How You Can Help Someone Who Is In Recovery
Family involvement is just one of the ways in which you can help your loved one when theyre in treatment. It allows counselors and doctors to get a better understanding of the patient as well as their behavioral patterns and habits. Other ways in which you can help your loved one include:
- Getting involved: Attend family therapy and express your feelings. This will allow them to get a better idea of how their addiction affects everyone around them. Its also a great way to show that you support your loved ones Recovery because you are willing to invest the time and effort to help them heal.
- Communicating with them: Once the blackout period is lifted, you will likely be allowed some contact with your loved ones. Communication can be very difficult, and a seemingly safe conversation can spiral into a heated argument. Find a mode of communication that works for both of you, be it phone calls, emails or in-person visits. Use it as an opportunity to verbalize your support.
- Offering support: Saying youre there for your loved one is one thing, but support goes beyond that. Talk positively about the future and of your loved ones progress. Let them know theyre not alone.
- Trusting but being mindful: Its important to maintain trust throughout the Recovery process, but its also important to remember not to fall into old habits. Show your loved one that you trust them, but be aware of old behaviors that may be problematic or harmful.
What Not To Do If You Want To Help An Addict
Living with an addict can cause stress, frustration, and unhappiness. The experience can deeply affect you. Understandably, your instinct would be to do everything to stop the addiction. You feel pressured to help your loved one. But you don’t have to do everything.
Here’s a list of what NOT to do if you want to help an addict:
Dont: Enable Your Loved One
There can be a fine line between helping someone with an addiction and enabling them. Sometimes when we think were protecting a loved one from the consequences of their addiction, we are actually enabling them to continue with potentially destructive behavior.
For example, if youre trying to figure out how to help an alcoholic, keeping them from drinking and driving is helpful, since that could put them and others in danger. However, consistently offering to drive them home whenever they get too intoxicated is enabling their actions, because its setting up a formula in which you are constantly available to rescue them.
Studies show that people with addictions are more likely to proactively seek treatment when they are forced to face the consequences of their actions. So, if you want to know how to help someone with an addiction, allow them to make mistakes without the promise of your rescue.
Its important to set up boundaries and rules, both for your well-being and the well-being of your loved one and its important to enforce those rules and boundaries. This is the only part of Recovery in which tough love is beneficial, since its done for both you and your loved ones protection.
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Protect Yourself With Healthy Boundaries
In all of your relationships, it is important to have healthy boundaries, especially in a relationship with a loved one with an addiction. This involves taking care of yourself, understanding and valuing your needs and desires, and communicating clearly. By setting solid boundaries, you bring a measure of control and stability into a difficult situation when your loved one refuses to enter treatment for addiction. In these situations, it is very important to set healthy boundaries and limits to protect yourself and those you care about.
If you notice yourself doing any of these things, it may be time for you to set healthy boundaries, or strengthen the boundaries you already have:
- Criticizing your loved one
- Frequently telling your loved one what to do
- Covering for your loved ones to protect them from the consequences of their actions
- Walking on eggshells around a loved one in order to avoid conflict
- Looking for hiding spots
- Hiding money or not allowing access to credit/debit cards.
Here are some examples of healthy boundaries you can set with a loved one who refuses to enter treatment:
No drugs or alcohol are allowed in this house or around anyone in our family.
Letting your loved one know that addictive substances are not allowed in your home is a healthy, firm boundary you can set right away. You can follow it up by letting your loved one know the consequences of crossing that boundary and be sure to follow through by enforcing those consequences.
Hope The Problem Will Resolve Itself
Some addicts, who secretly know different, hope that the problem they currently have with drugs and/or alcohol will simply resolve itself or go away. This form of self-delusion is akin to denial, but the accompanying blow to self-esteem when such a turnaround fails to occur plunges the addict into even deeper despair.
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Practical Ways To Help An Addict Who Is Resistant To Recovery
Sometimes the help we offer can cause more harm than good. Your sincere concern may enable a loved ones addiction, so its important to become educated on addiction.
However, there are some basic things you can do so your addicted loved one is more willing to receive help.
