Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Dangerous Relationships. Episode 1 part 2. Addiction. When Love Becomes Enabling

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Dangerous Relationships. Episode 1 part 2. Addiction. When Love Becomes Enabling · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to this second part of the first episode about dangerous relationships.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in this first episode, we started looking at the nature of addiction.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want to do is just to follow on from that because the theme is when everything revolves around danger.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: But before I go on, I'd like to just go back a second.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the first episode or the first part, I was talking about a number of things that concluded with the notion of enabling.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than repeat that, you're very welcome to return to the first episode.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something else I'd like to talk about, not simply as a psychotherapist, but as someone who spent many years working alongside families affected by addiction.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: These are the some of the most complex cases I encounter.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not because the addiction itself is difficult to recognize, but because every member of the family is suffering.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The partner is suffering.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So are the children, parents, brothers and sisters, and it's almost as if the tentacles of addiction reach every space.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is suffering, but I want to just say, and so is the addict.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we're living with the consequences of addiction, it becomes easy to see only the damage that's being caused.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: The broken promises, the deception, the fear, the chaos, and that's understandable.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And behind all of that, there is another human being living with profound psychological distress, shame, dependency, and hopelessness.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: As a clinician, I can't ignore either of those realities.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if I focus only upon the addict, I risk overlooking the profound emotional harm being experienced by everyone around them.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if I focus only upon the family, I risk losing sight of the suffering that sits at the very heart of the addiction itself.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So my task is to try and hold both realities at the same time.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not easy.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose what I've learned is that it requires me to think strategically rather than reactively.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of requires me to keep everyone in view.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The person struggling with the addiction, the frightened partner, the other family members, and the parents who are very probably just utterly exhausted.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also I have to think about the children who've quietly adapted themselves in order to survive.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of these people deserves to be seen.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of these people deserves compassion.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But compassion is not the same as collusion.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most difficult truths I have learned is that recovery often begins with increasing discomfort rather than reducing it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Things frequently become worse before they get better.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Long-established patterns take a long time to change.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But boundaries need to be introduced.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So responsibility begins returning to the person whose addiction has previously been carried by everyone else.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is unsettling for the whole family.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the reasons why addiction recovery should rarely be viewed as an individual task.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we call a systems task.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: No one clinician can do it alone.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I, from experience, can guarantee that that's the case.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And no one family member should be expected to do it alone.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery involves addiction services, medical professionals, mental health teams, therapists, family members, and where children are involved, very often safeguarding professionals, but all of us have to work together.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: My role isn't to rescue people, it's not to judge them.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: My responsibility is to understand what's happening, protect as much as I can those who are vulnerable, and to enable as much as I can in the healthy sense, the person living with addiction towards appropriate specialist help and to help every member of the family begin moving towards recovery.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So over the years I've come to see myself not as the person who solves addiction, because nobody can do that, but as one part of a much larger recovery system.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes my task is to help somebody take their first step into treatment.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's about helping a partner understand that boundaries and what I call reality confrontation are acts of love rather than rejection.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's helping a frightened child understand that none of this is their fault.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Every family's different, and so too is every recovery.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But every person deserves the opportunity to recover.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: One sentence has stayed with me throughout many years of working with families affected by addiction, it's this I will support you in your recovery, but I will no longer enable you in your addiction.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now notice what that sentence does.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't withdraw love, it redirects it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It says, I believe you are capable of recovery.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I believe you can be well.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And some become little carers.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some become little peacekeepers.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some try desperately to make everybody happy.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some become invisible because they believe causing their trouble is the safest way to survive, and others become anxious, angry, withdrawn, prematurely grown up.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Children should never have to become emotional caretakers for adults.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, in families affected by addiction, this happens with heartbreaking frequency.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: They begin carrying burdens that were never theirs to carry.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: They learn that love means rescue, that conflict means danger, that promises can't be trusted.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these lessons may quietly shape the relationships they choose many years later.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have worked with a number of people who are in addictive relationships, and quite often they will describe that they had a parent who was also an addict.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's not coincidence.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: The research indicates that there is a greater risk of people either becoming addicted themselves in later life from childhood experiences in addicted families and or choosing to be in relationships.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of abusive experiences in children, you know, children who have been emotionally abused, not always, but too often end up in abusive relationships as as they develop into adults.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have to understand that addiction isn't simply an individual illness.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a safeguarding issue, it's a developmental issue, it's a family issue.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if this is a family illness, people don't catch addiction.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that there is uh some mysterious external or intrinsic force that causes this.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Addiction is something which evolves out of systems.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose what I want to do is try not to focus too much on that, but I want to come back to the people who are affected by it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can say with my hand on my heart that people who live in these kinds of situations are going through a living hell.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievably awful.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the good news.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery is possible.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery belongs to the addict, but recovery also belongs to the partner, to the children, to the parents, brothers and sisters, to everyone whose life has gradually become organized around the addiction.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the addict recovers first.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the family begins recovering before the addict does, and both journeys matter because recovery means telling the truth.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery means replacing secrecy with honesty.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery means rebuilding trust through behavior rather than promises.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And recovery for the addicts means accepting help, but very often also the family, because families can't see what they're locked inside.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But recovery also means that love and boundaries aren't opposites, they're partners.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the greatest tragedy of addiction is that it persuades loving people that protecting the addiction is somehow an act of love, and it isn't.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Real love supports recovery, and it can be painful.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Love tells the truth and establishes boundaries and doesn't participate in destruction.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: There comes a moment in many families when the most loving sentence anyone can say is, I love you enough to stand beside your recovery, but I love you too much to stand beside your addiction.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that sentence doesn't abandon someone, it invites them towards life.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to understand that for a person to take that position, there needs to be a shift in themselves because the damage and the danger that is being experienced, risked, and frequently thought about erodes the quality of individual lives, partners, family, and children.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when I first set out to do these podcasts, they were child-centered.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: As these numerous series have developed, I have to think about the wider context.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to this, and judging by the number of downloads for the first episode, I suspect many are.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's different for me because you know I'm an experienced clinician and I know how to approach these things.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not suggesting it's the same in every case, but it was that forthright let's not play games.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what I see.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was incredibly powerful.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like to say, and as a consequence of that, the person went into recovery and it was all fine.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was the beginning of something.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to really try and understand that and try and accept that there is no shame involved in being somebody in a family where addiction is present.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: It does mean some self-examination because every family member plays a part, but that's not about guilt, that's about seeing things for what they really are.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this is helpful, and my heart goes out to those people who have lived and those who are living through this experience.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But please take a look at it from a different perspective.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much you can do for yourselves and for your children.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: In our next episode, we'll explore another dangerous relationship pattern, and one that very often begins with extraordinary charm and attention, but gradually becomes organized around control and entitlement and the erosion of another person's identity.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be examining relationships that are characterized by narcissistic patterns and asking a simple but profoundly important question.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this how does somebody gradually lose themselves whilst trying hard, so hard to keep somebody else happy?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.