|
|
The effects of alcohol use disorder (AUD) are far from limited to the person with the drinking problem. Their close loved ones are often directly impacted by the consequences of the addiction, and the damage that AUD leaves behind can make maintaining healthy relationships difficult or impossible. However, with treatment and recovery, there’s hope to rebuild those broken bonds….
How Addiction Strains Trust and Communication
Alcoholism erodes trust, yet trust is vital to maintaining all kinds of relationships, including platonic, romantic, familial, and professional. Trust in particular serves as a vital foundation for healthy relationships, allowing for vulnerability and emotional intimacy while facilitating a sense of security. Trust also encourages open, honest communication, which allows for people to resolve conflicts and make it through difficult challenges. Without trust and communication, it is virtually impossible to maintain a healthy relationship.
Unfortunately, people with AUD often find themselves facing a total breakdown of the relationships they value the most, due to their secretive, defensive behaviors. Their spouses or romantic partners may choose to leave because of the lack of communication and trust. Children may lose faith in their parents with AUD, or become estranged from them. Friends might start to keep their distance due to the breakdown in healthy communication.
It is common for people struggling with AUD to try to hide the extent of their addiction, especially if their loved ones have voiced a concern with their drinking. Struggling to quit drinking, but not wanting to disappoint those they care for, people with AUD may try to hide their usage, keeping alcohol in hidden places while lying about how much they drink or stowing away empty bottles where they won’t be discovered. However, the lies and secretive behavior often come to light eventually.
Communication in the relationship can also break down, due to drinking-related impairments in memory, speech, and judgment. Heavy drinkers may struggle to understand non-verbal communication cues like body language or tone of voice. If the person with AUD is drunk when speaking to their loved ones, they may also struggle to process information or express themselves clearly and healthily. Misunderstandings can result in defensiveness, or even aggression, that makes it difficult to communicate.
The Emotional Impact on Loved Ones
The person with AUD isn’t the only one who struggles as a result of their addiction. Loved ones feel the strain. Addiction to alcohol and relationships rarely mix and many have been destroyed due to over-arching effects. It can decimate a sense of security and comfort in the relationship. Even if the person with AUD doesn’t harm their loved ones directly, their addiction can destroy healthy family dynamics. The destructive impact of drinking on family members can include:
- Codependency: In some cases, codependency can develop when a family member or friend struggles with AUD. The codependent person is often a romantic partner, parent, or child. The codependent person repeatedly gives to the addicted individual, unable to maintain boundaries. They feel responsible for the addicted individual, making excuses or sacrificing to take care of unmet responsibilities. Unfortunately, this codependent coping only shields the addicted person from the consequences that are necessary to make them change their behaviors, perpetuating the cycle of addiction.
- Lack of Intimacy: Intimacy is the sense of connection and closeness between parties in a relationship. While it’s commonly thought of as sexual between romantic partners, it also can embody the bond between friends and other family members. AUD erodes this bond, leading to mistrust and fracturing relationships.
- Anxiety: People who live with a family member with AUD may constantly feel anxious about the potential consequences. The addicted individual may be unpredictable, or even aggressive, which can lead to feelings of unease, even when things seem to be okay. Family members might worry about a potential job loss or the effect of spending money to support the addiction.
- Depression: Living with someone with AUD can create feelings of helplessness. Despite best efforts to curb the addiction, loved ones recognize that they can’t make the individual change. Sadness and depression can set in, further amplified by the loss of emotional connection as they watch someone they love change into a stranger.
- Guilt: Family members and loved ones may blame themselves for the addictive behavior. They might think they could have acted differently to prevent the addiction from spiraling or feel like they’re responsible for the actions of their addicted loved one. Guilt may set in as they fail to improve the situation.
- Feeling Abandoned: As the individual’s addiction takes front stage, loved ones may feel abandoned due to the lack of emotional availability. It can feel like the person with AUD loves alcohol more than them.
- Lack of Security: Addicted behavior can result in instability and chaos within the family home. It’s a common sentiment for family members of addicts to say they have to walk on eggshells. The constant tension can have negative impacts on their mental health. Children, in particular, who grow up in this environment often face long-lasting, or even lifelong, effects.
Notably, alcohol abuse in families can hinder children’s emotional development. Children raised around alcoholism are four times more likely to repeat the cycle while also being at an increased risk of developing emotional problems. Children in this position love their parents, but also recognize they can’t go to their parents for support as needed. They’re more likely to experience abuse or neglect and can be left feeling confused, angry, depressed, embarrassed, and anxious. They might believe that they’re the cause of their parent’s drinking. Repeated disappointment when their parent failed to follow through with promises may leave them unwilling to trust others.
Repairing Bonds Through Recovery
Addiction to alcohol often shatters relationships, and once individuals enter recovery, they’re left to navigate the aftermath. Repairing those once-healthy bonds after such extensive damage can be daunting, but it is often possible with effort. Keep in mind that rebuilding trust is a long process. It can take months or years to earn back a semblance of the relationship that existed before.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) embraces this concept through the 12 Steps. Steps 8, 9, and 10 emphasize acknowledging those harmed during addiction and a willingness to make amends. For those not inclined to the 12-Step approach, there are other recovery programs that provide a framework for rebuilding damaged relationships.
People hoping to rebuild their relationships have to start by rebuilding themselves first. Individual therapy, addiction treatment, and taking responsibility for the consesquences of one’s actions must happen first. It’s then essential to begin rebuilding trust, while working on communication skills, to show that change has truly occurred.
Remember to understand the position of loved ones impacted by addiction. They may have been left reeling due to emotional and financial consequences and hesitant to extend trust, especially immediately following sobriety. It’s always harder to rebuild trust than it was to gain it in the first place, and in some cases, affected loved ones may decline attempts at amends.
People in recovery from AUD should focus on themselves first, recognizing that they only have control over their own actions and not how they are perceived by those around them. Through improving themselves and showing a dedication to their recovery, they can show others that they’re committed to repairing the damage that their addiction caused.
Building Healthier Connections Post-Addiction
Addictions are mental health disorders, and while individuals affected by AUD didn’t choose to be addicted, they can take responsibility for their health moving forward. Through treatment programs and therapy services, they can make the commitment to improve themselves and mend broken relationships. Support is integral to this process.
At FHE Health, we use a comprehensive, holistic treatment plan that utilizes evidence-based clinical practices and customized strategies to help people with addictions achieve recovery. For next steps in recovery from an alcohol problem. Our counselors are here to help 24/7.
