Understand how to heal YOU while loving those suffering from addiction.
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Living around addiction is overwhelming. Plain and simple. Over time, it can feel as if it consumes your entire world. Using your tools like support systems, therapy and daily practices can lead to healing and mitigating this overwhelm… but how do you get there when you’re in the thick of it?
Baby steps.
I’m talking small, snail-barely-crawling-forward progress.
And it works over time, but we have to give it time (keep reading below for some Dialectical Behavior Techniques (DBT) to help cope with overwhelm.
When you are deep, deep in overwhelm the idea of making a massive overhaul and shift in your life can feel… well, overwhelming.
Your world is already a lot. You are living with the heartache and unpredictability of being around addiction. Your body and mind feel uneasy because your world feels unstable. You are maxed out just trying to maintain the facade of your “normal” life.
Even tasks and activities that used to feel super simple and doable can feel insurmountable.
And that is O K A Y!
Feeling that way makes complete sense when you are living around addiction.This can then lead to physical symptoms such as headaches, struggles with digestion, inability to sleep, and muscle tension– to name a few.
It’s like your system is constantly running at capacity and then it falls into overload. And......overload leads overwhelm, which leads to shut down.
Living in a constant and consistent state of overwhelm puts your nervous system into a constant state of heightened stress. That stress begins to monopolize your nervous system. It completely overwhelms your experience. One thing that can lead to overwhelm is compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue is an emotional, physical, and mental state of exhaustion that occurs when someone regularly witnesses someone they care for suffering or in distress. Compassion fatigue can lead to a reduced capacity to be empathetic and compassionate, emotional numbness and detachment, physical symptoms like fatigue, headaches, and insomnia, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, and an increased risk for burnout and depression.
This means that it is completely normal to feel so overwhelmed when watching someone go through an addiction that you can’t feel empathy for their situation anymore.
RADICAL ACCEPTANCE: A DBT tool to help you naviagate overwhelm!
Radical acceptance can be very tricky when it comes to feeling the emotion of “overwhelmed.” When feeling like this, it’s difficult to find something that slows your brain down. With Radical Acceptance, nothing is going to change your thoughts or feelings about what is happening, however, you are just allowing yourself the idea that what is - is fact and reality.
You are fully accepting what is happening mindfully, emotionally, mentally and physically when you take a step to breathe, see what is happening in the moment, and accepting the reality. You DO NOT have to like or enjoy it, but you come to terms that it has been done. Acceptance of yourself and the situation is the first step to healing.
For example, a family member of yours relapsed again. Your first initial reaction might be to be extremely disappointed, upset, and overall overwhelmed with the idea that they have chosen to use again. When using Radical Acceptance, you are able to sit with the emotions whether they are “good” or “bad”and understand the reality of the situation, and are able to move forward because what is done, is completed. You don’t have to like what they have done, but accepting the fact of the matter allows you to move on from the overwhelmed feelings and alleviates extra emotions.
To do this, you can follow the key terms:
A --- stands for Activities…what activities can you engage in for focus and concentration(maybe distraction?)
C --- stands for Contributing…you can focus on contributing to another person in some way that suits!
C --- stands for Comparison…this one is tricky, but remembering a time there was another overwhelming incident and how you overcame that!
E --- stands for Emotions…do something that will create a challenge to the current emotion. If overwhelmed, listen to calming music!
P --- stands for Pushing Away…push negative thoughts away or focusing on thinking about something else in your life, to think about the situation another time if you need! Thoughts are all about what we want to accept into our brains or not!
T --- stands for Thoughts…occupy your mind with something instead of dwelling on the subject!
S --- stands for Sensations…hold an ice cube in your hand, go for a run to sweat, eat something sour!
Sweet Sunrise!
4-6 ounces of your favorite orange juice
½ to 1 ounce grenadine to taste
Orange Slice for Garnish
Fill a large glass with your choice of ice, fill the glass with the orange juice first, add the grenadine over top of the juice, top it off with the orange slice garnish and TA-DA!!!!
Online:
1) The Healing Circle -
Free online monthly somatic healing session (led by Heidi, founder of Life N Flow). Mondays @ 6am MST. Learn more and sign up here.
2) The Heart of Recovery -
A weekly meeting that joins Buddhist meditation and spiritual step work, in order to connect to and engage in a commitment to recovery from addiction, and the everyday addictive behaviors and patterns in our lives. Anyone is invited to participate. Learn more here.
3) Al-Anon Meetings -
Al-Anon is a mutual support group for those that live around addiction. Anyone who's lives have been affected by another person’s addiction is welcome. Online electronic meeting information found here.
Local Laramie Events:
1) Al-Anon Meetings -
This link has all recovery meetings for the area, scroll down to see the Al-Anon meeting times and locations. Click here.
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