Family Recovery 101

I frequently get calls or emails from family members in my practice asking what they should do or not do to help a family member who has gone into recovery.  I can sometimes just hear the worry rising as they grip the phone or coming through their labored emails as they begin their process of learning how to support someone they love both in addiction and now coming into recovery.  It would seem to outsiders like a family member should just feel happy at a loved one’s new found recovery and just be relieved and move on.  This couldn’t be further from the truth for many of us.

Just as someone who is entering recovery is struggling to find their footing, equally, so too are the family members involved. There seems to be multiple stages to the process and many weeks or years of a learning curve involved for family to feel stable in their process.  Family members hit my office wide eyed and even desperate.  They are often like new does wobbling in on their legs, uneasy and having just survived terrible challenges. 

Much has been written about the lifecycle of the addicted person’s recovery process. Persons with addiction, for example, have gone through the path of finding drugs or alcohol, having consequences, and eventually finding they cannot stop on their own.  In the beginning, these persons feel they want to stop but can’t stop, but begin to feel better if they stick around and remain sober. They eventually (with luck) find a higher power of some sort, and begin the heavy lifting of focusing on recovery. This includes exploring causes/conditions and continual maintenance of a program of action. At this point, they can finally recover.

But What About the Family?

You are the brave and patient souls who have been there all along, watching Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personalities form in your loved one right before your eyes! You may clean up wreckage or just live dead center in it! Your are not sure who you are going to receive on a daily basis, and endure countless night of worrying.  What is your process to be? One of the first stages I have come to know is a first wave of a shock stage.  This is the initial shock of learning about your child’s addiction or secret activities, a relapse after believing they were clean, flat out continual use, or maladaptive patterns. As a parent, you may yourself in the process.  Setting basic soft boundaries and talking to an afflicted family member seems to be as useful as throwing rocks at a tank. 

Several books I suggest to family members are titles like “how to help” your loved one in the recovery process.  While we do want to help them recover, these tips often lead to the ironic path of helping ourselves.

In the beginning, it is an all-consuming process to live surrounded with or affected by addiction.  How could it not be? Even the most calm, cool, and collected among us show up a few years later impatient, irritable, anxious, and tired.  At times we can barely think of anything else.  Weren’t we smart and loving and kind and didn’t we do everything right? Didn’t we do everything not too much differently than anyone else? You may often wonder why this is happening to you.  You may ring your hands in despair.

Addiction can’t be intellectually reasoned with, payed enough money, or given enough good schooling. In fact it’s better if we cut our losses and not try to have too many good ideas about how we are going to fix someone else’s addiction.  This often leads to feeling of guilt or even shame (depending on your upbringing and how prone you are to taking on other people’s “shameless” behaviors).  We carry the shame and pick it up for them because they can’t seem to own it or feel it.  

This initial shock leaves us feeling as if we are survivors of a foreign war.  We fight battles where we don’t even really understand with weapons we are supposed to use to defend ourselves or our loved one, but we don’t even know what we are actually fighting.  Underneath it all, we actually just want who we love to “be ok” and be able to trust them.  This bewildering stage of recovery is confusing for the family and in the beginning, you may only begin to unwind from the state of being frozen with fear.

The Beginning of the Process

Almost always, we begin with a powerful suggestion: become educated on addiction/recovery and support skills. This may only be for a short time until you get the scope of the issue, learn what it is and what it isn’t, and learn how addiction processes operate.  During this stage (and beyond), simple slogans, sayings, and reminders can come in handy. It’s not an easy feat. Sometimes it takes many months to learn the addiction basics needed for the family. While you may feel that you don’t have time for this, it only seems to eat up more time if we don’t know how to respond to the problem now sitting dead center in our respective lives and living rooms.  Next, I always recommend that you keep a good attitude.  Treat your loved one with love and boundaries but recognize that they are considered “newcomers” to the process for 1-2 years.  Some people would argue that the newcomer process is even longer than this.  Like many people with medical or health issues, we would still treat someone as if they are capable and be kind but maybe not well yet.  It’s not a great time to engage in wordy debates and intellectual reasoning.  Consider someone who has been diagnosed with diabetes or cancer—you may keep in mind they are not well yet but we could reasonably expect they will need love, support, and positive regard and be asked to be decently respectful to others to the best of their ability. Lastly, I cannot stress the need for education enough. 12-step meetings for the family, family support sessions or groups, and literature is helpful and can be found on just about every corner of the earth.

Next, we begin the process of setting boundaries, with hopefully the help of someone objective that can see the problem more clearly and help with reasonable expectations.  We also begin the process of our own healing.  Seeking support, sponsorship, our own step work process as well as other well-meaning family members who have walked ahead of us all come in strong recommendation.  We may begin learning what boundaries to set and have some ability to stick to them and begin to equate boundaries with love.

I also ask family members to begin to focus on self-care and return to some activities that bring them peace. In fact, such behaviors benefit someone in recovery.  Leading by example, we can create a life where our focus is on taking care of ourselves.  The airlines stewardess has it correct when they remind us to put an oxygen mask on ourselves before assisting anyone else. This allows us to be ready to be helpful when the time is right, and at the least have a more abundant life at the least. The name of the game is learning to be centered and reasonably happy even if someone we love is struggling.  Daily work on ourselves as well as a program of recovery are just what we need. One of my favorite sayings is that we prepare for a marathon, not a sprint, and in that I would add that we need objective coaches, sponsors, and as much physical and emotional health as we can find.  This is not at the expense of anyone else but to their benefit.  We cast off antagonizing, anger, and resentment with the help of our support system because these only seem to slow us down.  We may even be able to turn our thoughts to others who are walking the road with us or maybe are even a step or two behind us.  One of the biggest indicators of an addicted person’s success is family involvement and healthy family participation in their own recovery.  We did not necessarily ask for this walk, but it seems to bring us some learnings and maybe even a life with more tools and support that we may not have otherwise found. Many family members (down the road) say that while they aren’t happy addiction affected their family, they certainly have grown from the process of recovery.  Just as addiction spreads through the family system, so does family recovery.

Best of luck, and blessings on your journey!

Kim Miller, LISAC, LCSW is a blog writer, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Certified Life/Executive Coach, Addictions Counselor, and Family Support Coach in private practice.

Kimberly Miller, LCSW, LISAC