Sandy Swenson has coined the term ‘Unabling’ and she takes the time to share a reading from her meditation book entitled – ‘Tending Dandelions. Honest Meditations for Mothers of Addicted Children.
How does helping ourselves help the people we love? It feels so selfish and Sandy will share why it is not at all selfish.
How do we love our person and set boundaries around the disease?
Tune in to hear Sandy’s boundary.
How do we learn to stop throwing the tissues at them?
The power struggle with the disease of addiction is so futile for all involved especially the person with the disease of addiction. The disease loves a target, a person or, situation to blame and justify the next use. What about thinking of it as how do we get ourselves out of the disease’s crosshairs so it can not use us against our loved one.
See full transcript of the episode below.
Intro: You’re listening to The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. A place for conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson
Margaret: Welcome back. We concluded episode 12 with Sandy Swenson sharing an excerpt from her first book ‘The Joey Song’. You can listen to any of my episodes at embracefamilyrecovery.com or on your streaming service like Apple or Spotify. On today’s episode we talk about helping ourselves and how that helps all of our loved ones including those with the disease of addiction. Sandy also educates us on enabling using her powerful word ‘unabling’. Let’s get back to Sandy.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: Do you think your son has read the book?
Sandy: Um I know his read part of it. I don’t know how much. He was reading it on his phone way back when it was just a manuscript, so you know, he’s read part of it.
Margaret: But he knows what you do?
Sandy: He knows what I do. And I have to believe and again we don’t talk about this stuff because anything to do with addiction it’s just, we just leave it alone. Cause that he would feel like he’s being manipulated if I’m always you know pushing on that. But um he knows what I do, and I have to believe that he knows that I’m out there. I’m trying to change the way addiction is perceived and help mothers with addicted children. And you know have people shed the shame surrounding this disease. That has to make my son feel like his mom is really in his corner. Now the addict probably not so much.
Margaret: No, the addict is probably pretty angry.
Sandy: (laughter)Exactly but my son is the one who matters and that’s the one, you know, so he knows that.
Margaret: When you spoke to it earlier the turning our self into a pretzel to try to keep the addict from getting mad or manipulating our loved one with us is impossible.
Sandy: Impossible.
Margaret: So, making your relationship be about you and him and love and not about that, takes that off the table. Does the disease manipulate him with you? Possibly. But you certainly are not in the game with the disease on a day-to-day basis giving lots of ammunition to use against your son.
Sandy: Oh absolutely, absolutely. And if you know if we are conversing and some nugget pops its way out there something that would lead me down in risky path. I will just grab on to one smidge of that nugget and veer the conversation. Let’s just say he said something like and then I passed out by a red door or something. You know I’m just making that up. But I will not comment on the passing out part, but oh a red door I love red doors. Do you remember we used to have that house in Kentucky and then you know we left and it had a red door and blah off we go. I steer away and try to bring him some nice memory thing from somewhere and I don’t know the conversation can continue on an I didn’t cross.
Margaret: You’re boundary.
Sandy: Yeah, my boundary
Margaret: Yeah, you didn’t cross your boundary your boundary is to not go into the addiction with him, to not go into the disease with him, it sounds like. And so, as a result if you stay the course of not doing that you stay clean to your boundary. Cause you know mental health wise, wellness wise, spiritually calm wise. Going down that rabbit hole will not help you.
Sandy: Yes, that is correct in with exclamation marks all over that. Because yeah.
Margaret: So that’s your boundary. This is what I need to be healthy, and this is what I need to do. The byproduct is I show my son love and acceptance for him as a human being and not dance with his disease.
Sandy: Absolutely.
Margaret: You’re doing it for you.
Sandy: Yes, I’m doing it for me. It has to be for me, it has to be for me because yes, all the other things weren’t helping him this actually has, is helping him, in that we have nice conversations, and I am able to have the strength to try to change the world. (Laughter)
Margaret: But you offer the gifts to the world for them to take hold of and change themselves. That’s how I see you, Sandy. You give of yourself and your story and your growth and what you’ve learned generously to anyone who’s open to it. Which will help them if they choose to use it change their world, which is remarkable. That is a gift.
Sandy: Yes, and that’s the hope you know because we do have, each of us, so much power just by owning our own recovery.
