge that any little thing will set it off, and we're all just tiptoeing around that. And most importantly, we have to dissolve the camps. We are all on the same side. Everyone's opinion matters. And usually, in my experience, each camp has half the answer. And so if we can put those two halves together, we can get somewhere. So make sure you watch this video next, and it will take you to your next step of solving this problem. I'll put it right up here or here. I don't know which side Cassal is backwards. I want to say over here. So that means probably over there. It's up there. Just click it and take your second step towards walking out of this nightmare.