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Boundaries to Set For Those Struggling with Addiction

Written by Enlightened Recovery on . Posted in 12 Step Program, Addiction. No Comments on Boundaries to Set For Those Struggling with Addiction

Boundaries are important for any kind of relationship you have whether it is between you and a friend, spouse, who you are dating, a professional, or someone with an addiction. These boundaries lay down the ground rules of what is considered to be appropriate behavior and actions. By establishing boundaries between yourself and your loved one facing addiction, you will be able to take care of yourself and establish a clear understanding of your wants and needs and clear communication of your thoughts and feelings.

When It’s Important to Establish Boundaries

The time to establish boundaries with your loved one with addiction is when you are constantly criticizing that person. You keep criticizing them for their bad behavior, but they are still ignoring what you are saying and causing more trouble. It can also be when you keep covering for this person liking lying for them when others ask about their behavior, covering for them at work by calling in sick for them, picking up that person from the bar, or bailing them out of jail.

It can also be when you are taken advantage of or if that person is stealing your money. You have felt like letting it pass because you know that their addiction is not their fault. At the same time, it is your bank account that is being wiped clean. You may also feel like you have to walk on eggshells around this person because they are quick to anger and depression if you say something to antagonize them. To avoid being afraid of your loved one, setting boundaries will show how you feel about their unhealthy behaviors and not letting them get away with it.

What is Allowed Near You and the House

Let your loved one know that if they plan on staying in your home, let them know what is and is not acceptable in your home. If you do not want illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine in your home, let your loved one know about it. If you do not want your loved one to drink in the presence of children, tell them that. You are being nice by letting your loved one stay in your home knowing that they have a problem with drugs. Let that person know that if they do not listen to you, they can find somewhere else to live or will notify the police. This is your home that you are kind enough to accept a guest in. Setting boundaries will give you control over where you live as well as the safety of your children.

Who is Allowed In Your Home

Your loved one may be in recovery but is still inviting their friends who still drink or do drugs. You should not have to put up with the wild parties of people in your house smelling like booze or people shooting up on drugs. You and your children should not have to be a witness to unhealthy behaviors and you should put a stop to it. Let them know that you may not be able to stop your loved one from keeping their friends but that they have no business appearing in your house and substance abusing in front of you and others.

Refusal to Rescue

Many people with addiction end up in jail for either possession of drugs or crimes involving in acquiring drugs like robbery or assault. If your loved one is not getting help, then that increases their chances of many jail visits. Maybe in the past, you have bailed your loved one out more than once and brought them back home. This time, you need to let your loved one know that you are not to bail them out again. That they need to take responsibility for their actions. Your loved one may not want to acknowledge their drug problem, but they should acknowledge the punishments that arise when the law takes notice of your criminal activities.

Refusal to Lend Money

Another way that you could enabling someone’s addiction is lending money whenever they ask such as telling you they are behind on rent, groceries, bills. If they have a drug problem, you know that they are using it to acquire more drugs. You are no longer a spouse, a friend, a sibling, a neighbor, etc. You are instead an enabler, caretaker, or a pleaser. Always giving money whenever your loved one asks is not taking care of them but ignoring their problem. A boundary you can set on them is that you refuse to give them any more money. That if they are in a financial bind, they can seek treatment to fix their thoughts about needing drugs or to get a job of their own to fund their drug habit instead of continuing to come to you. It may seem harsh to refuse when a loved one asks for money, but you are merely doing it to take care of yourself and your own financial assets.

Refusal to Lie or Cover Despite Circumstances

The most important thing you can tell your loved one who is struggling with drug addiction is that you will not lie or cover for them anymore. That your loved one needs to take responsibilities for their own actions. Setting these boundaries will show how much you take that person’s drug addiction seriously and to help them better be aware that they need treatment.

Located on the shore of Southern New Jersey, Enlightened Recovery is a recovery center that uses evidence-based therapies and holistic healing to treat addiction and mental illness. With the opportunity to learn about therapies that are keyed in to healing the human spirit and learning about new stress reducing techniques centered around a 12 step network, you will be ensure a lasting recovery. For more information, please call us at 833-801-LIVE as we are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

How to Feel Happy When You Feel You Do Not Deserve It

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When people have depression, they may feel that they do not deserve to be happy for a number of reasons. When they feel that way, it can mean that they will push away anything good from happening to them. It is important to understand your worth if you are expected to have a long and happy life.

