Of the three most impotrtant factors when thinking about building your recovery – Design, cost and location. We could say that design is the one I see most often misunderstood, or left out altogether. Remember, if you do not design your recovery, someone else will!
Why is this important? Because if you live in a building someone else has designed you will resent it. And eventually you will pull the whole thing down yourself! I have seen it happen more times than I want to think about. So let’s learn more about what it means to design your own recovery.
The Big Three – Cost – Location – Design
In the first of three posts I am now going to get into more detail about the concept of ‘design’. Which is one of the ‘big three’ things to consider when building your recovery along with ‘cost’ and ‘location’. What do I mean by design and how can you create a good design for yourself? And how can you make sure that it remains your design as you develop your recovered self? Let’s start with how to create the basic design.
Always remember when doing any of these exercises that the more you imagine this as a real home, the better it will work for you as a genuine aid. Remember that the same questions you would ask when considering a new home are exactly the same questions you need to ask about your recovery. So think of cost in two ways. As things you will have to give and things you will have to give up. No longer acting the way you did is a cost and not having neighbours you liked would be a loss.
Location Location Location
Think of Location as who you will be living next to. In other words which relationships do you need to let go of and which relationships do you need to develop more?
There is a short exercise I use for this, the concept is simple. Write down the names of everyone you see regularly. Now score them out of 10 by how you feel about yourself after you have been with them. Remember, it’s not how you feel about them. It’s how you feel about yourself. Everyone who scores less than five is a person you need to move away from or consider limiting the amount of time you spend with them. Everyone who scores more than five is someone you should consider spending more time with.
It must be your design
It doesn’t matter how different it looks, it must be your design!
The idea of moving into a new home but not getting what you want is really frustrating. Imagine wanting a big garden but being persuaded by a friend or family member to buy a place with no garden for whatever reason. Every time you arrive home the garden would remind you that this was not your choice! That gets old pretty quick.
So how do we think about design? We start by looking at the way things were. How did you spend your time? Who did you spend your time with? This is the old design and being real about what it looked like is the first step. Next we need to imagine it as your old building. The one your ‘addicted self’ lived in. If this was a building design how many rooms would it have? And which would be the biggest room? Rooms will be labelled as work, family and personal time. Ask yourself honestly how much time you spent in the different rooms. The more accurately you do this, the better your chances of getting what you want.
Making a plan
Now it’s time to make the floor plan. Draw it simply and think of the size of the building as the amount of time you have. So the rooms represent both how many different things you do, but also describe the proportion of time you spend doing them. How do you want the new place to be different? Now you’re going to need a second floor plan. This should give you a clear view of how you have lived and how you want to change.
These drawings should be very basic, just like the ones above. Floor plans showing the rooms that you lived in as well as the names of the rooms. Be honest and use what you have learned from the FREDS list about who you really have been.
Making the Transition
Moving from one ‘home’ to another is part of what I call the ‘work of recovery’. Notice how much smaller the ‘work’ room is in the new house above. We now need a plan of how to build the new home in the way we wanted it.
Fill in every waking hour and colour code for each room.
To do this I want you to consider using a tool such as Google Calendar or something similar. Think about how you use your time. Most of you are already using something like this and, if you are like me you will probably be inserting things like meetings and phone calls etc. But you are always doing something! So now decide on your ‘waking’ hours and put something in for every hour. Even if you decide to do nothing that’s fine. try colour coding for the different rooms for greater clarity.
Now, does the percentage of time match the way you have set up your rooms. Or does it still look like the old house? Consider changing things till you achieve the balance that is right for you.
Remember, this is an aim, so go at the right pace for yourself. Don’t build too fast or too slowly.
This is the third article in the series – Addiction as an inappropriate relationship. In this final post we will be looking at one of the worst aspects of the inappropriate relationship. Namely that it looks good but is really bad. Inappropriate relationships are always presented as something good healthy or wholesome. In fact it is one of the most insidious things about them.
Always connected with something desirable like love or spiritual enlightenment, inappropriate relationships are at best cheap imitations of these things. Deliberately harmful and deceitful, they lead the innocent into damaging and abusive places.
