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Tough love

Old 09-16-2009, 11:31 AM
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Tough love

Hi. New member here seeking some advice on tough love. Recovering addict myself. 5 years sober.

Now a sibling of mine in trouble and won't seek help. My question is do you believe "tough love" is a good method to try to get someone to focus attention on their issue. I know that I only "awoke" when my wife did so. She was brutal, but it worked...and I love her for it.

Thank you for your thoughts.
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Old 09-16-2009, 11:38 AM
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Woops. Realize this should technically go under Friends and Family, but since I too am a recovering alcoholic and new to the site, thought I'd start here.
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Old 09-16-2009, 11:42 AM
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A great question, and I'm sure others will have an answer. I don't have any experience with tough love but probably should have learned about it. I lost my husband many years ago to alcoholism, partly because I was such a good little enabler & didn't know anything about the disease. I thought I was being kind by making excuses & covering up for him. So, if nothing else has worked, maybe your wife's tactics are in order. I'm so glad you're in recovery - hoping your brother can be saved. Let us know how you're doing.
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Old 09-16-2009, 11:58 AM
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Hevyn,

Thank you for your kind words.

Most troubling is that my brother's problems are beginning to play on my triggers as well. The stress of it all, I guess. That's why my instinct is to go the tough love route...because I'm angry that he's endangering my recovery.

Complicating matters is that his lifestyle choices aren't congruent with my families strict moral upbringing. And so any concern or attempt to get him to see the light (with regard to his drinking) is interpreted as us just being angry at him for his sexual orientation. Which is really silly.

Anyway, we're all at our breaking point. We love him dearly despite his straying from the Church's teachings. We just want him to get better!
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:11 PM
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Larry; I don't think tough love is the answer. I am currently going through that personally and it's making me want to bump a line more than I ever had. Someone telling me they don't care whether I live or die, just makes me want to die.
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:20 PM
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Glad I found the link

I am recovering from tough love and it is a long road emotionally and physically in my case. A day doesn't go by that I don't wish I had a cold whiskey shot to ease my results from vertigo. But I must remain strong and suppress the demons so I can one day be 100% confident to trust anyone again.
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:31 PM
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Wow. A lot of new members on here today (including me). You all must have seen the site's mention on that news article too. Welcome!

ElizabethFord,

I think you mis-understood "tough love". I don't want to tell him that I wish he would never be in my life again. I just want to tell him that if he doesn't seek treatment (for the alcohol and the other thing), the family might consider leaving him out of our father's substantial Will.

People care if you live or die, Elizabeth. People do care!
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:37 PM
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Larry, yeah I read the article and it forwarded me here to this site. I joined right away. I haven't been on the wagon very long either so I guess it's a perfect starting point for all of us.

My parents gave me extreme tough love. they kicked me out last week. I lost my job, my car and my dignity and now my home. I am living in my old catholic's school's convent. Which is ironic cause I haven't been a virgin since 5th grade and I lost it in the school yard. But my aunt is a nun there and she gave me a room.
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:47 PM
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Originally Posted by JustinSox View Post
I've been sober for a little over 4 years.
Not counting St. Patricks day, Cinco de Mayo, New Years, and my son's piano recitals.

But I can tell you that tough loves works.

The key is to beat them in Morse Code.

?????????????????????????
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:47 PM
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I believe that it is beneficial for an active addict or alcoholic to fully suffer the consequences of their behavior. I believe that based on personal experience and the observation of others. "Getting away with it" only allowed my delusions to deepen.

Way more important, in my opinion, is telling the truth. Sometimes the truth is hard to take, and that can be viewed as tough love. But really, it's just the truth.

Last edited by keithj; 09-16-2009 at 01:04 PM.
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Old 09-16-2009, 12:50 PM
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Curious about the article you are refering to...

As far as "tough love" goes, I think it really depends on the person. Some people you can drive even further away with a "tough love" approach. That was the case with me. At the same time, you definately don't want to be an "enabler", that was also the case with me. It's a fine line between the two. Most importantly you need to protect your soberiety and your family. If that means risking your relationship with your sibling, I feel you have to do what you have to do. Make sure they know that you are willing to help when they are willing to accept it, but as I'm sure you know, you can't get sober for anyone else other than yourself.