One reason why someone may feel they do not deserve happiness is based on sins they have committed in the past. All that person can see are the hurt they have done to others or feeling they could have done more. It is like if you were a guard or a police officer that was on duty during a tragedy that took the lives of many and you wonder what you could have done differently. Because they know that they cannot turn back time, all they can think about is feeling guilty and regret. They feel that they need to punish themselves for the rest of their lives since there is no one else around to punish them like being sent to jail or a facility.

You also could be experiencing survivor’s guilt when you have survived something that others in your position have not. You could have been in a bus crash and been one of the few survivors and are constantly wondering why you lived and others died or have been in the military and watched your men died while you were able to go home to your family. This can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. This guilt of surviving a tragedy can haunt you going forward without getting professional help.

It is also possible that when someone is abused physically or emotionally, they feel they are not worthy of love from anyone. They may feel dirty and not care about any future abuse that they suffer at the hands of anyone since they feel they do not deserve to be treated well. This can lead to prostitution. It is also possible that this abuse stemmed from childhood and left a dark cloud on the child growing up feeling like they did something wrong. This is also what can prevent women from being married or having children feeling like the abuse they suffered could be passed onto their children.

If you struggle from body dysmorphia, it could be another reason why you feel you do not deserve to be happy. You probably look at yourself in the mirror and think you are unattractive and that nothing you do will change it. That only pretty people deserve to have everything because of the effort they put into their looks. You could have been bullied by your peers at school or your own family about the way you look and lack self-esteem. It can also be if you are not making enough money and feel you are not worth anyone being nice to you or going on a date with you. You could have come from a poor background and feel worthless because of your current state.

Do not feel like you are wrong if you experience brief moments of happiness such as smiling with friends or laughing at something funny. Everyone is entitled to be happy as it is a positive emotion that everyone should feel no matter what their current situation is. If you feel guilty about people you have wronged or hurt, you should write a letter to those people apologizing what you did and seek forgiveness. If that person is no longer alive, you can still write a letter to them of everything that you wish you could have told them when they were still alive. You could also speak to the families of the deceased persons to help bring closure to yourself. This will help you move on knowing that you did the right thing and that we have all done things that we wish we could have done differently.

You should also be telling yourself that you did the best that you could. Maybe you feel if you had a certain skill set that you have now or were a little older at the time of the incident, you would have done things differently. You need to tell yourself that we get scared and do not always know what to do in a given situation. We can only do the best we can with what we are given and hope that the next time we do things differently.

Try to figure out what is triggering your depression. Maybe you start hating yourself whenever you watch the news or when you see others being more successful than you. If you have trouble figuring out your trigger points, speak to a therapist. You could try things like cognitive behavioral therapy to change your negative thought patterns or exposure therapy to help you relive why it is you feel you do not deserve happiness. If you have done wrong in the past, the best way to move past it is by not making the same mistakes again or making better choices. This can mean volunteering to help victims of abuse or changing how you treat others. Or maybe you did nothing wrong and you still need to have someone tell you that. Do not be afraid to let others know you are hurting. Everyone deserves to be happy and should do whatever it takes to make sure we stay happy.

At Enlightened Recovery, we are here to help you remember that life can be full of happiness and enjoyable moments, once we learn how to manage our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

All or Nothing Anxiety

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Having all or nothing anxiety means that your thinking is very black and white. This can affect the choices that you make going forward which can hold you back. It is very important to overcome these negative distortions to avoid missing out on new experiences that you have the chance to enjoy.

Seeing everything in an all or nothing viewpoint makes you think that something either is or is not something. This can mean using absolute terms like “never” or “ever.” If you continue to think this way, this will not leave room for an alternative solutions. You may only see the downside of every situation which will make you not want to try things. You can only be one thing instead of two and can only do something one way instead of trying another. This kind of anxiety can leave you withdrawn from your friends if they feel you are too stubborn to every try things their way.

