Hope for Creating Personal Boundaries in the Addicted Home
Effective personal boundaries are life-enhancing!
Recently, Sanford Behavioral Health Founder Rae Green and I presented an educational in-service for the Mental Health Association of Michigan. Our focus was on boundaries (personal or external) for recovering families. After the presentation, I began thinking deeply about boundaries and recovery. I became even stronger in my belief that families dealing with addiction have issues with establishing and maintaining healthy personal boundaries.
Hope for Personal Boundaries
The very presence of addictive disease requires a family to let go of their boundaries and live with a loss of structure, roles, and predictability. The best hope of recovery for the individual with a substance use disorder (SUD) and their family includes healthy personal boundaries being acquired and implemented. There are two important steps:
- Step one is to learn about addiction.
- Step two is learning about boundaries: what they are and what is going on currently within the family.ย
These steps drive my belief that family members with resistance from their substance-using loved one must seek treatment for themselves and their boundary issues. The presence and process of addictive disease in the human brain prevents the seeking of treatment. Oftentimes, the cart must lead the horse. I hope readers of this article will read and then re-read steps one and two until they fully comprehend the meaning! Please seek professional help for yourself whether or not your loved one is in treatment.
I want to share a few key points from our presentation on boundaries.
When there are poor, nonexistent, or inconsistent boundaries in a family dealing with addiction, the family member with the SUD has no idea how their behavior is negatively impacting the mental and physical health of their family. In other words, they do not feel the negative consequences of their behavior. So, they do not feel any motivation for change.ย
- We want solutions for addiction that preserve families rather than break them apart; boundaries are a tool to accomplish this.ย
- Personal boundaries regulate all our relationships with family, partners, co-workers, and friends.ย
- Personal boundaries exist to keep us physically and emotionally safe in life situations.ย
- Effective personal boundaries are life-enhancing and, when consistently practiced, will begin to bring about positive changes.ย
- Learning to identify and regularly practice personal boundaries is not easy; it takes time.ย
Building Personalย Boundaries
ย So, if what I have shared with you so far sounds interesting or tweaks some of your past learning, why not try to build healthier boundaries in your life? I recommend Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. I suggest you treat yourself to a copy and give it as a gift. Here is a sample from the book:
HOW TO ESTABLISH HEALTHY BOUNDARIESย
- Identify the symptoms of your boundaries that have been dishonored or ignored.
- Identify the irrational or unhealthy thinking and beliefs by which you allow your boundaries to be ignored or violated.ย
- Find new, more rational thinking and beliefs that will encourage you to change your behaviors so that you build healthy boundaries between yourself and others.
- Identify new behaviors you need to add to your healthy boundary-building to sustain healthy boundaries between you and others.ย
- Implement healthy boundary-building beliefs and behaviors in your life so that your space, privacy, and rights are no longer ignored or dishonored.ย
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I often share with groups at Sanford Behavioral Health, โWhat we live, we learn; what we learn, we practice; what we practice, we become.โ This statement helps us understand ourselves, how we got to where we are, and where we want to be!ย
Enjoy this Special Season of Hope!ย
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