It’s important to help family members with their problems — after all, that’s what families are for, right? Undoubtedly, yes — but some burdens can be difficult to bear, even when helping someone you love the most. And no one knows this better than families facing addiction by one of its members. Even when you want to give all the love and support you can, helping people with addiction gain self-confidence and heal without making their predicament worse can be hard. How do you provide the love and affection they need without enabling them? When do you need to put your foot down without endangering your relationship? To navigate these questions and more, you’ll need to employ a few effective communication strategies. Read on to learn about the most important ones!
Creating a Safe Space
Communicating with people with a substance use disorder can drain you, physically and emotionally — especially when they’re family members. However, the actual communication isn’t the hardest part.
Before you have any difficult conversations, you need to establish trust. Your loved one who’s battling addiction should know that talking to you is okay, regardless of what’s on their mind.
Unfortunately, most addictive substances can trigger paranoia, making the ordeal even harder. That’s why creating safe spaces for conversations is so crucial.
The recovering addict needs to understand they can turn to you (and a select few other family members) at any time, no matter what. However, remember that creating an emotionally safe space isn’t enough.
Your home and your loved one’s home must be physically safe spaces. In other words, you need to clean your surroundings of anything that might trigger the addiction. All alcohol and drugs need to go, even if you don’t have addiction issues yourself.
Also, you need to create a group of people that your addiction-troubled family member can turn to besides yourself. In most cases, these are other family members as well. Realistically, you can’t be available for someone 24/7, every day of the year.
Besides being impractical, that burden will probably be too much for you to bear alone. Without energy and emotionally drained, you won’t be of much use to the person with an addiction either.
Active Listening Is Essential
Communication is a two-way street, regardless of the topic. And when it’s something as serious as addiction, that goes double — you must try your hardest to listen actively.
If you’re not familiar with the term, it may seem weird. Don’t we all listen passively by default? How can I listen more actively?
In practical terms, active listening means trying to hear more than the words coming out of the other person’s mouth. You must go past the verbal and try to hear what’s left unsaid — their feelings and thoughts.
This is one of the most important and effective communication strategies for providing guidance and support, and it entails three crucial aspects:
- Emotional control
- Cognitive focus
- Intentional behavior
Emotional Control
When communicating with a person with an addiction, you’ll hear a lot of things you don’t agree with. And this is an understatement. In reality, you may disagree with most of their viewpoints — most of which will be skewed from reality.
Depending on the level of addiction, you may not be able to maintain a rational conversation. However, regardless of that — you need to exhibit a compassionate, calm demeanor.
Think of the process like kids overhearing an adult’s conversation. Even if they don’t understand what’s being said, kids can pick up on emotional cues — boredom, annoyance, frustration, etc.
The same is true for people with an addiction. If you show any annoyance or other emotional reactions, they’ll pick up on them and close up. To avoid this, keep your cool and control your emotions.
Cognitive Focus
Active listening also requires a high degree of focus. You need to pay attention to every single detail you hear, comprehend it, and respond properly — all in real-time.
Unfortunately, addiction can force the afflicted to lie or omit the truth when put under pressure. This means you need to equally focus on what’s left unsaid and try to parse every sentence for its implicit meaning.
Intentional Behavior
We’ve already mentioned the importance of controlling your emotions. Avoiding non-verbal cues that could damage your relationship with the afflicted family member is crucial. However, there’s a flip side to controlling your behavior while communicating.
Your behavior must also convey constant interest and understanding. The family member in recovery must always believe you’re genuinely interested in their plight and ready to hear them out.
Setting Boundaries
Unfortunately, setting boundaries is just as important when dealing with someone in recovery. To ensure you’re always there to help your family members, you need to define the limits of acceptable behavior.
These boundaries should mainly concern their behavior towards you, but not exclusively. You should also make it clear that negative, self-destructive behavior is unacceptable while in recovery. When your loved ones know what you’re prepared to tolerate, everyone will feel more valued and respected.
Acting Assertively
When you’re helping family members with addiction issues, there’s always the impulse to act compassionately and provide care. However, to truly help them, sometimes you need to communicate assertively. There has to be no doubt about your feelings and thoughts on key issues.
To maintain the necessary trust and a healthy relationship, you need to be forthright and firm — but also caring and compassionate.
Encourage Community Support Groups
As we’ve already discussed, communication goes both ways. That means the quality of your communication with a loved one in recovery also depends on their approach. So, to help them open up in general, one of the most effective communication strategies is joining a support group. Encourage them to do so, and consider attending meetings with them, at least at first.
If they join, make sure to ask questions about the group and show enough interest in the process. This is one of the best ways to show interest in their recovery process intentionally.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are plenty of effective communication strategies for families facing addiction — but they require ample time and energy. To ensure your effort has maximum effect, learn more about their particular form of addiction. Educating yourself on addiction will help you notice potential signs of relapse and avoid possible triggers.
Author bio:
Allie Hinchman is the Director of Business Development at Time Wellness and has years of experience in regional outreach and addiction recovery support. Her professional journey includes roles at leading treatment centers where she honed her expertise in communication strategies, community engagement, and recovery advocacy.