Having symptoms of anxiety like having a panic attack can make you think you are unworthy and nothing else. This type of thinking will stop you from noticing all of the positive qualities about yourself. Examples of all or nothing anxiety can mean that you gave your resume out to all of these companies that you could picture yourself working for only to never hear from them. Because of this bad experience, you tell yourself that you will never be hired anywhere. You do not mean that you will not be hired at that particular company but anywhere for as long as you live. If you kept up with this thinking, this could prevent you from ever getting a job if you do not put yourself out there.

Another example could be that you are afraid of riding roller coasters. In your mind, you tell yourself and your friends that you will never go on a roller coaster. You probably think about the freak accidents you hear on the news of roller coasters or you watch people go on them first and feel it will be the death of you. There is no changing your mind about giving it a try. While you should trust your instincts and not do anything out of pressure or what you are not comfortable with, you should not look at everything with a negative mindset and be open to stepping outside of your comfort zone.

The best way to overcome all or nothing anxiety is by changing your thought patterns. Since you are used to thinking in the extremes, find some middle ground. For example, if you have not heard back from that companies that you applied to, you can say to yourself that maybe they have not gotten to your application yet, you may get a phone call from them today, they could be reading your application right now, or there are other job opportunities out there waiting for you. The other example could apply as well in thinking that there may be a possibility that you will have fun on this roller coaster enough to go on again. You will not know if you do not give it a try.

Instead of using words like “never,” “ever”, and “or,” change your word choices. Do not use extreme or final word choices. Instead of thinking that I will never have my dreams come true, think of the possibility that you will. Instead of feeling like you are either a good or bad person, be honest with yourself about your positive qualities. Think that you can be both a good person and a bad person as we all have strengths and weaknesses. No one is all good or all bad. Instead of feeling like today was a good day or a bad day, just be honest and admit that while bad things happened today, good things happened too. By using the word “and,” it feels like there is room for more than one choice and more open to other options of your feelings.

You should also think about expanding your options. All or nothing thinking can make you feel like you have to choose one way or only stick with one option or your world will crumble if you had to settle on another choice. For example, you may belong to a Republican party but your friends are talking about liberal issues. You do not want to keep an open mind because you believe that you need to believe in anything your political party is for or against. Actually listen to what your friends are saying and see things from their viewpoint. You might change your mind after hearing them or your opinion will be the same. At least you were able to consider all of your options instead of having an automatic answer.

Most importantly, try to find the positivity in every situation. Do not believe that because things did not work out today that that is all the day brought you. Think of the moments when you smiled or laughed today. Use your friends and family as a support system when you are feeling down as a day that you found to be all bad can grow to be positive by the end of the day. By overcoming your all or nothing anxiety, you will be more open to the choices and opportunities around you and you will be a much happier person.

Through years of experience working with art and music therapy, we know how powerfully beneficial they are in healing and relapse prevention. Call Enlightened Recovery today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Making the Conscious Decision to Choose Healing

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Many of us living with addiction struggle against our illness, and therefore ourselves, for the entire duration of the addiction. We’re fighting against the truth that we are in fact addicts. We resist coming to terms with our harsh reality. When we’re ready, finally, to tackle the recovery process, the journey begins with a choice. We have to make the conscious decision that we want to heal, that we can’t possibly continue our lives going in this direction. Our lives have become unmanageable and our pain unbearable. When we’re finally at that point, what many of us refer to as rock bottom, we desperately want to get better. We miss our lives, the people we love, the people we used to be. We crave inner peace. When we’re not quite ready to do the work needed for recovery, we haven’t yet made that critical decision that we in fact need and want to heal.

We put off getting help even when we know we need it. We procrastinate on making decisions and deliberate on whether or not to seek out support. We try to convince ourselves our problem isn’t so serious. We try to persuade ourselves into thinking that we’ll be able to quit on our own. We tell ourselves this time will work, this time we’ll be successful. At the root of our ambivalence and procrastination is fear. We fear disclosing our secret to people, especially loved ones, because we don’t want to disappoint them. We don’t want them to be ashamed of us. We fear being judged, rejected, scorned and shunned. Many of us are already isolating ourselves so much that we don’t want to lose what little connection to our loved ones we may still have. Even though we’re struggling, we’re deeply afraid, so we continue to suffer alone.

