What's Behind How Families Handle Addiction

If you're watching this video, you know you're feeling sad, angry, frustrated, but what you might not know is what you're really feeling is grief. Grief is really what's underneath our own struggle, our own power struggle with addiction. Grief is the most left-out conversation in the world of addiction, and it's often not discussed or acknowledged. In the courses that we run, I often hear clients say, I had no idea I was actually feeling grief until I watched that module. And hearing it was that I'm actually grieving felt really challenging to me to switch from my comfortable feelings of being mad, crying, trying to control it all, to acknowledging what I'm actually feeling and experiencing is grief somehow feels wrong. And so we have to do a lot of this work. It's largely because when you love someone struggling with addiction, all eyes typically go to stopping their behavior, ending their addiction, getting them to treatment. We're focusing on changing our own behaviors so that they will change. As all of you guys know, this at the very least is a slow process. And all of our attempts really to change ourselves in the effort to change them are often futile while simultaneously driving us crazy. While our emotions are careening all over the emotional map, While we're trying to elicit this thing that's not happening. Once I learned that it was grief that I was actually feeling, once I understood that my process of how I was truly feeling at my core, what was really happening inside me, I was able to function differently. I was able to handle addiction from a more clarified, maybe a more clear angle, and to live with less drama because I understood what was really going on and how— To live a little easier within myself with less volatility and less drama. So this, like, understanding grief really does pull it back to us and allow us to sit with our true feelings and what's really going on. Remember, all anger, all those things, those are secondary emotions. Fear and sadness are our primary ones, and fear and sadness are our grief. So we have to link grief. It's the most integral thing. So we have to link it to our relationship with addiction in order to change our role and how we interact with addiction. Makes sense. Why is this important? Because if we don't, we are actually inadvertently out of love, out of fear, feeding addiction through our behaviors, which are ineffective and reinforcing shame often in ourselves and in our loved ones. So we're actually Pushing a boulder down a hill when we need to be going the other way. Brené Brown talks about how in grief we feel lost, L-O-S-T, as well as feeling loss, L-O-S-S. Brené talks also about how grief brings agony, and this agony with addiction goes as deep as our bones, and it causes— it manifests itself as fatigue, Exhaustion, loneliness, yearning for the addiction and all that it's bringing with it to end. I wrote a blog years ago called SALTY— sad, angry, lonely, tired, yearning. And really, if we boil all that down, it's grief. So that's what we want. That's what we're talking about today is how do we change this? Because this yearning is directly linked to what I call loss of dream. Loss of dream can be like the big things, like missing graduations and proms, trips, celebrations, and vacations. And that's what people talk about all the time is sort of like, well, I missed their prom, or I was talking to all my other, my husband's coworker spouses, and we missed the company trip because he was too drunk to go. But I think that there's a giant focus on loss of dream that internally for me that more importantly really just misses— it's like missing on the intimate moments, dinner conversations, cooking together, solving problems as a team, doing mundane but human things, watching TV, sharing books that we might read together, silly— the silliness of life that we miss when we have someone with addiction. And these are the things that bring us together as family members. And that is missing. And so that causes, in my opinion, a tremendous amount of grief. But we don't talk about that and we don't acknowledge that. We just focus on what do we got to do to make them stop? What do we got to do to change our behavior and our interaction with them so that we'll comply with what the therapists tell us we need to do? None of those things are bad and none of those things are wrong, but they don't acknowledge what I'm talking about today. These thoughts make us question To be honest, who we are? How did this happen? What did I do wrong? And the answer to that, you know, we know is nothing. Unless you provided cocaine to your five-year-old, you did nothing wrong. But but we all think it, and we and we all question it. We all debate it, and I I did myself. So but these thoughts induce self-judgment and let us feel judgment from others, which may not even be real. So I think the faster we can recognize grief, we can stop. Sort of feeding these other outlying things and we can focus on what's really happening because really all of this is grief. Grief does not come in progressive stages that we move through linearly, okay? And