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[one_half_last]Welcome to the Addiction Recovery Blog RoundUp for this week. Happy Reading!
The Bigger Picture
Here is a great post by Melanie Brayden over at The Addict In My Basement. Her post starts out talking about big life conversations but she moves in to talking about her healing and maintaining healthy boundaries as the mother of an addict. Because it is so true, I love in the post where she says “As a parent I feel part of the definition is to advocate for my child when she can’t. I do that, I think. But I also have to know my limits”. [/one_half_last]In life, but especially if you are affected by secondhand addiction, you must figure out where your limits are and then figure out a way to put boundaries around the limits that you can maintain. Your limits will be different than someone else’s and that’s ok. The point that she makes so gracefully in her post, is “…I can’t live my life if I am constantly watching her life.” Ask yourself: Is it time for you to start living your life again?
It Is Time You Took Back Control
More about managing your own life over at 100 Pedals this week. Dave Cooke is writing about his own experience of change and how it evolved through his son’s addiction. In talking about how to move forward, he says: “When you choose to live the promise of the future – your future – and avoid getting up in the uncontrollable chaos of your loved one’s life, you will find the peace and clarity you desire in your life.” If you desire change in your life and you are dealing with secondhand addiction, you must take control over your part and move your focus back on yourself. In an ideal world, this will cause others to change. But you can’t count on that. You must focus on yourself, your life, your beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Keeping the focus on someone else not only allows the chaos to continue but it keeps you embroiled in the middle of it.
There’s Just So Much Not To Like
So. Speaking of Acceptance. (smile). Here is a whole post on it. Paul W. is writing from the alcoholic’s perspective over at 12 The Hard Way. But since my focus seems to be secondhand addiction this week, let’s take acceptance from that perspective. As he says: “Serenity becomes impossible when it’s dependent on other people, places or things.” So what if….as someone struggling with secondhand addiction, we place the focus back on ourselves. Stop looking at the person struggling with the addiction. Stop trying to fix, manage, or change the person struggling with the addiction. You have no control over what they think, what they do, and whether or not they choose to change. You do have control over what you choose to think about, how you choose to spend your time, and whether or not you choose to change. And make no mistake, focusing on yourself does not mean that you don’t care, that you don’t love them, or that you don’t want the situation to change. It just means that you accept the current situation and realize that the best way for you work through it and take care of yourself, is to focus on yourself. Difficult? Yes, of course. Acceptance of complex situations always is.
I Couldn’t Solve It
“To do the only thing that would work but was so hard to do as a parent. I finally had to let him go, an absolutely counterintuitive thing for a parent to do.” Can you imagine? As a parent, our charge is to care for our children. To help them learn to navigate the world. It is possible, however, to get so focused on this “job”, that we get in the way. This is an anonymous post over at the New House Life blog this week talking about the difficulty in letting go when you have a child struggling with addiction. As the writer notes towards the end of the article, getting out of the way allowed the child to move forward and find his own path. Sometimes, we have to let go and get out of the way in order to make room for our loved ones next step. Even if that step would not have been the one we would have chosen for them.
Learning To Trust A Loved One In Recovery From Addiction
Finally this week, MomShiningLight over at Parent Pathway is talking about trust and rebuilding trust. When someone who has been struggling with addiction moves into recovery, it takes a while to believe. It takes a while to realize and process that what is happening is different than what was happening in the past. And it takes a while to trust. It should be a slow process. There will have been a lot of damage to the relationship and rebuilding that takes time. All sides must learn to be patient with the process.
That is my Addiction Recovery RoundUp post for this week. I hope that you found some small nugget to carry you through the next few days. Enjoy your weekend!
If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or codependency issues, Contact me today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation to talk about how we can work together or find the right person for you.
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