Many of us are understandably afraid of doing the work of recovery. We might not be ready to undertake the biggest challenge of our lives and face the greatest hurdles we’ll ever overcome. When we’re ready to do the work, though, we’ll make the conscious decision that we can’t maintain our lives the way they are anymore. We can’t continue to be the person we’ve become. Once we make the decision and start doing the work, we’ll start to feel a sense of fulfillment and peace many of us have never felt before.

At Enlightened Recovery, we’re here to give you the supportive community, understanding providers, and professional care you deserve. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Taking Small Steps Towards Recovery

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The recovery process can feel overwhelming, daunting, even terrifying at times. We’re being asked to push ourselves to confront painful emotions that have been blocked for years. We’re dealing with issues that have been buried within us, that take incredible strength to face. When we feel too overwhelmed and burdened by our recovery program, we’re less likely to be able to keep up with it. The stress can overtake us, and we can find ourselves relapsing or giving up on our goals altogether. One helpful solution for this very common problem is to break down our recovery program into small steps and take things one small step at a time, one day at a time.

When something about our program feels too daunting, let’s see how we can break it down into smaller steps that are easier to handle and navigate. For example, the idea of starting treatment can be so scary that we continuously put it off. Our procrastination is just a byproduct of our fear. To help ease our fears and break the treatment process down into smaller steps, we can start by researching treatment centers, getting tours of their facilities, speaking with their staff and alumnae, and reading testimonials about people’s personal experiences being in treatment. Chances are, when we look at things this way, they start to feel less scary and impossible to manage.

Small steps we can start to take are asking a family member or friend for help finding a therapist and making a list of support groups to attend. We can develop a gratitude practice where we list the things we feel grateful for every day, to help us with our feelings of sadness, hopelessness and anxiety. We can start to get regular exercise to help us naturally lift our mood and combat depression. We can commit to seeing our therapist or going to a support group once a week. We can ask for help in connecting with a sponsor and then plan to communicate with our sponsor on a regular basis.

Taking small steps helps us to feel like a very large and complicated process is actually more approachable and manageable. We can start to feel like we’re capable of doing the work, and this self-belief can make all the difference in our recovery. When we feel defeated, like we’re climbing an uphill battle we can’t win, we’re more likely to give up altogether. Breaking larger things down into smaller steps can give us back our hopefulness and ambition, which can give us the motivation we need to keep going.

We’re here to give you the support and understanding you need for a successful recovery. Call Enlightened Recovery today: (833) 801-LIVE.

Embracing our Gifts for Recovery

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When we are embroiled in addiction and mental health issues, sometimes the first thing we abandon is our connection to our gifts, our natural talents and abilities. We neglect our passions and interests to focus on maintaining our addiction. With all the turmoil and distress we’re experiencing, we don’t have the emotional clarity to remember how beneficial our passions can be to our well-being. When we’re stressed and overwhelmed, we don’t have the time or energy for what we consider to be leisure activities. When we prioritize our happiness, however, we give ourselves a huge advantage in the recovery process.

Reconnecting with our gifts is about remembering who we were and what we were passionate about before addiction took hold of our lives. What were you naturally good at, before addiction caused you to forget your talents? What did you excel at? What made you feel inspired and impassioned? What brought joy to your heart and made your soul sing? These interests were given to us as a reason. For many of us, our passions are our calling. We’re meant to pursue them, whether professionally or as hobbies, to make us happy and add light to the world. Our interests bring us a sense of purpose, of fulfillment and accomplishment. When we give time to our passions, we feel proud of ourselves. We feel complete.

By embracing our gifts and talents, we are giving ourselves a healthy outlet for our emotional energy. Our pain and fear have somewhere to go rather than staying stuck and stagnant within us. We allow our energy to flow through creative expression. We’re able to process, express and communicate our difficult emotions in productive and healthy ways. Our pain is transformed into something beautiful, useful and beneficial. We can give these gifts to ourselves and to others, just by being who we naturally are and embracing the talents we were given.

Any time we have a positive outlet for ourselves, we’re less likely to need to turn to our addictions for relief from our pain. Our creative expression becomes our relief instead. Our energy is going to something helpful rather than something detrimental. We encourage and uplift ourselves, adding to our resilience and increasing our capacity for growth and change. We transform ourselves from within, using natural sources of joy as our catalyst. When we add our gifts and passions to our recovery program, we benefit greatly from how much they can help us stay on track with our recovery.

