Family Addiction Treatment Therapy: Why Family Healing Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00
Hello, everybody. We’re back. My name is Lainey. And this is Natasha. And we are here with Impact Wellness Network. So if you haven’t listened to our previous episodes, we’d highly encourage you to go and do that. But what we want to talk about in this episode actually literally just landed in our lap. We were just talking to the gentleman who is helping us to do this. And he was telling us a little bit about just kind of his journey and the stigma behind mental health, more specifically for men. But also this idea of, you know, in families, if you have one person who is going to go in and get help and, you know, change the way that they live to like, you know, make better for themselves, but other people in the family aren’t, it doesn’t work. Right. And it makes it really difficult. And so, you know, last episode, we talked a lot about, you know, what if what do families do to support their loved ones? Um, and I think, you know, I really want to hone in today on just family dynamics in general, right? So when you think about um, you know, your loved one who struggles with mental health or addiction, that affects you. Right? That affects you and like when you’re in the depths of it. Um, and then whenever they go to treatment, that also affects you.

SPEAKER_02 1:20
I mean, it affects you in mentally and emotionally. It drains you. Many of us develop depression um symptoms, um, anxiety. And as a result, we start to fall back on living life. So we’re not necessarily um being intentional. We’re not necessarily, maybe some of us, or if not a lot of us, um, we’re not going out anymore. We’re not um, you know, getting involved in social activities. We are not having maybe date night with our partners, we’re just not living life. Life all of a sudden gets put on hold because we are so consumed by what’s going on with our loved ones. So I think it’s really hard. I’ll speak from my own personal experien experience, that when you’re so consumed by your loved one getting better, I know for me that I didn’t even stop to think that I needed to do anything to be better. I didn’t I didn’t think that I needed therapy, I didn’t think that I needed to talk to anybody. Um, I was just so focused on what is it that needs to be done because I want my loved one to stop using, I want my loved one to be better, I want my loved one to get back to working and having a life. I wanted our marriage back. You know what I mean? Yeah. So those were the things that I focused on that in the in that process, I neglected myself. And the first time I learned through my sponsor and my women’s group that I was losing myself. I had lost myself in the process, and I didn’t even see that. Like if someone did not point that out to me, I didn’t know that I had lost myself and that I needed to do something different.

SPEAKER_01 2:57
Yeah. When you were talking, um, what came to mind was um, you know, the saying, you are who you hang out with. Um, and I want you to think, you know, if I had to make an assumption, um, which you know what they say about people who assume, um, but if I had to make an assumption, most of the people that are listening to this um are the people that are spending the most time with the loved ones who are struggling with substance use and mental health. Now, before anybody loses their panties in this, I’m not saying that because your loved one, you know, uses substances or whatever that you’re gonna use substances, but I want you to think about behavior. The way that we behave, the way that we react, the way we interact, the way we’re communicating, all of those things are things that we do adapt to, right? Um, you know, in family units, it’s common for people to adapt to keep, you know, everything calm, everything level, right? We want to keep everything balanced. And so, you know, if my loved one starts acting a fool, I’m gonna match that, right? And I’m gonna start having some of those same unhealthy behaviors. And I think that that’s important for us to recognize here as we talk about this, right? You know, your loved one goes off to treatment. Um, well, really, whether they go to treatment or not, you’re wanting something to be different. And so if you’re wanting something to be different, you have to be willing to be that difference.

SPEAKER_02 4:21
But what if you don’t know that is true, but what if I don’t know what different should look like? What if I don’t know how to be different? Because I’ve been doing this for so long. I’ve gotten so used to worrying about them, you know, dropping work and leaving my responsibilities to go tend to their crisis. How do I know to do something different?

SPEAKER_01 4:47
I think that’s a good question. And I think, you know, there’s a few different answers that come to mind. I think one of the biggest answers is um you have to be willing to do something different, right? So you have to have a willingness of, you know, what is it? Well, I guess you need to start first of what needs to be different, right? And then you need to have a willingness of what needs to be different. So what I will say to that is you’re currently surrounding yourself with the same people doing the same things and expecting something different. We just talked about this in a recent episode, you know, episode. Insanity. Right. It’s insanity, okay? Um, and so what I would encourage you to do is seek out new, seek out different. You may seek out different and it may not work. And that’s okay. At least you’re trying to find something different, right? Maybe it’s seeking out um a podcast to listen to, maybe it’s seeking out a different friend to talk to. Um, not saying that the people that you’re with, you know, can’t be supportive, but if you’re wanting to change things, right, we have to be willing to seek out what that difference is. And, you know, in my own healing journey, I remember um, you know, I was told to, you know, just kind of reflect, take a week of your life and kind of take some time to reflect. And everything that you wanted to be different, write it down. And it doesn’t have to be all these big serious things, right? But you can say, you know, I want my morning routine to look different. Um, I want the way that I interact with my husband to look different. I want the way that I interact with my children to look different, right? You just, you just write down what are all the things you want to look different, and then you start seeking out advice, support, help, people, right? Whatever education.

