Things You Find When Looking For Something Else - The 3 C's Posted by:Rocco--Monday, July 19, 2010

Things You Find When Looking For Something Else
- The 3 C's

Often after getting help we wonder why did we wait so long before looking for support and learning how to use the resources that are available to us.

We become aware of a serious problem with the behavior of our teen. We see them changing in negative ways and may even understand that alcohol/drugs are involved. Usually we think that we can handle the situation ourselves.

The idea that our son or daughter might be an addict is so disturbing that we will focus on almost any other issue as the main issue (friends, school, our job). Sometimes we know the reality in our heads but can't or won't accept it in our heart. This split between head and heart is not unusual but may prevent us from moving forward toward learning how to respond to our child’s drug use in a healthy way and seek help and resources for them, ourselves and our family.

First of all many of us don't really understand addiction. The second issue is that the concept of addiction carries with it a heavy load of blame, shame, guilt, failure, and is unfortunately and inaccurately seen as a reflection on the character of our family.

Our tendency is to try to take care of problems within our family and not to "air out our dirty laundry." This behavior tends to isolate the family and reduces our chance of learning more about the reality of addiction and how to contact and use resources that could be helpful.

What do you do with that urge, or obsession, to control your teenage drug/alcohol user’s every move?

It is important to remember the 3 C's.

We didn't Cause the addiction.

We can't Control the addiction.

We can't Cure the addiction.

The 3 C's might sound like we are more helpless than we want to be. We would rather force ourselves into the situation rather than believe we are helpless in a family crisis.

Parent Survival Skills Training (PSST) can help you to understand what you are dealing with when you have an addicted adolescent in your family, help you reduce your feelings of isolation and anxiety, help you relate to your entire family, help you feel better about yourselves and stay connected to friends and other people you know in the community.

PSST can help you with the following:

1. Understand the nature of the disease of addiction.

2. Understand the difference between your teen’s issues and your issues.

3. Understand and begin to implement the 3 C's
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4. Understand and begin to implement the new 3 C-C's based on what you can do.

5. Learn how to manage anxiety and fear. Learn how they drive unhealthy reactions to the addict.

6. Learn how to use resources both inside and outside your family.

It may take a while before your teenager fully accepts their recovery program. But in the mean time PSST will help you find a sense of balance, self-control and general well-being in your life. When you act from a sense of balance, you have the presence of mind to “be there” for your teen in a meaningful, rather than a desperate way. You have the ability to think clearly and make better decisions. You will know the difference between what your issues are and what your teen’s issues are.

So, what do you do with the urge to control your addict’s every move?

Start by controlling your every move.

Get yourself to a PSST meeting (or find help at www.alanon.org or www.naranon.org), put your health and well-being first, and start treating your teen properly – regardless of whether or not he or she is meeting your expectations of how to live life.

Start to really LIVE your life yourself. Enjoy your moments, hours and days; stay in present time; Breathe deeply and enjoy the company of the people around you without allowing every other word you speak to be about the addict in your life.

Of course that’s just the beginning and at the same time it’s an awful lot.

They say there are only 4 ends to an addict: jail, death, recovery or institution. The same can be said for the co-addict. Stop your obsession and begin to live a life in recovery TODAY!

The New 3 C-C's:

Remember that in fact we are not helpless and if we are to make the best use of important resources we need to learn the new 3 C-C's.

What we Can Cause: Improvement in our well being, increased knowledge about addiction, treatment and how to respond to our teenager.

What we Can Control: Our environment, How we respond to addiction, How we allow ourselves to be treated.

What we Can Cure: Our own emotional and physical health.

The 3 C's and other information concerning Families and Addiction can be found at the following web sites:

12StepFamily.com - dedicated to reaching out to the family members of addicts of all types and help them get the information they need to improve their life circumstances whether the addict is still using or not!
http://12stepfamily.com/category/parents-of-addicts/

Families and Addiction Blog - An ongoing dialogue about how family members can help themselves, the addicted person they care about and learn to use resources in their community.
http://familiesandaddiction.blogspot.com/