Boundaries

Another Perspective

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

“A Open Letter to My Family (from the drug addict)

I am a drug user. I need help.

Don’t solve my problems for me. This only makes me lose respect for you.

Don’t lecture, moralize, scold, blame, or argue, whether I’m loaded or sober. It may make you feel better, but it will make the situation worse.

Don’t accept my promises. The nature of my illness prevents my keeping them, even though I mean them at the time. Promising is only my way of postponing pain. Don’t keep switching agreements; if an agreement is made, stick to it.

Don’t lose your temper with me. It will destroy you and any possibility of helping me.

Don’t allow your anxiety for me to make you do what I should do for myself.

Don’t cover up or spare me the consequences of my using. It may reduce the crisis, but it will make my illness worse.

Above all, don’t run away from reality as I do.Drug dependence, my illness, gets worse as my using continues. Start now to learn, to understand, to plan for recovery. Find NAR-ANON, whose groups exist to help the families of drug abusers.

I need help: from a doctor, a psychologist, a counselor, from an addict who found recovery in NA, and from God.

Your User”

 

Enmeshment can be crippling: we don’t have enough emotional distance, often, to deal intelligently and effectively with the addict. Stepping back, detaching, takes discipline and restraint. Such a hard thing to do when we’re in this emotional minefield. It has taken me years in my recovery program to act more and react less. As I said in my last post, I need to deal from strength to be any help to my daughter. The oxygen mask goes on me first.

“Deal From Strength”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

 

“Nar-Anon Do’s and Don’ts:

Do note the effect the user has on each member of the family…

Do always encourage attempts to seek help.

Do remember to see the good in others and yourself.

Don’t accept guilt for another person’s acts.

Don’t nag, argue, lecture or recall past mistakes.

Don’t overprotect, cover up or rescue from the consequences.

Don’t neglect yourself or be a doormat.

Don’t forget that addiction is a disease, not a moral issue..

Do allow other people to accept their own responsibilities.

Don’t manipulate or make idle threats.

Do involve yourself with the activities of Nar-Anon.

Do learn to be open and honest.

Don’t yearn for perfection in yourself or others.

Do grow day by day, by reading Nar-Anon literature.

Do remember to focus on your OWN reactions and attitudes.

Don’t overlook the growth opportunities of a crisis.

Don’t underestimate the importance of release with love (commonly called detachment with love).

Do please try to manage your anxieties with love.

Don’t start the recovery program with the user. Start with the family at Nar-Anon, meeting and learning the difference between destructive and constructive help.”

Boundaries

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Self-care is all about healthy choices: choosing how we live and how we are treated by others.

Living with addiction puts us at risk in ways we hadn’t imagined. I often moved boundaries around to accommodate others. But when I saw how that was hurting me, I was able to step back and enforce my boundaries.

We are not responsible for the chaos. It’s not our fault. I won’t allow it in my house.

I’ve often seen this attitude help addicts make different choices for themselves.

Boundaries benefit everyone.

“Let Go And Let God”

Marilea C. Rabasa3 Comments

“In Al-Anon, letting go and letting God means exchanging the finite, narrow limitations of our own self-will for the infinite wisdom of our Higher Power. We turn our lives over to the Higher Power’s care, confident that in God’s time, solutions to our problems and relief from our pain will come to us.

The lily symbolized this slogan and was inspired by the biblical passage that tells us:

‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’

By making the Twelve Steps a part of our lives, learning to trust God’s will, and practicing program principles in all our affairs, we continually renew our faith and achieve our own special beauty as our serenity grows.”

My life is so much simpler when I let go of things and people I can’t control and turn the struggle over. What had been weighing me down is lifted from my shoulders and I feel lighter, more at peace. This frees me to live my life better, unencumbered by negative thoughts for which I have no solutions.

Life can still be good for us; it’s all a matter of perspective.

Serenity Every Day

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Hope for Today, November 12:

“Serenity? What is that? For years I was like a weather vane that spun around according to the air currents that other people generated… I attributed these mood swings to nervousness, lack of assurance, and whoever else occupied the room at the time. Serenity always seemed beyond my control… Where does this serenity come from? It comes from trusting that everything in my life is exactly as it should be… It comes when I choose to care for myself rather than to fix someone else…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: I am powerless over many things, but my serenity is not one of them.”

Trust. That’s a hard one for many of us. I am an adult child, and being able to trust anyone has been difficult. So I became very controlling, trying to manipulate events to suit me. I had no faith that things were happening as they were meant to. I was always forcing outcomes.

But eventually that behavior took a terrible toll on me and my most important relationships. I was far too dependent on others and what was going on in their lives. This weather vane was spinning out of control. I needed to find a way to center myself.

I’ve learned to recognize situations in my life that I have no control over. And I’ve learned to let go of them and the people attached to them. My life is much simpler when I “stay in my own hula hoop” and concentrate on making my own life better. It’s the only thing I have the power to control.

Joyfulness and serenity are the gifts of my recovery. We can all reach for them, and the rewards are amazing!

The Yellow Brick Road

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A Member Shares on Recovery: “The Yellow Brick Road”

“We are both on a path, the addict and I. When I think of this path, I often remember the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz. Has anyone ever noticed when Dorothy starts down the yellow brick road there is also a red brick road? As a child, I always wondered what would have happened to Dorothy if she had taken the red brick road instead of the yellow brick road.

Well, I look at our paths, the addict’s and mine, as being on those two roads—me on the yellow and her on the red. We are not supposed to cross over to each other’s paths. That would not help either of our programs…

Sometimes I catch up with others on my path, or they catch up with me: other parents, other spouses, other loved ones affected by the disease of addiction. I know I am never alone. The same thing happens on the addict’s path. She may meet other addicts, some in recovery, some not.

