Coming Up for Air — A Toolkit to Help with Your Loved One's Recovery from Addiction & Mental Illness

Sometimes, people say the person with substance use disorder "has to want" recovery before it will happen. Others even say they must want it more than their family members or allies. In truth, people are often ambivalent; the process is often subtle. It's up to us to provide options, be open to their process, and discover our part, changing our own behavior rather than trying to change theirs.

Being an ally for a person with substance use disorder means stepping up beside them. Work with yourself so you can better see the opportunities to be a change agent -- for slow, methodical change. If your role is too large, you need to be just another player, waiting for your chance. Be a good "dance partner."

How do we move away from expecting perfection from ourselves? Through patience, compassion, and practice. Change is an incremental process. Embrace "beginner's mind," and don't be afraid to fail. Allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them; practice until the tools become automatic.

To build new muscle, identify what you need to change. Begin with self-awareness, gained through pausing to consider what you want to do differently. Practice in small ways frequently, until it becomes habit. This self-awareness leads to self-care – accidentally/on purpose. Taking care of yourself changes who and how you are, but also changes your relationship with your loved one. In true CRAFT style, the hope is that by changing yourself, you positively change the relationship, allowing your loved one new possibilities to change their own habits. They have to change if you’re doing something differently, if you’re not going to be a receptor site for the old way of doing things.

When you're beyond the fatigue of burnout, you're hitting the wall. Stressors have accumulated, and your emotions feel unmanageable. Step back. Claim your emotions, but state them briefly, making it clear you're going to go take care of yourself. Ask yourself how bad things are, and how much help you need. Allow yourself the compassion and patience to take a break.

Do things feel one-way in your relationship to your loved one? Reframe it. You're taking your power back -- not to change them, but to change yourself, to grow and learn. If you're bringing your best self to the relationship, you'll inevitably change the dynamic, helping the other person heal.

Your loved one goes to treatment, and often a call follows -- a call saying the place is terrible, or the people aren't good, or for some other reason they want to come home. Your job? Hold the line. Don't be part of that conversation; don't be part of an exit plan, even if they can leave on their own. Let them be uncomfortable. Give them the message that they can handle it, and can get something good from the situation if they stick with it.

When you're dealing with difficult circumstances and the actions of others, it's important to shift focus from external to internal, to pause and check in with yourself and ask yourself what you need and want. Take your power back. We believe that taking care of yourself in this way has a positive impact on the other person. It's a demonstration of boundaries and self-care.

When it comes to hope, trust, and expectation, what's our part, and what's the part of others? Hope is ours. It's internal, doesn't damage anyone, and is loose, open, and a way to stay positive. It's also ours to accept -- to say this is how things are and soothe ourselves. What not ours? Trust. It's the other person's job to become trustworthy for themselves. Expectations, too, are theirs -- if we impose expectations on others, we set up failure.

Having expectations for others can be a difficult trap. When we have ideas about how things should go, we often try to manifest those expectations and have other people do what we want them to do. Instead, learn to manage your nervous system, to calm yourself and have tools to make requests of others. Be careful not to superimpose your expectations on others -- it might not be what they want, need, or are able to do. That needs to be okay. Learn to give people room to create their own expectations for themselves.