If someone in your life is in recovery from addiction and it’s not a topic you’re used to discussing, you might not be sure how best to support them, other than clearing out alcohol and drugs from your home and events you want them to attend. At Safe Harbor Recovery Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, we treat people with substance use disorders and offer support to their family and friends. We would like to share some suggestions for ways you can help your loved ones to stay on track with their recovery.
Engaging in Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance is the idea that you love and accept your loved one, no matter what, and that this may sometimes come with a painful reality of their substance use without judgment, rejection, or fighting your own emotions about their use. It’s not the same thing as being okay with them engaging in active addiction. When applied to a person in addiction recovery, radical acceptance looks like:
- Acknowledging that sometimes relapse is part of the recovery process, and it can be an opportunity to learn and grow
- Allowing your loved one to have good days and bad days
- Knowing that the recovery process looks different for each person
- Understanding that your loved one may need time to recognize and take accountability for the pain you experienced as a result of the choices they made in active addiction, and that you may not get the apology you deserve right away or ever.
Setting Limits
Radical acceptance does not mean that you let your loved one walk all over you or that you make excuses for poor decisions. You still have every right to set boundaries around any behaviors that are:
- Dangerous
- Abusive
- Damaging to your mental health
- Manipulative
- Exploitative
- Disrespectful
- Beyond your ability to handle
Your Support Matters
The things you say and do to your loved ones can have a huge impact on your relationship with them and their belief in themselves. It’s best to:
- Empathize. Try to see things from their perspective. Even if you wouldn’t make the same choices, try to understand the underlying feelings and the medical concerns that could come along with withdrawal or a history of addiction.
- Learn about their condition. If you get familiar with the signs of an impending relapse, withdrawal, and mental health conditions that might co-exist with their addiction, you can help your loved one to head off problems before they get too big to manage easily.
- Separate the person from their disease. Addiction and mental health disorders are diseases, not moral failings or signs of weakness. Your loved one needs to take responsibility for the poor choices they made, but adding to their sense of shame doesn’t increase their ability to recover.
- Familiarize yourself with their treatment plan. This can increase your empathy for what they are experiencing and help you to advocate for them if their voice isn’t being heard.
- Be patient. Recovery takes time, and there are sometimes setbacks. That doesn’t mean your friend or family member isn’t trying to get better. Knowing that you believe in them can give them the power to pick themselves back up when they experience a challenge.
- Encourage them to expand their support system. It’s not healthy for your loved one to lean exclusively on a single person. Encourage them to stay connected with family and friends, but also attend recovery groups, go to therapy, engage in hobbies, explore their spirituality, and do other things that will enhance their connections to other people. If you have been impacted by their substance use, you might also consider expanding your support system.
- Be ready for change. Growth requires change, and that might be a bit uncomfortable. Your loved one might start setting some boundaries you aren’t used to. They might engage differently with you and others than they did before. They will need some flexibility from you, as they figure out how they want to build a life around their recovery.
- Keep the good. If you’re both huggers, keep giving them hugs. If you have a shared hobby, keep doing that together. Continue to invite them to family gatherings and special events
At Safe Harbor Recovery Center, we see the benefits of supportive family and friends in the lives of our clients every day. We value the contribution they make to helping our clients establish lives that are solidly in recovery.