SPEAKER_02 6:23
So now you’re talking about asking for help. And how that looks different from maybe a female versus a male, right? Um, I’ve observed in my years of doing this, women tend to ask for more help. Now, not saying that, you know, I’m gonna be fair, so I want everyone to hear me well. In our experience, I so I’m gonna look at our retreat. The majority of our attendees are women, right? Um, you know, many have partners involved, and a lot of times the the the males don’t show up to the retreats, or even if they’re in family therapy, you’ll see the wife speaking up more than the men do. Um can we maybe talk a little bit more about where we need we need to see men maybe stepping up more or speaking up more within these family systems, or maybe being a little bit more involved and not just the women? Can we talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 7:21
Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely brings up a good point. You know, I think um, you know, when we’re talking about change, emotions come with that. Um, there’s a lot of discomfort, there’s a lot of emotions that come with that. And I think that oftentimes it’s hard for us to recognize that we have to be willing to feel those emotions. Um, and I’ll tell you right now, and this is something that I have found in our own work that we do with Impact Wellness Network in our retreats. When men just speak up, you don’t have to be willing to do anything else. You don’t have to, I mean, literally just speaking up and saying, I’m uncomfortable, I want something different. And that can start the conversation and help heal all the things that need to be healed. With that also being said, and this is for men, women, you know, whatever, right? Like you, this is what you need to hear. Nothing can change unless you’re willing to speak up. Use your voice, right? This is Natasha’s saying, so I don’t know if we need a trademark it, but say what you mean, mean what you say. Don’t say it mean. Don’t say it mean, right? That’s for everybody. So everybody listening to this podcast, right? You have to ask yourself, am I on the path that I want to be on? As an individual. As an individual, right? It doesn’t matter about what everyone else is doing, right? Because you have to first look at yourself, right? So we started this off by saying, you know, your loved ones, whether they go to treatment or they don’t go to treatment, you want something to be changed, right? If you, if your loved one goes to treatment and you don’t change anything and you and in you, and they leave treatment and come back to you, what is different? And the way that we can start identifying the things that need to be different is just by learning to speak up.

SPEAKER_02 9:22
And when we speak up, we were talking earlier about changing the narrative, right? If we keep thinking, well, that’s my loved one’s problem, and I don’t need to do anything or I don’t need to do anything different, then nothing changes. Right. Right. And I always say if nothing changes, nothing changes. So when we talk about doing something different and we needed to use our voice, we need to speak differently. And I’m very big on speaking hope.

SPEAKER_01 9:46
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:47
I have a lot of families that will speak on, well, I’m always fearful that they’re going to relapse. Well, if you keep believing that they’re always going to relapse, then there’s no hope that they can do better than that or move beyond that and actually be successful in their sobriety. Right. Right. Or if you believe that it’s just their problem and they’re the only ones that need to change. To me, that is that is a struggle for me and that’s a concern for me because this is a family disease. And while you may not be the drug addict and the alcoholic, their addiction has impacted you. Right? Coming back to whether that has caused you to isolate, whether that has caused you to withdraw, whether that has caused you to be an enabler, or you are up late at night worrying and consumed and can’t sleep. It has had an effect. So if your loved one is needing to do something different, why would you not try to do something different? And so that’s just something that I want our, you know, our listeners and our viewers to know and understand is like we all have to do something different. So within that family system, it’s not just the ladies, it’s not just the women that need to be doing something different. I want to see the men, I want to see the brothers, I want to see the uncles, I want to see the grandfathers, I want to see the dads, I want to see them also having a voice and speaking up and doing something different as well because they deserve happiness. And I think we we were talking earlier that most oftentimes men carry the responsibility of just kind of holding everything inside and you know, not talking about anything. But when we were talking about emotional support earlier, your loved one in sobriety needs you to open up to them. They need you to come communicate with them, they need you to be vulnerable and truthful and honest. So if you’re a person that is not used to speaking up, we encourage we encourage you to speak up to your with your loved ones because that’s where you’re gonna build connection with your loved ones. You can’t expect to do more of the same that you were doing before they went to treatment and expect that things are gonna change when they come out of treatment.

SPEAKER_01 11:52
Well, and I think just you know, beyond the speaking up, you know, in our last episode, we talked about what support looks like. Um you speaking up is giving them an opportunity to learn how to face difficult things. Right?