Sometimes addicts may stop and sit for awhile; they may ponder whether this is the right path for them. We can only hope they will move on, but we cannot pull them forward because we are not on the same path and it is not our job. That job belongs to their Higher Power and the timing of it is completely out of our control.

Sometimes both of our paths are fraught with obstacles the same as Dorothy’s with the Wicked Witch, the flying monkeys, and the poison poppies. How we deal with obstacles and how we manage to keep moving on is the learning part of this journey. Sometimes we get help from others on the same path such as the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion, in the form of experience, strength and hope. This helps us to stay focused and grounded.

If we keep going, the addict and I, we will one day get to Emerald City. But please keep in mind, even after Dorothy reaches Emerald City, she still had challenges to overcome, just as my addict and I will.

Keep coming back! Don’t leave before the miracle happens.

Love And Enabling

Marilea C. Rabasa4 Comments

A while back I read Libby Cataldi’s book, Stay Close. In my book, I say that I try to stay in communication with Angie, but reading Libby convinced me to “stay closer.”

Now, after years of recovery work, I feel strong enough to try to keep up communication without feeling drawn into the orbit of her manipulation and insanity. Whatever happens, I want her to know that I’ve always loved my daughter inside the addict—and I always will.


In the Afterword in Libby’s book, Dr. Patrick MacAfee has these words to say: “I believe that ‘stagli vicino’—staying close but out of the way of the insanity—is best. If you are dealing with addiction, offer the addict roads to recovery, not more money or bailouts. Excuses keep people sick…The fear of watching a loved one failing is frightening, but don’t let it cloud your realization that the natural extension of love and caring may only enable the addict’s condition.”

That’s a very fine line. We want to help our loved ones, of course. But often giving cash to an addict is like oxygen to a fire. It just feeds the addiction. There are so many other ways to offer help, and when they are ready hopefully we’ll be stronger to give it.

Split Down The Middle

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I remember so well my friend tearfully sharing at a meeting last year:

“My son is in two parts. I don’t see him anymore. He’s hidden deep inside.”

And I remember looking up at Heaven and thanking God for the education I’ve received in the rooms of recovery. My daughter abuses hard drugs, and she’s not the same person anymore. Before I learned that addiction was a brain disease, I didn’t understand the complete change in Angie’s personality. It bewildered and frightened me, if only because she became so abusive that I was afraid for my own safety.

So…boundaries…I needed to learn how to set and enforce boundaries, without which none of us can enjoy healthy relationships—with addicts or anyone else.

The education I’ve received through the years while living with the addiction of my daughter Angie has provided me with a healthy perspective that I needed to stay strong and persevere.

And I have. Maybe not perfectly, but I’m still here and I look forward to getting up every morning.

God didn’t create all the misery that we read about in the paper. He didn’t designate me to be the mother of an addict. I haven’t been singled out for this tragedy. His purpose in my life is to help me rise above it. And once my eyes were cleared of the tears blinding me, I was able to see that.

I’m very grateful for my ongoing recovery!

Loosen Your Grip!

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From From Survival To Recovery, page 268:

“Living fully requires enough trust to release our manipulative, tight-fisted control of life, for only then can we accept the guidance of a Power greater than ourselves. For adult children of alcoholics, our damaged, devastated trust has to be healed and nurtured bit by bit until we feel safe enough to truly let go and let God. Trust does not come from reading a book, however inspired, but from experiencing new relationships in which we are trusted and we can learn to trust those around us…If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of the Twelve Steps, our lives will be transformed…Though we may never be perfect, continued spiritual progress will reveal to us our enormous potential…We will laugh more. Fear will be replaced by faith, and gratitude will come naturally as we realize that our Higher Power is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves…”

“We will laugh more.”  How can I, beset by depression and instability for many of my early years, come to revisit my life now from another perspective? How have I learned how to laugh and see the comedy in things? What has enabled me at last to live well and be happy?

Being in the rooms.

But I hasten to add that we can learn the same tools elsewhere: the tools of letting go and accepting what we can’t change; the tool of gratitude (a big one—half the world is starving; I have enough food and a roof over my head); the tool of detachment and understanding our personal boundaries in relation to our addict.

I might have been luckier, like many of you out there, and learned these tools in a happy, functioning family when I was growing up. But I didn’t; I learned them later.

And it’s never too late to learn how to be happy.

The Boomerang Of Enabling

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

A few years ago in one of my support groups in New Mexico, a friend shared how she had to lock everything up in her house. She’d lock the jewelry here, the silver there. She had a different key for every place, and one time she was so flummoxed by her son that she lost all the keys! We laughed together at that one, grateful that we still could laugh.

This is what it comes to for many of us parents. We erect walls to protect ourselves, keeping the addicts out. And then, of course, we feel guilty about doing that.

My daughter Angie used to steal valuables from my home in order to sell them for drug money. It was safer, she thought, to steal from me than from a store. She already knew what an enabler I was; but she was still a thief. And even though her addiction pushed her onto the wrong path, she still should have paid the consequences if she was going to learn and mature. But I let her get away with it.  I deeply regret that.

They will work us, manipulate us, and use every tool in their arsenal to get what they want if they’re still using. Parents are so vulnerable, and they’re walking a fine line between helping their child recover, and enabling them to continue using. We learn eventually to sit frozen in inaction, to do nothing.  We learn to let our addicts be accountable for their own actions, and hopefully learn from the consequences: eviction, jail, or death.

But it’s that last consequence that holds us hostage, keeps us doing for our addict all that he should be doing for himself. We say to ourselves, ‘As long as he’s alive, he can recover.’  True, but when will we ever get rid of our God-like parental power, thinking that his recovery is all up to us?