Addiction is a devastating disease that affects entire families. The profound impact of drugs and alcohol affects not just those directly engaged in their use, but all of those who are invested in their well-being. Supports are often just as committed to healing as those overcoming addiction. However, supporting others can be extraordinarily difficult if it comes at the expense of their own mental and emotional health. While it is common to want to jump in and always be available, tending to personal needs throughout any healing journey is crucial for the best approach to transforming family life after addiction.
Redpoint’s Commitment to Healing the Healers
Effective supports are invaluable resources throughout any stage of addiction. Those continuing to further their own sober goals through effective outpatient programs can benefit greatly from a robust, educated, and supportive home life. Redpoint’s commitment to a healthy life goes beyond just finding the best strategies for those overcoming addiction within its walls but rather creates communities across Colorado to normalize healing and a culture of sobriety for individuals and supports alike.
With many of Redpoint’s staff continuing to navigate their own sober journey, the perspective of being on both sides of addiction – those looking for support and those providing it – is ingrained into each recovery program, creating the necessary strategies for transformative familial healing.
Supporting Others Means Caring for Yourself
It is paramount for families and supports to take a step back and tend to their own needs. Constantly supporting others without equal time spent addressing their own needs can have ramifications that negatively impact their personal health or even their ability to support others.
Exhaustion, burnout, compassion fatigue, compromised personal hobbies, and more are all common among supports unwilling or unprepared to tend to their own needs first. This can not only compromise their ability to be empathetic and effective supports, but also may even comprise their own mental health, birthing anxiety, depression, and even developing feelings of resentment toward those a person is trying to support.
Healing Yourself While Supporting Others
There are always strategies that each support can use to develop their own balance between supporting others and personal healing. Exploring a variety of options can help those in recovery and supports alike create a healthy and sustainable sober transformation.
Keep Your Own Schedule
Supports of loved ones still have to live their own lives and should never compromise their own goals, ambitions, or hobbies for the sake of another. It is wholly possible for an individual to be an effective support while still tending to their own daily schedule. Having clear work hours and continuing to engage in weekly meetings, hobby or social groups, and more can all be necessary to help support to tend to their own social and emotional needs.
While contact in case of emergencies can absolutely be discussed with loved ones, normalizing maintaining these schedules and setting effective boundaries around these personal needs can empower supports to tend to their own needs for both their benefit and the benefit of those relying on them.
Explore a New Hobby
Recovery is a transformative time for all, and it is common for supports and those in recovery to begin exploring new traditions, hobbies, and practices together in a developing sober lifestyle. However, it may also be important to have a personal outlet for oneself devoid of this context to step away from such connotations. Finding a personal hobby wholly for oneself can be a great stress reliever for supports, allowing them to process their own challenges in a healthy manner.
Supporting Others by Slowing Down
Addiction recovery is a tumultuous journey, with a seemingly endless deluge of new challenges, obstacles, and stresses. It can be easy to feel as if supports must always be taking action to best support those in recovery. However, taking time to slow down can be just as powerful and can reintroduce needed feelings of agency and control into daily routines and compulsions where an individual may otherwise feel pulled around by stress.
Supports cannot directly control the actions, thoughts, and behaviors of loved ones overcoming addiction – only empower, encourage, and guide. Watching a show, employing breathing exercises, reading, or making other efforts to slow down the day and take time to create manageable and realistic plans and expectations for tasks ahead can be instrumental in pacing each person’s ability to continue effectively supporting others.
Keep the Body Healthy
Supports need to be physically and emotionally healthy while supporting others. Cooking and eating healthy meals, going for a morning jog, having a light exercise routine, and avoiding unhealthy diets like those laden with caffeine can all promote this healthier lifestyle. Not only can this provide the energy necessary to maintain a healthy physical and emotional state, but it can also scaffold these effective behaviors for those in recovery to develop their own healthy dieting habits.
Overcoming addiction is a familial affair, but learning to best support those transitioning to a healthier, sober life means first tending to your own needs. At Redpoint, we understand the need to heal the healers just as much as we support those in recovery. Each of our dedicated outpatient programs focuses on this spirit of holistic recovery. From developing personalized strategies to address urges and cravings to developing new skills to employ with family outside our walls in outpatient treatment, we are committed to providing a truly transformative approach to sobriety for entire families. For more information on how we can support you and your loved ones alike, call to speak to a caring, trained staff member at (303) 710-8496.
