This is a guest post by Elaine Altman-Eller. Elaine is a Family Recovery Specialist from Michigan.
From the moment you give birth, an innate force within secures a powerful and concentrated intent at the deepest level to protect your precious child, protect them from harm. As a parent, you accept this role with reverence as it carries the highest priority.
Holding your child carefully, keeping them warm, nourished and safe, you show them the immeasurable importance of their place on earth. They feel loved and of great value, knowing that you care about their happiness, comfort and fulfillment.
You are their greatest fan and root them on as they step into the world, deciding for themselves how they wish to engage in the life experience. Seeing them off, deep steadfast desires to protect surge through you still.
As their caretaker for many years, this powerful urge does not ever truly end. You simply let go, hoping the years of love, guidance and care remain as the foundation for their own ability to keep themselves safe from harm.
What happens when your child is involved in one of the most harmful behaviors possible and they fall away from the safety you worked so hard to instill, strengthen and ensure? How do you handle watching them sink deeper into a world that seems to swallow them into darkness, an unreachable place where you feel powerless – the world of addiction?
Addiction is dangerous and destructive to everything you have committed to keep safe.
How do you protect your child? Your natural instinct is to shield them from harm, however in your attempts to do this, the addiction begins to engulf your life as well.
This is when your child’s addiction becomes your own.
Three major reasons for this are:
1) Believing you have the power to change or control the person/addiction.
Feeling powerless, you strive for ways to gain a sense of control — life centers around fixing the problem and dealing with the addiction’s consequences.
Attempts to gain control are:
- Becoming a “perfect” parent, supporter, nurturer
- Being careful about everything you say and do
- Peacekeeping
- Taking care of the child’s needs over your own
2) Treating addiction as a moral, behavioral issue rather than an illness.
Expecting rational thinking from an irrational, altered state of perception – addictions cease to be rational by their very nature. Usual support and guidance are ineffective. When tried, there is a great sense of failure, frustration and hopelessness for all involved.
3) Believing the addiction means something about you.
Self-blaming causes guilt, anger, regret, and a sense of inadequacy as a parent. Identifying with your child’s addiction – either feeling responsible for fixing it or unable to face it. The key is not gaining control or changing the addiction. It is understanding you have no control over the addiction. You do, however, have power; the power to let go.
Letting go is:
- Supporting, not fixing
- Permitting another to face reality
- Allowing consequences
- Not taking responsibility for them
- Admitting the outcome is not in your hands
- Acceptance
In letting go, you truly embrace your parental power, by being the example of that which you wish them to do. The addict will be most positively affected by a healthy parent who takes care of themselves, has good boundaries, follows through, respects themselves and honors their life. You don’t need to control or change the addict’s actions, but you can learn to change your responses.
You best help your addicted child by:
- Reaching out for support of others who have been through it
- Expressing your feelings
- Letting your child solve the problems their addiction creates
- Focusing on one day at a time
- Not determining your choices by theirs
- Not doing for them what they can do for themselves
Remember, your child doesn’t need you to take them away from their journey towards discovering their light, they simply need to see your light shining as a reminder of their own along the way.
Do you think your child’s addiction has become your own? Join the discussion and let us know in comments.
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Contact me to set up your strategy session if your teen is struggling with teen substance use. Getting support can help you clarify decisions and begin the process of healing.
It’s sad to deal with addiction when it’s your child. That probably has to be one of the hardest things for a parent to go through. Thanks for the helpful advice.
Bryce
Is it Helping or Enabling?
There is a critical difference between helping and enabling. Helping is defined as doing something for someone that they are unable to do for themselves. We have many opportunities to help others in our lives, whether they are family members, close friends, or complete strangers. Helping makes us all feel good; we feel good because it feels good to lend a hand to someone in need and the recipient of our help feels good because, without our help, they wouldn’t be able to get through a difficult time alone. Examples of helping include taking a meal to a sick friend, or mowing a neighbor’s lawn while they recover from surgery. Helping has an end; you only help until the person can get back to doing things for themselves; notice the optimal word “until.”
Enabling is doing something for someone who can and should be doing for him/herself. Well- intentioned family members, close friends and even neighbors often confuse enabling as helping. In regards to enabling the addict, family members, close friends, etc. make excuses for the behavior of the abuser further contributing to the problem. When we enable addicts, we are preventing them from facing the consequences of their behavior. Not only are they prevented from realizing they have a problem but they are further deprived of reaching their full potential.
Helping someone is truly admirable, until. Enabling someone, however, is a short-term answer that causes ongoing long-term complications. Well-intentioned parents find themselves feeling frustrated, resentful and manipulated, but lack the ability to stop the enabling until…their loved one chooses sobriety. Consequently, the ‘help’ of enabling becomes a distorted entitlement belief held by the enabled and a pit of despair for the enabler. Enabling creates an entitlement monster. It creates damage that is all-inclusive…until we stop.
~~Elaine Altman-Eller
Putting the Spotlight on Enabling
The Prodigal Hope Network
Hi Elaine,
Wonderful explanation. I know that your comment will be helpful to parents caught in the middle or trying to decide whether they are helping or enabling. It is such an easy thing to enable when you want so badly for your child to do well, get better or seek recovery. We find ourselves in that endless loop of trying to do or say anything that will make a difference. Enabling for any parent with an addicted child is a daily challenge when your child has not admitted or acknowledged that their drug or alcohol use, or any other bad habit, for that matter, is ruining their life. We can easily become driven by anxiety, fear, lack of control, anger, frustration, annoyance, sadness as well as a host of other emotions that we feel when our child is caught in this disease. Thanks so much for clarifying. You have made the distinction more clear for all of us.
