by Victoria Seed | Thursday, June 11, 2020 | Addiction, Carer, Family, Resilience
Have you ever struggled with your loved one’s drug or alcohol use and not known what to do next?
Do you feel stressed, worried or alone?
Do you feel like you’ve tried everything and don’t know where to go for help and support?
Firstly, I need to acknowledge that this is National Carer’s Week. Did you know that looking after someone with a drug and alcohol problem makes you a carer? Having caring responsibilities can impact on every aspect of a person’s life. Not knowing how someone is going to ‘be’ on a daily basis can be incredibly stressful. Most people do not ask for help and the cycle of stress continues.
My clients are usually professional women living with a loved one’s substance use. They experience a great deal of guilt, shame, secrecy and stress and I work with them to reduce that stress and live a better life.
In this blog, I’m going to share with you my three top tips for helping you care for yourself while you’re caring for someone else.
1. Look after YOU
If you don’t look after yourself, and meet your own needs, it will be really hard to maintain your other responsibilities. This will impact on emotional, mental and physical health.
Most of my clients are working women, many with children. If their partners are drunk by 6pm or the dealer is dropping off their next mid-week bag, this usually means additional work after actual work! Hangovers and come downs at the weekend are common, so even more pressure is added for carers to run the home and care for children.
Maintaining the responsibility for EVERYTHING, including your loved one and their substance use, while holding down a career or running a business is just too much. Just giving yourself one hour per week to do something that you enjoy will allow you to switch off from your current situation and recharge your batteries.
2. Communicate your feelings
Try and speak to your loved one, about your situation, when they are sober. If they are drunk or intoxicated with drugs, the likelihood is, they will not listen to you at all. You will be wasting your energy, having conversations with somebody that is unlikely to remember the vast majority of it.
Positive communication is something I highly recommend.
If you communicate positively it reduces family/couples conflict. It gives you the opportunity to tell the other person how you feel. The idea is that you talk about your feelings, without being accusatory.
Many families do this the other way round. They voice their concerns when a loved one is intoxicated and hope everything will go back to normal, because they have a day (or a week) sober.
Save these discussion for when your loved one is sober. These are the times when I advise families to talk about the issues. These are the times their loved one will absorb those feelings, These are the times when change can be influenced.
3. Ask for help
Asking for help is so very hard. I know this as a recovering perfectionist. When we are proud human beings, fully in control and holding it together on the outside, asking for help can feel like a catastrophic fail. However, look at it in another way. Having ONE slightly uncomfortable conversation can relieve a whole load of stress for you and your loved one.
A great way of asking for help is to write out your support network and highlight any friends, family members, neighbours or co-workers that either know about your situation or who you would find helpful if they knew about it. There will always be some people to avoid with a bargepole with asks like this so don’t bother with them for ‘helping’ asks. We all have different people in our lives that bring different qualities, so bear that in mind when asking someone you’ve only known through your clubbing days for help with childcare. Save them for your next night out! We all need people we can simply have fun with.
The next step is to ring them and have a conversation about what you are going through and what you need. Avoid texts if you can. Your ask might be for practical or emotional support. I know it can feel like keeping your situation a secret is beneficial, but for who? Openness and transparency are approaches that help family members live a better life. It allows someone using substances to consider change. Secrets and lies do not.
If there are children involved, I would always recommend that you speak to them about the situation in an age-appropriate manner. They will know that something is going on. I have worked with children for 20 years and even though many cannot always name ‘addiction’, ‘alcohol’ or ‘drugs’, parental substance use does have an impact on them.
So…. in summary Help & Self Care = Recovery.
I can help
Did you enjoy my blog? Why not get more of my best tips to reduce your stress and live a better life by signing up to my mailing list AND…
Click here to Download my brilliant PDF with my top ten tips, a handy checklist and useful support services who can help you and your family.
Take Care,
Victoria
by Victoria Seed | Friday, February 15, 2019 | Addiction, Alcohol, Emotions, Family, Resilience, Uncategorized
I’ve attended training in January to learn the 5-Step Method of supporting families coping with a loved one’s drug or alcohol use.
It is the first time I have come across a model of support that helps family members in their own right. Usually, the person having problems with substance use accesses a service then families are offered help as a result of this.
Family support groups
The type and quality of the help varies from country to city to town. There is no consistency in this. For example, a family in Ireland will be able to access family support groups which are led by family members who have been supported, trained and developed by the National Family Support Network. They have set up quality assurance so that families can access a quality service whether It’s led by volunteers or led by professionals.