SPEAKER_02 12:06
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:06
Whereas if we don’t speak up, they’re not given the opportunity to learn how to face those things. Um, one of the things that, you know, and and anybody who knows me knows that I I’m very transparent. I will share whatever about my life, um, which might be a fault. Um but one of the things that, you know, when my mom was going through her recovery, you know, there was a there was a period of time um where she she didn’t speak to me in her recovery. And and you know, I need everyone to listen up to this, right? Um, you know, my mom was doing her recovery and she was trying to better herself and she was, you know, doing her therapy and learning all the things, and and I didn’t change. I was angry, I was resentful, um, and boy did she get it, right? And for her to stick to her recovery, she had to put space between us. And a lot of people out there listening are thinking, how in the world could she do that? And I’m gonna tell you right now, as a child of someone who struggles with addiction, I thank God that she did that. Had she not done that, right? My poor behaviors, my unhealthy behaviors, my unwillingness to change could have been the contributing factor to her never getting sober.

SPEAKER_02 13:26
Okay, you got to break that down. You gotta tell us a little bit more about that because I know that there you struggled a lot with just being angry and resentful. So, but Lenny, she’s getting better. She’s sober. So why are you still angry?

SPEAKER_01 13:40
Well, a lot of the anger came from um because I was waiting for an I’m sorry. Um, so I wanted to hear I’m sorry. And then, you know, as I’ve learned and over the years, I’ve I’ve I’d heard I’m sorry plenty of times, but there was no change in behavior. Um, I also remained resentful for all the time that was missed, right? Um, I was angry because she was happy and I wasn’t. That was a hard pill to swallow. Um, so there was a lot of things out there that, you know, I thought, I truthfully thought, you know, my mom gets sober, my life will be great. Um surprise. Say that again.

SPEAKER_02 14:15
And I want you to say that a little bit louder. When mom gets sober, my life will be great. And did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 14:22
It did not because I was still very angry. And when, you know, one of the biggest things that I was angry about was, you know, a lot of our time, or I felt as though a lot of our time was taken from her addiction. And then as she got sober, a lot of our time was taken by her recovery.

SPEAKER_02 14:38
Now you now you’re getting into another sensitive subject because we hear so many times my loved one came home, they’re going to their meetings, but now they don’t have time to be with the family. They don’t even have time to take care of household responsibilities because they’re always at a meeting. And I hear some resentments, I hear some frustrations in that. Did you experience that with your mom? 100%.

SPEAKER_01 14:58
Yeah. I mean, I I even told her that a few times. Um, you know, and and my mom, you know, went to treatment a f a few times, and every time she came home because she needed to come home to be a mom, right? Um, she had me and my brother, and you know, every time she left treatment, she left treatment because she had to come home and be a mom. Every time she came home to be a mom, I was angry, I was resentful, um, all the things, right? And so, of course, my responses to her came from that. Um, so poor communication, poor boundaries, all the things. Um, and every time she would relapse. Um, and and let me say this clearly. I know that it’s not my fault that she relapsed. It is not my fault that she relapsed. That is on her, that is her responsibility. But what I didn’t understand at the time is that I was a contributing factor to that. And the way that I was contributing to that is because our family system was built on this, I guess, idea that she was the addict, right? She was the one who struggled with addiction, and so all our behaviors adapted to her being an addiction. So when she came home and she wasn’t an addiction, our behaviors didn’t align with her recovery.

SPEAKER_02 16:13
And you’d been so conditioned in in those behaviors that those behaviors just doesn’t magically go away. Correct. You don’t wave a magic wand, your loved one doesn’t just get sober and those behaviors just disappear. Right. And so some of those behaviors is, you know, being stubborn or being self-centered or pride, not asking for help. Um, can you maybe give me some of the behaviors you might have continued to uh display or demonstrate when she got sober?

SPEAKER_01 16:42
So a lot of my behaviors, um, it was a lot of it was a lot of anger. Um, it was a lot of um, I don’t really want to say name-calling, but I guess a lot of like kind of degrading, a lot of guilt tripping, a lot of controlling, controlling, manipulation. And and let me also make it clear to you all too, um, at this time, um, I was still under the age of 18, right? So anybody out there who’s thinking, like, oh yeah, she might have been a kid, but she wasn’t like a kid, kid. No, I was. Um, this was, you know, I I would say, if I had to guess, probably between the ages of like 15 to 24, that I was, you know, unwilling to change my behaviors and had some pretty poor behaviors that followed it. Um, but it was a lot of, you know, that manipulating, that controlling, that anger. Um, and ultimately, what I’ve learned in my healing journey, what it boiled down to was my inability to speak up. So instead of saying, Mom, I miss you and I want to spend time with you, I would lash out and say, You really have to go to another meeting? Don’t you care about me? Don’t you love me? Why wouldn’t you spend time with me?

