Who is the Individual of Concern (IOC)?

With the Individual of Concern being your friend, I’m guessing you have some history with them or you wouldn’t be reading this page. You may not know the person they were before the addiction. You probably have a range of feelings, emotions and opinions. You may want to trust your friend to make good decision for themself. They can’t.

Know that your interactions have influence. You have a story about your friend’s crisis. Your friend probably has another story. Don’t argue about the accuracy. Right now, the accuracy is less important than your friendship.

The Relationship

In crisis, how you make meaning of your friendship is your asset and potential leverage for them to take action after their crisis. If your goal is to support them from crisis to safety and/or from addiction to sobriety, now is not the time to bring a grudge. For now, take the high road. Focus on their safety. If you can’t, support someone who can.

What are the stories you tell yourself about their crisis? It’s easy to see their patterns.You have an opinion. You may think it’s important to express it. Now may be a good time to emphasize the gap between how you see safety and risk. Now may not be the best time to emphasize your story.

If your opinion is negative and judgmental or if you’ve been in the caretaker role with your friend, either way recognize that the same approach in relating may contribute to the same results and may be counterproductive to creating a container of change.

Be curious about the shame your friend may feel. When you have a friend in addiction, I believe another wave of shame isn’t going to help them. Creating a container of compassion can help. But the container of compassion will look a little different depending on the history of your relationship. This isn’t about lying to yourself or being someone you’re not. It’s more about connecting deeper inside yourself and pushing your own edges of growth to see their wholeness.

Your friend may trigger something inside of you. Be curious about your beliefs.

If you’ve been in the caretaker role with your friend, listen to Morgana Rae’s and Heidi Le’s podcast on the “Families Navigating Addiction & Recovery.” Both women have powerful stories about a parent in addiction and how they did their own healing work. http://hpi.gya.temporary.site/category/podcasts/page/2/

If you’re concerned about being in a conflictual role with your friend listen to the podcast with Dr. Mark Goulston who provides valuable tips in connecting with people who don’t want to connect with you.

At best, the relationship between you and your friend has a history of trust, mutual respect and clear boundaries before the slow gradual process of addiction. Maybe you’ve communicated your concern for them, asked questions and really listened. You’ve done your best to not communicate in anger, and manage any anger directed at you by not engaging in it.

At worst, the relationship between you and your friend has a history of a challenge, pain, hurt and emotional baggage. Maybe you’ve gotten triggered, raised your voice, gotten in arguments and demanded they make a change. Maybe you’ve done this many times.

Either way, challenging areas in the history of your relationship may be acted out in the present. The crisis feels so personal, so painful. Every time another crisis arises with your friend, the normal tendency is to react in the same way. Eventually, you want to disrupt this pattern.

Where your friend’s addiction can be seen as a strategy to numb themself from painful feelings, you can become “addicted” to your strategy to fix them. You can become fixed to your beliefs, your pattern of relating, and the way you connect. Two people reacting to one another’s triggers becomes a circular looping pattern.

Ideally, your goal is to support your friend getting safe after a crisis. Before you have a conversation with your friend, it’s important for you to learn about addiction.

• https://www.samhsa.gov/capt/practicing-effective-prevention/prevention-behavioral-health/risk-protective-factors
• https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drugs-brain

Ideally, you help to create a container of safety for heart to heart conversations.

The Conversation

I’m reminded of a wise mentor I had back in the 80’s and 90’s who stated, “Only in the presence of compassion will a person allow themselves to see the truth.” It’s optimal for you to create this presence of compassion in your relationship with your friend, but if this is not realistic for you, it’s a sign that you may not be the right person to lead a joint effort. It’s a sign you  may need someone to create this presence of compassion for you before you can do this for your friend.

If you don’t want to have a conversation with your friend:

• Consider sorting through your feelings with a trusted friend, coach or therapist
• Avoiding can be a short term strategy in crisis, but has longterm consequences
• If you feel their behavior is none of your business, ask when would it become your business?

Your feelings are important. A longterm strategy of holding them rigidly may not serve you longterm, at least it won’t serve on a level of family healing. Consider this an opportunity to look with new eyes at your friend’s situation.

If you do want to have a conversation with your friend:

• Be clear about what outcome you’d like to see happen from a conversation
• Consider past patterns of communication and find a way to deepen it
• It won’t be helpful to blast your feelings all over your friend
• This is not a time to increase their shame
• Own what you can and stay positive

Know that addiction interrupts brain functioning. Your friend may be stuck in a reactive pattern with you. You own your side of the pattern. In theory, you have more potential to change how you look at your relationship with your friend than they do. Expanding your perspective allows more info for you to consider-from contribution to impact to multiple pathways of healing. Shifting your perspective is an opportunity, not an obligation.