In Manchester, there are a few family-led support groups that I’ve heard of, but I feel ignorant that I haven’t linked up with them more, so the families I help can get further support from people that are in the same, but unique, situation as themselves. This is called peer-led support and allows people at the very least to realise they are not alone in coping with a loved one’s drug or alcohol use.
Local carers centres also provide advice and support for families caring for people with drug and alcohol problems.
Local drug and alcohol services offer
Drug and alcohol services are getting better at offering family support services. In Bury, they offer the CRAFT programme (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) and in Salford, they offer 5-Step Method, but again, this usually depends on the person using substances accessing the service then families being supported following this.
There are whole family support services commissioned in some areas like Early Break’s award winning Holding Families which provides a 6-month programme for children and families affected by parental substance use.
Why families should stop focussing on the person using drugs/acohol
Family members always focus on the needs of their drug or alcohol using relative before themselves. I saw an advert recently on Facebook for a rehab and family members were asking, ‘how much is this?’ and ‘how long do they stay for?’. There was nothing about, ‘what support do you provide for families?’. When a family member made a comment, the rehab posted a link to Famanon which made it pretty clear that they didn’t support families and they were solely focused on the person using substances spending money to go to rehab.
People tend to think that rehab will solve everyone’s problems, but they cost anything from 5-50k. It is possible to get to rehab through the drug and alcohol service but it doesn’t happen overnight because of the cost to services. The person using substances has to show a commitment and often a reduction in their drug or alcohol use before they will be given funding to go to detox or rehab. Drug and Alcohol services often run a pre-detox group and who can blame them with so many funding cuts to services.
Why rehabs are not always the answer
Rehabs are great, but, Most people relapse in the first 90 days following a period in rehab. Why? Because they don’t have the skills to face the reality of being back at home in the same situation, with the same triggers and the same life that they were tucked away from in rehab. It is then that people need support and guidance when they are back in reality. I know a family who paid 30k to send a relative to a luxury rehab, she was drinking again within three weeks. No aftercare was provided unless they travelled 200 miles back to the residential rehab their relative had left. Family support was non-existent – a lesson here is that it doesn’t matter what you pay, it’s the aftercare that counts. Lots of services recommend 12-steps for families but this involves going to groups which works for some but not for others. I recommend to give everything a go twice and find something that works for each individual.
The point I’m trying to make is there are lots of services for problematic drug and alcohol users, but there are also many for families too. The more support families get, the more they can focus on themselves, regardless of whether their relative continues to drink or take drugs or not.
Focus on the family
There are some brilliant programmes out there for family members which I have mentioned above. CRAFT focuses on reducing stress and getting a loved one into treatment. The model I use with families is similar to this, so family members are supported at the same time as figuring out the detail of their loved one’s substance use in order to understand it and influence their loved one’s behaviour (note that I’ve said influence as you cannot change anyone else’s behaviour, it is their choice). Mainly, it builds resilience and coping strategies with family members so they can live a better life.
5-Step Method
I’ve now been trained in 5 step method (this has nothing to do with 12 steps!) which is a fantastic way of supporting family members in their own right. It doesn’t matter whether they have regular contact with the person using drugs or alcohol, whether they are in treatment themselves and it doesn’t even focus on their loved one at all. This is all about families. What they need, what they want to know and discussing whatever is important to them.
This is a unique and evidence-based model which has been tested out to work all over the world.
I deliver this over 6 sessions with an introductory session included:
1. Introduction, assessment and goal setting
2. Getting to know you and the problem
3. Providing you with relevant information
4. Exploring how you respond and cope
5. Exploring and enhancing social support
6. Identifying further needs and referring on for further help
It is a wonderful programme of support! Find out more on my website here as I’m offering this at my training rate and can deliver online so you can get the help in the comfort of your own home. You just need a set of headphones and a phone/laptop. I also offer my services in the Manchester area (UK).
Get in touch for a friendly chat about your situation and to find out more about my services.
Take care,
Victoria.
by Victoria Seed | Saturday, June 16, 2018 | Resilience
Resilience- how to cope under pressure
I attended Liggy Webb’s Resilience Master Class in Manchester a few years ago and I’ve been a huge fan of her work ever since. I am so excited that she has agreed to guest blog for us. Liggy has worked all over the world supporting individuals and organisations through her amazing knowledge and specialism of this subject. She ignited my passion for the subject which I taught to staff and managers in the NHS at the time. See my blog “How the Circle of Influence can help you lead a better life”.
Resilience is such an important skill/behaviour/attitude to have in order for us to cope with difficult situations thrown our way. That’s not to say that we will always be resilient all of the time and in every situation! Learning how to “be” resilient is crucial when living with a problematic drug or alcohol user. Whether you are in this situation or not, Liggy wrote this guest blog for me last year and it’s just too good not to re-post:
By Liggy Webb
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.
