Being able to accurately and honestly identify what our needs and feelings are can be a real challenge.  If no one in your household is making things difficult, does this mean you are having a good day?  Let’s say your loved one is home and has not shown evidence that their addiction is rearing its ugly head.  They are actually following through with what they say they are going to do.  This is a good thing right?  Maybe you don’t want to be the cause of them beginning to think about drinking or using drugs so you are polite and try to be a good person or a nice wife, husband, parent or whatever.  You are being supportive.

This is your wakeup call.  In this particular scenario, there are two people.  It appears that only one person is getting consideration.  One person is not supposed to quietly suffer while the other is getting well.  Both of you have needs that must be met

There is something in Alanon called the three C’s.  It goes like this: You didn’t cause it. You can’t control it and you can’t cure it.  I like to add a fourth “C”: But you can contribute to the problem.

Your day should not be dependent upon whether or not someone else is having a good day.  Someone should be taking care of you and there is no one better to do this job than you.  This has a lot of perks.  When you have successes, you get to feel the rewards for those successes instead of just getting relief because you aren’t feeling the pain of someone else’s failures.  Sure it feels good when pains stops but don’t you want more than that for yourself?  I’m just saying…

How about seeing your own therapist to help you take stock in what your needs and feelings actually are.  It is helpful to have a non biased professional to help sort out our feelings.  We all can use an emotional tune-up now and then.

You can call your insurance carrier to get referrals for therapists or you can go to http://www.samhsa.gov or http://www.hopelinks.net/codependency for more resources.

As always, I encourage new ideas to old problems.  All responses will be printed.

Ms. George