Welcome to SR to all the newcomers!! This is a great site with a ton of support and loving, caring members. Take care.
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Old 09-16-2009, 01:01 PM
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Tyler, I am confused about the thin line between tough love and enabling, please elaborate. they seem like complete opposites to me so how can they be so close?
How did you experience them both? Is that really you surfing in your picture???? That's AWESOME if it is.
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Old 09-16-2009, 01:04 PM
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Not sure what kind of "tough love" you're referring to specifically, but if you're talking about the healthy way to deal with loving an addict, setting boundaries, sticking to them.. not making threats.. then yes, I think it helps, if anything, it helps the folks who love the addict live their lives unaffected directly by the addicts behavior. Often a bottom is "created" by families during interventions to guide a person into accepting help.

However.. I see both sides. If anyone would have done that with me, I likely would have been just fine telling them to **** off and get out of my life, and continue using/drinking. I am the one that had to want help, until I did, it wouldn't have mattered what was said to me.

Boundaries aren't created to 'get the addict help', they're created to help the folks who love an addict live in a healthier and non enabling way.
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Old 09-16-2009, 01:07 PM
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Originally Posted by ElizabethFord View Post
Larry, yeah I read the article and it forwarded me here to this site. I joined right away. I haven't been on the wagon very long either so I guess it's a perfect starting point for all of us.

My parents gave me extreme tough love. they kicked me out last week. I lost my job, my car and my dignity and now my home. I am living in my old catholic's school's convent. Which is ironic cause I haven't been a virgin since 5th grade and I lost it in the school yard. But my aunt is a nun there and she gave me a room.
Do you have a link to the article? I dont think I have seen it yet.
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Old 09-16-2009, 01:21 PM
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Originally Posted by ElizabethFord View Post
Tyler, I am confused about the thin line between tough love and enabling, please elaborate. they seem like complete opposites to me so how can they be so close?
How did you experience them both? Is that really you surfing in your picture???? That's AWESOME if it is.
That is me surfing...in my dreams!!! I'm east coast, ride a bit of long board, but rarely anything over 4-5 feet. Lately I've been riding the boogie board more than the long board, as the waves have been pretty weak all summer (except for a couple of off shore tropical storms, both of which I was out of town!!)

Perhaps "thin line" was a poor choice of words. I guess what I meant is you don't want to be so "tough" you push someone away, but you also don't want to be so "soft" you enable them. Over my using years I had several people try the "tough love" approach with me, and I reacted like a rebelious teenager pushing them away and showing them "how bad I could really be". Not exactly the most effective solution to my problem. On the other side, I had my wife and family who loved me very much, probably too much, and I used it too keep on using.

I think someone already mentioned there is really nothing you can do with someone who is not ready to be helped. I wasn't ready for a long time, until I pretty much destroyed all that was dear to me. Perhaps if I had been "helped" in a manner somewhere between the two approaches, I would have "come around"' sooner, but perhaps not.

While I'm personally not a big "god" person, I believe we all have a path to follow in our lives. Everything that happens on that journey is what makes us who we are, and we are who we are supposed to be. Not sure if that clears anything up or just muddies the waters further.

BTW, welcome to SR, I hope you find it as helpful to your journey as it has been to mine. Take care.
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Old 09-16-2009, 02:22 PM
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You know I think it depends an awful lot on what you mean by "good method." If you mean, is it somehow guaranteed to "make someone engaged in dangerous behavior see the light," then "No -- it's not a good method and it doesn't really work."

If you mean, "Does it constitute my best chance for getting them to see the light," then, really, you're focused on them and what you think they should be doing and on how you might get some control over them and be their savior, and it's probably not the best method because you're not in a place where you can really practice it and it probably won't really work because you are going to be judging it's effectiveness by how it impacts the other person's life rather than by how it impacts yours.

