Hi, I’m Kate Duffy, CEO of Tipping Point™ Recovery, and today I wanna talk about a comment someone made on one of our posts. Your comments are so appreciated because I can respond back to you. 

And this is a Recovery Conversation™ and literally how our entire curriculum has been built over the last six years. It is through these conversations with you, who are facing these complex challenges, that we have built the framework to most effectively deal with the issues. 

Through these conversations, you learn about this complex and baffling disease, and you learn new ways to handle it and respond to it, and ultimately you and your loved one can both get on your respective recovery paths. 

So this comment says, “Thank you for your insight. It’s hard not to be negative when my loved one has fallen off the bed, soiled himself and the sheets, and begs for me to go to the liquor store at 2:00 AM and I won’t.”

To that I reply: Indeed, it is. It’s extremely hard to be positive in that situation, and I must stress, I probably can’t say enough, our message is never for you to just swallow it, shove it down, simply accept that it must be this way, at all. 

Our message is for you to know that you do not have to accept this for yourself and that there are many things you can do to change the dynamics. We want you to know there is a better way to handle things that is not only best for you, it is best for your loved one too!

In this situation, acknowledge your feelings. In the moment recognize that those feelings are valid, they are hurting you, and that they certainly won’t get someone sober. So we have to address you and your feelings first.

Why must we address you and your feelings first?  I’ll answer that in another video as there is more to say about this. 

In the meantime, as the addiction progresses, the majority of individuals are not likely to raise their hand, stand up and display the tenacity and resilience needed to begin the journey of climbing out.

It usually does not happen like this. 

Often, a bit of willingness can be manufactured when someone around them makes certain changes, which is why we are talking to you. 

When you begin to do things differently, things can change. And so yes, it’s terribly uncomfortable to be in this situation. You do not need to be OK with it. In fact, I’ve personally been through living with a partner in active addiction. I know how maddening and horrible this can be. 

These feelings you have about the situation are hurting you. It won’t help them, for sure, for you to just tolerate it.

Your suffering won’t make anyone better.

Your suffering isn’t allowing you to fully live your life. 

Your suffering is a mirror to their suffering. 

When you are both suffering, no one is getting well. 

Let that land for a minute, right? Being a martyr isn’t heroic. And there is no sense beating yourself up about it. It’s just where you are. When you love someone it’s hard to just leave, just walk away. 

The good news is there is another way.

Now, I can’t give you the entire curriculum in this short blog, but I suggest you watch our videos so you can start to unpack what to do. 

And at this moment, you’re right that you don’t want to go to the liquor store at 2:00 AM for someone. I also want to point out that your no to this person isn’t necessarily going to be met with a favorable reply!  

→ Don’t expect them to say “Oh, sorry, Sweetie, for asking you this. I understand.” 

We wish! 

That’s just unlikely to happen. By the way, what this person is asking you for is what has become a life threatening medication that they feel they can’t live without at that moment. And this disease will do whatever it can to cajole, manipulate and maneuver someone into giving it relief!

So what do you do? First you become aware, and then you tell someone about it. 

Awareness and honesty are where it must begin.  

The person who made this comment has shown this awareness. Commenting on it helped her get it out there, to be honest with another person. 

The next thing I’d like you to do is begin to whisper to yourself, “I matter. I matter.” Put your hand on your heart and take a deep breath in and say to yourself, “I matter. I matter.”  Write it in a journal one hundred times. Look in the mirror and say YOU MATTER. And tell someone that you love, “I matter.”

So step one is awareness. Step two is honestly sharing it with another person: “I matter.”

We take baby steps here to begin when we’re looking to create change from patterns we’ve been stuck in for years, sometimes more years than not. 

Now you want you to say, “I deserve to not feel this way. I matter and I deserve to not feel this way.” So just for this moment, my encouragement to you is to turn away from the mess for a moment. Put your feet planted on the ground, your hand on your heart, take a deep breath and say, “I matter. I deserve to not feel this way.”

Being with others who are doing this work magnetizes the transformation, which is why I want for you to be in community. Here are the ways you can be in community at Tipping Point™ Recovery: our free weekly Double Circle Meeting or our Recovery Mastery Membership. 

Head over to our website and sign up for Double Circle Meeting. It’s every Thursday night at 7:00 PM ET. Let our community remind you how much you matter, because that’s what we do on Thursday nights together. Schedule a call to get information about our Recovery Mastery program, which is a year-long family recovery accelerator to dive deeper into this recovery work together. 

You can also attend Al-Anon meetings. You can attend Al-Anon meetings multiple times a day, and all the people around you, whether it’s online or in person, are gonna be repeating to you that you matter. You can attend Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings. You can also attend open AA meetings.

If you wanna fight your way out of this, that you matter and you deserve to not be treated this way, this is how you begin. It’s the same as we want the alcoholic to do it. We want them to go to meetings. We want them to know that they matter, know that they deserve to not be poisoning themselves.

But you can start this regardless of what they do. You can start this journey. Just for today, just for this moment.

You’re right. It is hard to break out of this negative pattern, but you can do it because I see people do it every single day. So go ahead, get started. 

Please let me know how it’s going. 

I believe in you, 

Kate