SPEAKER_02 17:48
And is it fair to say that you had a really difficult time being vulnerable and honest?

SPEAKER_01 17:53
Correct.

SPEAKER_02 17:54
Because maybe you somewhere in your past being vulnerable and honest didn’t reap pot, didn’t reap positive benefits. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 18:03
Absolutely. Yeah. And it was, you know, that idea of being vulnerable and sharing was difficult for me because, you know, it’s one of those things that you go twofold here, right? And so I was I was extreme anger, and I’m gonna speak up and say everything, but I didn’t say it honestly. Um, so I didn’t say what I meant. Um, and I definitely said it mean, right? Um, or you go the complete opposite way, which I’ve done this too, which is where you just don’t say anything at all.

SPEAKER_02 18:25
I I just I withdrew, I just kept my mouth shut, and that came back from you just you don’t say anything because you don’t want to, you don’t want to start an argument. I don’t want you to be mad at me. Now you’re sober, you’re finally not using, I don’t want the conflict, so I just don’t say anything. I just bite my tongue.

SPEAKER_01 18:41
And both of those aren’t effective, right? Both of those are the environments remaining the same. And both of those aren’t giving you a voice to speak up for the things that you need, and it’s not giving the other person an opportunity to respond.

SPEAKER_02 18:55
True.

SPEAKER_01 18:56
And I think that, you know, one of the biggest things that I want to hone in on, right, going back to that question of, you know, what does support look like and really talking about this environment, right? Is understanding that we have a part to play. We have a role to play. Everybody listening to this podcast, whatever, whatever role you have placed yourself into, right, there is a part that you are playing in this relationship. And when we learn to speak up, when we learn to say what we mean, mean what we say, and don’t say it mean, right? When we learn those things, we can be a part of the change in the environment that can produce recovery, not only for our loved ones, but for ourselves, right? Um, and I think that’s just something that to be mindful of when we talk about, you know, what does support look like? What does this mean? Um, it’s just learning that you can speak up, that you can be a part of that change. Um, you know, I guess, and if you want to take like one simple thing from all of this, right, it’s it’s learning that you have a part to play and you get to you get to decide what part that’s gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 20:04
Yeah, and come just to kind of wrap this up and also go back to the beginning and when you said about um we putting things ahead of our recovery. So one of the things I learned in my program is that anything, whether that be a relationship, whether that be a job, whether that be going back to school, anything that I put in front of my recovery, I’m going to lose. Right. Because what ends up happening is life gets in the way. I get so hyper-focused on all the other things that what I need to do for my recovery, what I need to do to maintain my sobriety, ends up on the back burner. Right. So I think it’s really important for us to remember that it’s not when we come into sobriety and we’re busy and we’re on fire for recovery, we want to stay on fire. And that does not equate to, I want my the audience to hear this, this is not equate to that we don’t love you, you know, or that we’re we don’t want to spend time with you or we don’t care. It’s we’re learning that our recovery has to be number one. Because when I can be grounded and centered in my recovery, then my relationships in life and everything else in my life is easier to manage rather than me trying to manage everything else and leaving the recovery um for last.

SPEAKER_01 21:19
Right. Absolutely. No, I love that. I love that. And I think, you know, one of the things that I’m gonna leave you all with this. I want you all to get comfortable with saying what it is that you need to say, regardless of where your loved one is at today. So I want you all, homework, here it comes, in a podcast, you get it too. I want you to think of something to say to your loved one that you haven’t said out of fear of being vulnerable. And it can be something as simple as I miss you, right? You have a loved one out there in active addiction. I want you to pick up that phone right now, send them a text message, and just say, I miss you. You don’t have to give anything else. You don’t have to send them money, you don’t have to tell them to come home, but just say I miss you. Or how about I love you? Right. You can say I love you. That’s all you have to say. But I want you to just take a moment to get vulnerable. Get vulnerable with yourself, get vulnerable with someone else. Vulnerability does not mean action. You do not have to act in this vulnerability, but you can say something. So I’m gonna end this podcast by being vulnerable. Here we go. Impact Wellness Network is gonna be like, Laney, what are you doing? Uh so I’ll end this podcast by saying, Mom, if you’re listening, I’m proud of you and I love you. And we’ll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_02 22:31
You want to be vulnerable with anybody before we Yeah, I mean, to my parents and to my children, you know, I love you. I love you with all my heart. And I I’m just thankful for this opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 22:42
Awesome. Well, we will see you all next time. Thanks for getting vulnerable with us. Till next time.