The worst inappropriate relationships always involve the innocent or vulnerable. Young people who are easily tempted with things they cannot get for themselves like a ride in a car or a bag of sweets. Addiction is similar in that the temptation is always about now! So it appeals to the child in us. It always offers instant gratification. There is never any thought or promise for the future, only now.
Big picture versus little picture
Large Cinema screen
Small picture view
This one of the methods I use frequently with my groups. The idea of small and large ‘screens’ as a way of understanding how you are ‘seeing things’ right now. It’s also one of the main reasons why personal growth, development and maturity are the answers for you as an addict. The more mature you become the more your view is ‘big picture’ not the ‘small picture’ of a child.
If when the temptation of this inappropriate relationship came you could summon up a picture even a tiny bit bigger than ‘right now’ you would be very likely to say NO THANKS. Even considering tomorrow morning would probably be enough, but in the past this has been beyond you. Your addictive relationship is only attractive in the ‘right now’ of the ‘small picture’ view.
Avoiding the ‘quick fix’ by changing your ‘screen’
Of course there are times when it is appropriate for you to go the other way and I teach this in the group I run. Ask yourself now is your problem in the past, future or present? Where is the thing that is making you feel bad? If it is in the past or the future it is a ‘big picture’ problem and you must shift to a ‘small picture view’. You do this by bringing yourself into the moment and asking yourself “what am I actually doing right now”? If it’s making a cup of tea, then make the best cup of tea you can and concentrate on it. Small picture!
If your issue is in the present then you must shift to a ‘big picture view’, in which you will feel better and gain some perspective. This is why when you are first presented with the substance that later leads to addiction it appears to be the perfect answer! Instant bliss! You can be transported to a place that has no problems or bad feelings associated with it for just a little money. As long as your health and money last you really have what appears to be the perfect solution to your issues. The perfect answer but only in a small picture view!
I was no different from you in my youth. I felt terrible and the thought of drinking and smoking weed gave me an instant ‘brain shift’ and better feeling. As I got older it was worse! Now I wanted to feel good not only without earning it, but in spite of all the wrong things I was now doing! So because you are doing the same this means that your ‘perfect’ answer is now somewhat more tarnished than when you were young. But it still offers you a powerful relief from the bad feelings you have.
Defining the appropriate relationship
We hear so much about the inappropriate relationship these days. A simple search on the internet brings up heaps of material on Teacher – Student relationships, incestuous relationships, as well as the more common extra-marital relationships.
The more subtle forms of inappropriateness such as the controlling partner and the psycho boss are harder to find but are still plentiful if you search a bit harder. When it comes to things that are more challenging to define such as manipulative friends and people who are over keen to be in the spotlight of leadership or be ‘running things’ there is a lot less information. It is here that the boundaries get a little blurred.
What if we started at the other end? What if we started by defining what makes an appropriate relationship? This is problematic because it is much harder to generalise around health than it is around the unhealthy. Here are a few things that appropriate living relationships include. Along with some links to further reading.
Equality – except where the power differential is written into the relationship such as counselling or a work hierarchy.
When you make a decision to move towards recovery, you are saying that you want all your relationships to be healthy, have good boundaries and able to grow and develop! You will understand the unhealthy nature of the relationship you have with your substance/behaviour much better after reading this series of episodes on the inappropriate relationship .
I have an appropriate relationship with poison. I avoid it! Of course developing more healthy relationship with your substance or behaviour of choice also means developing your relationships with those around you. If your friends, work colleagues, or even your family are using and constantly tempting you towards these substances or behaviours you must consider placing strong boundaries in these relationships, or at the very least strong time constraints. I am not saying it is as simple as saying no! I have written extensively on how we develop a better relationship with our ‘drug of choice’.
Looking at your part
We have been talking so far about the idea of inappropriate relationships with you as the victim and the substance or behaviour as the perpetrator. That’s how it feels a lot of the time as you are extremely vulnerable once you are in an addictive pattern. It’s far too simple to see this relationship that way so now we need to look at your part in this unhealthy relationship.
