Addiction causes a lot of problems for the people you love. When you’re in active addiction, using your substance of choice, relationships are on the back burner. While you may care about people in your life, you’ve lost the power to do much else than seek out your high on a daily basis. You may neglect family or manipulate friends to get what you need.
When you get clean and sober, hurt relationships may be a harsh reality to cope with. But now that you’re on a new path to sobriety, you know that you want to begin to heal the damage you caused.
Addiction isn’t something that solely affects the person who is addicted. Inevitably, there are people in your life that you love and love you back that are hurt by your behavior. You may have let your parents or your kids down time and time again. Or maybe you’ve promised your friends you’ll get sober several times and this time they may not believe you.
For many people in your life, it will take time to regain their trust. They may not trust you, or have hurt feelings about your behavior that they need to cope with. Some people may even have a harder time with you getting sober than they did when you were getting drunk or high.
Addiction is a family disease, and while a person is getting high, other people learn to cope in their ways. Often their coping skills are unhealthy, such as continually bringing up past behavior, starting arguments, or babying/hovering around you whenever you’re at home. These behaviors aren’t meant to harm you, but come from a place of hurt or fear. It may be hard for your loved ones to step away from this type of behavior.
The best thing you can do to help others in your life is to stay sober and work on yourself. As a person in recovery, you will learn to accept responsibility and become a productive member if society. This will help you lay the building blocks of trust.
It’s not your job to “fix” anyone but yourself. Remember: you are powerless over everything except your actions and reactions.
However, there are things you can do to help others in your life cope with the aftermath of your addiction. You can help your family understand more about addiction by bringing home brochures from your 12-step meetings. Your therapist or treatment counselors can help set up family therapy sessions. Some people in your life may also need to attend support groups like Al-Anon or seek out therapy for themselves to have support during your transition.
Addiction is a spiritual, mental and physical disease that can bring a lot of misery to you and your loved ones. The good news is that you can recover! We help people from all walks of life begin to reclaim their life in recovery. Learn more about how we can help by getting in touch at 855-997-1372. Give yourself the chance to get the help you deserve.