Mike, one of our interventionists, said something in a group call recently that stopped everyone cold…

“When your loved one overdoses or blacks out, only one person remembers it. And it’s not them.”

Let that sink in for a second.

Your loved one overdoses. You find them. You call 911. You ride in the ambulance or follow behind, shaking. You watch the EMTs work on them. You pace the hospital hallway. You wait to hear if they’re going to live.

You experience every single second of that terror. The grief. The helplessness. The relief when they wake up. The rage that they did this again.

And your loved one?

They were awake one minute and not the next. They missed the entire event.

They don’t remember you finding them. They don’t remember the ambulance. They don’t fully remember the hospital. They don’t carry the trauma of wondering if this was the time they wouldn’t wake up.

That trauma? That’s yours. Not theirs.

This is what I mean when I say the family’s experience and the addict’s experience are very different things.

In this scenario, one person is trying to figure out how to get high again while the other is trying to figure out how to get them to never get high again. 

Both spiraling. 

And both require their own recovery path.

Most families don’t understand this. They think if they just explain how terrifying it was, if they just make their loved one UNDERSTAND what they put the family through, it will create change.

But your loved one can’t understand an experience they don’t remember. They can’t feel the weight of something they weren’t present for.

You don’t intellectualize someone out of an illness. 

You’re carrying a trauma they don’t even remember happening.

Here’s another example:

A dad comes to me and says, “My daughter is so selfish. She doesn’t care how much pain she’s causing this family.”

I ask him: “What are you observing? And what are you feeling about what you’re observing?”

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me what you’re seeing her DO. Just the facts.”

“She’s using. She’s lying about it. She stole money from her grandmother. She missed her nephew’s birthday party.”

“Okay. Those are observations. Now tell me what you are FEELING about those observations.”

“I’m furious. I’m heartbroken. I feel betrayed. I feel like she doesn’t give a damn about any of us.”

Here’s the distinction:

The using, the lying, the stealing, the missing the party – those are behaviors. Those are hers.

The fury, the heartbreak, the betrayal, the feeling that she doesn’t care – those are yours.

And here’s what happens when you tangle the two together: You take it personally. You make it about you. You call your pain “her selfishness.” You call your heartbreak “her not caring.”

But addiction isn’t personal. It’s a disease. And the disease doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t care about family birthday parties. It doesn’t care about grandmother’s stolen money.

Your feelings are valid. And they’re yours.

Not hers to fix. Not hers to manage. Not hers to take responsibility for.

Yours.

This is Step 2 of our framework: Untangle You.

Separate what’s yours (your trauma, your fear, your anger, your grief) from what’s theirs (their disease, their behaviors, their choices).

Because when you don’t do this, you stay stuck. You operate from emotion instead of strategy. You make decisions based on your fear instead of what actually works. You keep trying to make them FEEL what you’re feeling so they’ll change.

And it doesn’t work. Because they’re not living in your experience. They’re living in theirs. And often, they don’t even remember the worst parts.

At Tipping Point Recovery, we practice this skill every single day.

We ask: What’s yours to manage? What are you observing versus what are you feeling about it?

It sounds simple. It’s not.

Because for most families, their entire nervous system is wired to their loved one’s chaos. Every text sets off alarm bells. Every call triggers panic. Every day of silence creates spiraling thoughts.

You’re living in their addiction even when they’re not in front of you.

Learning to untangle means recognizing: Their addiction is theirs. Your reaction to it is yours. Both are real. Both matter. But they’re not the same thing.

Here’s what happens when families learn this:

They stop getting activated by every text, every lie, every crisis.
They stop making fear-based decisions.
They reclaim their emotional bandwidth.
They can respond instead of react.
They start doing their OWN recovery work instead of trying to manage someone else’s.

Because here’s the truth: Your loved one’s recovery is not your job. Your recovery IS your job.

You’ve been carrying trauma they don’t even remember. You’ve been managing chaos that isn’t yours to manage. You’ve been trying to make them feel what you’re feeling so they’ll change.

What if you stopped?

What if you let their experience be theirs and your experience be yours?

What if you focused on recovering from what YOU’VE been through instead of trying to make them recover from what they don’t even remember?

That’s what untangling looks like. And that’s where your power actually lives.

In my next newsletter, I’m going to show you what to DO from that untangled place. Because understanding is just the beginning. Action is what creates change.

Talk soon,
Kate

P.S. If you’re realizing you’ve been carrying trauma that isn’t yours to carry, if you need help untangling your experience from theirs, that’s exactly what we do in our programs. You don’t have to figure out how to recover alone. Visit tippingpointrecovery.com to learn more.