Your role in relation to your friend may remind them of a pattern with someone significant in their life. They may see your reaching out to them as negative. Expect this possibility. Consider looking at the situation through multiple lens. Don’t believe everything you think.

You may think, “why do I need to change? It’s not me who has the problem.”

Change is not about lying to yourself or changing your personhood, but about changing your perspective and approach to their situation. Change is about staying engaged with your friend while being compassionate with yourself as well as your friend.

It’s likely the addiction crisis has been building for years. You may have seen plenty of signs. See your friend at the epicenter of an addiction disruption, and you in a role around the slow, gradually building problem. Our culture has an old story of seeing addiction as an individual problem with individual solutions. This perspective contributes to the challenge for your friend to see their strengths rather than their deficits emphasized in the old story.

It’s safe to assume that this addiction disruption didn’t start with your friend. Assume there are family patterns of challenges that contribute to their situation. With individuals and families, there’s a trickle down of genetic vulnerability to addiction and behavioral coping strategies with challenge that is linked to the story of your friend. Right now, it’s not necessary to know the specifics, but the assumption has the potential to shift how you and your friend see how addiction has taken root in your friend.

Neurobiologically, our brains are wired to look for differences. But it’s in your ability to focus on the sameness and connections that support you using your relationship to inspire change with your friend. Consider expanding your focus from the old story and the narrow primitive impulses of your neurobiology to consider possibilities in connection.

(link to Shame Reduction Map & explanation of Intergenerational transmission)

Thick or thin, there’s tentacles of connection and perhaps love and concern (or its opposite) between you and your friend. If you relate to them like you have been, you’re in trouble. Addiction will manipulate the connection every time. Addiction exploits the connection. The positive connection of love is a threat to the connection addiction has with your friend. Addiction loves to create chaos. Addiction will not roll over. Addiction will fight. It may seem like your friend is fighting with you. Separate addiction from your friend. Act on the impersonal knowledge of patterns that have been trickling down over generations. Addiction is not personal.

Addiction will attempt to suck you into a fight. You’ll lose every time. When you talk to your friend, imagine that you’re talking to addiction. If you approach a conversation as if you’re talking to the positive aspects of the friend you remember, you’re inviting addiction to take advantage. Even when your loved one’s words sound sincere, it is very possible addiction will not allow your friend to do what they say. You may just write them off as a liar, but addiction has invaded their thinking and how they make meaning. See past addiction’s nastiness to your friend’s personhood. You’ll catch their attention.

So, the first step in having a conversation is to create an environment of compassion for your self and your friend This may be the only step needed, but you may need to do it over and over.

You want your friend to feel the difference between this approach and every other approach to a conversation you’ve ever had. This is a huge task. You must prepare yourself.

Assume everything that comes out of their mouth is coming from an impaired brain. In your thinking, separate your friend  from addiction. In your language, separate your friend from addiction. If your intention is to connect with your friend, realize that you need to get under the veil of addiction. Listen to the podcast, “Families Navigating Addiction & Recovery” in the episode with Dr. Mark Goulston. http://hpi.gya.temporary.site/2018/10/17/dr-mark-goulston-suicide-expert-more/

Unless a bus is bearing down on your friend, it is not your responsibility to get in the way of their feeling the weight of their own behavior. Your friend needs to feel the pain or they have no motivation to change. On the other side, blaming and shaming your friend and thinking this will motivate them to change is a myth. (link to blog article-historical use of shame to motivate bad behavior)

Look into their eyes. Breathe deeply. Look for what’s behind their eyes. What is the emotion you see or imagine behind their eyes. Connect with that emotion. Be with that emotion. Ask about that emotion. Guess what’s it’s like for your friend. Be willing to be wrong. Stay connected to that feeling inside your own body. This, more than anything is your barometer to your moment by moment decisions to say anything or just be with your friend.

Do not react to their anger. It’s crucial that you stay connected to that place inside. It’s crucial that you are grounded and present. Keep the tone of your voice slow and calm. Let them dance around you. Refuse to engage in the dance of the past.

Crisis is not the time to talk with your friend about past patterns that get stirred up. Be aware of your own feelings. Feelings, not thoughts. Feelings are one word. Sentences are thoughts. You want to connect with your own feelings. Own them. Be with them.

Only when you can sit with and own your feelings, can you separate your friend’s feelings from your own feelings. Being comfortable with feelings increases the possibility your friend will feel their own feelings. Don’t try to change them.

Separating your feelings from your friend’s feelings. Being with them without judgment starts a shift in your relationship. You are more in control of your change, then you are of your friend’s change.

Don’t expect this conversation to change anything quickly. Addiction is a slow gradual process. So is healing.

Advice Giving

Are they asking for your advice? It’s great if they are, but it’s unrealistic to expect they can fulfill on anything they say. They may make commitments that addiction will not allow them to do. Addiction is either strongly influencing or controlling your friend’s thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Don’t give advice, especially if your pattern is giving them advice. But if you do, don’t expect them to take your advice. Be gentle with yourself.

