Why You Can't Help Your Addict with Acts of Love

Why Can’t You “Help” Your Addict With Love

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Why Can’t You “Help” Your Addict With Love

10 March, 2020Articles, News

Have you often wondered how you going to cope with a drunk mother or high spouse over a special gathering, or how can you help them not be drunk or high?

This is an all to common occurrence in people who have a significant other in active addiction or alcoholism, and you may find yourself deeply affected by these experiences, leaving you feeling frustrated and filled with despair as you repeatedly try to stop or help your addict or alcoholic, when it is actually the addict or alcoholic that should be feeling this despair.

These common acts of love to protect your addict or alcoholic may cause more harm than help.

Blaming Yourself

It is typical behaviour for your addict or alcoholic to blame their drinking or using on circumstances or others around them -often the one’s closest to them. You may tend to believe that if only you change certain things their behaviour will change.

Honestly the addict or alcoholic will drink or use no matter what you say or do, and it is not your fault. Once they become dependent, nothing is going to get between them and their substance of choice. This is often a difficult truth to face and a lot of time and energy is spent trying to avoid this reality.

Taking It Personally

Another typical behaviour of an addict or alcoholic is to promise that they will never drink or use substances again, and in no time they are back to drinking or using and lying and manipulating and you find yourself thinking “If they really loved me they would not be doing this.”

The truth is that your alcoholic or addicts brain chemistry has changed, to the point that they are unable to make healthy choices, and are unable to control their own decision-making. However, you are so wrought with the destruction to your relationship that it difficult to not take it personally when you are unable to understand the change in your loved one.

Try To Control It

Attempting to control your addicts or alcoholics drinking and abuse of substances to the point that you would go to any lengths to get them to stop, leaves you feeling lonely and frustrated as you keep telling yourself “surely there is something I can do.”

The reality is that not even the alcoholic or addict can control their drinking or using and the same applies to you – you cannot control their behaviour nor can you control the consequences of their behaviour.

Stopping / Avoiding The Crisis

Loving an addict or alcoholic is very difficult. It is very difficult to let a crisis happen or play out. Often when the addict or alcoholic reaches the point of getting into trouble with the law or losing a job, the best thing to do is nothing. This may feel to be an impossible action to take -it may feel as if it is going against everything you believe in.

The reality is that by allowing the crises to happen, this may be a way for your addict or alcoholic to get to a point of wanting to change.

Trying To Cure It

Alcoholism or addiction is a primary, chronic and progressive disease that can be fatal.

If you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction, they will need professional treatment to get healthy again.

Again, this is no different from any other disease.

Alcoholics and addicts go through stages before they are ready to make a change or face the reality that they need help, and anything you do to try change this or make them quit will be met with resistance.

Covering It Up

Sometimes the addict or alcoholic does not want anyone to know the extent of their drinking or substance abuse as then others may want to intervene. Often, you are trying to “help” your addict or alcoholic by covering up or making excuses for their behaviour because you also feel embarrassed or you may be trying to save your addict or alcoholic.

The truth is that you are enabling your addict or alcoholic to continue their behaviour and the best way to deal with this is to be open and honest regarding your addict or alcoholics actions.

Accepting Unacceptable Behaviour

This often starts off with a minor event that would be easy to “brush off”, however, little by little this behaviour gets worse and you slowly begin to accept more and more unacceptable behaviour.

Before you know it, you are unable to uphold any boundaries. You feel manipulated and confused as well as frustrated and lost. You will try anything for this behaviour to change, except uphold your boundaries or walk away from unacceptable behaviour which is often what your addict or alcoholic needs in order to become willing to seek help and change.

Having Unreasonable Expectations

When dealing with your addict or alcoholic, often what seems reasonable to you may appear completely unreasonable to your addict or alcoholic. The alcoholic or addict will frequently promise you or themselves that they are done and will not touch the substance again, and you believe that this is true.

This is a very unreasonable expectation; it is not possible to expect them to be honest with you, if they can not be honest with themselves.

There will be times when you have felt confused because your addict or alcoholic has been able to be honest or been able to meet commitments in other areas of their life- why are they not able to apply the same with their drinking and substance use? Remember you are dealing with a disease.

Enabling

Frequently, the belief that you are helping your addict or alcoholic, is something that enables them to continue along their destructive path. You are forgetting that you are dealing with a progressive disease.

Helping your addict or alcoholic, for instance, who has passed out in the garden, you help them into bed. This action has not allowed your addict or alcoholic to face their own consequences – waking up outside, coming in to face the family.

Not letting them feel the pain of their actions, is not helping your addict or alcoholic and again, it is very challenging for you to not fall into the role of enabling the addict or alcoholic in your life, as this may seem like such a loveless act on your behalf.

