Category: Family

When your loved one is recovering from addiction, the effect that sobriety has on their behavior may become clear through them being able to show up for life in ways they were unable to before compared to when they were actively abusing alcohol and/or drugs.  Being able to notice this change in your loved one can set the foundation in place for rebuilding trust in your relationship with them.

Showing Up For Life

It can seem like nothing short of a miracle when your loved one remembers events people typically shouldn’t forget, like your birthday, Thanksgiving, or even something as simple as feeding the dog.  These are the types of actions your loved one couldn’t keep track of or plain and simply neglected due to the unmanageability in their life cause by their addiction to alcohol and/or drugs.  Now that your loved one is clean and sober today, they are able to think much more clearly and are removed from selfish tendencies that keep them astray.  When having these thoughts removed, your loved one is able to have their focus shifted to obligations and live a manageable life.  They aren’t so consumed in their obsessions and are free to think about others, like you.  Recovering from addiction allows your loved one to be placed back in the present moment, engage in reality, and show up for life.

What does it mean for your loved one to show up for life?

When your loved one was actively abusing substances, they may have been the type of person who never came home, failed to respond to phone calls, struggled to keep a job, and only were concerned about their drinking and/or drugging.  The most important driving thought on your loved one’s mind was chasing a feeling that would only last for a certain period of time before it wore off.  Showing up for life means your loved one wants to build relationships with others instead of turning to substances to fill a void in their life.  Your loved one wants to connect with human beings and create memories now.  They are the type of person that knows what day it is and have already mailed out cards so that they will arrive to receivers, like you, before the occasion.  These acts prove to show a new sense of responsibility in your loved one, which wasn’t noticeable when they were active in their disease.  This is crucial because you should be aware of how far your loved one has come and credit their sobriety to their positive behavioral change.

How this can help you gradually work on forgiving loved one

When your loved ones can show up for you in their sobriety, they show you how they aren’t the same person they were when they were out there drinking and/or abusing substances.  This is huge, especially if you haven’t entirely forgiven your loved one for the actions they have committed from when they were active in their disease.  Forgiveness may come as a gradual process over time and through seeing continual changes in your loved one.  Rebuilding trust is a process that can’t necessarily be rushed, but through seeing your loved one continually show up for life, more trust can be built in your relationship with them.

Showing up is a pivotal part of the recovery process for your loved one because when they are able to become part of the life they are living, they show how they are present and not living in their own world revolving in their own selfish tendencies.  The world begins to appear much larger than the one they once knew before when they were active in their disease drinking and/or abusing drugs.

An effective way for early prevention of drug abuse and addiction to help your children quit before starting can begin with methods like encouraging them to participate in activities to find out what they enjoy doing.  The importance in early prevention methods becomes clear as the rates for drug use continue to rise and more members in society become tragically addicted to substances as time goes on.

More: Recovery Stories

Early Prevention of Drug Abuse and Addiction

Early prevention of drug abuse and addiction is a smart tactic in order to reduce the amount of people using substances in the country because substance use disorders are diseases that need to be stopped before they begin.

Involve children in activities

One particular way to do this is by involving your children in activities at a young age.  Getting them involved in activities so they can discover what their favorite hobbies are will prove beneficial because it will show them what true pleasure is.  As your children develop, they will have passion in their lives and if they learn to cling to this, they will be less inclined to resort to drinking alcohol and abusing drugs. 

Importance of communicating with your children during their teenage years

There’s no denying the existence of societal pressures.  Teenagers are often tempted into experimenting with alcohol and/or drugs which typically leads to other risky and trouble behaviors such as engaging in unprotected sex, intervenous drug use, and other impulsive decisions.  It may be uncomfortable for both you and your teenage children to have a talk, but you should open the door for conversation at this age.  As parents, you should be striving to establish a concrete understanding of how your child makes choices and guide them respectively while veering them from destructive decisions.  It may seem like common sense, but teenagers need this reinforcement stated in conversation and they need to hear their worth.

Hearing self-worth during teen years

Teenagers particularly need to hear about their worth because values are thrown into question at this age and judgement becomes clouded.  A sense of low self-worth isn’t out of the ordinary at this age.  Teens should be building themselves up instead of down but they can’t see the forest for the trees.  As parents, you can help through showing them the value they truly have.

Make yourself available and present to your children

The best action you can take for your child as a parent is to show up in their life.  When you are mentally, emotionally, and physically present in your child’s life you show that you care about their well-being.  According to author Holli Kenley, who holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology, this influences an individual’s decisions and can hold the most significant impact on whether they will end up abusing substances in the first place. 