In my mind, tough love is "tough" because it's tough on me, not because it's tough on the other. (Addiction/mental illness/compulsion-to-engage-in-dysfunctional-drama is what's "tough" on the A...."tough love" has got to be friggin' joy-ride in comparison!)...Tough love is tough on me because it means letting go and letting the other receive the consequences that s/he has rightly earned through her/his own actions and choices. It means recognizing that s/he is an adult with the right to make her/his own choices and with the right to have me respect that and not interfere or try to change or control. It means me valuing myself enough to do the work I need to do to know who I am and what I need and me becoming strong enough to take the steps I need to take to make sure that all of that is not compromised by any other person's sick choices.

Obviously, any A that doesn't address his or her addiction is at high risk of for all kinds of trouble, pain, danger and violence -- but, seriously, addiction is a dangerous and violent place and, if left untreated, it is going to lead to dangerous and violent ends of some kind. Even if an addict dies totally wasted in his/her own bed, is that not a dangerous and violent death caused by his/her own addiction????

I guess maybe I'm not really seeing what exactly it is you think you might be protecting him from with enabling "love" as opposed to tough love.....(and, yes, I put the scare quotes around enabling "love" because I really do have some doubts as to how true -- "true" as in other-directed as opposed to self-centered -- of a love it actually is).

...and actually, now that I've written that, I think I need to ask if maybe the person you're really thinking about protecting is yourself.....protecting yourself from fully realizing and accepting the harsh and very ugly realities of any increasingly self-destructive behavior and where it takes people who do not take care of themselves. You don't want to see your A hit some terrible bottom -- you don't want to have your A suffer whatever might await him/her there....so you think maybe it's a better idea to protect both of you from that happening -- him/her from experiencing the direct pain of the consequences and yourself from experiencing the pain of having to share/feel/live his/her pain....again...and again.....and again.....and again....But, for me, the biggest problem with that kind of protection was that it only deepened and prolonged the misery of everyone involved. And I did have the power, at any time, to disengage from my part of that misery and have a better life....and tough love (or, if it makes it sound better, you can say "detachment") let me do that.

Now, I do need to be very clear here, obviously there is a lot of sadness and grief involved with knowing that a loved one is suffering, maybe even especially when you know that that suffering could be prevented by some very clear and simple (that is not to say "easy") different choices......but for those of us who love A's, we are the ones who choose to turn that sadness and grief into a never-ending tortuous misery by remaining actively engaged and emeshed.

Basically, tough love is one of the tools that saved me from the consequences of addiction -- because, make no mistake about it, if you choose to stay emeshed with and enabling of an A, you are not only not going to succeed in saving them from the consequences of their own behavior, but you are pretty much going to guarantee that you share those consequences in perhaps different but equally unpleasant ways.

Is that really what you yourself have gotten sober for????

So, in terms of freeing yourself and fulfilling yourself and your having a much better, more peaceful and serene life, in my personal experience, "tough love" is a great method!

freya

BTW, The term "tough love" can mean different things to different people and there are people who tend to use it as a justification for being unnecessarily hurtful and mean....for me what it basically means is the practical/theory-into-practice result of successful detachment. So, detachment is the emotional state; tough love is the behavior that results from one being in that state.
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Old 09-16-2009, 05:52 PM
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welcome to all the newcomers here

I think Freya's right - it's tough love because it's tough on me - it's tough to watch someone fall and not run to help them up....but sometimes helping them makes it worse...They need to learn how to get up themselves and we need to learn to let them.

it should never be a punishment - simply a commitment to creating healthy boundaries for all concerned and sticking to them

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Old 09-16-2009, 06:00 PM
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I'm not an addict but have lots of experience with them.

As a loved one of an addict, one of the most helpful things I learned were the "three Cs":

You didn't CAUSE their problem;
You can't CONTROL them; and
You can't CURE them.

I think "tough love" is generally effective, if you are referring to setting and sticking to boundaries of acceptable behavior from an addict. It doesn't mean that you have to hate them, it means that you will always support them as they seek recovery, but not if they remain in active addiction.

One book that is cited again and again by loved ones of addicts is "Codependent No More" by Melanie Beattie. Excellent reading.

Also, you might Google and do some reading on the term "loving detachment."

Finally, you might want to check out the Loved Ones forums on this site, too...lots of wisdom there.

Good luck, and please protect your own sobriety first! That is the most important thing...everything else is secondary.
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