Written for Family Members of a Loved One in Recovery

I’ve worked a lot with the family members of a loved one in recovery over the years. I’ve also worked a lot with family members whose loved one is still active in their addiction.

As someone with similar experiences, I know their heartache, anguish, anger, pain, frustration, resentment, fear, love, desperation and never-ending belief that they (the family member) can do something to stop the nightmare.

And they’re right – there is something they can do.

But it’s generally never what they thought the answer would be. I know it sure wasn’t for me.

And that answer?

Get help for yourself. Yes, just for YOU.

As someone who resisted this concept for decades, believing such action was selfish and really irrelevant to the whole picture because I wasn’t the one with the problem (they were, and if I just got them fixed, all would be well), I suffered greatly – physically, emotionally and spiritually – by the time I cried, “Uncle.” And as I got further and further from my “core” self, I changed, and I deeply affected my daughters and everyone else in my path – including my loved ones with the disease. For I became a master at manipulating, blaming, shaming and a martyr extraordinaire (trust me, I’d have punched [OK yelled] at anyone who would have even suggested this to me back then, so I understand if you want to bounce out of this post right about now). Yet I eventually learned, it was all of that yuck that had kept me from doing the most important thing I could do for my loved ones (yes, I have several), and as importantly, for me – get help.

Consider the Numbers of Family Members in Need of Help

It’s well accepted that over 23 million Americans still struggle with the disease of addiction but only 10% get the help they need.

I would hazard a guess this same percentage applies to the number of family members who’ve lived this disease with a loved one actually getting the help they need.

But the numbers – the numbers of people who are still suffering the physical, emotional and quality of life consequences of ongoing exposure to secondhand drinking | drugging – are in the tens of millions.

Why that number? It is also well accepted that each person with a substance use disorder affects up to 5 other people (not all are family members, of course; it could also be a close friend or boyfriend or girlfriend, for example). Take a family of 5 in which a teen or young adult child has the disease, as an example. Assuming it’s an intact family, that includes a mom, dad and two siblings. Likely there are four more, as well – the two sets of grandparents – not to mention any siblings either parent has.

Doing the math: 23 million x 5 = 115 million, less 10 percent (11.5), leaves more than 103 million people who are not getting the help they may need for the physical, emotional and quality-of-life consequences they may have developed as a result of coping with a loved one’s addiction, which they are now carrying into their loved one’s recovery (explored more fully in this post, Consequences of Secondhand Drinking (Drugging) to One’s Health).

What Do I Mean by “Help?”

I’ll let this post of mine share some of what I mean, Behind Every Alcoholic or Drug Addict is a Family Member or Two or Three…, as well as the following suggestions:

• Understand how you’ve been affected – check out The Fight-or-Flight Stress Response – Secondhand Drinking Connection.
• Do what you can to improve your diet, get regular exercise and restful sleep. It’s remarkable what science is now proving about the role nutrition, exercise and sleep play in a person’s BRAIN health. And to heal oneself from the brain changes associated with chronic stress is to heal one’s brain. This post shares why this is so important, Here’s to Neural Networks and Neurotransmitters: Keys to Brain (and Therefore Emotional/Physical Health.
• Understand Secondhand Drinking Prevention
• Consider using slogans to help.

[Just to be clear, none of this is to suggest that everyone exposed to or living with a loved one’s addiction or a loved one in recovery needs help nor to suggest those that do will all need the same sort of help.]

Include Family Members in Recovery in National Recovery Month Celebrations

This is being done already to some extent, but I believe we need to enhance the effort.

Why?

1.  To gently remind family members they need help, and that it’s OK to seek it, if for no other reason than their own relief. The additional, wonderful outcome of family members getting the physical, emotional and spiritual help they need to heal their brain (yes, as you read in one of the posts linked above, family members’ brains wire around the stress responses they developed to cope with their loved one’s disease, which in turn changes their physical and emotional health, thoughts and behaviors) is what their “new self” can do to help their loved one seek treatment and/or continue in their long-term recovery.

2. To help those living in recovery and society as a whole better appreciate what family members have gone through in order to cope with their loved ones’ addiction-related behaviors WITHOUT the numbing effects of alcohol or drugs.

3. To recognize and support FAMILY RECOVERY from this FAMILY DISEASE. If we fully embrace and celebrate family recovery as an integral part of the recovery movement, then we can better advocate for efforts to expand health care programs to treat both sides of this family disease, which in turn insures family members have access to the medical and emotional treatments they need, which in turn helps break the cycles.

For if we don’t, the family side misses out on wonderful opportunities to live healthy, happy, enjoyable lives AND families have far too many opportunities to raise the next generation of people who will develop this disease. Addiction is a developmental disease and its key risk factors include: genetics, childhood trauma, social environment, early use and mental illness. Growing up in a family where one person has the disease and the others cope with it in unhealthy ways, sets up the potential to develop three of these key risk factors: childhood trauma, social environment and mental illness. Throw in genetics, and a child has 4 out of the five before they have their first drink. You’ll see what I mean in this closing post, Drug Addiction – Alcoholism – Can Parents Help Their Child Avoid It?

© 2014 Lisa Frederiksen

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Lisa Frederiksen

Author | Speaker | Consultant | Founder at BreakingTheCycles.com

Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, "10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and "Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.

Latest posts by Lisa Frederiksen (see all)

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