How Our Messy Feelings Got In the Way of Natural Consequences

Photo credit: Liam Ortiz

It’s a fact: emotions can overwhelm the strongest of us. When it comes to interactions with our Loved Ones with SUD, many of us trip over our own feelings, entirely legitimate though they are. In this second part of her own story, Allies staff writer Isabel Cooney shows us how her guilt, self-doubt, and other challenging feelings became a burden and a barrier to deeper understanding of her ex-husband’s struggle with alcohol. She also reveals how essential CRAFT has been in changing that dynamic.

As I explained in Part One of this series (in which I also break down the CRAFT concept of natural consequences), alcohol and the fallout from my husband’s SUD were a big part of why our marriage ended in divorce. There was so much I didn’t know when we were together. In fact, I really didn’t know anything about substance use disorder (SUD)—I hadn’t even heard the term.

Were I to go back in time, there’s a whole lot I would do differently. CRAFT has taught me never to go head-on with a Loved One (LO) suffering from SUD. It’s shown me how to address issues between us in ways that maintain mutual respect. I have practiced, on the Allies site, the key skill of looking at my own negative or destructive patterns and “leading the way” through my own personal growth. I’ve learned to use “I” statements instead of pointing a finger.

I also see now that my LO’s denial was a very predictable part of his SUD. Man, did that denial make me want to scream and rip out my hair!

What I didn’t see then was that his denial was the obvious response to my constant efforts to confront him and attempts to talk like mature adults. That was simply not going to happen—and yet I kept at him. So often, I had the feeling of banging my head against a wall. I was mad and frustrated that he couldn’t see the problem and wouldn’t talk about it. I was resentful for having to “put up with it all.” I felt more alone and rejected the more he retreated into use. And I felt desperate because I couldn’t identify any solutions.

It never occurred to me to learn about addiction, to seek professional help (other than trying a few sessions of couples’ therapy. The latter can often be helpful; unfortunately for us it was not). If there’s one area in which pretty much all of humanity needs to improve, it’s education concerning the basics of SUD—including the vital fact that families can help, once they have some basic guidelines to follow. With everything we know now, it is intolerable that so many of us remain in the dark, making uninformed and unhelpful responses to our LOs’ challenging behaviors again and again.

I started off in the dark with natural consequences

After a few years of watching my LO drink more and more frequently and in bigger doses, and having no idea how to help him, I was exhausted, hopeless, and pissed off. I gave up on us as a couple and asked for a divorce. He immediately asked for 50% custody of our daughters, and I immediately agreed.

If I’d had CRAFT in my toolbox at the time, I would have proceeded very differently. But first, I’ll tell you how I did respond. Here’s what was going through my head when he broached the subject of shared custody:

He has been so absent for them, so much of the time. Here’s his chance to fix that. Who am I to refuse? He has just as much of a right to them as I do. Maybe this will be the motivation he needs to work on the drinking. Plus, if I try to have them with me more of the time, we’ll have to fight it out, and I’m not ready for that…

And here’s a non-exhaustive breakdown of what I was feeling in that moment:

• FEAR (of backlash, on a personal, familial, and legal level)
• GUILT and DOUBT (was it selfish of me to think that the girls would be better off with me, given his current struggles?)
• EXHAUSTION (the state of constant frustration and battling I’d been in had brought me to this point of separation; maybe I deserved a break. And after all, he could take the girls for a while…)
• HOPE (maybe having the responsibility for the girls would get him “back on track” and provide motivation for positive change)

Looking back at the whole situation through the CRAFT lens I have today, I can see that I did have options in that moment:

• First, I didn’t have to agree to his demands right away. I could have taken time to think about them and weigh the pros and cons.
• Second, this was clearly an opportunity to use leverage, as in: “Yes, I think that we could work towards 50/50 custody, but I would want to see evidence that you had completed a treatment program and were managing to not use for at least 3 months…” Though not a “natural consequence,” this proposition was, in a way, the consequence of his struggles and behaviors related to SUD thus far.
• Third, even if he hadn’t been open to #2, I could have established a few “conditions” that would be part of a custody arrangement, such as ongoing family mediation, in which we might have started to address the substance use.

Natural consequences enter the scene

I made the decision to share custody of our girls 50/50 when my LO was, despite his drinking, still very high-functioning. He was running his company, helping around the house, and compartmentalizing his substance use (mostly evenings). His family, who all lived nearby, didn’t seem to be concerned in the slightest. Our daughters—as far as I was aware—didn’t know much about the drinking, either. And I was so concerned with not setting him off that I decided not to talk to the girls about it; I figured their understanding would happen organically.