we don't move through it to completion, check the box, now we're done grieving. It works instead on a coil and it's big at the top and gets smaller and smaller and smaller with time. Time is the only way that grief does that, but it doesn't go away. That coil is always there. I am 17 years into addiction with one of my kids, and every now and then I still have a moment of grief of just like, oh yeah, I missed that. Or he got taken away from me at 17 and I missed years of spending time getting to know him or writing inscriptions in books to him or cooking with him. Just these little things I'm talking about. It's always with us to some degree, and people ask me all the time, when am I going to feel better? You will feel better when you're ready to feel better, but you'll never feel like you did before. And I think that's an important thing to recognize is grief is always with us. It's like learning to swim in the ocean. At the beginning, you're like, there's no way I'm going to do this. The waves are big. It's knocking me down. I can't get it. There's— I'm scared of the fish. There's But I've never swum in the ocean cuz I'm afraid of it. But the people that do long-distance swimming, they get out into the deep and they're like, you have those thoughts, but you do swim and you do get where you wanna do. And those thoughts become smaller and smaller because you're making more progress. I feel like that's a really good metaphor for grief. So we're not gonna get done being sad, then we're not gonna move into anger, never to return to sadness. We don't get into acceptance and not come back out. to anger or any other phase, it's very circular. It's very unpredictable. It's not manageable. So it's going to spin. You could be angry, then, all right, this is what it is. And then you could just be incredibly sad for no reason. Maybe you heard a sad song, and then you could move into some sort of bargaining, back into sadness, back into acceptance. So it's just— it does this. There are 2 types of grief. The first is the most common, and it's what's called franchised grief. And franchised grief is a grief that can be shared, like when our mothers die or our dog dies, or you're badly hurt in a car accident. Most people can understand this type of grief and they can relate to it. There are worldly rituals to bear it. There are concrete things that are delivered to us that we can— how we can process it. It helps us hear it, honor it, and help dissipate it. So what I'm talking about are like cards, terribly sorry for your loss, casseroles, we're thinking of you. We don't want you to have to deal with mundane things while you're trying to just get through life and your sadness. There are religious services, there are conversations of care and concern. In franchise grief, you know, I've gotten condolence cards. Sometimes I'm like, I can't believe they said that, but they meant well and they They said what they thought would make me feel better. Sadly, addiction falls into the second category, and this is called disenfranchised grief. Other things that could fall into this category would be having a child with a chronic illness, divorce, an unplanned move or an unwanted move, leaving behind a home, leaving behind childhood friends. Changing jobs can cause grief, and these these kinds of grief are disenfranchised, and what. What that means is that these are unique griefs. This grief has nowhere to go. So it sits within us because people don't understand it. They're like, but it's so exciting to move to Berlin, Germany. And you're like, yes, but I'm leaving behind all my friends and my tandem bicycle and maybe my hamster because you can't take a hamster to Berlin, Germany apparently. So the things that I talked about all fall into that category. So anything that comes without desire, I think, would fall into this. So we're talking about addiction today. So now we're back to addiction. So they're either non-reinforced or not understood. In the case of addiction, also can be judged. And the shaming and like people do maybe purposefully and maybe not, but saying the wrong thing or nothing at all. And that leaves us with that sad, angry, lonely, that grief within ourselves or the super small system within which we're working. Could be our spouse and partner or an understanding parent or friend or relative. It's generally very few people that we will trust with it or that will respond appropriately. Okay? So this is a very, very limited group of people. With disenfranchised grief, one of the biggest emotions we feel is shame. This shame tends to make us isolate. Now we're sort of emulating addiction. And this is, you know, we talked about this, we sort of water ski behind them, but doing the same things they're doing. So the things that I believe we do with the shame is we isolate, we deny, or we bury. Okay? With isolation, we don't engage with others wherever possible. If we can avoid them, we do. This could be neighbors, friends, strangers with whom we might normally interact, like The grocery store people, like I'm always chatting with them, but not in isolation. We limit our conversations and interactions even with