It is important to realise that you are the abuser, not the substance. That’s why they say you are ‘abusing substances’. I want to take alcohol here as the typical example. It works well as an example as it has an accepted social use and is legal. As well as this it was my ‘drug of choice’ and so I do speak from experience!
Think about a friend or neighbour that you have and you need to borrow something or ask them a favour. Fine, they are okay with it. But now you ask again, and again, and again. You can see where this is going. Even the most patient and giving person is going to get to the end of their patience as you continue to abuse the relationship. I used alcohol beyond it’s socially accepted use and this is what happened. I abused the friendship and I lost it!
Developing better boundaries in all relationships
“When all your relationships with everything and everyone around you are healthy, or are becoming healthier, you are recovered”. I use this definition of recovery a lot and find it very useful in supporting people when they are reflecting on the way forwards for themselves. It locates the issue inside the ‘relationship’ rather than inside themselves or others. Ultimately it is what we make together that forms our world and our experience.
Try this exercise now. Think about specific relationships. With things as well as people. How could you make that relationship more healthy? I often advise looking for 5% improvements rather than going for broke! Now think about how you might go about that improvement. Remember, they don’t have to do anything or say anything to make this work. It all comes from you!
Of course we all must have relationships with inert things, such as sailing, football, television etc. But we are not ‘bonded’ with them! Always try to maintain healthy boundaries around them. I hope this series of articles has helped you to evaluate your relationships and given you a way of thinking about your addiction that offers a way forward. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Over the past few years I have felt more and more moved to work with the families of addicted parents more than the addicts themselves. I am committed to getting the best information I can out there. Particularly for people who are often not well informed as to their issue. There are lots of well meaning publications out there that will tell you that it is progressive disease and other scary ideas that are not always true for your family. You need an effective way to manage this situation and to recover from it.
The effect of addiction on children
All poor and defective parenting has the same effect on the children. It encourages, causes or forces them into the adult arena. In other words they are expected to perform at an adult level even though they are still children.
The family with the issue of addiction is an extreme example of this and everyone who works in the addiction field has heard the story of the child who comes home to find their Mum passed out on the couch and then feels the pressure to ‘become the Mum’ and parent the other children and in some cases Parent the parent. I call this reverse parenting, I’m sure you get the picture, or recognise yourself in this story.
This pressure of developing an idea that you are responsible and must act in situations were you are not experienced and should not be held responsible results in trauma of various strengths.
In the personality there are two major effects or results and they are immediately recognizable. I have seen this sibling formation again and again over the years and I will now offer a definition of these two types.
The Two choices for children of families in addiction
When you are faced with the extreme circumstances of addiction in the family as a child you effectively have two choices. I will describe them in the form of ‘mission statements’ for both below.
“Everything will work out if I get everything I want”
This is the mission statement of the addict. Faced with the prospect of being recruited into a world where they must be continually thinking about the other, they ‘escape’ into utter self centredness. The technical term for this is narcissism.
They create the one place where they cannot be reached. They create a ‘world of one’. They create a place of safety. Like all unhealthy strategies this one appears to offer the perfect solution. The problems only come later as the strategy fails to produce a healthy life and healthy relationships.
“Everything will work out if everyone else gets everything they want”
This is the mission statement of the reverse addict. Faced with the prospect of being recruited into a world where they must be constantly thinking of the other, they choose to take on the task and start to identify with the role. Whereas the addict develops a fantasy life followed by drugs, alcohol or addictive behaviours, the reverse addict escapes into concern. The constant worry and pressure offer lots of opportunities to not think about their own state. This becomes habit forming and addictive.
The effect in later life
The effect of addiction on children as they grow is that they have been placed one way or another into the ‘adult arena’. This often takes the form of ‘reverse parenting’ when their parents do not fulfill their responsibilities to the children. Often in my work I meet adults who started looking after their siblings when they were only seven or eight years old.
So we now have the narcissist and the co-dependent. The addict and the reverse addict. I will go more into brain chemistry and the way these things affect choices at another time. For now I want to explain to you more of what you will see when you witness these personalities.
