When Facing the Alcoholism of Someone You Care About, You Need to Help Yourself
What alcoholism does
Witnessing first-hand the destructive process of alcoholism is heartbreaking, maddening, and frustrating. Why? It is hard to see someone you care about not take care of themselves, make bad decisions, and not cherish or even appreciate what you see in them.
Frequently this is described as seeing someone destroy themselves.
As a result, loving someone who has alcoholism, whether this is a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, or a partner, often involves living through a series of traumas that lead to guilt and self-recriminations.
Two of the most referenced feelings are:
· Feeling powerless
Feeling powerless doesn’t mean being powerless. It means not knowing what to do.
and
· Self-blame
You may be blaming yourself because you don’t know what else to do. Self-blame is actually a defense against feeling powerless. Many often feel it’s easier to blame themselves than to feel they cannot do anything to make a positive difference. So they work harder because who wants to feel powerless?
How does resilience fit into this?
Resilience embodies doing something with what has been done to you. It involves taking action, changing how you think, and possibly how you act. You respond you plan, you move internally, externally.
But developing resilience in the face of what you see as an ongoing tragedy may feel undoable. It’s not.
Resilience in the face of the illness of a loved one
When you’re faced with caring about someone and witnessing their being so ill that they cannot see what they are doing to themselves, let alone understand the impact of their illness and resulting actions on those of you who love them, you can take action.
Your actions could involve many things, but one of them needs to be self-care.
How Al-Anon helps
Often, in this circumstance, self-care is not usually on the top of a “to-do” list.
If you love someone with addiction you may be more focused on trying to fix them. You may be considering going into psychotherapy with a trained mental health practitioner or seeing your pastor, priest, rabbi, or imam. Or do both in an attempt to try to motivate the person you love and see struggling. Both are good initial strategies, but they are not enough.
Eventually, your frustration and pain may soon give way to realizing that you have been negatively affected and need to heal yourself.
Al-Anon, and the corresponding adolescent program, Ala-teen, encourage this realization, supporting members in this process, and helping them set realistic boundaries concerning what they can do—change themselves, and what they can’t do—change the one they love.
This is the essence of the Serenity Prayer … grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
And Al-Anon is complimentary to working with a psychotherapist or religious leader. The magic in Al-Anon is that when you no longer feel isolated, when you have group support to change how you react, what you say, and do, you may find the one you love changing as well.
Al-Anon was established over 70 years ago and follows a 12-step format, where the focus is on the Al-Anon member. There are no dues or fees. Groups are in person or virtual and exist around the world allowing easy access to support at any time day or night, creating a free 24-hour worldwide network of mutual support. Interested persons may join any group(s) at any time. It’s not usual for a person to go to more than one group.
Interested in referring your clients?
If you are a professional and wish to learn more about Al-Anon so that you may refer your clients, I invite you to attend a free webinar over Zoom on May 2, from 5:00 pm – 5:45 pm est http://bit.ly/3WGSRVT.
After registering, a confirmation email will be sent containing information about joining the meeting.
In this webinar, you will briefly hear from two individuals in Al-Anon sharing their experiences of hope and healing.
· The first will share how he was referred to Al-Anon by a counselor, while his wife was in addiction treatment. He had thought only his wife had problems.
· The second person will share how she sought counseling due to realizing that her parenting was negatively affected due to her growing up in a family with alcoholism. Her counselor referred her to Al-Anon, making a huge difference in how she saw herself.
· I will conclude by speaking about the benefits of encouraging patients to join a mutual support group while they are in psychotherapy.
… and you will be able to ask questions of the three of us.
The webinar is free-- but you must register.
Learn more about Al-Anon Family Groups at https://al-anon.org