Remember that you arent responsible for someone elses sobriety. You cant control how someone responds to your help, but you can control how you contribute to a loved ones recovery.
How To Help An Addict: What Can You Do
With the restrictive nature of trying to help someone who doesnt want help, you can feel helpless. The only person that you can help is yourself. Helping ourselves is the only way to help our loved ones. There are options for helping yourself. Pursue the ones that you are most comfortable with. The more options you have, the more chances that you have to find the path to your recovery.
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Simple Tips To Help An Addicted Loved One Who Doesnt Want Help
Anyone who has experienced life with a friend or family member suffering from addiction knows that once the addiction has taken over, it often takes reaching a rock bottom before that person will take action, if even then. From the outside, this idea of a rock bottom is absolutely terrifying, which leads us to ask what can we do before it gets to this point? How do you help an addict who doesnt want your help? Read on to find out some basic pointers on how to get through to an addict before its too late.
Let Go Of Expectations
Addiction is a powerful disease that affects various parts of the brain. Therefore, you should let go of the expectation that your loved one is going to enter treatment because there are many defense mechanisms that the individual unconsciously uses to protect the addiction. This makes it difficult to determine if your loved one is willing, or even ready, to begin recovery. When you sit down and share your concerns with your loved one about their addiction to alcohol or drugs, be prepared for defensiveness and anger, but never give up hope. Common defense mechanisms people with addictions use include:
Denial
Your loved one may deny or minimize any problem exists and refuse to accept reality.
Blaming Others
Your loved one may shift focus away from themselves and make others responsible for their addiction.
Projection
Your loved one might attribute their own negative feelings or behaviors to others, possibly by blaming their own feelings, decisions, and behaviors on others.
Rationalization
Your loved one might excuse irrational or unacceptable behaviors, motives, and feelings in an attempt to justify them to themselves and others.
Distorted thinking is a significant issue when dealing with anyone with an active addiction. Although you may see the situation clearly, thought distortions can make communicating with such a person exceptionally difficult.
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What Can You Do When Someone Refuses Treatment
It can be very difficult when your loved one needs to stop using alcohol or other drugs and refuses treatment. When someone refuses treatment or refuses to acknowledge they have a problem, it is devastating to everyone who loves them and cares about them. The friends and family of addicts, as well as the addicts themselves, often live in shame and silence. Addiction is a complex, vicious disease, but recovery is possible. Below is a list of ten steps you can take if your loved one with an addiction refuses treatment.
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How To Help Someone Dealing With Addiction
Knowing someone who has an addiction is not uncommon, but knowing the best way to help a loved one with an addiction can be confusing and even scary. When someone has an addiction, it can affect every aspect of their lives as well as the lives of their loved ones. You will inevitably be concerned about your loved one, and it can be difficult to know what to do and what not to do, but its important to remember that Recovery is a solution.
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Support Recovery As An Ongoing Process
Once your loved one decides to enter treatment, its essential that you remain involved. Continue supporting their participation in ongoing care, meetings and participate in support groups for families of addicts. Be the support system that they need, and show them that youll be there every step of the way.
Consider Staging An Intervention
Sometimes, you need to make a stronger effort with a friend or family member suffering from addiction. Pulling them out from their long-term spiral may seem challenging, but there are ways to help. Sometimes, addicts focus too much on their personal satisfaction and quest for the next high without taking the consequences of their addiction on others.
An intervention may seem like an extreme step, but in certain cases, you need something like this to get them out of their current situation. Interventions can either be run by close loved ones or with the help of a professional.
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Dont Forget About Helping Yourself
One of the forgotten consequences of trying to help someone elses drug addiction remains the effects it can have on your psyche. Seeing a loved one struggling with addiction but refusing to get help can have drastic negative effects on your mental health. Dont be afraid to seek professional treatment for your mental health while trying to support a loved one and their struggle.
Dont: Give In To Manipulation
When a person with an addiction is unwilling to seek treatment, they will resort to whatever they need to do to continue feeding their addiction. This may include lying or trying to guilt the people who care for them. Its important to establish boundaries and learn how to say no. It may be very difficult to not react negatively or to stick to your established rules, but its necessary for everyone involved.
