The Emotional Impact of Addiction on Family Members

Anger
Fear
Guilt
Sadness
Happiness

Anyone who has a family member struggling with addiction knows the emotional tsunami it so often brings with it. Aside from the flood of feelings that the addict themselves is dealing with, there are a host of strong and sticky emotions that family members grapple with throughout the addiction and recovery process.

To begin, it’s important to remember that these emotions are normal, and to be expected in any healthy individual!

Let’s talk about these emotions and explore some helpful ways to deal with them.

1. Anger

More than anything else, anger is often the number-one emotion that family members feel towards their addicted loved one. Anger that they’ve caused you so much searing pain. Anger that they’ve lied, cheated, and betrayed your fragile trust way too many times to count. Anger that they’ve torn apart a once stable and happy family unit. Anger that they’ve brought the shame and stigma of addiction upon your family. Anger that they’ve made you live in horrible fear and uncertainty for so long. And the list goes on…

Anger is a primal, powerful emotion that can help us defend ourselves in moments of danger or distress. However, when nursed for too long, anger acts as a corrosive chemical does upon its container, and it will eat us up alive. As grueling as it may sound, we need to process and then let go of our anger -if for no reason other than our own happiness and emotional wellbeing.

How do we work through our burden of anger after we’ve been carrying it around for so long?

Firstly, get professional help. It might sound overwhelming or downright embarrassing, but speaking to a qualified mental health professional is critical. Your mental health is just as important as your addicted loved one’s!
Together with your counselor, you’ll work through and validate the anger you so rightfully feel, and give yourself time to process it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll gain effective therapeutic tools and techniques that will help you let go and begin the journey to forgiveness.

Learn About Addiction. No matter how up close and personal you’ve gotten with addiction during your years of living with an addict, you still can’t completely understand all that your addicted loved one has gone through. And despite recent awareness and education initiatives, people still view addiction as a willful choice and moral failing of sorts rather than the clinical disease it really is.
Read up on addiction as much as you can, educating yourself on the condition, its causes, and its impact on its victims. You may feel your heart begin to soften as you get a glimpse into the living nightmare your loved one endured as they battled a disease they never asked for.

Take care of yourself. Self-care may be a trending buzzword right now, but the importance of truly caring for yourself can’t be overstated. Take the time to tune in to your physical and mental needs. If your loved one is now in treatment, capitalize on this quiet time to really focus on yourself and begin doing the things that their addiction didn’t allow you before.
Self-care can be anything - exercise, a hot bath, shopping with friends, going out to eat, meditating, yoga, sitting on the beach, or watching your favorite movie. Do whatever it is that will fill your inner bucket, making you feel peaceful, content, and cared for.

Attend support groups for families of addicts. - Al-Anon and Nar-Anon are both great options as family support groups. If you’re looking for something different, find out if there are other family groups offered by local recovery networks. If your loved one is currently in treatment, find out if their treatment center offers support groups for families of clients.
Family support groups are invaluable because they provide a safe space for you to share, cry, and process the trauma you’ve endured with other people who deeply understand. And most importantly, it helps you realize that you’re truly not alone – you’re not the first person to have felt this way, and you definitely are not the last! Embrace the community you find, and let them carry you as you begin to heal from your journey.

2. Fear

Another very common emotion for families of addicts is fear. When you have a loved one grappling with substance use disorder, there’s so much to be fearful of every single day. You’re afraid that:

They might overdose and die.
They might become permanently disabled or die from an accident while drunk or high.
They might kill someone else through an accident while drunk or high.
They might become violent while drunk or high.
They might be arrested due to criminal behavior while under the influence.
They might develop serious health issues, or die, due to their constantly abusing their body.
Their addiction will bring horrible shame, judgement, and isolation upon you and your family.
Their addiction will cause you serious financial difficulties – whether through arrest, jail, job loss, or addiction-related health problems.
Your children may experience the same addiction as your loved one or may marry an addict, perpetuating the cycle of suffering and dysfunction in the next generation.
You will remain emotionally scarred for the rest of your life due to your loved one’s addiction.
If you set boundaries, your addicted loved one will leave you or make your life miserable.

Once they’re safe in treatment, you might be afraid that they’ll leave AMA (against medical advice). Even once they’re in recovery, you might be afraid they’ll relapse.

In short, there is never any shortage of things to be fearful about. And they may all be valid, worthwhile points!

But if we don’t choose to face and let go of our fears, they can accompany us for a lifetime. This is why it’s so important to recognize and validate our fear, work it through (whether with professional help or personal techniques), and then kiss it goodbye. Once we recognize the futility of living in stress and fear, and receive the help we need to overcome it, we can move forward and start truly living again.

3. Guilt

In the crazy world that is addiction, guilt is a common emotion too. Although we know logically that our loved one’s addiction is their problem alone, our minds may play tricks on us. We may feel that perhaps:

Something we did caused our loved one’s addiction to develop.
Something we did made our loved one’s addiction worse.
If we had sheltered them more, we could have stopped the addiction from developing at all.
If we had extended ourselves more, we could have stopped the addiction from progressing.

If they get clean and then relapse, we may then feel guilty that:

We didn’t support them enough in their recovery for them to stay sober.
We were not aggressive enough in our attempts to get them and keep them clean.