The holistic treatment programs at Enlightened Recovery include art, music, equine therapy, yoga and more to help you discover your own gifts as part of your recovery. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Changing the Narrative of Addiction

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When it comes to looking at addiction honestly and removing the stigmas around it, those of us who have lived with addiction firsthand can begin to change the narrative of it for the larger culture to be able to learn from our experiences. We can express ourselves and speak about our experiences. We can shed light on the truth of addiction and how pervasive it is in our families and communities. We can illuminate for people just how destructive and debilitating it can be in our lives.

For us to be honest about our struggles with addiction, we have to muster a level of courage we might not think we possess but which is part of our inherent inner strength. Once we realize our potential and claim our voice, we can tap into the strength and courage within us. Many of us have only ever discussed our addiction with those closest to us, with our support groups, close family and friends, or therapists. Many of us haven’t even brought ourselves to tell our loved ones about our addictions. Why would we hide such a huge part of our lives from other people, especially those that care about us? The answer lies in fear – the fear that fuels the stigmas around addiction in the first place, and our fears of being judged and rejected by the people we love and by society in general.

Fear causes us to misunderstand each other and the illness of addiction. Just as depression and mental illness are still widely misunderstood, addiction also suffers from the negative stereotypes, stigmas, misconceptions and misinformation surrounding it in our culture. Working to summon our courage means realizing that we might always have fear on some level but that we can transcend it. We can give addiction a face and a name. We can change the dialogue around addiction to be inclusive of the addicts who have had personal experience with it, not the people who are most judgmental and fearful of it. We can give ourselves a voice and reclaim the discourse around addiction, for ourselves and for our larger communities. We can redefine addiction as something that impacts our lives but doesn’t have to dictate them entirely. We can see our addiction as something we can learn from rather than be devastated by. Healing from our addiction can be part of what empowers us, rather than just being a memento of our self-destruction. The memories we hold of our struggles can motivate us to move forward, rather than staying stuck in the past, mired with regret.

The community at Enlightened Recovery has years of personal experience with addiction, recovery, and helping others in recovery. We can help you too. Call (833) 801-LIVE.

Treating Co-Occurring Conditions

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Addiction is all-encompassing and touches every area of our lives, from our work and our interests to the health of our relationships and our ability to feel at peace. Addiction doesn’t function in a vacuum; it impacts and is affected by all of the other issues in our lives. Very often when we’re living with addiction, we’re also struggling with other deeply rooted mental, emotional and physical issues. When our conditions occur at the same time, they’re referred to as co-occurring conditions. To heal from one, we must work to heal from all of them. The underlying issues behind our addictions are often contributing factors to our other illnesses, and vice versa.

Healing ourselves from addiction is not as simple and straightforward as abstaining from our addictive substance or behavior. When we don’t work to heal from all of the issues causing our addiction, our recovery isn’t as profound or as thorough as it needs to be in order to really prevent us from relapsing. Many of us living with addiction are also coping with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Just as many of us haven’t sought out help for our addictions, we also haven’t gotten help for these very pervasive and destructive mental illnesses. Our ability to cope with daily life is often impaired. We struggle to function in our regular lives. Our health declines. Our relationships suffer. Our ability to care for ourselves falters. When we are deeply depressed, we often retreat inwards and isolate ourselves, making us even less likely to reach out for the help we so desperately need. Many of us struggle with some form of social anxiety, where our fears of people and social situations keep us from interacting with other people or asking for help when we need it. Our depression can cause us to feel so hopeless that we give up on ourselves. We don’t see any point in getting help. We’ve lost faith that we can recover. We’ve lost all belief in ourselves.

Successfully recovering from our addictions means treating our co-occurring conditions with as much care and attention as we place on our sobriety. What trauma do we have yet to heal from? What fears are still unaddressed that are driving our behaviors? Asking ourselves these important questions is part of the healing process. Many of us are afraid to venture this deep into our emotional problems, because it’s very scary terrain. Our recovery depends on our courage and our willingness to face these very difficult issues. We can’t grow to heal and love ourselves without doing so.