the people that we can't avoid, like coworkers or families. We sort of shut down when people say, are you okay? We're fine. I'm fine. I'm just in a bad mood, or I'm just being quiet today. That we are, we are isolating. Okay. So that's even more reinforcing this, this disenfranchised grief of nowhere to go. We don't take part in our normal behaviors like going to the Y, walking on the trail. Going to church or the movie theater, we just shut down. We isolate. Then we deny ourselves. We might not eat. We might not exercise, or we might overexercise. We don't share ourselves. We don't enjoy our hobbies or even watch TV with other family members. We may not order out. I remember saying I don't want any Chinese food Friday after Friday after Friday. It was just easier for me to. Sit up in bed and be sad than to try to eat lo mein. This denial is often linked to the false sense. This is important to the false sense that if we can get used to living in a state of deprivation, we might feel more capable of being able to tolerate the crap of that's going on with our loved one. This is a false sense, you guys. I did it. Lots and lots and lots of people I know through work, this experience, they do it because they're like, well, I'm so miserable that I might as well be even more miserable. And maybe when I get more miserable, if this keeps going on or something else bad happens, then I won't have to feel as sad. That's horse hockey. Won't work. And then the third thing we do is we bury it. We don't let ourselves feel the grief. It's not acknowledged, it's not talked about. So some of us, it doesn't even occur to. Most of us, it doesn't occur to. Instead, we feed depression through all of the above behaviors. Okay? We are feeding depression, which is an external, I guess, view of grief. This doesn't work. If I were speaking in all caps, I'm now speaking in all caps. This does not work. We must, we have to acknowledge grief as grief. We have to for several reasons. First, so that we can change how we're interacting with addiction, change our roles in how we are going to respond to it. And this will also importantly help reduce its impact on us. How do we do this? We first name it. Use language that acknowledges it. I am sad. I feel lonely. I don't know how to handle this. Name it. That makes us feel better in a weird way. It also brings people to us. This feels really horrible. That people can relate to that. They may not understand addiction, but they can understand when you say, I am so sad. This is horrible. Then they can at least say, I'm so sorry. Then you share it. I guess I jumped ahead of myself. Grief needs a witness to find support. Find your people, literally, whether this is a literal support group with other family members that are going through it or strangers going through the same experience, or very few trusted family members or friends or professionals who understand addiction and can help you. We need to get help for this. That you need help navigating your feelings, your actions, and your thoughts. These people with whom you can share, you can just say, I'm sad and confused. You can have these conversations. They shouldn't try to fix it. They should hear you. They should meet you where you are, and they should empathize. They shouldn't try to fix it because they can't. And then you try to manage it. What do I mean by this? Learn you can put it down for today. This is an AA saying. It's a wonderful one. You can feel something for a certain amount of time and then that you can limit 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45, but put a limit on it and say, I'm going to now divert myself. I'm gonna distract myself. Get busy. You can come back to it if you must, but develop the skill of being able to put it down. A couple of things that will help you do this are like use the compassion reframe. I understand and talk about this all the time, okay? With lots and lots of clients. Addiction is an entity. So with a compassion reframe, you learn about the addiction, you grasp the concept, That your loved one is in a relationship with their substance, this entity. Okay? There are 3 of you in this relationship. Understand this. It is something other than you, and that addiction is running the show. Their brain is operating from a totally different and very incapable frame of reference. If you understand that, your grief can become a little bit more manageable because you understand that your expectations need to be lowered. This will really help you take it less personally and can reduce the grief. And then choose to find some small things you can do or build to ease yourself out of the grief. Ease yourself. Even a little reprieve is better than no reprieve. Even if this just initially includes one or two things, just start, you guys. This could include the most basic things initially, but depending on your level of deprivation and denial, like showering, using some favorite products, not just basic hygiene. Cook an actual meal you like, not just eat something. Buy fresh flowers for your home. Choose clothes to wear that are just an outfit instead of throwing on the same jeans and whatever