Relationships & Behavioral Addiction Recovery

How does behavioral addiction, relapse and sobriety affect family life?

When you have reached the end state that we call addiction, you've gone through a variety of phases. You've gone through a variety of phases including relapsing, experimentation, and escalation (perhaps spending money and things like that). Don't think that you've gone through this alone. Your family has gone along with it if you're not single, of course. Your family has gone through a roller coaster experience with you; ups and downs, and backs and forths, and they are at the end like hanging on to the end of the dog's tail. They have been very much involved with all these ups and downs, these roller coaster experiences; they have been involved through the sobriety and falling off the sobriety, and involvement in treatment and non-involvement in treatment, and your mood swings, and things like that. You are not an island. They have not engaged in destructive behaviour, per se, but they have been actively shadowing you in some way, and they are very profoundly been affected by your involvements.

What is "codependency," and how does it affect a recovering behavioral addict?

Codependency is a lay term that just really means that there is a less than healthy relationship between you and a significant person to yourself, to the point where that significant person fosters (not actively) the continuation of the destructive behaviour. Codependency implies that there is a cohort; an individual who won't necessarily say go ahead and engage in it, but through their passivity, through their making money available, will endorse the involvement in the destructive behaviour.

How does codependency play a role in relationships for behavioral addicts?

Let's say you're married to somebody who's co-dependent with you. That means that if you don't address this partner, your co-dependent individual, and probably engage them with you in the recovery process, there's going to be a mighty clash; a clash of substantial proportion that actually may dissolve the relationship. So, the co-dependent must be brought to an awareness of their component in the continuation of the behaviour, and perhaps may be involved in their own individual therapy or couples' therapy, or in some way be as integrally a part of recovery as the individual with the addiction themselves.

How can family and friends support the behavioral addiction recovery process?

The family can play an extremely important role in the behavioural addiction recovery process. What does it look like, again depends on the family and the sort of the evolution of what has happened to the family during the course of the addiction, the recovery, the sobriety, and the falling off the sobriety, and things like that. Generalities about what the family can do and what loved ones can do are, generally speaking, no shaming, no blaming; it's not particularly helpful to continually ask them, "How are you doing?" Even though it's coming from the right part of your heart, it's generally not a good thing for the addict to constantly have to explain or defend themselves as to what they're doing or they're not doing. The family can support them going off to treatment, whether that's a nightly support group or a month in a residential, rather than resisting it and fighting them. The family can not protect the individual totally from the stresses that go on in the family as normal, but try not to bombard someone who has just come out of a treatment programme with all the problems of the day and put them exclusively responsible for solving them. Again, I don't want the family to be avoidant and put that individual in a position where they have no stresses, but to realise that there needs to be a ramping up of how to cope with stress. The family should realise that they can bring the difficulties and problems that need to be solved to the individual over time, rather than in one lump sum.

What can loved ones expect in the first six weeks of behavioral addiction recovery?

Family members and loved ones can expect quite a lot in the first six weeks of behavioural addiction recovery. They're probably going to see more dramatic shifts in behavior and mood during the first six weeks of someone with a behavioural addiction on a recovery process than any other time. There will be changes in the recovery of the individual over the course of time but they won't be as dramatic and in such a condensed way. During the first six weeks, depending on the severity of the addiction, how much reliance the addict had on the particular behavior, so too much generality won't be helpful, the family can expect more mood swings, maybe short tempered behaviour, maybe falling asleep earlier, difficulty maintaining concentration on tyipcal activities, to be much more pronounced during the first six weeks or so than they will find down the road. They need to be patient with the recovering individual and let their neurochemistry take it's course, be patient with them and let their coping skills evolve over the course of time.

Do family members and friends sometimes have unrealistic expectations of recovering behavioral addicts?

It's very difficult to change the minds of loved ones if they have a predetermined notion of what behavioural addiction is about. If you want to change their mind, generally speaking, I would suggest that you educate them, and that education may come through formal mental health practioners describing things, or having them read a book, or suggessting an article, or having them talk to somebody they look up to - a physican who can explain this phonemon in more depth than they have traditionally acquired off the street. But again, I think the biggest danger in not being able to change a loved ones prespective lies in the notion that addiction, whatever type of addiction, is an immorality or a character weakness. Just as bad, even though this may seem controversial, that addiction is simply a disease. It is a much more complex phenomenon when the individual is trying to cope, with all their heart in most cases, with very uncomfortable feelings, and you need to give them credit for it. It's not that they are weak. In fact they may be quite strong, but they are struggling. If there is anything the family can do, it is have empathy with the individual and their struggle, and see that maybe they won't understand it, but if they can see the struggle within them, accept that as part of it. It is not simple. It is not a light switch that you can turn off. It is not a book that you read that you can magically stop reading or put down. I even believe that accepting a harm reduction approach would help the family to cope with the relapses better, if they understand these learning opportunities. Maybe another example would be, depending who was in the family, to find something in the history of the family, or the individuals in the family. Let's say the mother, who is quite judgemental about the recovery of her daughter, was overweight at one time and ate too much. Maybe you could show her it wasn't a single event when she decided to lose weight. Drawing up some behavioural comparisons between the addicted individual and a friend or family member may help the family and friends of the individual understand the struggle.

How can recovering addicts deal with work issues?

In recovery work plays a varying role with addicts. Again it all depends on if you are the owner of a large corporation where you have a lot of responsibilities or if you are someone who really doesn't have a lot of responsibilities and work doesn't interfere at all. It really depends on the individual and their particular orientation or relationship with work and the obligations of it. Some people choose to cut off work and not be involved at all during the early phases of recovery and only slowly integrate back in to the work environment but other people try to keep work going at the standard pace. This may or not be advised. I'm not suggesting either way is correct. It also depends on the orientation of your employer. Are they going to be accepting of you? If you tell them that you have an addiction or you're in a recovery program, are they going to be accepting or are you going to lose your job? It's a very delicate topic in contemporary life, the issue of having an addiction and being part of a work force. Particularly, certain addictions are totally taboo and I wouldn't advise anyone tell their employer unless their emplyer happened to be a mental health practitioner