The programs at Enlightened Recovery treat co-occurring conditions along with addiction, to help you achieve true recovery. Call us today: (833) 801-LIVE.

The Importance of Friendship

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When we’ve spent years of our lives isolating ourselves from other people, and when we’ve experienced excessive conflict in our relationships, we can start to believe that friendship is unimportant and that it’s not worth the pain it has caused us. Our addiction can taint everything we feel, perceive and believe, including the importance of our friendships. The truth is, we all need other people. Over time, we learn that friendship can actually be one of the most important elements of our recovery. We can start to feel as though we never would have come so far without our friends.

As we’re working towards recovery, we learn just how important it is to be able to connect with other people. We often forget how important connection is when we’re embroiled in our own inner turmoil, our isolation and our relationship issues. Connecting with other people recedes in importance and falls to the bottom of our list of priorities. We forget that we have so much to learn from other people and their experiences. There is infinite wisdom to be gained from our friendships that can benefit our recovery and contribute to our wellness.

Learning how to be in a friendship and how to be a good friend is an important part of our emotional recovery. We learn patience, both with others and with ourselves. We are reminded of the importance of compassion and understanding. We learn how to give support, and just as importantly, how to allow ourselves to be supported. We often block this kind of intimate connection because we fear opening up to other people and being vulnerable. Our deep connections, our humility and our vulnerability add to our strength. Allowing ourselves to be open teaches us so much more about healing than we could ever hope to learn closing ourselves off to other people and isolating ourselves.

When we associate friendship with tension and conflict, it is often because we are in such a place of turmoil ourselves that we can only manifest relationships that reflect that turmoil. We attract other people who are similarly unhealthy. Many of our friends are addicts themselves. When we’re working toward recovery, we start to attract and manifest healthier relationships from a better place of clarity and peace. We learn how to build friendships based on trust, love and support. We grow together and support each other’s recovery. Sometimes our friends in recovery become the people in our lives who are closest to us, who understand us the most and who can best relate to our personal experiences. We find new companions to share our life journeys with.

Enlightened Recovery is here to give you the support, care and understanding you need for a successful recovery. Call (833) 801-LIVE today to get the help you deserve.

Learning as a Wellness Tool

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Learning can be a very helpful tool in our healing and recovery from addiction and mental health issues. Practicing a new skill, learning a new language, even trying a new recipe can boost our production of dopamine, one of the body’s feel-good chemicals that makes us feel happy and satisfied when we accomplish something. Exploring, learning and practicing new things can all help with our feelings of well-being, which can benefit our mental and emotional health and keep us positively occupied on productive things rather than on our addictions. When we feel more content and satisfied with ourselves, we’re less likely to be tempted to give into the temptation of addiction.

Some of us associate education with the tediousness of school, but learning can actually be a lifelong endeavor that brings us pleasure and fulfillment. When we open ourselves and broaden our horizons, we grow and expand to become deeper, more enlightened versions of ourselves. We break out of the mental constraints we were in that closed us off to deeper understanding. We gain insight and awareness that help with our mental and emotional development. We become stronger as a result.

When it comes to addiction and mental health, learning new things can mean the difference between staying stuck at plateaus of healing and breaking through to increase our wellness and making entirely new discoveries about ourselves. The more we know about ourselves, the better prepared we can be to handle any setbacks we come across. We have a clearer understanding of who we are and what it will take for us to heal. We learn more about our inner selves, our connection to other people, and the truths of human nature.

As part of your recovery, consider adding the element of learning. Is there something you’ve always wanted to pick up? Perhaps you’ve always wanted to learn to play the guitar, to cook, or to knit. Maybe there’s a language you’ve always been intrigued by, or a country you’ve always wanted to visit and learn more about. Give yourself permission to explore these things. Be open-minded and adventurous in your approach to your recovery. Recovering from the serious afflictions of addiction and mental health issues involves giving ourselves some enjoyment, some pleasure, fun and satisfaction. The feelings of pride and accomplishment we get when we learn something new and succeed at it can invigorate us and make us feel connected to ourselves again. The more we give energy to productive and positive things, the less inclined we are to self-destruct in our old ways.

The treatment programs at Enlightened Recovery include yoga, meditation, art and music therapy to help you heal holistically and have fun learning in the process. Call (833) 801-LIVE today.