t-shirt you can grab that's easy. Allow yourself to take a walk, maybe with music you like or an Audible book to listen to or try to enjoy. Even this 15 minutes a day start. If we can name our grief, if we can manage it, and we can begin to build some level of happiness, we will do better with it in this world of addiction. Watch a movie or a TV show where you can laugh or just feel better. Feed a sense of gratitude. Look around you, find things to look at that you love or used to love, and remind yourself that you do love them. Allow yourself to feel this love again and to give yourself permission to find moments, pockets of happiness, joy if you can, but Allow yourself spend time acknowledging the other non-addictive people in your system, doing something small with them. One of the ways I got out of it was I'd say I'm going to be sad for 30 minutes and I'm going to go downstairs and I'm going to find a fun TV show to watch with my daughter. And then I'm going to we're going to order something for dinner. Didn't want to do those things, but I did them and they did begin to help. Getting out of grief is a process. It's going to take time. It's going to take effort, determination, and maybe even grit. So start small, start slowly. But start. I hope that this video has given you some serious insight into why you feel like you do, how to acknowledge it, and some ideas on how to begin to change how you feel as well as how you respond to addiction and this new unchosen world in which you live. If you'd like to understand grief more and how it drags you under and how to change that, we have several courses that address this that you can pursue. The link to Beyond Boundaries, is in the description and our website has got links to all of our other courses that would address this. Just remember, grief is real and you're allowed to feel it. All right, so let's see if there are any questions on this or frankly, whatever you guys wanna ask. And now Bree will run the show. All right. How do I handle my alcoholic husband being so angry and questioning me a lot and will not move out? We dislike each other. That's the end of it, I think. I think you're not going to change him because this is probably his defense mechanism for his alcoholism. You are going to have to decide how long do I want to bear this situation? You're going to have to decide, can I see out there? Can I envision what I could go to? And then do I need to build steps or a timeline in which to get to that place that I can see? No one goes into the abyss. This is a famous Kim statement. If you can't envision something, you will stay stuck. Okay, so to change the abyss into some new possibility, you have to be able to envision it. Could I see myself in an apartment? How do I have the money for that? How much would I have to save to get there? What would it— where would I get the furniture? Sort of begin that and then decide, do I have the ability to have the boundary to make that happen? In with addiction, especially with Partners, I think ultimately we have to answer the question of how long do I want to live like this? I can beg, cajole, do all the things that I'm supposed to do, and they either don't change, can't change, won't change. And then now I have to decide how long I want to live with that reality because I've given it my all and it isn't changing. So how much do you dislike him? How much do you want a better life, different life? That's a personal time frame, but. I think that's the thing is you sort of envision where would I go and is that possible? Is that the only question we have? All right, that was easy sneezy. All right, let's wait a second. There's a lot of stuff out there on grief, you guys. So if this sparked an interest, like There's some great books. I don't know the names of them right now, but there's some great podcasters. Brené Brown does a marvelous job. So explore this a little bit more. Oh, gotta put the shovel down. We have tons on grief. Duh, I should know that. All right. Was there a second question up there for a second, Bri? Yeah. How do we detach with love if we make the choice to separate? Hmm. I really thought about that. I think you have to slowly, like, cut the strings, if you will, metaphorically, of, um, memories, hope, wishes. And you have to go towards yourself and take care of yourself and remember who you are and what your dreams are. And so as you shift over there and you sort of cut these strings, doesn't mean you have to hate the person, but I'm not going to hang on to hope and wish and history because they're not going to serve me anymore. Doesn't mean I have to never think about those things, or I can't reminisce with that person at some point in time over those things. But to detach with love is you have to go toward your new self and your new life and acknowledge that that was that, but this is this. And then you just stop fighting. You just, you just stop arguing about those things. That's, that's another part of it, is you just say maybe. Um, do I bring up treatment? Like, would you consider going back to that program? With— how do I bring it without causing a fight, the bad guy role? Great