Loving an addict or alcoholic in active addiction is exhausting and devastating. Relationships are filled with manipulation, guilt and destruction. Trying to avoid or change these painful events is a natural reaction which is only enabling your addict and alcoholic and serves little help in getting your addict or alcoholic to a place where they want to change.

Doing all these things in the hope that your addict or alcoholics insanity, guilt trips, lying and manipulation will stop- will not happen as long as there is no reason for your addict or alcoholic to seek help and change.

Remember, when addiction has taken hold of your loved one, the person you love disappears. That person is still in there somewhere, but that is not the person you are dealing with now. Addiction is a disease that not only affects the addict but the family as well.

Your loved one is in the grip of this disease and like any other disease, they need professional help in order to change.

As powerless as your addict or alcoholic is, is as powerless as what you are and the only chance of change is for your addict or alcoholic to see and feel their reality.

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Stories of Recovery

The encouragement, love and support from the team at Crossroads allowed me to eventually see that I was worth something - that my life could be turned around and that I could accomplish the things that had long been a forgotten dream.
Oliver VG
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On the last day of my stint at Crossroads I could only express gratitude towards all who works there. A wise councillor once commented on my question when one is ready for rehab by explaining that when one is ready for rehab, rehab is ready for you.
Johan B
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I was lost and my soul was broken until I ended up at Crossroads and was introduced to the Twelve Steps. With the help of their excellent staff and amazing support I have recently been clean for 18 months, I could not have done it without them!
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Burn-out and our responsibility to ourselves and our clients.

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Home / Archive by category "News" (Page 91)

Burn-out and our responsibility to ourselves and our clients.

28 February, 2020Articles, News

Every time I share my working situation with friends or family, I get the same set of questions:
“How do you manage with those people? Don’t you take your work home with you? You must hear some really hairy stories, how do you detach from them?” and so on and so on. Its all relevant and worth taking note of.
Counsellor burn-out is a huge dilemma in this field and we need to be acutely aware of our own “mental and emotional health care” so that we can provide the best, most focused and most productive experience for our clients. Substance abuse is one of the most difficult problems to treat, and addiction counsellors are not immune to the negative attitudes and feelings that come from working with difficult clients. Reducing counsellors’ entanglement with their own negative thoughts may be particularly important because there is evidence that these processes contribute to provider burn-out, staff turn-over, and to decreased effectiveness in working with people in need.

Burn-out is a term commonly referred to by those in many fields of the so-called caring professions or human service fields and is often broken-up into three core areas:
(1) emotional exhaustion (the sudden or “creeping” inability to feel compassion for clients),
(2) depersonalization (detachment from the emotional needs of their client),
(3) lack of perceived outcome accomplishment leading to over critical evaluation of our capabilities.
-( Shoptaw, Stein & Rawson 2000 ).

Do some counsellors burn out more frequently than others?
There is no reliable research to suggest that some personality types or even behavioural aspects of counsellors will predetermine whether they are more prone or susceptible to burn-out than others, however certain situational factors may be relevant.
Some are personal : age, educational level, recovery status – while others are organizational characteristics: the number of clients per counsellor, the availability of supervision, the level of team support from colleagues, the level of decisionmaking , the working hours and time off allocated to staff members and the role expectations that the counsellor carries.

How can we manage possible burn-out effectively?
The National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA published a study that reviewed the scientific literature on preventing and dealing with burn-out in the mental health and substance abuse field. The study highlighted some critical areas:

Heading off the psychological factors that lead to burn-out is a crucial intervention strategy.
This requires mindfulness on the part of the individual addiction counsellor.
Organizational aspects to “protect” addiction counsellors are crucial.
These included:
- Managing workloads
- Providing support activities to improve worker morale,
- Involving staff in decision and policy-making in order to create an environment that values their input.

While not often addressed in classic 12 rehabilitation centres with regard to staff burn out the aspects of transference and counter transference are fundamental.

Regardless of the structure that step work provides and the minimisation of the transference possibilities, we are in relationship with our clients and the transference cannot be avoided. As much so, neither can the counter transference and hence the need for case discussions, team meeting and supervision if possible.

Take time for physical activity every day.
Do not be afraid to express your limits and say, “No.”
Stay organized and on top of paperwork.
Ask for help when you need it.
Celebrate even the smallest victory.
Get creative and more interesting with group sessions.
Get out of the office whenever possible.
Take up a hobby you love.
Schedule a weekend trips away on your off weekends
Take breaks between clients.
Set boundaries.

How do we care for each other at Crossroads Recovery Centre? At Crossroads we (the staff) are continually looking out for each other. Working together in such an emotionally charged environment results in continual feed-back to each in respect of our moods, attitudes and behaviours towards our clients. Daily staff meetings and regular staff support discussions ensures that if one of us is experiencing the effects of burn-out or if we are “out of sorts” due to work stress or even personal issues the professional team is there for us to share discuss talk about what may be concerning us.