The point being made here is that these are children – your children.  Keeping them away from substances by focusing on early prevention of drug abuse and addiction is important.  It can begin with simply opening the door for conversation and by you being present with your children from a young age through their teenage years.

Are you concerned your child has an addiction to alcohol and/or drugs?  Contact The Watershed for help now.  Recovery is possible, so call now. 1-877-975-4837.

The moment that most alcoholics and/or addicts, like your loved one, walk in the door of the recovery world, it isn’t uncommon for them to already be asking how to overcome addiction to alcohol and/or drugs while precisely pressing on a time of how long does recovery take until they can go about life as though they were never addicted to a substance? 

More: 5 Stages Of Recovery From Addiction

The truth is that the process of recovery doesn’t work quite as simply as a remedy for a cold where it clears up within a set amount of time and the symptoms slip away, leaving the sufferer, like your loved one, good as new.  Addiction and alcoholism are chronic brain diseases with no cure and though treatable, this disease requires regular maintenance which your loved one will need to adhere to in order for the most effective results to add up to a substantial gratifying quality of life.

How to Overcome Addiction to Drugs and/or Alcohol

A drug and/or alcohol addiction can be a debilitating experience.  It can leave your loved one feeling hopeless, lost, and confused with where to turn for help.  Your loved one may be left clinging to substances, feeling like they have no choice other than to continue with the ways they have formerly known.  Feeling stuck like this and like there is no way out can be a scary place to be in, but the beginning stage of how to overcome an addiction can begin with reaching out to someone and seeking help in some way, shape, or form. 

Truth About the Root of Addiction

On the topic of how to overcome addiction, it is necessary to see that root of the problem not so much has to do with the substance as much as it has to do with the addict and/or alcoholic themselves.  If your loved one continues to focus on simply removing the alcohol and drugs but fails to take a look at their own shortcomings and underlying pressing issues, then they cheat themselves out of working on the real issues that led them to use substances in the first place, thus initiating the spiral of the addictive cycle.

So how long does recovery take? 

The process of recovery takes as long as your loved one desires to get better.  In other words, this means that any addict and/or alcoholic will get as much out of their program of recovery as they put into it.  By continually putting in effort into the program of recovery, your loved one should allow themselves the opportunity to develop and enhance their spiritual horizons to be the best version of themselves that they can be.  Recovery truly begins when your loved one is willing to take a stern and unbiased look at themselves from as far back as they can remember to get down to the catastrophic reasoning behind the calamity.  Your loved one has probably created much collision during their illness and during the process of their recovery they will be able to sort through it.

Before your loved one entered the process of recovery, you may have never had a happy St. Patrick’s Day together. It’s probably safe to say that like a countless amount of other holidays, St. Patrick’s Day was yet another excuse for your loved one to get drunk or high and humiliate family and friends. Now you can put that to rest because your loved one is in recovery. It’s pivotal to know what behaviors you can expect to see from your loved one, how you can be there to support your loved one, and the signs of codependency you should be on the lookout for so that you can avoid enabling your loved one this St. Patrick’s Day.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

A happy St. Patrick’s Day begins for you and your loved one because of a change having occurred within your loved one. Your loved one has put in the effort to make a significant difference in their life and it has no doubt shown otherwise they wouldn’t be where they currently are in their sobriety. The impact has brought them to where they presently are. St. Patrick’s Day should ideally unite you and your loved because that is what holidays are all about. They bring loved ones together in the moment to focus on rejoicing where they are, highlighting the positive attributes.

What to expect from your loved one in recovery

You might have noticed your loved one isn’t always going to have a good mood all the time and this can be attributed to their disease of addiction, which has no known cure. Being in recovery doesn’t mean that your loved one has necessarily worked out all the kinks but rather that they have made improvements in their life. This means they are willing to work to make changes on their defects of character to make amends for where they have particularly caused harm. This by no means constitutes that they adhere to a perfect program. Even on holidays like a happy St. Patrick’s Day, your loved one may get overwhelmed, especially if they see alcohol and/or substances at an event. Try to be patient with your loved one and understand where they are coming from. They may not want to discuss the issue with you and instead may take it out on you by becoming irritable. It doesn’t mean that its right, but it just means their temperament could use fine tuning.

How to show your loved one support

Show support by being there to revel in it! Spending time with your loved one can make a difference in their recovery and pull them out of a slump. Make the commitment to plan time for them. If you’re with them and you notice them becoming triggered by seeing alcohol at every street corner, you can help them by re-shifting their focus on the importance of the festivities being on spending time with one another, which is what holidays are meant for. Holidays are for pleasure with one another. Ideas you might consider could include attending an Irish-themed festival in honor of St. Patrick’s Day where you can see dancers in the street with fiddlers, watching a local parade, or making a special Irish meal for dinner at home. When you’re taking part in these activities together, be sure to show support by listening to your loved one’s needs. If your loved one sounds stressed or appears to grow frantic seeing others abusing substances, then use your best judgement to pull yourself out of the situation. A St. Patrick’s Day parade may be too much for recovering individuals and can overwhelm them, especially too early during their recovery process if there’s an excessive amount of binge drinking going on at the festivities.