Margaret: Correct.
Sandy: So much goodness can come from that. So much goodness can come from there.
Margaret: And yet when we land in the place of loving someone with this disease that is the furthest awareness from our scope. It is never about us. It is always about them and that’s where that powerless feeling continually perpetuates itself.
Sandy: I remember going to the first it was actually at Hazelden I remember going to our first Family Program.
Margaret: Yeah.
Sandy: And going in there and just being a quivering mess of you know fear and everything. And right away somebody said something to the effect of you know, you’re here for you, you know. (laughter) I was like wait a minute here. What! No. I’m not you got this wrong I’m here because I’m here to fix him. And it was really just huh so hard to comprehend that. How could that be? But it takes time, but it’s so real.
Margaret: Yeah, I’ve witnessed that reaction in thousands of family members. They get there and then they start realizing you know what you’ll learn about the disease but you know it inside and out well we’re going to teach you is how to take care of you differently which by proxy helps them in a better way.
Sandy: Well, that’s the key. I think because we’ve, you know the notion that yes, it’s for us, but it’s also for them.
Margaret: For sure.
Sandy: Because we are conditioned to think that taking care of ourselves is selfish and that somehow if we take care of ourselves then we’re abandoning our child or whatever. I think it’s really, really, really important for people to understand that self-care isn’t selfish for one. And that old oxygen mask on yourself first thing. You know. You gotta take care of yourself for everybody else is going to sink, just not going to work. So, the fact that by taking care of ourselves. Which is not selfish, it’s necessary. For our own well-being, but also it then benefits. Just by the nature of taking care of ourselves we are helping the addicted child and anybody else we happen to bump elbows with. It’s just better.
Margaret: Absolutely. We’re a healthier version of ourselves to give everyone in our life.
Sandy: Yes absolutely.
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Margaret: I am a big fan, Sandy of your interpretation of enabling.
Sandy: Yes.
Margaret: I have had this conversation with you before. I love the way you interpret or write enabling in your own way and I want to move us into Tending Dandelions. Which is a meditation book that I have referred to do more people than I can even count, who are mothers and I say to fathers you’ll get stuff out of it too. It’s a meditation for mothers with addicted children and every day there’s an amazing nugget for a family member to read and process, and possibly implement in their own recovery. So, if you’d be so kind to read about unabling so we can have a little talk about that, ’cause I think it’s a fabulous way to say it.
Sandy: Yes, yes.
Sandy reading from ‘Tending Dandelions’:
Unabling. it is not helping my child if I do things for him that he can and should do for himself. Instead by diminishing expectations I diminish his capabilities I am unabling.
Unabling means that I’m helping to make the son I am helping, unable to manage his task or his life on his own. It is crossing boundaries, reducing responsibilities, removing consequences and cheating him of things adults need to learn in order to live and love life on their own.
It’s providing an escape hatch from the realities of life. So I will not give in, hand out, set up or fix up my child’s messes and catastrophes until I am inevitably unable to enable. Or unwilling or burned out. I will not help to leave my child so unabled that he is unable to handle the business of running whatever is left of his life after he’s endured a lifetime of my unabling.
What happens to my child if he never learns how to rescue himself?
All I can and should do is help him to get the help he needs to help himself. That, and love him.
Margaret: And if you would mind that next quote right under it.
Sandy: Yeah that’s from the Joey Song, this last quote.
Margaret: If he sneezes, I’m not the one who should leap for a tissue. And I’m not the one who should want to.
Margaret: Sandy so much here. I love this. I’ve read this on day two of the program in the past because it’s so important. So, start with the tissue like I am not the one who should leap for the tissue and I’m not the one who should want to. Like that is such the switch of when we internalize the powerlessness of our being able to fix anybody else.
Sandy: Yes, yes. And I mean as I said I wrote that in The Joey Song so I came to that early-ish on. I’d done everything and I realized that I was. I wanted it, I wanted it. He didn’t even want it. Or, the addict didn’t want it in any way. He did not want it. I wanted it and so I kept throwing the tissues at him, you know, and he was just fine doing what he was doing, the way he was doing it. And I wanted it so badly for him. And just not taking into any consideration that he was an adult. An adult and he was in charge of his own life and yeah it was
Margaret: Enabling is a word people react to pretty strongly.
