How To Deal With An Addict Spouse?
Contents
What happens after a year of sobriety?
Your Mental Health is Much Improved Too! – There’s a lot of damage to your mental health and cognitive functioning that addiction to drugs or alcohol causes. After a year of sobriety, you’ll find you’re thinking more clearly, you can remember things better, and you can focus and make decisions better.
What is stonewalling in a relationship?
What does it mean to stonewall someone? In simple terms, stonewalling is when someone completely shuts down in a conversation or is refusing to communicate with another person.
Is it unhealthy to be addicted to your partner?
Can You Become Addicted to a Partner?
Falling in love can be a naturally addictive process. Feeling addicted to a partner who isn’t healthy for you or doesn’t want to be with you can seriously harm your wellbeing. Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques can help you let go of your ex and create the next phase of your life.
Source: Milkos from Getty Images Have you ever been madly in love? Felt completely and utterly enamored with another person? Been so enchanted by your lover that you felt almost obsessed with them? If you have, you know the experience I’m talking about.
A special someone enters your life and you feel a tidal wave of when they’re near. Just the sound of their name brings an instant smile to your face. You find yourself yearning to talk to them, touch them, and be close them because you feel incredible when you’re together. You think about them constantly.
Even when you’re not together, you find yourself fantasizing about them and giddily gushing about them to your closest friends. Over time, this love interest quickly becomes the focal point of your mind, dominating your thoughts, emotions, and actions over everything else.
How do you detach from someone you’re addicted to?
How to Support Without Enabling – You can always let the addict know that what you have been doing is not working for them and yourself. You can concede to your mistakes and offer them professional help in exchange for your ineffective help. The addict has a right to use substances, and you have the right to detach and stop enabling the behaviors and addiction,
- Learn About Addiction: Understanding what your loved one is up against in their addiction and their recovery can help families better understand what they can do differently. Al-Anon groups for yourself and attending Open Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings can be very helpful too. Open AA and NA meetings are available to anyone, and all are welcome. One does not need to be an alcoholic or addict to attend. Closed meetings are reserved exclusively for addicts and alcoholics. Professional interventionists do a great job of bridging the gap between family and addiction too.
- Attend and Participate in Family Therapy: It is without question that a healthy family increases the chances an addict can get better. Even if they do not get better right away, the family can still change and improve their quality of life. Individual therapy, self-help groups, workshops, and Family Recovery Programs are all helpful for families to learn the benefits of detachment and the destruction of enabling.
- Set Boundaries and Learn Effective Communication Skills: Boundaries are your way of saying I love you and I don’t love your addiction or your current behaviors. Boundaries are another way of saying that you love yourself and other family members who are affected by your enabling and unhealthy behaviors. Learning how to effectively communicate with an addict still using substances or in early recovery helps both you and them. If what you were doing wasn’t working, it is time to try something different.
- Engage in Self-Care for Yourself: Many family members of addicts and alcoholics have forgotten who they are or what they want for themselves. Taking time for yourself and engaging in activities that you enjoy or trying new ones is a helpful way to take care of yourself and detach from them. You can’t fix them, and you can’t control them. Setting boundaries and following the suggestions above while engaging in healthy activities can be very helpful for both you and the addict.
Enabling provided by the family that has produced entitlement for the addict does not disappear overnight. It takes work to undo years of unhealthy strategies that have compromised the family’s sanity and the addicts’ recovery. The addict will not become well in one day, and neither will the family.
