Bob is the father of a son with a substance use disorder. This episode is packed with tangible tools Bob used in his recovery to find relief from his own stress, anxiety, and obsession with his son.
Bob demonstrates the hope for all loved ones of people with the disease of addiction in choosing their own healing. This required a willingness to recognize the disease had impacted him, and he deserved the same help he wanted for his son.
See full transcript of the episode below.
You are listening to the embrace family recovery podcast. A place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back! As you heard in Episode 25 Bob is the father of a son with a substance use disorder and he’s also one of my colleagues. This episode is packed with tangible tools Bob used in his recovery to find relief from his own stress, anxiety, and obsession with his son. Let’s hear more from Bob.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast.
Margaret: It’s selfish at nature which is really hard to get truthful about right? When I’m doubling down and managing, fixing and controlling what am I avoiding?
Bob: For sure. Working at Hazelden we draw two circles on a board, and we divide that circle into about five or six pies of like one piece of the pie is mental, one is emotional. one is relationships, one is work or school, one’s spirituality. And over one circle we put addict/alcoholic over the other one we put family member. We’ll ask all the addicts and alcoholics in the room how is your mental life, you know your emotional life, your relational life, your spiritual life, your work or school life been impacted by this disease? And we get very specific answers of what the impact has been in each of those areas.
And we do the same for the families in their circle and then at the end we get very dramatic, and we erase addict/alcoholic above the one circle and family we erase that above the other circle, and we say if a stranger walked in off the street right now and we said one of these circles represents someone who has the disease of addiction and the other represents a family member who loves them. Can you tell us which circle represents which group?
And you literally cannot tell the difference, and yet we as family members think we are in a position to be running the show for both and it’s all about the client, when really there is so much that we need to heal from and grow from.
Margaret: So, you got to a point where you realized, came to, an awareness that you were doing the controlling with your son, and it was not effective. You are in the process of doing your own work attending meetings, readings, you know educating yourself about the family disease. At the same time was your son actively engaged cause you mentioned this was before his first relapse. So, I think that’s also something worth talking about because people fear relapse so much, but also need to understand with this disease relapse is a symptom. It can happen. So how did you navigate moving forward along the journey parallel to David?
Bob: Yeah, um you know one of the keys for me because for a while I believe there was another why I believed and that was that if my son doesn’t get healthy and is basically 100% miserable. Because I’m his father therefore it’s the same for me. That I’m gonna be miserable.
And you know part of what I started to get a glimpse of in Al-Anon and was you know, there is actually an opportunity for me to have some happiness, some joy, and some freedom, regardless of what my son chooses to do or not to do. So that was a big beginning place for me. Realizing to certain extent almost like I’m worth it. That that my life is actually bigger than just than just my son, even though he’s obviously indescribably important to me and you know part of my heart.
So, you know that was kind of the first step for me and then you know as I started to experience a little relief from my anxiety and my sadness and my preoccupation with him, I wanted more of that.
Margaret: How did you start to feel that relief? Like what tangible things do you think gave you some of that relief and ability to recognize you could still have that joy or find that joy again. You know like what gave you that? Is there concrete stuff Bob that helped you get there?
Bob: Great question you know I think a big part of it, Margaret was going to meetings and meeting other dads in particular who weren’t six months or a year into this but were had been attending Al-Anon for four or five or eight or 10 or 15 years. So that connection you know as we always say the active addiction is a disease of isolation and being alone and recovery is about connection.
And that’s so powerful I mean to me that was the most important thing that happened meeting other men and women, parents, husbands, wives who love someone who suffered from a disease that they were you know committed to their own self-care and getting healthier and freer. And that gave me a lot of hope because I saw a freedom in them that I didn’t have, and their experience wasn’t that much different than mine or their reality that they were living with, so that gave me hope I think first of all. A hunger, it was kind of like I want what they have so attending meetings, you know jumping into therapy. That was something that was important for me and again finding the right therapist who is really equipped to deal with my trauma and all of its you know, impacts was huge.
