Families & Friends Of Addicts Support Group
Addiction affects more than just the individual. This community is dedicated to the families and friends of individuals suffering from any form of addiction. Mental health professionals are increasingly considering alcoholism and addiction as diseases that flourish in and are enabled by family systems. Family members react to the addicted person with particular behavioral...
Just wanted to run this conversation by someone and see if I'm being silly for being annoyed. In my other post I said husband came home and drank the rest of the day and kicked the trainset down that I had built with my 2 yr. Old. And told the older kids to pick it up. he asks me what I'm reading and I tell him its about the law of attraction and how to be more positive. He says oh that's not going to help anything..is it going to get the kitchen cleaned up? And then he says I'll shut the F*** up...and almost immediately after that he follows me in the bedroom and asks if I wanted to be naughty! I said no u t an a_hole and took the baby for a walk to get my other kids down a few houses. Then he was yelling over at the neighbors because I was watching their kid for a few minutes and he was starting to get annoyed and yelling hey what?? When they told their kid to stay here few more minutes. I said please shhhh..and of course hes all drunk...I guess after all those beers...
"Alcoholics act and family members and friends react... just because the alcoholic (behaves how he tends to behave) doesn't mean (we) must do what we have always done before." they go on to liken interacting with an alcoholic like playing tug-of-war with them, thatthe harder they pull the harder we pull, it never occurs to us that we don't have to play at all.
Some alcpholics feel guilty about their need to drink and find it much easier to blame the drinking on someone else. Such alcoholics often provoke those around them trying to start an arguement or create a crisis. We tend to argue back, defending ourselves and in the end the alcoholic gets exactly what they were looking for an excuse to drink... or a way to divert the attention away from themselves.
Dropping the rope means we notice the provocative behavior and notice how we respond.
The alcoholix says we are lazy and we respond by listing everything we do for them, they then resent our self-righteous attitude, and we feel unappreciated and sorry for ourselves. this quickly escalates that ends the same way with the alcoholic storming out tghe door to the nearest bar. (this is me talking no t the book, or perhaps trying to take the atention form the fact that he is drunk again and feles guilty about it so wanst to put the attention on YOUR failures)
you can decide not to react, keep quiet, change the subject,leave the room or busy yourself doing something else, take the time for yourself to acknowlewdge that the accusation is not true and that is his desease speaking. or perhaps acknoledge that maybe sometimes you are lazy, smile pleasantly and agree. there is no right or wrong response it doesn't matter HOW you break the pattern, just that it is broken.
The alcoholic might not take kindly to you not playing teh game, they need to drink (or need to get rid of the guilt of feeling liek failure or the attention of having "done it again") HE will probably try again. do not become self-rightous or condescending, you arn't making this change to teach him a lesson or punish him, but to help YOU. you are not trying to be right or win... you are trying to heal yourself
okay that was REALLY paraphrased, you might want to read it yoruself. I think the basic idea is that he is saying the things he is saying as part of his disease and you do not have ot play the game or accept what he is saying.
I hope this helps. even if you are not in teh program, it might be a good book to buy just to help in moments liek these.
good luck, much love and support.