Hi Bryce,
It is heartbreaking for parents. When children are deep in their addiction, most parents realize at some point that they need to let their children make the decision on whether they decide to seek recovery. There is no guarantee, and sadly some kids never make it. We realize we cannot control the addiction for our adult children. When children are under 18, parents have more control of the environment their child is in, but it is an emotional challenge and you realize your child is basically gone, unless they decide to stop using drugs or alcohol. The stress is huge, and some parents end up with poor health from all the stress. Definitely, prevention is the better way. Thanks for your comment.
Sensible, solid and simple advice. Thank you, Elaine and Cathy. I need to be reminded again and again because my heart strings get pulled easily and often. Before I know it I’m trying to rescue and undermine any little progress that was being made. I’m reminded to PRACTICE your suggestions one day at a time, each day and get bolstered by support from those who’ve been through it and/or going through it.
Hi Shelley,
Elaine does give some wonderful advice and something that parents have such a hard time with, myself included. I need daily reminders to help keep me on track, but the benefits are worth it. Thanks for your comment.
Thank you Elaine and Cathy. I can only imagine the pain and difficulty when it’s your child who has the addiction. Your suggestions will also be extremely helpful for anyone who grapples with a loved one who drinks too much — regardless of whether that individual has crossed the line from abuse to addiction…. Thanks, again, for the post!
Hi Lisa,
Elaine’s ideas are wonderful and I do agree that her post will be very helpful to any parent in this situation, or any family member for that matter. Thanks for your comment.
I think that I am beyond my son’s addiction issues becoming my own. He was clean from heroin for a year and a half and relapsed in September, he is back on track with that again. Unfortunately his weekend drinking has never ended. He gets drunk every Friday and Saturday night, pretty much until he passes out. This does affect me as he lives in my home, he is 23 years old. My ex-husband does not want me to “kick him out” as he believes if I do that he will die on the street. I don’t know how much more support I can give him, when he is sober, he is an extremely pleasant to be around. I am just exhausted having my weekends ruined by his drinking, the two days a week that should be enjoyable are stressful and hell for me. The mornings are nice as he is sleeping. I guess maybe after writing this I’m thinking his addiction has become my own,
Hi Erin,
My heart goes out to you. Sometimes, as I’m sure you know, the addict replaces one addiction with another. It is emotionally exhausting for parents to watch their children basically self destruct. Have you tried an Al-Anon meeting? For me, the Parents Meeting has proved to be extremely helpful. You feel supported, and I learn every week from others who have gone before me and have experienced the same situation. There are other types of support groups as well that could be helpful.
What I have learned is that it is important to have an objective person help you with making decisions regarding your son. We, parents are many times too close to the situation and cannot step back to look at the situation logically. It is difficult to make healthy choices that will benefit both you and your son. You are entitled to a serene and peaceful life. Setting boundaries are important, and if you and your son’s father could come to an agreement about what is acceptable, that would be helpful. I don’t believe kicking out your son is the answer, but I do believe setting limits on what is acceptable in your home and following through is extremely important. Your son can then make the choice if he wants to live by the rules of your home or not. Be sure to read Elaine’s comment as she does an amazing job of explaining enabling vs. helping.
There are many resources online, as well as addiction counselors that could help you on a short term basis. We used a counselor and the investment was well worth the money. I have many resources, so feel free to email me an I will send them to you. Thanks so much for your comment, and my best to you and your family.
Cathy, this is a helpful post for parents with kids going through addiction but really in any bad situation. Parents tend to have a lot of guilt with anything that goes wrong with their children and sometimes take responsibility for things they really had no control over. Thanks for sharing this guest post.
Hi Vishnu,
Parent do carry a lot of guilt and have a hard time letting of the past and what they perceive as their mistakes. They also worry about their children’s future. Parents may try to control the disease, and enable their children in hopes that their action or words will make a difference. It’s a challenging situation and my hope is that prevention will allow more families skip this experience. Thanks so much for your insightful comment.
I just read when your child’s addiction becomes your own and it really does clarify things for me. Our son is 33 and for a long time we have struggled with his addiction to crack. We have seen him go through all the different phases and he has sucked us into believing everything he told us about the addiction. We finally told him he couldn’t be in our home and use and he left about 4 weeks ago. We have not heard from him at all and I am so afraid that he is dead. I don’t know what to do anymore. We did report him missing but……….I’m not sure that was the right thing to do either. I know that I have made his disease mine and I know I have enabled him. I feel so completely helpless. I wonder is there other things we should be doing to find our son or should we just wait?
Hi Karon,
My heart goes out to you in this situation. It is emotionally draining for parents to deal with the ups and downs of addiction. We cannot control this disease when it affects our adult children. We can offer support if they choose recovery, but when we support them while they are actively in their addiction, it just prolongs the process. I know this must be so difficult not knowing where your son is. It seems fine to me that you reported him missing. You need to follow your instincts and listen to your heart. What has helped me with the helpless feeling is getting support from a professional such as an addiction counselor, or therapist. This disease takes a toll on family members and can affect the health of all concerned. I would also suggest attending a support group for parent of addicted children. Al-Anon is one choice, but there are others as well. This has proved invaluable to me and I have made some close friends from my group who understand what we are all going through. Contact me through the Contact page if you would like more information. Best of luck to you and I hope your son makes the decision to seek recovery. My thoughts are with you.
I am curious if this is a current thread. I am unable to tell the date. I have a son who is a drug addict and would love to join the conversation but cannot tell if it is over, ha.
Hi Marlene,
You can always join the conversation. If you click on the blog home, the most current post will come up. I’m sorry your son is a drug addict. There are resources, and archive list and a list of posts by category. I hope some of these can be of help to you! My Best.