Beware of being codependent with your loved one

Another matter to be wary of is enabling your loved one. You don’t want to become codependent with your loved one during St. Patrick’s Day. It’s easy to slip into this role during a holiday when you’re spending time with them because you latch onto the idea when you get overly friendly with your loved one and partner up with them. You may want to do tasks for your loved one and nurture them, but doing this will only prevent them from being able to complete tasks on their own and cut them off from continuing on with their own recovery process. You don’t want to prevent them from getting better!

Have a happy St. Patrick’s Day this year with your loved one this year now that they are sober and you can both celebrate happily in the present moment. There’s much more to life when you’re able to stay in the moment occurring and be aware of it as its happening. Showing support of your loved one is essential for both of you during this time and knowing what signs play a role in the process of the recovery on holidays can help you to be able to encourage them while being there for them without enabling.

Family arguments, sibling rivalries, break ups, road rage… what is a healthy relationship between two parties or individuals? It can be a difficult term to define, especially in today’s society where people tend to have a short temper with more inclination for instant gratification and likelihood of leaning toward some form of addictive behavior as an unhealthy coping mechanism. When your loved one enters recovery and you begin the process of rebuilding a relationship with them, you may want to be best prepared for any roadblocks you may face along the way.

Understanding Relationships and Conflicts

When trying to determine what is a healthy relationship after you and your loved one have had a foundation based solely off themes of selfishness, self-centeredness, fear, and dishonesty, you should remain aware at all times of checking both of your motives. It can be extremely tough to try to see both sides, but remembering that there are always two versions to every story will get you further than believing only what you see through your own sight and vice versa. A healthy relationship is going to require good communication skills. This means that you and your loved one are going to need to listen to each other, speak with one another to discuss matters, not leave a room angry if a dispute happens to ever erupt, respect each other’s privacy, discuss boundaries, go over some guidelines, and talk about your wants and needs.

Dealing with Character Defects

Character defects seem to come in full bloom in all types of relationships because the more people are surrounded by one another, the greater the magnification of their defects of character is to others and even more noticeable to themselves. When you are surrounded with others, you are in constant friction of one another’s defects and if your negativity rubs off on one another, you both transcend the unpleasant aura. A healthy relationship will also be one in which one party isn’t trying to raise the other’s but both parties are actively in support of one another. The recovering alcoholic and/or addict may be struggling at times, so this is where you may need to be patient with them. Try not get discouraged with them, but also be wary of not enabling them and inadvertently thrusting them back into self-seeking behaviors that amplifies that root of their selfish disease mindset.

Forming Trust

There’s a lot to keep in mind when it comes to what is a healthy relationship. Communication is key, but trust is another major factor here. When your loved one was active in addiction, they may have tarnished a level of trust, which is slowly being rebuilt. This may come over time. Don’t put pressure on it. This is something that action will speak more to than words.

Is your loved one still actively and regularly abusing alcohol and/or drugs without the ability to stop? Contact for help today because it could save your loved one’s life now.

What are the warning signs of suicide and why is it important to know them? Suicide is the l0th leading cause of death in the United States and its 100% preventable.

Knowing the Warning Signs of Suicide will help reduce rates

Suicide should never be taken lightly and even the most subtle mention of death needs to be looked at as one of the warning signs of suicide. Concern should immediately be shown to your loved one if they bring up the topic of death regularly, discuss ideas of suicide, or hint at the desire to hurt themselves. Another symptom might be that your loved one has already been seeking out ways to commit suicide, like resorting to searching how to do so on the internet. This is why parents, siblings, and other family members should take notice of what their loved ones may be looking up. Catching potential suicide behaviors before they turn into actions is ideal because it very well may result in saving their life.

Some other warning signs of suicide may not be as obvious, which is why professionals are quick when jumping at the idea that thoughts of suicide are really just attributed to its own specific sort of mental illness. Depression, for example, has many overlapping symptoms with suicide. Feeling like a nuisance, avoiding friends and family, losing interest in previously enjoyed activities, and over or under sleeping are prime examples for both displaying a depressed and potentially suicidal individual. These signs can be displayed at any age from younger to older but they may be most noticeable in people whose age ranges between 15 and 34 since suicide is the second leading killer of that group.