question. My advice on that is I never bring up treatment with someone I love or, um, a client If my son's relapse has been causing so many consequences, hard to watch. Yeah, but I don't bring it up unless they give me some level of a window. Okay, a statement like, "I'm screwed. I don't know what to do. I can't get a hold of this." Then I say, "Would you be interested? Would you think about?" And then I sort of nudge the concept of treatment out there. If they're responsive, like maybe, then I might nudge just a little. More tiny, like you could call them today. We could see with what the you know possibility of that is, and if they're like yeah, then you pull back. Okay, you do not want to keep pushing. You want to nudge until you get resistance. The minute you get resistance, stop because if you don't, then they're going to build up their wall of defense of why that's not a good idea, why they're not willing to do that, and we sort of just took a giant step backward. If same thing, if we bring it up too early, if we start to like. Talk about it. They're going to build up a wall of resistance so that even if they got to the point that they're like, "I probably should. Maybe I should look into that." They're going to do that later than they would have because they have to take that wall of resistance down in their own head. So I think when someone's like, like you're sort of saying your son is just like a hot mess right now and it's hard to watch. If he said something like, "God, my life is so hard," or that was a That was a bad day. Then you could say, yeah, I saw that. Like that must be tough. Go in there and acknowledge. Use that empowerment triangle, you guys. Empathize, acknowledge, validate, align, and then just say, when it gets to be too much, I'm sure you know what to do next. When it gets to be too tough, I'm sure you know what some of your options are. At that point, if he said, no, I really don't. Now you nudge, and you just suddenly say, well, we could see if you could go back to. Camp X? No, I don't want to go to Camp X. Okay, I get that. Well, let me know if you want me to help you with some research for who else we could look into. Stop unless he says, all right, would you do that? If he says, yeah, no, yeah, whatever, you say, okay, that's up to you. Let me know if you change your mind. So you've got to sort of hear the room, not read the room, but hear the room and listen to, do they close the window? Or do they leave it open, or do they open it wider? And then you react according to that. Remember, if we oversell, they won't buy. Okay? It's kind of like if you go to a street fair in Morocco and they're just like coming at you, coming at you, coming at you, like buy this water, buy this pen, pen, scarf, scarf. You're just like, I'm not buying anything in here. I'm getting outta here. It's overwhelming. Don't be those, don't be those hawkers in Morocco. Just quietly stand there on the side like you work at Lord Taylor in front of the scarves and just stand there until someone approaches you to look at the scarf. You know, would you like to look? So maybe not a great metaphor, but worked in my head. All right. How do you get an alcoholic father to see the effect he's having on his teenage kids? Gosh, I have this problem 20 times a week. The problem with alcoholics is they don't usually see the problem. 'Cause alcohol really isn't a very good rememberer. And so they tend to be the biggest minimizers. A good old opiate addict will be like, oh, that was horrible. And I know it was terrible and I know it was not good. But an alcoholic says things like, it wasn't that bad. Nobody noticed. It was one time. So it's very difficult. The best way to do it, which is really hard to do, most kids are not willing to do it, is to have the kids Speak directly to the dad. Just say something like, Dad, I really miss you. Like, alcohol's getting in the way of our relationship and I like it much better when you're sober because we play ball or you wanna go to the movies with me. And I wish you'd think about giving it up. Most kids are not willing to do that because that's super difficult because they may incur wrath, they may incur shutdown, and they don't like that. But for us to tell our alcoholic spouse, What the children feel is a giant drama triangle. It never goes well. They're like, you don't know what you're talking about. You're splitting. You're just making that up. You're going to get conflict. So teenage kids are very capable of having tough conversations. And if you can get them to have it, that's the best answer. Even with a recovering alcoholic, how can I ever trust him again? Trust is earned. It's it's something he's gonna it's his to own. You can, and I trust my children implicitly at this point in time. I think it comes with time. I think it comes with their actions. I think it comes with their conversations they have with you. I think it comes with can you see the spiritual shift? Can you hear a different tone in their conversations? More importantly, can you hear a different conversation? Do they show up differently? Can you be like, oh, there they are, like that's a real person? Or are