And boy, did it happen. Once I moved out, their daddy started to spiral out of control. He felt betrayed, abandoned, alone, and his long-ignored anger expanded and spilled over. The drinking got much worse, and he started binging regularly. This lasted for years. But at the time, I didn’t have the full measure of what was happening.

Thus began six years of living with my stomach in knots. It was not a pretty time: not for him, not for our daughters, and not for me. I was never sure what my daughters were going through, never fully reassured or trusting him to be a responsible parent. I was ready 24/7 to swoop in and carry them to safety, and a lot of the time I was submerged in anxiety and doubt.

The good news is that in this period of crisis and increased using, there were suddenly many new opportunities to allow natural consequences to occur. By now I had begun learning about CRAFT and could start practicing, even though we were living separately. Shared custody meant that we were still in each other’s lives, and although it sounds funny, I could “use” access to the girls as a point of leverage, if needed.

Feelings, Feelings, Feelings

In my next blog post, (the third and last in this series), I give detailed descriptions of some of the situations we ran into with our LO: which boundaries were crossed, what feelings came up for us, the natural consequences we allowed to occur, and how things worked out.

But here I’d like to say a little more about the feelings that we—those whose LOs struggle with addiction—deal with every day. Those feelings can affect things so keenly, and even determine whether we allow a natural consequence to occur or not.

First of all, I want to remind you that all the feelings you’re having are OK, normal, and understandable. Even when they appear to be contradictory. I really mean that. And beware of heaping judgement or shame on top of your already-complicated feelings. Doing so just makes everything heavier and harder to bear.

The more we work the Allies program and practice stepping back to look at our own feelings with curiosity and compassion, the more distance we can get from those feelings. The less we’re at their mercy. And the clearer it becomes that we are not our feelings.

If you’re like I was, your stress levels may be through the roof. You may not even realize the level of inner tension you’re walking around with. When I was in the position of having to always be “the responsible one” or “the one the kids can count on,” I was attempting the impossible: hoping to thrive while in constant emergency mode.

Subconsciously, I believed that worry was a non-negotiable. If my LO was in a horrible place, I should be too, right? Wasn’t it a sign of devotion and true love?

It’s always fascinating to start looking with curiosity at both our feelings and our beliefs about those feelings. Our situations are all somewhat different, but what we share is immense as well. You need and deserve support—just as I did—and you must seek out ways to let the tension drop. Your body is doing the best it can, but if the tension is always present, if the adrenaline is coursing through you every day, your body will simply not be able to keep withstanding it all. And may I remind you, you need your body!

When our feelings and self-judgement get in the way of natural consequences

In addition to my feelings and emotional states (stress, worry, panic: you likely know them all if you have a LO with SUD), I was also battling some other demons.

A people-pleaser for much of my life, I always sought to do the “nicest”, “sweetest”, “most thoughtful”, “most selfless” thing. It was way easier for me to say yes than no. I wasn’t great at setting or maintaining boundaries (understatement). I was more concerned with how others were feeling than how I was. Can you relate?

So naturally, it was a learning process when I started diving into CRAFT. Rewarding my LO’s non-use was a breeze: I love being the good guy! But withdrawing rewards when I saw him using? Oy, much harder. And then there was allowing natural consequences to occur when it was safe to do so. That was the kicker. It meant I needed some clear and consistent boundaries.

Working the Allies program also meant that I had to start letting go of the guilt. Oh, the guilt! I grew up in a rather guilt-soaked atmosphere. I played the guilt game pretty well (in both directions, giving and receiving). But I was now starting to see that guilt was not serving me well!

I started practicing. I had a long list of things not to feel guilty about:

• Establishing new boundaries
• Protecting those boundaries
• Sometimes not wanting to kiss him when he smelled of alcohol and cigarettes
• All the ways I had messed up with my LO before I found CRAFT
• When allowing a natural consequence to occur made my LO angry
• That I had separated from my LO
• When our daughters preferred spending time with me
• When I didn’t manage to remove a reward (for instance, engaging in conversation with my LO when he was still under the influence)
• When I did remove a reward (for instance, opening the door when my LO came to visit me and my young daughter, smelling alcohol on his breath, and asking him to come back when he wasn’t using)
• When my LO’s family insinuated that he was in this state because of me
• My own feelings—my own murderous anger, for example
• The state of my family. As Laurie MacDougall recently said, I was just “one person trying to balance the entire universe!”
• That I had chosen to let my LO have partial custody of the girls

What will go on your list, as you start weaning yourself off guilt (or other self-judging, self-harming emotional states, like shame or perfectionism)? What negative self-talk loops are you ready to let go of?

What responsibility have you been carrying around that just doesn’t belong to you?

I hope you keep reading. Please feel free to write in with questions or comments. The next and final piece of this series lays out some mini real-life case studies from my family’s experience.