Prevention and Awareness

So can awareness of these warning signs of suicide help minimize this as a significant leading cause of death in the nation? “When we invested in HIV/AIDS and breast cancer, we dramatically reduced the rates of death,” began Jill Harkavy-Friedman, who is the vice president of research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “If we invest in suicide prevention — really invest in it — then we have a good shot at bringing it down.”

Finding Hope

Dr. Georg Northoff has remained hopeful for patients with suicidal ideations and tendencies. He began to explain what his findings showed, “We observed in these patients that they show very often abnormally increase in neural activity in a certain set of regions right in the middle of the brain, right beneath your forehead that is also there even during the night, that probably you have sleepless nights, you have all these ruminating thoughts…your thoughts are continuously circulating, ruminating, and it’s all about your own self, you’re not worth it, you may have a feeling of hopelessness, and you are stuck in your own self. You have no ability to reach out to a different kind of self.” With drugs like ketamine and its byproduct hydroxynorketamine (HNK) showing improvement on participants as an effective treatment for depression in research studies, there is hope in the future for innovative medication and treatment options. As pertaining to patients that have an ongoing fixation with suicidal thoughts, Dr. Northoff found that a majority had an increasingly difficult capacity to envision the outcome of the rest of their life. He saw that it was as though the patients were simply unable to even fathom their own future and that they couldn’t picture not being in a state of catastrophic depression. It was as though they were utterly hopeless. Dr. Northoff believes that it is possible to correct such a malady, as there are ways of coping with mental illness and finding healthy ways to resort back to a form of stability in life to function effectively throughout the course of life.

Breaking the Stigma of Mental Health Issues

With suicide comes an unjust stigma. A lack of understanding and knowledge can lead to the stigma of suicide, which is why there is a need for far more education to be brought to the attention of the public. Situations in life do not make your loved one immune to suffering from a mental illness and/or from living with depression. It doesn’t matter how much or how little money your loved one may make, what kind of job title they may or may not hold, where they come from, what they look like, or anything – mental illness and suicide does not discriminate.

Need more information about suicide prevention?

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Addiction Crisis Helpline

If your loved one is displaying any warning signs of suicide, please do not hesitate to reach out and tell somebody now. Suicide is not a matter you can afford to wait on.

Living in denial is a complex matter regarding alcoholics and addicts. If an individual is high functioning, they may only be until their manageability declines. They may not be functioning as well as they believe but this may not be visible to them, although it’s apparent to others.

In Denial

What does being “in denial” mean?

Addicts and alcoholics in denial of addiction are living in unawareness of their inner thoughts and blocking off activity of their disease. Being in denial of addiction means an individual isn’t able to take a look at themselves. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are lying but may mean they don’t realize they are disregarding their own truth. They may not be willing to make changes in their life to get better or they may not think there’s a problem causing their life to be unmanageable.

More: How to help a loved one in denial

How do I know if my loved one is engaging in denial?

Signs of an individual engaging in denial may include abusing substances in private. When confronted, they may insist it’s a personal concern. Continuing to be approached and always derailing the topic should be viewed as a warning sign of being in denial. Stopping the conversation, minimizing, hiding substances, and lying are signs pointing to problems that your loved one’s living in denial.

Why do addicts and alcoholics stay in denial?

Addicts and alcoholics may not be aware they are in denial because they justify it as who they are instead of the illness it is. Others may see their life as unmanageable while the sufferer lacks the capability to see this because they are in denial and don’t want to change their behaviors.

How do I help my loved one break out of denial?

It’s difficult to get a loved one from living in denial of disease but an intervention can be a strategic move because it’s a prepared procedure. Individuals who care about the person battling addiction can face them. An intervention provides a mode of confrontation which can be monumental for breaking denial. Key components to be mindful of prior to intervening include speaking with experts, ensuring a small group is gathered, preparing what to say, having a secure setting, and not enabling your loved one.

More: Are you loving your loved one to death?

What do I do if they won’t admit they have a problem?

Unfortunately, the harsh reality is not every addict sees their problem or accepts help. Providing resources for your loved one, telling them you care and showing them support can be helpful for the time being until they are willing to see the truth. Loving them where they are at is the best you can do sometimes.

Where can I go for further support if the addict and alcoholic doesn’t want to?

Addiction affects the entire family. It’s important each member has the opportunity to heal and recover too. The illness latches onto the individuals loved ones and it takes a toll on their lives through creation of chaos and friction. There are 12-Step programs to attend meetings, work steps, and seek supports at such as Al-Anon and Nar-Anon. With fellowships like this, you can learn about ways to cope when dealing with your loved one being in denial and hear about solutions on a regular basis. You can even invite your loved one, if they choose to come.