But if your friend asks your advice and listens to your advice, know they will likely need help being successful. Break down the steps in the process of what they would like to do, attach the steps to timeline and explore how they can have support with each step. Explore how having a buddy to go through this with them would increase the potential for success.

The criteria for the person in, what I’m calling the buddy role is that they:

• Understand the complexity and tenacity of addiction on the human body
• Understand the challenges and obstacles in the pathway of recovery
• Create an environment of compassion for themselves and for your friend
• Can separate your friend’s personhood from addiction
• Can separate their own agenda from your friend’s agenda
• Listen well

This person might be:

• A new friend in a self help group (example: an AA participant or eventually a sponsor)
• A recovery coach
• A therapist

Initially, this person might be you. Perhaps not. Realize this journey is not just a short trip through one rapid and then the challenge is over. Think of this journey your friend may take as a hero’s journey. Historically, for women this would be like Innana’s journey to the underworld or for men the Gilgemesh story. A more modern day example is Dorothy’s journey in the Wizard of Oz. She is open to the help of others for her to navigate obstacles in her journey.

Realize change is an incremental process. Your friend needs support with every step in making change. Know they’ll likely disagree. They may say they can do it by themselves. However, each time they try and fail on their own increases their level of shame. Change may look like you planting seeds in rich, tilled soil. Your providing space without judgement works nutrients into the soil.

Next Steps

First, do what you need to do to manage the crisis with your friend. Do what they cannot do for themself, and allow them to feel the weight of their own behavior. Consider allowing natural consequences.

Second, whether it’s just you or you and others in your family, it’s optimal to see addiction as an opportunity for change. The opportunity is to include an and/both focus, fluidly shifting back and forth between the problem and what surrounds the problem. You and other friends surround the problem. Much can be done to help increase protective factors  and to create an environment of compassion and if applicable, eventually an environment inhospitable to active addiction.

Third, create your own support systems to learn, practice and integrate aspects of the above that serve you best. Through this process you may be involved in making important decisions. Staying engaged with these resources over time will support you to make best decisions.

There are multiple pathways to individual recovery. Familiarize yourself with the possibilities. This document suggest the multiple avenues available to your grandparent to choose what fits and for your family as well. (link to Multiple Pathways pdf)

Online Crisis group provides structure, connection with likeminded others, and natural opportunities for skill building

The structure of the online groups starts with opportunities for you to navigate the continuum between anonymity and openly sharing who you are and details you wish to share about your situation.

The structure supports you to self select what is most appropriate for you. You can start with anonymity and can move to openly sharing details of your situation. You will have choice each step of the way. The online groups are not facebook groups.

All of the groups provide opportunities for you to learn and practice:

• Building trust
• Boundaries
• Communication skills
• Conflict resolution skills
• Problem solving skills

These are all skills you can implement into your family when you choose.

The objective of the Crisis group is to know what contributes to crisis, what you can do to defuse it, understand how best use your relationship to stay connected with your loved one, and inspire action that best meets your goals.

The Crisis group will meet online 3 times a week for an hour. Half of the time will be spent with an opening, check in’s, and specific content delivery on a 12 week rotation. The other half of the time is for group members to share what has worked and not relative to the topic, reflections, questions and coaching.

Here’s an example of topics:

• The key under every strategy to help you navigate crisis
• Learn the do’s & don’t’s for conversations with your loved one
• Learn deescalation techniques
• Find your criteria for decision making in any situation

Addiction will minimize crisis. Take it seriously.

You have an option between individual coaching or group coaching

The objective of the Crisis group is to support you to best address crisis when it arises. You’ll learn how to best use internal and external resources as you navigate before, during, and after a crisis. It’s not same for each person’s situation.

The Crisis group will meet online three times a week for an hour. Half of the time will be spent with an opening, check in’s, and specific content delivery. The other half of the time is for group members to share what has worked and relative to the topic, and what hasn’t worked. It’s a time to ask questions, get coaching, and if you like, ask for an accountability buddy from the group.

Here’s an example of topics:

• Strategies to help in crisis and how to know what’s best for your situation
• Learn the do’s & don’t’s for conversations with your loved one
• Learn deescalation techniques

It’s great when a crisis is a wakeup call that results in longterm change, but with addiction it’s likely the impaired brain of addiction is stronger then a wakeup call. Your role is to support your loved one, not addiction. There will be a series of decisions to be made. The Crisis group is an environment of likeminded people to support you brainstorming options and providing resources for you to make decisions that are best for you.

The crisis of your loved one comes with a message and an opportunity. Your loved one cannot recognize it. But with your abilities to stay regulated and calm, it’s much more likely that you can use crisis to make new decisions.

Take crisis seriously.

You have choices: an online group or individual coaching.