How can I support my loved one’s recovery without enabling their addiction?

These are the types of questions I receive regularly and I wanted to share my responses in my Ask Candace Q&A Column. Watch for more Ask Candace coming soon!

J. asked: How can I support my loved one’s recovery without enabling their addiction? And how can I communicate effectively with my loved one about their addiction?

My response: Hi J,

Those are two great questions that overlap. Let me talk a bit about enabling and the difference between enabling and helping, because they’re so important. When we enable someone, especially an addict, we’re doing things for them that they need to do for themselves, things that they should be doing for themselves. When we do that with an addict, they lack the incentive to start recovering—and they stay stuck in the addiction. We know that enabled addicts don’t recover because really, why should they if everything is being done for them? If life is too cushy for an addict in active addiction, they will stay in active addiction.

Helping behaviours are the ones that challenge them. An example of this is when you might say to somebody, Yes, you can live in our home, but you’re not to use any drugs here, and you’re not to punch holes in any walls when you get angry, and you’re to be up and out every day at nine o’clock, and you’re not back until 4:00, and your job is to find a job or be in a program of some sort or be in school. These behaviours are boundaries that come from a place of the love you have for the addict you care so much about.

We need to come from a place of love and compassion, because sometimes when we switch out of enabling into helping, we feel like we’re not being loving. Mom, I want 20 bucks. Give me 20 bucks. If you used to say yes every time, and now you’re saying no because you know where that money is probably going to go, that might not be easy for you. To a loved one, that can feel like, Oh, my God, I’m not doing the right thing. I should be giving them the $20.

The most loving thing that we can do for the addicts we love is to not enable them, to not contribute to them staying stuck in their addiction. The same is true of recovery. The question “How do I support an addict who’s in recovery?” has the same answer. You don’t enable. We’ve heard stories about addicts who have gone to rehab—their families have paid thousands and thousands of dollars for them to go to a treatment centre, hoping that that will “fix” the addiction. But because families haven’t been worked with in the same way that we work with them at Love with Boundaries, the addicts—despite having learned a lot and perhaps are wanting to stay sober—are enabled at home again and often relapse. The family often wonders how this could have happened, and enabling the addicts is one of the reasons.

Please understand it’s not your fault when an addict relapses. The addict is making his or her own choices about whether to stay in recovery or go back into addiction. But if you’re contributing to any enabling behaviour, you need to stop doing that and understand that the most loving thing you can do for your addict is to start helping them instead, by creating boundaries that have consequences that mean something to the addict.

It’s important for loved ones to do what’s right for the addicts they love, whether they’re in active addiction or they’re in recovery. Do what’s right for them, even when it’s difficult for you. That’s the key. We want to stop loving an addict to death – instead, start loving them to life.

It may not be easy for the family members, because in essence, they’re going into recovery at the same time that they’re hoping the addict will go into recovery. Loved ones are recovering from their own addictive behaviours with the addict, but they need to make their own changes first. This is because an addict, especially one in active addiction, isn’t going to come to them and say, “Please set some healthy boundaries for me, Mom and Dad.”

If you love an addict, it’s going to be your job to set your boundaries first.

All my best,

Candace

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About Candace & Love with Boundaries

Candace Plattor, M.A., R.C.C. is a professional speaker, TEDx speaker, Addictions Therapist in private practice, and a sought-after leader in the field of addiction. Candace is also the author of the award-winning book Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: The Top 10 Survival Tips for Loving Someone with an Addiction. In her unique and signature Family Addictions Therapy Program, she specializes in working with families and other loved ones of people who are struggling with addiction. The results Candace achieves have been astounding: addicts stop using and families regain their lives from the ravages of addiction.

About Love With Boundaries

Love With Boundaries offers counselling to help families and the addicts they love come out of the pain and devastation of addiction—forever. Our therapists counsel families about how to love with clear and respectful boundaries, and they provide insights and techniques to help families stop enabling the addicts they love so that they can all make the choice to recover from addiction.