Is love the most powerful emotion in human existence?

Most people say it is impossible to change another person. I have watched families beg their addicted kids to accept the gift of treatment and I know that Love is enough. You just need to express it in ways that sometimes feel unbearable to do. The fear of stopping the status quo because they threaten to run away or hurt themselves. These are very hard realities at critical times to intervene.

Yet salespeople are in the business of changing other people. Teachers are in the business of changing the understanding of their students. Doctors are in the business of changing the health of their patients. Parents spend their lives trying to change their children to become upstanding citizens, responsible, kind, and contributors to society.

Love is a natural force that changes the person receiving it from their worse lives to a better one. In the addiction field, like many of the definitions in this field, “tough love” has as many different interpretations as it has professionals using the term.

Usually it means that one’s need to love their child, in this case an addict, is misguided. Tough love is described to be firm instructions, directions and an uncompromising attitude that drug use is not tolerated. Instead, sympathy and a willingness to do whatever their child request is too many times how parents of addicts related to their children.

Too many parents “enable” their children that are addicted by:

1.Feeling sorry for them.

(Sympathy kills and there is never a place where it is beneficial. There are places where it is socially more acceptable than others, like funerals, but the act of actually feeling sorry for someone else only makes them weaker.)

2. Believing that the parents can solve the addict’s problems and becoming overly involved in their lives.

It is sometimes extremely difficult for parents to allow their children to experiment on their own with the challenges of growing up. These children are protected from having to confront challenges of life, with the idea that the parents are being the ultimate caretakers by keeping hardship and pain away from their son or daughter’s world.

3. Bargaining and being reasonable when it comes to setting rules about the use of drugs and the consequences if those rules are violated.

This reasonableness can happen at any time from the first signs that drugs are being used to when the addict comes back from treatment. At any time, parents can sabotage the good work of treatment professionals by “giving in” to the complaining and rationales of their children.

It is common experience in the treatment realm to see parents that will go completely against the advice and recommendations of professionals by giving weight to their children’s request that are obviously being driving by manipulation to get what they want…continued drug use.

These parents need help to realize how difficult it is for their child to face and learn from the lessons of life. They will come to the treatment center when their child is in early treatment and go into agreement with the idea ; that they are not going to do drugs again; that they are good now and don’t need to stay in treatment.  The addict is very convincing and they know every button to push to get the agreement that they need to leave treatment.

The parents truthfully know that they “may” relapse and that their child isn’t thoroughly done with TX , but they delude themselves to have peace in the family and allow their child to leave treatment before it is recommended and before they are actually at a point where they can handle the cravings and temptations of using drugs again.

This is a very common and sad occurrence in treatment centers. Many times we find that fathers are weakest with their daughters and mothers with their sons, but the results are the same; a failed treatment.This becomes excessive when parents ignore the life-threatening dangers that can accompany addiction. Sometimes an addict completely unable to control their lives to the extent that they will put themselves in harm’s way if not given some support.

Not only is this tragic for the families, but it actually makes it harder to get their children back into treatment when they discover that they again relapsed. As then the addict carries the belief that treatment didn’t work.

So many people I talk to from Vancouver’s DTES say that treatment didn’t work for them , so could it possibly be because they did not want to be clean?? because that it was they tell me. They do not want to be free of the feeling of being high and are very scared to feel “normal” I know we can have this can of worms opened and hear  all the enablers of the profession tell us different. But curious if their kids are using drugs and how they would deal with that. I believe we can inspire kids to change and Love is the key.

So, Tough Love, was a term that was created to use with these parents so that they can have a message to not give in to the desires of someone that is addicted to alcohol or drugs. I also am very aware that intervening is not the only show on the road to help addicts. I also will help families by life coaching their kid to improving his or her life and meeting to help with all the resources I can muster to help them see that life can improve by small measures of action too.

It is recommended that parents that are dealing with situations of non-compliance with a loved one and are applying the principles of “tough love”, they should be advised from a skilled professional to help them know how far to go when forcing the treatment issue.

Parents struggle when it comes to the well being of a child that is addicted and is presenting them with “logical” arguments on why they need to leave treatment or not go at all. It is asking too much of parents to navigate these waters without professional help. We can love a person’s being and still protect ourselves from their behavior if that is necessary.  To think that loving someone means we have to accept being abused by them is dysfunctional – and it demonstrates a lack of Love for our self.  If we do not know how to be Loving to our self, then we cannot Truly Love another person in a healthy way.  If we do not honor our self, show respect for our self, by having boundaries – then the other person is not going to respect us.

Usually guide the families to the process of understanding and the hard realities that addiction can bring even they give in. I also don’t tell families to kick their children to the street. I help each situation differently and guide the parents to the decisions that need to be made and the bottom lines.

That is one reason that we are here. Our years of experience can help and know when to act and when to be more passive; how far to push the “tough love” rules and under what conditions are they allowed to be broken.

Linda

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://infidelityrecoveryinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1969146_10152256746900498_1384919852_n.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Linda Jane Devlin, Interventionist , CIP, I.C.A.D.C.- “I have worked in the field of healthcare for twenty years and have seen the destruction that addiction has and can have on the most amazing people in this world.” Contact Linda [/author_info] [/author]