Japanese Proverb
What is resilience?
Some people describe resilience as the ability to bend instead of breaking when experiencing pressure or the ability to persevere and adapt when faced with challenges. These abilities help people to be more open and willing to take on new opportunities. In this way resilience is more than just survival, it is also about letting go and learning to grow.
Liggy’s work
Personally I find the topic of resilience fascinating and have spent the last few years deep in research exploring the habits and behaviors of resilient people. In the work that I do with the United Nations travelling to some very challenged parts of the world I have had the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life.
For my latest book Resilience – How to cope when everything around you changes I interviewed over 100 people who had experienced varying degrees of set backs. From these interviews and various other research channels I was able to create a competency framework around resilience, developing a deep understanding of the necessary coping strategies for dealing with adversity.
Personal experience
Then I was given a huge opportunity to personally put my knowledge and the strategies that I had designed to the test!
Two years ago, quite out of the blue after feeling very lethargic and out of sorts, I was diagnosed with a very rare tumour actually growing inside my heart. The prognosis was critical and open-heart surgery was the only way to proceed. For someone who is in good health and still in my forties it came as a huge shock. I guess we never really imagine things like this are going to happen to us until they do! The most significant thing that I learnt was that whilst we may not be able to control some of our circumstances, we can absolutely choose the way we respond to them.
I think in many ways I surprised myself, you never really know how you will react in these situations and it’s amazing how resourceful we can be when we need to.
I learnt so many things and I can honestly say it has certainly taught me a few things about recovery and indeed my own resilience. It was without doubt, life changing, with so many defining moments.
Top tips for resilience
Recently I was interviewed about my own experience with regards to recovery and asked to define the three most important resilience behaviors and this is what I concluded:
1. Accept your current situation
Let’s face it we all like to be in control, however, in some situations you have to put your trust in others hands and ask for help. For example, if we think of what we can control and what we can’t, we need to accept we cannot change the choices other people make. We can only change the way we behave. Sometimes acceptance of your situation and taking care of yourself is the best use of your energy.
Tips for accepting your current situation
- Remember acceptance is not about resignation, it is the recognition that fighting a situation that you cannot change may be a waste of personal resources
- Acceptance will put you in state of flow which will help to reduce stress and anxiety
- Learn that you cannot control other people’s choices
2. Take personal responsibility
Life can be very unpredictable and invariably we will all be subjected to various set backs and personal challenges. You can’t always control what happens to you in life.
You do however have total control about how you choose to respond to those situations. By taking personal responsibility for your reactions and attitude you will be far more empowered to cope and manage the ultimate outcome.
Tips for taking personal responsibility
- Acknowledge that you are in total control of your response to any situation that presents itself to you
- Be aware of the victim trap and focus on what you can do
- Avoid the blame game and spend your time seeking solutions – spend your time instead seeking solutions
3. Be positive
Thinking positively is not about putting your head in the sand and being unrealistic, as some people may believe. With a positive attitude you can recognise the negative aspects of a situation and then make a conscious decision to focus instead on the hope and opportunity that is available. This releases you from getting locked in a paralysing loop of negative emotion and allows you to bounce back from adversity and challenging experiences.
Tips for seeing the glass half full
- Try to make a conscious decision to challenge each negative thought and flip it over into a positive thought
- Understand that every experience in your life whether it is good, or bad will bring a valuable lesson with it which will enable you to cope better in the future.
- Remember that life is ultimately what you make of it and your attitude can have a huge impact on everything you experience
In summary
Being resilient takes effort and practice. It may well feel sometimes as if you are taking one step forwards and two steps back, almost as if you are doing a little dance with life. The key however is to keep moving and to not lose the faith that you can and will pull through if you remain positive and hopeful. The quicker that you can start recovering and bounce back, the better because life can pass so quickly and this is your golden opportunity to make the best and the most of it.
More information about resilience
Thanks so much to Liggy for writing a blog for us.
For access to a complimentary life skills library email liggy@liggywebb.com
Click to access The Little Book of Resilience
Check out Liggy’s Website
Please comment about what you do to keep resilient.
I can help
My service, The Vesta Approach, supports families affected by a loved one’s substance use. You can access confidential support from me wherever you are in the world. I will help you to get your loved one into treatment and lead a better life. I offer face to face sessions in the Manchester (UK) area or via Skype worldwide.
I also have an online therapeutic programme. Take a look at my services here
Follow me on Twitter and Facebook
Sign up to my mailing list here to keep up to date with Vesta news and get my free Ten Steps to Family Recovery download.
Take care,
Victoria.