However, guilt is a toxic, unhealthy, and destructive emotion for anyone to harbor – and all the more so for a person already bearing the heavy emotional burden that comes with an addiction. Feeling guilty about your loved one’s substance use disorder doesn’t help the addict, it doesn’t help the other members of your family who need you, and above all – it most certainly doesn’t help you. All it will do is withhold you from being the very best version of yourself that you can be. As hard as it may sound, for your own physical and emotional wellbeing, you must let go of that guilt.

Below are some helpful points to consider and remind yourself of whenever you feel guilt creeping up:

Your loved one’s addiction is NOT YOUR FAULT. Your loved one is a person who made a lot of mistakes in life, mistakes that led them down a path they probably didn’t want to follow. Even if they cannot be held fully responsible for their actions, you are absolutely not to blame for the bad choices they made in life.
Your loved one is an independent person, and you cannot control every move they make. Even if it feels like you ought to supervise your loved one from dawn to dusk, sheltering and keeping them safe, you simply can’t. As much as you can encourage and guide them in the right direction, your addicted loved one is their own person. and you can’t control their every action.
Relapse is never a sign of your failure. There is nothing as disheartening as relapse, but it is a natural and expected part of the recovery process. If your loved one gets clean and then relapses, it’s not a sign that you’ve failed in your efforts; it’s a sign that your loved one is human. With your help, they’ll come out stronger in the end.
Never stop hoping. If your loved one is still in the trenches of addiction, don’t give up hope! It can hurt to hope because it keeps us open and vulnerable to the pain that addiction brings, but it hurts even more to live without hope. Learn to hope responsibly, finding a balance between your dreams and reality, but never despair. Recovery is always, always possible!

4. Sadness

If your loved one is struggling with addiction, you’re probably feeling some level of sadness – ranging anywhere from mild melancholy to all-out grief. Addiction is a devastating disease, and watching the terrible toll it takes on a person you love can suck the sunshine out of your life. They may be physically present near you, but their heart and mind are lost in a parallel universe you can’t seem to access…

In essence, you’ve watched a person precious to you slip away, and that is a huge and valid loss. You lost their steady presence, you lost their listening ear and helping hand. Maybe you’ve lost a steady income source. Maybe you’ve lost the father or mother of your children, and in their place is a shell of a person that you can’t recognize.

This is why professionals and people with personal experience have often observed that “loving someone through addiction can feel like the stages of grief.” Although they’re snoring in the recliner across the room from you, you’re mourning them as though their funeral has already been held – and that makes sense!

Below are the stages of grief:

Denial and Isolation – Our first and most natural reaction to a loss is denial, our natural defense mechanism. Facing reality is far too painful and overwhelming, so we instead shut it out.
Anger and Guilt – After denial, the next thing we’re prone to feeling is “Why me”? We feel angry that this fate had to befall us, of all people. We may also feel a tad guilty, thinking that their addiction may somehow be our fault.
Bargaining – Within the chaos that addiction brings, many people try to regain control by making deals with their loved one. We look for ways to manage the addiction on our own and avoid seeking the professional help the addict needs.
Depression – Once reality sinks in, sadness and depression can overtake us as we struggle to deal with this new life. This depression is compounded by the paralyzing fear that our addicted loved one will ultimately die from the disease they are fighting.
Acceptance – Finally – hopefully! - after going through each of the stages, we reach a place of acceptance and tentative hope. We make peace with reality as it is, arm ourselves with the hope that everything will turn out okay, and then tighten our belts for the journey ahead. Once we reach the stage of acceptance, we are ready to deal with the situation and move ahead constructively.

It's so important to work through your feelings of grief so that you can process them in a healthy way. Validating and then moving past our emotions, rather than wallowing in them, helps us move on and live a happy, beautiful, productive life – even after a loved one’s addiction.

5. Happiness

This last emotion is a good one -hold on to it for all you can!

If your loved one is in an addiction treatment center, or has successfully graduated rehab and is now sober, you likely feel an overwhelming sense of relief and joy. The horrific experience of active addiction is past, and your boat is now in calm waters. You’re happy, life is peaceful, and you pray that your loved one continues working and staying strong in their sobriety.

If this is the case, use the moment to recognize how far you’ve come and relish the view from the top of the mountain. You deserve it – after all, you made the climb! Grab the opportunity to begin taking care of yourself in ways you couldn’t before, both physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Now that you’re past this experience, it’s a great time to begin seeking professional help to work through the many complicated emotions you’ve experienced throughout this journey. Remember - seeing a mental health professional is not a source of shame, but pride. It means that you’re taking the time to care for your mind as well as your body, and learning to live your very best life. A healthy you is the biggest gift you can give to your loved one in recovery!

Additionally, if you’ve been struggling with forgiving your loved one, use your present happiness as an incentive to begin understanding them and softening your heart. Acknowledge that they’ve been through a huge amount, but have fought their demons and come out stronger in the end. With your constant support, they’ll continue to stand strong – and enjoy the beauty and blessing of a life in recovery for many years to come!

If you or a loved one is struggling with substance abuse disorders, reach out to Avenues Recovery Center at any time to speak to our trained and friendly treatment specialists. They’ll provide a free evaluation, answer any and all of your questions, and guide you to the level of care and facility that is best for you. They’re standing by, ready and waiting to help – all you need to do is reach out!

Begin your journey home today with Avenues Recovery Center.

Top 5 Emotions for Families of Addicts