recovery matters

Detachment & Other Coping Strategies

LEARN ABOUT THE ILLNESS
You need to gain as much knowledge about the illness as you can. You need to know what you are up against. A lot of people delay in this process because they don’t want to accept that their family member has the problem. Delay causes the illness to progress and can be very costly. Once you are informed, you will:

Be able to clearly recognize whether your family member has a problem or not

Be able to recognize certain behaviour patterns as symptoms of the illness and not take them so personally
Be in a much stronger position to help your loved one and offer strength and support to other family members

In order to learn about addiction/alcoholism you can:

Read books from the library
Speak to an informed professional, i.e. someone who knows and understands addiction, preferably who has experience of counseling addicts
Contact someone from AA, Alanon, NA, Tough love or GA
Search the internet on reputable sites such as www.alcoholics-anonymous.org , www.hazelden.org ; or www.drphil.com ; www.christians-in-recovery.com; www.ncadd.org ; www.recoverynetwork.com

A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE
Once you have learned as much as you can about addiction, try and develop a new attitude towards the illness and towards those who suffer from it.

Try to see them as people who are ill and who need help rather than people who are weak and bad.
Don’t blame yourself for the illness. Anyone who uses an addictive substance, including alcohol, runs the risk of becoming addicted. It could happen to anyone. (Whenever I had to deal with an inebriated person, I would imagine that I was talking to a whisky bottle! I soon gave it up. I understood that I would get no sense and backed off. I would return and discuss things when they were sober.)

THE RESPONSIBILTY QUESTION

You are not responsible for:

causing the problem
the addict’s continued use
the addict’s choosing not to accept help
Protecting the addict from alcohol or drugs, or from friends who use.

You are responsible for:

Looking after yourself and your children
Setting appropriate boundaries which protect the family from the addict’s behaviour
Creating an environment where you detach and let the addict experience the natural consequence of their actions
Confronting the addict in a caring but firm way about the reality of their behaviour
Showing a willingness and readiness to be involved in a treatment programme
Offering support and caring in the addict’s recovery

DETACHMENT
This is most probably the most important life-skill that you can learn when you live with an addict. It will literally save your life.

What is detachment?
“Detachment is not detaching from the person we care about, but from the agony of involvement” Al-anon member

Detachment is releasing or detaching yourself from a person or problem - in a spirit of love. Detaching means to emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically disengage ourselves from unhealthy and painful engagements.

In other words, you give yourself a choice in a time of chaos.
“I don’t have to engage. I can choose how I react. I can choose to stay or go. I can choose my words. I can choose to be silent.”

Detachment is based on the premise that each person is responsible for herself or himself. We can’t solve problems that aren’t ours to solve. “Present moment living” has been a popular concept, famously written about by Eckhart Tolle. It has resonated with modern society because we are so easily overwhelmed and over-loaded by modern living. Living in the here and now…..allowing life to happen, taking one day at a time, instead of forcing life and trying to control it. As people living with addiction, we spend a lot of time trying to keep everything under control. Sometimes we have to simply ‘let go’.

Here are some suggestions follow to help you detach from people and to moderate your destructive reactions to them. These are only suggestions. There is no exact formula. You can start with this process and then change it to what works for you.

Recognize when you are reacting. For me, this is when I start to feel anxious, afraid, tense, uncomfortable, indignant or just plain angry. I first feel this in my gut. It tells me that someone has pushed my buttons. I have lost my peace and serenity. I have been ‘caught up’ in something. It’s important to know that its not wrong to feel those feelings. I feel them and then name them and then choose how I want to respond.
Time-out. Say and do nothing until you have restored your calm. Take a few deep breaths. Breathe from your stomach. Slowly say “In-two-three and out-two three” Repeat this until you are calm. Do whatever you need to do to help you relax (as long as it’s not self-destructive.) Go for a walk. Clean the kitchen. Go to a friend’s house. Go to a movie. Find a way to separate yourself from whatever you are reacting to.
Then - and only then - try and work out what happened. If it is a minor thing, journal it down and work it out for yourself. If it’s more serious, talk it over with a trusted friend. Examine what has happened. Be very truthful. What really happened, how much is real and what is assumption. Were you trying to control someone? How serious is the problem or issue? On a scale of 1 to 10 with a tsunami being a 10, rate what happened. Are you taking responsibility for someone else?
What do you need to do to resolve this so that you are left feeling ‘clear’. Do you need to apologize? Do you need to get clarity, or just let it go. Whose business it is? Remember that your responsibility is to yourself and not for fixing others or changing the way they do business. Do you need to assert yourself? Do whatever it is you have to do to be able to sleep well that night.