The addict personality has been well covered many times and so my concentration here will be the reverse addict or co-dependent. One of the biggest influences on their personality is the way ‘acting grown up’ eventually replaces ‘being grown up’. Circumstances made them responsible for things they did not have the experience or the maturity for..
The Hermeneutic of addictive relationships
In many ways this bifurcation of the two types is indicative of their future, and their future partners. The two types will ‘find’ someone from the opposite group to form a serious relationship with. In this way the addicts will partner with the reverse addicts and vice versa. And what a perfect fit!
In this type of relationship it initially feels to both parties that they have found perfection. The narcissist gets someone who seems happy to completely subjugate themselves to their cause, whilst asking for nothing in return. And the reverse addict gets someone who not only gives them a full time caring role, but always takes centre stage and never puts the spotlight back on them.
The unhealthy aspects of the addicts relationship
If only this worked long term! Everybody would be happy and no one would be in need of recovery! Unfortunately like any other unhealthy strategy it offers a quick fix but fails in the long term due to the side effects of this fit. Do not mistake a good fit for a healthy fit. There is no balance here. There is no intimacy because there is no vulnerability. Any conversation of any importance is usually had ‘under the influence’ and often leads nowhere.
Eventually the novelty wears off and both parties learn to protect themselves behind a resentful layer of self justification. Years of relentless selfishness has worn away the genuine caring of the codependent. The addict has long since learned to totally take their partner for granted. It is important to understand that these relationships are not only completely unhealthy but actually get worse over time. As a tendency in one fits with an opposite tendency in the other. These ‘tendencies’ slowly strangulate into extreme positions that cannot be maintained without serious mental health implications.
The more he behaves like a child the more she feels she has to become the parent. Or in the other formation where the addict is the female, the more irresponsible she behaves the more he feels he has to be responsible for the whole family.
There are many helpful articles on the nature of narcissism, but what can help more is an understanding of how people fit together in relationship.
The only way to authentic recovery is to outgrow your difficulties
These are serious issues and I see them again and again in my work. But they can be overcome! You can recover! It takes a commitment to growth and personal development and cannot be acheived through regular counselling sessions. You need expert and experienced support which is long term and as committed as you are.
In some cases people split up, but not always. In most cases the partner is our best teacher in that we learn best in the circumstances of the relationship. When we have the right support and guidance. We learn to use our difficulties to grow.
Addiction in families is an issue as old as addiction itself and this is the first in a series of articles relating to the family. It will offer lots of practical help and things you can do to improve the family health. You could start by downloading my ebook The five big mistakes families make…. on the subject.
As far back as 1935 Alcoholics Anonymous was calling alcoholism ‘a family illness’. Of course they were talking particularly of alcoholism. And they were largely concerned with the ‘effects’ on the family. Not so much addiction in families but how the wife (they still largely saw the problem as male) might help and best support her Husband.
Coming forward to today we can definitely say that things have changed. As a society we are now looking at the issue more from a general addiction perspective which includes behavoural addictions. Our understanding has grown to include the ‘co-dependent personality and so the family are now seen in their own right and not just unsuspecting bystanders affected by the addicted individual.
The Family is the client
As a systemic Family Therapist my approach to the issue is to see the family as the client. There are some advantages to seeing it as an illness and there are now no less than fourteen separate addiction conditions recognised by the DSMV. So it’s official, it’s a disease. In some parts of America the Jennifer act allows family members to be committed for their own safety.Clearly there are enough symptoms etc to consider it an illness but there are also some disadvantages to seeing it this way, which I would call the medical model.
The fact is that when I have contracted or am born with an illness, the tendency is to see myself as absolved from all responsibility. There are some exceptions but this approach often has people too far removed from a sense of responsibility for themselves. You will not take enough responsibility for your self if you have been schooled to think this way. Of course it is a huge ‘move on’ from the earlier approach (the moral model) which placed 100% responsibility on the addicted person. From this perspective they are simply making bad choices.