Sandy: Yes, and I am one of them.
Margaret: I think that the way you word it as unabling makes it way more palatable when you break it down like you did.
Sandy: Yes. Because that you’re right, I reacted. Enabling to the word enabling as judgmental somehow. It feels very, you’re doing this wrong. That word enabling just means you’re doing this wrong that’s what it means. (laughter) Unabling to me somehow explains it. It’s not judgmental. I don’t know why but it just feels different to me.
Margaret: Well, and you give such clear examples of the difference. Right? In you want your son to be healthy, functional, able to care for himself, responsible that would be the goal. And even though this disease has affected all of those things from happening for him. You doing them for him, will certainly not help him figure out how to do it.
Sandy: No and here’s the thing. Is I, this was based on Joey of course. Everything I had known about him to this point, but also somebody that I cared about very much. And this person’s parents did everything for him. Out of love.
Margaret: Always.
Sandy: Always done out of love, always done out of love and confusion and fear and you know the whole mishmash of mess that we’re given. So, you know they would give him money, they would bail him out of jail, they would pay his rent, he be evicted. He’d destroy it, he’d be kicked out whatever they’d get him another place, they put him in a hotel for a while, they would get him another apartment, evicted, you know whatever car crash, you know whatever this stuff. Fix, fix, fix, fix, fix.
This went on for many, many, many, many, years and over that time this person burnt a lot of bridges. You know lots of addict friends along the way who you know fell to the wayside, fewer friends, fewer friends, fewer friends because you know addiction has some bad behaviors and you do tend to lose friendships.
So, as he got older into his 50s and he couldn’t function in life without the help of his parents. But guess what they both passed away. So now here he was still relatively young-ish 50, whole life ahead of him. Family members, old friends from the past, new friends from you know down the street, there’s nobody there to help him because he’s burnt the bridges or there are people around him who don’t care at all or whatever and the parents were gone. Other people you know burned out, gone whatever he had nobody anymore and he most importantly didn’t have himself.
He had no skills. So even though his parents of course had been doing this as we said, you know with the best of intentions. He was left with nothing. He was homeless after that. He was homeless. I saw the place where he lived, under a bush. He was homeless, he had nothing anymore and that helped keep me in line with Joey. It just did, Joey’s got skills.
Margaret: The parallel that I could explain is when working in the treatment side with the clients who are seeking recovery and someone relapses. And it can go two ways, the disease goes OK what’s the point you’re going to relapse go out and use or the recovery person says, I am heartbroken that that person relapsed and I’m going to learn from it. And do whatever the heck I have to, to not relapse also.
Sandy: Yes
Margaret: And that’s what you describe. You wanted different for your journey with your son than you saw in that, even though instinctively the loving, well intentioned part of them was very much alive in you.
Sandy: Oh, absolutely yes. Absolutely yes. But that is the example that I saw, and I could already see that unfolding with my son, from the behaviors that I had been doing with him up to that point. So, I could see very clearly where this this could go.
Margaret: One of the other aspects of unabling / enabling that we haven’t touched on is my perception, is when I am doing those things, I am playing the role of my I loved one’s higher power.
Sandy: mm.
Margaret: I’m assuming I know best. I’m assuming I know what will work and not work. I’m assuming the responsibility of figuring it out. I’m trying to plan the projectory of where their life is going to go, paved the way with best intentions right. What if I’m getting in the way of their higher power connecting with them by taking on that responsibility of being their higher power?
Sandy: Yeah, getting in the way because they’re going to be dealing with you instead of their higher power. As long as we’re in there we are much easier as the target and an unhealthy target. In whatever way to manipulate, to fight against, to ignore doing what we should be doing. you know when we’re in the way we are in the way of them and their higher power, you know trajectory for sure.
Margaret: And I believe in that way we are also using them as our drug of no choice to not do our own work.
Sandy: I think we do that a lot.
Margaret: I think Sandy’s concept of unabling is so powerful in its love and generosity for her son and herself. And it makes the concept of enabling much more understandable and doable for all of us.
Outro: I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story. Please find resources is on my website https://embracefamilyrecovery.com/resources/
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time please take care of you
