The Things We Do for Love: Avoiding Co-Dependency When Addiction Affects Your Relationships

Valentine’s Day is a time to show your appreciation for those you love, often with gifts, a special dinner or even doing a few chores so that they can relax and feel at ease. But, when addiction is part of your relationship, there can be a very fine line between showing your love and support and enabling substance use with codependent behavior. This is especially true in romantic and parent-child relationships where one partner or the child is battling addiction. Naturally, we want so badly to help our partner or child get better, protect them from harm, and maintain the relationship by keeping the peace, that it’s hard NOT to succumb to codependent or enabling behavior. And many times, this happens without the enabler even realizing. Unfortunately, whether it’s intentional or not, codependency can be extremely detrimental to the recovery process and keep both the addict and the enabler caught in a quagmire of destructive behavior. The key to breaking the cycle and providing healthy support for those you love is to: Acknowledge the behavior. Implement strategies that help you both break the chains of addiction and codependency. What is codependency? The first step is to recognize the behavior. Codependency most often involves one person catering almost exclusively to the extreme emotional or physical needs of the person suffering from substance use, often at the expense of their own well-being. The enabler will give in to their loved one’s demands, either volunt...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Addiction Alcoholism Recovery Relationships Substance Abuse Addiction Recovery addiction support Codependency Codependent Coercion Enabling Guilt Trip Manipulation Source Type: blogs