they still a little bit shifty or telling little tiny lies every now and then or being unreliable? As long as those behaviors are in place, you're not going to trust them. But that's up to them to recognize that. You could point that out if you're having difficulty because those actions are still happening with, you know, when you told me the little lie the other day that seemed kind of silly about Buying brown bread, but you bought white. Like, that kind of makes me not trust you and that makes me really sad. So can you work on not doing that anymore? You could have those conversations, but you're gonna have to have it at the right time, the right tone, the right body language, the right intent, and stay on that very topic. Not make this a big topic. Most people do learn to trust again as long as the person is doing everything I said at the beginning of the question. Are they still working some level of program? Are they still having conversations with you about integrity or awareness or humility, or are they showing those things? That's when you know that they're in recovery and you do trust them. And so you could even have that conversation, like, we never talk about anything deep. Like, how tough was Step 4? Like, you could have those kinds of conversations if you have that relationship with that person. But Time is the answer. Time and their behavior. Okay. Another trust question. How do you begin to trust your child again if he ever gets sober after all the damage he's caused? Same answer I just gave. Time and every indication that they give you that they are changing, that they are a different person. Remember, recovery isn't just not using. Recovery is a spiritual shift and the spiritual shift is palpable. Somewhere around 60 to 90 days, you're like different person showing up differently. I'm feeling differently about my relationship with this person. I have it in counseling. I had it with my children. I watch you guys all have it. The damage can be erased, in my opinion, with their ongoing sobriety. Are they happy? Are they healthy? You can forgive a million things. If they are demonstrating healthy, happy, sober, so give yourself time. I don't know how long it's been, but give it time and don't rush it. I guess would be the would be good advice on that. How do you begin to heal a relationship with an adult child after you've asked them to leave your home? If they've left your home after you've asked them. Then you don't have to end the relationship. They're out of your home. They complied. Give it a little bit of time for emotions to simmer down a little bit. But then you can say, I'd love to see you. Can I take you to lunch? I'd love to meet you at Starbucks and have a cup of coffee. I'd love to go see a movie with you. I'd love to have a conversation while we take a walk about books. You just sort of begin like you would begin a friendship. You, you just talk about super neutral things for a short amount of time and just watch the relationship rebloom. But that means you have to let go of the emotions that drove you to asking them to leave the house. So I would give that some time and space. Meanwhile, before you can get to all the stuff I just talked about, you could just send little, I love you. I hope things are going well. You can send little, what I would call heart touches. And if they respond to them, then know in time you'll get to those bigger things. If they don't, then just give it some time. Be open, be there, but don't push it, don't rush it, and give them the space to process their shame, everything that's going on. And my guess is if you just ask them to leave their home, they're also in active addiction. So have expectations that are not overly high, but leave the door open that even if they're still using, You can meet them for a burger, you guys. You can, you can have a conversation with them. I have a client in California who's doing a marvelous job on this. You know who you are. And she just picks him up where he lives, which is pretty homeless, and she'll take him out for lunch. They have really in-depth conversations about the Odyssey or interesting books or just conversations. And then she takes him back and says, You know, reach out to me whenever you're ready to, or I'll reach out to you in a couple days, and hopefully we'll see each other soon. And you just sort of adjust to that new normal, but you don't not love them. Okay? Putting boundaries down about addiction, asking people to leave, reinforcing you can't live in this home doesn't mean I don't love you. It doesn't mean I can't care for you. It doesn't mean I can't spend time with you. It doesn't mean I can't think of you. And reach out to you, whether it's just little blue hearts. Like, remember that we do not not love. All right, that's it for today. I hope this topic spoke to you guys. I really, really, really want you guys to think that this is grief, not all these other things. And let me just sit with this and figure out how to process it and begin to climb myself out of it so that I can interact. With my loved one in a different way. All right, thanks a bunch, you guys, and we'll see you next week.