How I Learned to Stop Enabling and Start Helping

Between her former husband, her brother, and her sister-in-law, Melissa had been surrounded by people in active addiction for years. She was loaning money, bailing people out of jail, and doing whatever she could to try to help. But like many people in this position, all her efforts didn’t seem to get anywhere. In fact, the addictions of her loved ones and their consequences only seemed to be getting worse. She was exhausted and didn’t know what to do, only that she couldn’t keep going the way she was. It was about that time that she was on Facebook and came across Addressing Addiction in the Home, a workbook put together by us here at MARR for family members in Melissa’s position. She started going through the workbook filling the pages with her own examples of how she had been pulled into the family disease of addiction. She began bringing the workbook to her therapist to get support in changing how she interacted with her family members. She shares with us some of the insights she has gained as a result of working through this material, and how she has started her recovery from the family disease. If you’re interested in checking out the workbook for yourself, visit www.marrinc.org/workbook. 0:01 – Intro 2:38 How Melissa heard about MARR 9:00 Learning about the disease of addiction 11:30 The family disease of addiction 13:20 Building tolerance for the addict’s behavior 15:40 Addiction is a monster that everyone’s feeding 16:20 Realizing how she had been enabling 18:20 How it felt to see things differently 20:29 The difficulty of setting boundaries 23:20 The urge to jump in and rescue 26:52 What Melissa would pass on to people who are listening