Over the past few days, we’ve been talking about the four foundations of family recovery:
1. Self Care
2. Being a Loving Person
3. Setting Boundaries
4. Getting Support
Yesterday we talked all about self care, and I’m hopeful that in the past 24 hours you’ve taken a bubble bath or done something else that has nurtured your body and soul.
Today’s topic of being a loving person is other centered, but in a very different way than most co-addicts are used to.
For many who love addicts and alcoholics, being a loving person has meant caretaking, enabling, hovering, bossing around, dominating, or allowing one’s self to be dominated. And it’s all been done, in the name of love, though often the supposedly loving actions are done with a tremendous amount of resentment and distaste. After all, who wouldn’t get sick and tired of taking care of things that grown adults should be able to take care of themselves? Who wouldn’t resent all of the disappointments and let downs that go with the territory of being in relationship with a using addict or alcoholic?
But, actually, being a loving person, as a co-addict or co-alcoholic in recovery, has very little if anything to do with caretaking. In fact, it is more about a state of being than it is about a state of doing. As the Naranon Little Blue Book states,
” Your role as helper is not to DO Things for the person you are helping, but to BE things, not to try to train and change his/her actions, but to train and change your reactions. As you change your negatives to positives — fear to faith; contempt for what he does to respect for the potential within him/her; rejection to release with love, not trying to make him/her fit a standard or image, or expecting him to measure up to or down from that standard, but giving him an opportunity to become himself/herself, to develop the best within him/her, regardless of what that best may be; dominance to encouragement, panic to serenity; false-hope, self-centered, to real hope, God-centered; the rebellion of despair to the energy of personal revolution; driving to guidance; and self-justification to self-understanding — as you change in such ways as these, you change the world about you and all the people in your world for the better. ” (from the Nar-anon Blue Book)
These words describe what it means to be a loving person. A person in recovery from co-addiction knows that their only obligation to any adult (using or not) is to be a loving person. This means to treat the addict with respect, understanding and hope. What this looks like in a family affected by addiction is that the people in recovery in the family stop yelling at and berating the addict, stop blaming all of their problems on the fact that he/she is using, stop glaring and fearing the addict and start praying for his/her well-being, treating him like a person with feelings and failures and successes, just like everyone else.
This can be hard to do when the addict’s behavior sometimes gets so destructive. So how does it work? First of all, it is almost impossible to do alone! That’s why so many 12 step groups for families have sprung up all around the world. Alanon (www.alanon.org) and Naranon (www.nar-anon.org) can be found almost everywhere in the world now. Check your phone book, your Internet, your local church. Chances are, you will be able to find a meeting. Alanon has phone meetings now around the clock. You can find these at www.alanonphonemeetings.org . Naranon has an online forum, where members from around the world share their experience, strength, and hope with others affected by the family disease of addiction. And of course, there are the Naranon and Alanon family groups on www.intherooms.com .There is really no excuse not to get help. But we will talk more about this when we get to the fourth foundation of family recovery: Get support.
In the meantime, to be a loving person, think of the way you would like to be treated: with dignity and respect. Don’t do for the addict what he or she can or should be able to do for themselves. That’s enabling, not being loving. Being loving is respecting their inner ability to grow and seeing all the good about them that has nothing to do with their using. See them as they truly are: Spiritual beings in physical bodies growing and learning in the schoolyard of Planet Earth.
When we are willing to look beyond behaviors and see the spirit underneath, we can let go of resentments and expectatons and live in the moment with our loved ones. Instead of wishing they were different than they are, we can enjoy the gifts they bring to each moment…their sense of humor, their beautiful smile, the way they bring a different perspective to a conversation. There is much more to your loved one than their addiction. Being a loving person means taking a three dimensional view of those in our families who are addicted and enjoying the positive aspects they bring into our lives. They are still the same people we once loved. By letting go of any bad memories or future worries that have been clouding our glasses, we can enjoy, appreciate, and love them for who they are in the moment today.
If you have any questions or comments, or would like to schedule a complimentary family recovery coachg session, go to the link Contact Us and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
All the best!
Coach Bev
Beverly Buncher, MA, CEC
Family Recovery Coach