You know regular exercise, I can’t underestimate that in terms of helping me deal mostly with my fear and anxiety, that you know when those endorphins get released in our brain, it’s it was you know I would go into a workout just full of fear and feeling overwhelmed by my life. And after an hour of lifting weights, and doing sit-ups, and doing some cardio I’d walk out of the gym hey you know what I’m stronger than I thought, this this thing isn’t on top of me pummeling me right now, you know, I had more ability to fight the bully almost in my mind and in my heart.
And I think for me the foundational is the spiritual peace to me it encompasses everything. I mean I’ve had a practice since I was in my late teens of taking time every morning for what I call prayer and meditation where I’ll read something, I’ll listen to some music or listen to a short talk on spirituality, I’ll just sit in silence, I’ll walk in nature or that to me is that you know kind of the key piece that all the others then kind of flow from but I mean practically I would say those would be the major pieces that helped me find more freedom and healing.
Margaret: And interesting when you describe it if I was to not know you were a family member, to your point about the circle drawings, and you were to tell me the things that you use practically, they would very much mirror what an early recovering person with chemical dependency would be needing to do for their well-being.
Same tools, same priority
Bob: Oh yeah, they’re very, very similar
Margaret: Well and that speaks to the power of your recovery role modeling to the rest of your family that there’s a way to feel better about this to heal from this, and never underestimate that power.
Bob: Yeah, it’s been interesting you know in my family, so my wife and I’m very grateful Kathy and I throughout the very difficult process with David I know so for some families, especially if it’s a child. parents can sometimes there’s kind of two classic roles parents take one is what we call kind of the prosecutor. Kind of a tough you know confrontive parent that wants to really get you know more you know if aggressive is the right word but to be more proactive in terms of confronting the behavior of the child. And then the other is more the enabler, kind of wants to coddle be soft, kind of soften the prosecutor. Uh and you know stereotypically oftentimes it seems like dad tends to be the prosecutor, though not always and mom can tend to be more of the enabler, though not always.
I’m grateful in our marriage uhm we were really in sync from the very beginning. and I tend to take more of a lead with it, but I would always check in with Kathy and we would talk about it. And I don’t think we ever had a situation in four or five years where we had a disagreement about what our approach should be. Very grateful for that.
Bumper: This podcast is made possible by listeners like you. Can you relate to what you’re hearing? Never miss a show by hitting the subscribe button. Now back to the show!
Bob: Kathy tried Al-Anon a few times and she struggled with it um I think from the standpoint of her previous experience of being in groups was you would give feedback and offer more directive. Whereas in Al- Anon you know it tends to be more you know there’s no advice giving first of all and it’s more of a listening style, and you don’t get a lot of feedback in the group setting oftentimes. At least the groups that she was going to.
I kind of you know Margaret, I’m a I’m a slow learner so I, you know I kind of did with my daughters what I did with my son. And I you know I was you know strongly encouraging them to attend Al-Anon maybe taking a family program. I think I had it set up at Hazelden once where they could go to a family program and they kind of gave me a polite well just you know thanks dad but we’re going to pass. Um but you know I hope that they you know have seen that dad has changed, you know but I’m more loving, freer than I was.
I know that my son has thanked me a number of times that I’m working a program of recovery and he’s told me that it means a lot to him, and he finds that supportive. So, out of all the voices I guess that I’d wanted that from he would probably be the, you know the first so.
Margaret: Well, it speaks to a lot of what sandy Swenson says around parenting. You know, we don’t want to have to add to the burden of the person with the disease has already burdened by a disease that’s killing them, for lack of a better way of saying it. If it has its way that’s what it will do. and so, her concept is if we want to care for ourselves first and foremost and secondly support our loved one with the illness the best thing, we can do is do our own work and not burden them with the responsibility of feeling, it’s not them, it’s their disease that’s racked the family with fear and worry. It’s not them but that’s a very hard separation to make.
You’re doing it and continue to do it by doing your own work, and saying I get that this family disease blew into our family by no fault of anyone in the family and then started creating all this fear, turmoil, anxiety, and uncertainty. And my job is I gotta do my own work ’cause I’ve been affected is equally as you have if not equally definitely substantially.