The family is a complete system
When working with families with addiction the most difficult idea they face is that there is nothing they can do. This belief often comes from the perspective described above. When you see the issue as an illness, contracted through no fault of their own, you are left in a pretty helpless position. When you see the issue as an ‘innapropriate relationship’ then there are lots of things you can do! When I work with a family I make no distinction between the family members in the sense that they are all part of the complete system.
Co-dependence
The first thing you need to know about co-dependence is that it is like a coin with addiction and codependence being the heads and the tails. Of course this is a hugely important part of the family recovery and I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast page specific to relationships and to see my other material on the subject.
Communication – the key to growth
The first thing you should try to set up in your family when suffering with addiction issues is better communication. The most basic way that the ‘post’ issue problems (by which I men the problems that arise as a result of addiction) can confuse things is the way the addict can tell different people different things. By simply telling different family members different stories the addict maintains unhealthy boundaries and manage the whole family from behind simple untruths.
One of the first (and best) things the family can do is to set up a method of communication between the members that insures good information for all parties. Choose a method of communication. ‘whatsapp’ or facebook, texting or skype are some alternatives. The point is that anything, and I mean anything, that you hear from the addicted family member is shared with the whole family.
The addict in the family (or addicts) soon learn that talking to one member is like talking to them all. Straight forward deceit is not a big problem for every family but when it is, this is one of the biggest and simplest ways of managing it and can save the family so much heartache.
Money – Let’s face it and get honest
Most families with addiction issues have money issues. The big three (as I call them) are money sex and food. These are the three things that addicts eventually have to deal with. It can often be years after abstinence has been achieved. Money is often the first thing that comes up as it mostly involves all others, and problems with it are difficult to hide or ignore.
So what about money? Depending upon the nature of the addiction there may be no sign that money is a problem. The issues of a very successful workaholic and those of a heroin addict can present in an apparently different way. But for the purposes of this general look at the subject I will concentrate on the most typical scenario your family will face. That is an addict in the family needing money and not having any. Constantly lying manipulating and stealing from within (and without) of the family.
The communication network you set up will help with this a lot but the biggest challenge you face as a family is to yourselves. Ask yourself “what is my attitude towards money”? Do you have a belief that it is better to supply your addict with money than for them to steal it from somewhere? Remember, the challenge to yourself must be as great as the challenge to your addicted family members.
If you have a lot of trouble with boundaries around money, get together with your other family members and agree on the boundaries. When pressurised or challenged later you can stand on the idea that this is not your decision. You have set this boundary as a family.
Set your focus as a family
When there is addiction in families they tend to focus on the addict. It is so important for your health as a family that you set your focus as something else! Individually your focus should be your own growth and development as a person. As a family your focus should be to develop harmony and intimacy. You will learn more about each other including your vulnerability and difficulty. Focusing on anything other than your addict tells you how much you have been affected by this issue.
Go for the long game
Try to stay away from any sense of the quick fix. If your addict seems to be listening to you do not feel that you can take advantage of this by intervening with some formulaic solutions and improvements. They are likely to be manipulating you because they want something.
This is the type of beginners mistake that counsellors not trained in addiction and recovery work tend to fall for. The general rule is ‘when you think you are manipulating them, they are probably manipulating you’.
Go more for the long game. Assess improvements over months rather than days. Have long term aims and try not to be too disappointed by small set backs (of which there will be many). Commit to growing through these things. They are not a problem to be fixed.
Till next time when I will be taking all these subjects and more in detail.
This is the third article in the series – Addiction as an inappropriate relationship. In this final post we will be looking at one of the worst aspects of the inappropriate relationship. Namely that it looks good but is really bad. Inappropriate relationships are always presented as something good healthy or wholesome. In fact it is one of the most insidious things about them.
Addiction in families is an issue as old as addiction itself and this is the first in a series of articles relating to the family. It will offer lots of practical help and things you can do to improve the family health. You could start by downloading my ebook 
When there is addiction in families they tend to focus on the addict. It is so important for your health as a family that you set your focus as something else! Individually your focus should be your own growth and development as a person. As a family your focus should be to develop harmony and intimacy. You will learn more about each other including your vulnerability and difficulty. Focusing on anything other than your addict tells you how much you have been affected by this issue.