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Start With The Medical Approach
When someone is in the grip of addiction, their clarity quickly withers away. Suggest or schedule a routine check-up appointment. Inform the doctor of the addiction prior to the visit, and do so for multiple reasons. Theyll be better able to identify the issues and see past the excuses of the individual. Doctors will still protect doctor-patient confidentiality, but in their medical and professional opinions, they can also recommend courses of action to take, which can be very eye-opening for the person. In some cases, it has been proven to help them think clearly when someone outside of their social or family circle is able to recognize issues. Before they are too far gone, its a wake-up call.
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Reasons An Addict Wont Seek Help For Recovery
View Original Notice ? 5 reasons an addict wont seek help for recovery
Do you have an addict in your circle? Those suffering from addiction do not always appear to have problems.
Some signs you may notice that indicate that someone is in trouble can include when they drink or use drugs when alone, keep these things hidden away in out-of-the-way places or actively isolates themselves, ignoring friends, loved ones and activities they once enjoyed. This person may exhibit erratic behavior and suffer from troubling physical symptoms when attempting to get sober.
Addiction incurs enormous costs for all of us, whether we have an addict in our circle or not. The challenges with which we wrestle on a societal level are innumerable, including the far-reaching impact of drunk driving, complex medical issues requiring subsidies that affect all of our premiums and homelessness.
However, convincing the addict to get help and to accept recovery is an immensely difficult undertaking.
Here are five lies addicts tell themselves when confronted by loved ones about their addiction. Any one of these keeps them from recognizing that they should get help.
I would be fine if everyone would leave me alone.
Placing blame is one of the excuses an addict uses to justify substance abuse.
Because of these factors, in addition to the secrecy surrounding their using, the addict can feel very isolated and lonely.
I can quit anytime I want.
If I have to ask for help, this means Im weak.
Why An Addict Wont Get Help: Fear Of Detox
A great many addicts whose problems have crossed the threshold into the territory of physical dependence know all too well how agonizing withdrawal symptoms can be. According to the National Institute of Healths Clinical Guidelines for Withdrawal Management and Treatment of Drug Dependence in Closed Settings, Withdrawal management refers to the medical and psychological care of patients who are experiencing withdrawal symptoms as a result of ceasing or reducing use of their drug of dependence withdrawal symptoms vary according to the drug of dependence and severity of dependence, but often include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anxiety and insomnia.
One of the reasons why an addict wont get help is because theyre under the mistaken impression that detox is just that: withdrawal without any comfort or support, but the reality, of course, is thats the furthest thing from the truth when it comes to a drug and alcohol treatment facility. Safe medical detox programs use comfort medication and clinical protocols to manage withdrawal symptoms, keeping patients as comfortable as possible while theyre slowly weaned off of drugs but still the misconception remains.
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Proper Treatment Elements For Addiction When An Addict Wont Get Help
A proper addiction treatment plan will be custom to fit your exact needs. For example, addiction therapy often includes the following addiction treatment elements:
Specifically, reality therapy will place you in real-life situations, with the assistance of our staff, to begin utilizing your training. Therefore, you will have firsthand experience overcoming stressors and triggers in daily situations outside of rehab.
When You Need A Break
There are certain situations where you dont necessarily have to cut ties yet. However, learning how to love an addict can be costly to your mental and emotional health. This is a point where you need a break. Below are the steps on how to temporarily separate yourself from the stressful situation:
- Avoid contact temporarily: Depending on your sons personality, you can either be honest about them on taking a break or simply doing it subtly. Whichever approach you choose, avoiding contact can help remove toxic thoughts and stressful situations.
- Do something distracting: Take a vacation, do something you love, or recharge by interacting with other people. This may help you gain a new perspective on how to approach your sons addiction.
- Prepare yourself: During your break, you can prepare yourself to be stronger mentally, emotionally, and even financially to help your child. Taking a break gives you the refueling you need to overcome this difficult situation.
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