Bob: One of the things I learn from you, and I work together out at Hazelden was your articulate way of helping families separate their loved one from the disease. And you know I just think that is so, so important that uhm you know it really is a no-fault disease. Yes, someone chose to pick up a drink or to pick up a drug, but their intention was never to become addicted, and to have a life-threatening disease, that’s chronic, progressive and sometimes fatal. That was not their choice uhm.
Margaret: I agree, and I also go back to what I’ve heard in my work with wonderful people over the years, in my former supervisor would say this and I don’t believe she coined it, but she would say it “who hasn’t auditioned for the part of addiction”. Your story speaks to it. You were fortunate, you were spared, you didn’t have the genetic predisposition to this disease, or your story would have manifested differently.
Your son did the same thing that most students, high school students do which is experiment. And by no means am I encouraging people to do that. I’ve worked very hard with my kids to say, hang on as late as you can before you put your first substance in because you’ve got that frontal lobe working again, not again, for the first time. And just work to stay out of it as long as you can. Now does that stop them no. But that’s the education that I chose to give them, and I have to recognize my own story. I didn’t wait. So, I think it’s a really interesting, baffling we use that word a lot disease because there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to why. As we talked about in the beginning.
Bob: Yeah, we don’t I don’t think as a society we like to live with mystery and the unknown and I think that the, you know we want answers we want to know the facts, we want clarity and I think you’re right when it comes to this disease there’s, I like to use the term mystery. There’s so much we don’t understand or the reasons why and I think it takes some humility you know to live with mystery, and to realize that we don’t have all the answers. We’ll never get all the answers, and we have to learn to live I think with ambiguity and contradictions um. It’s just part of I think living as a functional adult, freer adult.
Margaret: I know you to, you have a saying about when to share, when not to share. And I think that would be really valuable as a touchstone for a family member listening to take and try and utilize that in their life or are you willing to share?
Bob: Oh sure yeah I heard this you know add a Al-Anon meeting probably six or seven years ago and the man was sharing, and I believe as he was talking about his 40 year old daughter who is an alcoholic and he said yeah before I’ve really learned before I give her any advice about her recovery or her life in general. He said I asked myself three questions:
is what I’m gonna say true?
is what I’m gonna say need to be said?
and then the third question am I the one to say it?
And he said that he found answering those three questions caused and helped him to offer much, much, much, much less advice.
And I would say in my own relationship with my son it was the most transformative piece or helpful tool in my tool chest that positively has positively impact my relationship with him. And there’s been numerous times as I went through those questions you know is it true? I could have argued very persuasively that you know what I was thinking and wanted to say, it was true.
And should it be said? Absolutely I could think of the reasons why. But time and time again over the last eight years of that as I’ve gotten to that question, Am I the one to say it?
I can honestly say 99.99% of the time the answer has resoundingly for me in my life come back no don’t say. You’re stepping in where you don’t belong. Let him live his life you’re trying to manage, fixing, control.
Give him the dignity that he deserves, to live his own life and make his own choices. And you know there’s been some powerful results because of that actually.
Margaret: Do you find that that translates to your other children as well?
Bob: Yeah, that transfers to many relationships in my life I tend to be kind of a, I can be an advice giver and by nature and kind of a manager and controller. It’s my go to, so uhm you know one of the beautiful interpretations of step one I heard a long time ago with somebody. You know it talks about our lives becoming unmanageable and this person said the reason our lives become unmanageable as we’re not meant to manage our lives, were meant to live our lives. And when he said that it gave me goosebumps because I realized that I’ve spent so much time holding so tightly onto life, my life, my children’s lives, my wife’s life etc., etc. That you know I’m basically a fear driven person, because I grew up afraid in my family of origin. And moving from a fear-based response to life, to a love and trust-based response to life has been the most dramatic two steps forward, one step back journey of my life.
Outro: I wasn’t wrong was I! Such good stuff, I loved listening to this again for the editing process ,and hearing all the quotes and tools he used. I hope you come back next week where Bob shares more of his story, and a great quote or two for sure!
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website
embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson
Until next time Please take care you!
