No doubt your loved one’s addiction has caused both you and your family a great amount of pain. As you think about their choices and actions, as well as the ensuing consequences, you may want to bang your head against a wall. Maybe you visualize yourself finally speaking your mind and giving them your two cents out of frustration, or even payback. While that may make you feel justified in the moment, talking to your loved one like this can do more harm than good in the long run. Knowing how to help someone with addiction takes a different kind of approach.
Understanding how to help a loved one with addiction starts with having compassion and non-judgmental conversations. After all, your loved one’s addiction has caused them great pain, too. At The Blanchard Institute, we believe that addiction is the villain, not your struggling loved one. We also see families as the hero who can uniquely help their loved one heal, which is why we take a family-centered approach to addiction treatment. And part of this involves helping family members like you learn how to help a loved one with addiction in the recovery journey. Here are some foundational strategies for engaging your addicted loved one successfully without ultimately enabling — or hurting — them further.
How to Help a Loved One with Addiction: 11 Practical Tips
1. Lead With Empathy and Compassion
When talking to your addicted loved one, it’s important to leave your feelings of anger at the door. Instead, start by seeing the situation from their shoes, so to speak. As you consider the toll that addiction has brought upon your loved one — as well as the stigma of addiction they must navigate in order to turn their life around — you can begin to have empathy and compassion for them. By leading the conversation in this way, your loved one sees that you care and are not there to pick a fight or judge them. This helps them be more receptive to talking with you, and they likely will open up more as a result.
2. Ask Open-Ended Questions
Part of the goal of the conversation is to better understand the challenges your loved one is facing with addiction so you can help. It’s probably a hard topic for them to talk about, so you need to come prepared with open-ended questions. Open-ended questions require your loved one to respond with more than a “yes” or “no.” Some examples include:
- What are the good things about…?
- What do you think you’ll lose if you give up…?
- How would you like things to be different?
- What do you miss?
SOURCE: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
3. Have an Honest Dialogue
As you approach the subject of addiction with your loved one, it’s important to have an honest dialogue and discuss the issue candidly. Your loved one may even be unaware of how their actions and choices have affected you, or themselves. To do this well, ensure you’re having the conversation when your loved one is sober. Once they are, you need to be honest (but remember, in a compassionate, empathetic way) about your concerns for your loved one. This allows your loved one to better understand the magnitude of their struggles. To do this well, it may be a good idea to prepare in advance what you’ll say beforehand.
4. Avoid Blaming or Shaming
In the conversation, how do you help someone with an addiction without causing further damage? It’s critical to avoid blaming or shaming your loved one from the start. Deep down, they likely already feel shame about their addiction and blame themselves. These negative feelings have probably caused them to continue abusing substances to cope. Pointing fingers and shaming them will only exacerbate your loved one’s addictive behaviors, not lessen them.
5. Why is Active Listening Important?
EduMed.org describes active listening as listening to understand rather than just listening to respond. But why is active listening important when engaging your addicted loved one? Actively listening helps your loved one feel understood, shares SAMHSA. And since addiction can be a difficult discussion topic, active listening helps correct any misunderstandings. Active listening may even require repeating back to your loved one what you’re hearing them say to make sure you’re on the same page. To help you listen well, it’s also a good idea to talk with your loved one in a quiet setting free from distractions (as well as other listening ears).
6. Address Productive Topics (And Not Unproductive Ones)
Learning how to help someone with addiction means steering the conversation toward productive, supportive subject matter. When engaging your loved one, helpful topics of conversation may include:
- The benefits to your loved one of making a healthy change
- Emphasizing that quitting substances is possible
- Basing your concerns on what you’ve seen and felt
- Specific ways they can begin pursuing recovery
SOURCE: US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
At the same time, you don’t want your conversation to spiral toward issues that would make the situation worse (remember, addiction stigma is a real thing). Here are a few examples of unproductive discussions:
- Bringing up a long list of past wrongdoings
- Impatiently demanding that they have a solution in place now
- Using threats or bribes to get them to change
- Blaming them for all of the family’s challenges
7. Establish and Respect Boundaries
Setting boundaries with your addicted loved one, especially since their actions affect other loved ones, protects both them and your family. Boundaries hold your loved one accountable and keep your family from aiding in your loved one’s substance abuse. Healthy boundaries may include no longer supporting your loved one financially nor allowing them to live with you, for example. As your loved one pursues their sobriety, they may establish boundaries of their own in recovery. You as their family need to respect boundaries they have in place, which may mean stopping your own substance use around them.
8. Honor Your Loved One’s Autonomy
Remember that your loved one is their own person. That means their approach to recovery may be poles apart compared to what you would do. Instead of telling them to change their plans, make it a point to respect their autonomy in the process. You need to remember that ultimately the decision to seek help for addiction is up to them, advises the Government of Canada. The path to wellness looks different for everyone.
9. Instead of Enabling Someone, Be a Supportive Ally
Exactly what is enabling? Unfortunately, it’s something that families can easily do to make a loved one’s addiction worse, not better. According to the National Center for PTSD, enabling happens when family members help, rescue, support, or protect their loved one from the consequences of their substance abuse. Despite good intentions, family members may engage in enabling behavior without even knowing it. So what is enabling behavior? Some examples include:
- Giving a loved one money
- Lying for them to cover up wrongdoings
- Paying their bills
- Denying that there is an issue
How do you help someone with an addiction? By not enabling them. Instead, focus on being an ally and providing key support in the recovery process. This may mean educating yourself on the facts about substance abuse and addiction to better understand their struggles. Consider volunteering to be your loved one’s accountability partner and someone they can call upon when they’re struggling or triggered. You can even help them create and keep up with their relapse prevention plan, too.
10. Get Help Yourself
While learning how to help a loved one with addiction involves direct support of their needs, part of helping them means actually getting help yourself. As mentioned earlier, your loved one’s addiction has taken its toll on you and your family as well. As a result, you may need to sign up for family and marital counseling, for example. Or ensure you’re making time to pursue self-care activities like exercise, eating healthy, and getting good sleep. Addiction support groups for families can also be a vital resource in this season, helping you connect with peers who’ve gone through similar struggles.
At The Blanchard Institute, we know the importance of family support along the recovery journey. That’s why we provide a number of resources for family members like you to be change agents for their loved ones’ healing:
- Support groups for families of those with a substance abuse disorder
- Counseling for families
- Family communication techniques
- Family workshops
- Family-focused articles
11. Help Your Loved One Seek Professional Treatment
One of the best ways you can help your loved one achieve sobriety is by aiding in the process of finding professional addiction treatment. Because addiction is a family disease, your loved one needs to partner with a treatment program that can help to get the root causes of their disorder if they truly want to overcome their struggles. As a family member, you can help research the right treatment center for their needs and even offer to take them to treatment.
If your loved one is ready to take that next step and achieve long-term recovery, we can help at The Blanchard Institute. As a family-focused addiction treatment center, we provide safe, structured outpatient programs that equip your loved one to live a happy, healthy, more connected, and fulfilled life, free from substance abuse. And we empower you as a family to support their recovery along the way. To learn more about our treatment options, contact us today.