Why It's So Hard to Face Reality About People Destroying Your Life

there's this strange thing that happens to families when one member falls into destructive addiction we know that addicts thinking gets distorted and they slip into denial and lying and blaming and sometimes stealing that's what you'd expect but as I know so well from bitter experience the presumably sane people who love the addict also succumb to distorted thinking and toxic behavior and they fall into denial and lying and blaming and maybe not stealing but losing themselves amidst all the drama to a degree that makes the whole dynamic more damaging than it already was my letter today is from a woman I'll call Izzy and she writes dearest fairy I grew up in a family of nine seven kids and two loving and devoted parents I'm the middle child and often find myself in the role of The Peacemaker and mediator h i don't mind the position this puts me in as a sibling however it does mean I often get forgotten about by my parents because I'm the responsible one me too I was the responsible one I'm very close to my three sisters as well as my younger brother who is also an adult now my older two brothers have always been distant and less interested in family matters but each to their own my parents had a hard life especially my mother they both arrived in Australia Australia during the fall of Communism in Poland and married here their parenting styles are very relaxed yet firm when they need to be and I wouldn't have had my upbringing any other way I admire them deeply things started to go haywire when the third brother who was around 19 at the time whom I'll refer to as Dean got caught up in a terribly toxic relationship four years ago he was cheated on multiple times while away serving in the Air Force not to mention the amount of psychological and emotional abuse inflicted by her he began heavily drinking as a way to cope and his whole respectful demeanor that was earned while he was away began changing each time I walked past his room there would be hundreds of empty and collected alcohol bottles I saw him slowly revert back to his old ways in which he had been smoking marijuana since the age of nine nine okay that's a propensity there he began smoking every day and has never stopped he then began a new relationship which lasted approximately 2 years he took up drugs and became addicted to opioids party drugs inhalants narcotics and Coke essentially he grabbed a hold of whatever he could get his hands on that's when the stealing began he'd fiddle through the house in search of Cash when he began to run out on a minimum wage job even stole cash from his workplace Dean would go through our closets wallets purses and cars some times in the middle of the night to buy drugs he crashed three vehicles and tried to take one while high off while high like off his face meaning very high on drugs he lost his license eventually and on occasion we'd call the police or offer resources for support but you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped Dean didn't want to get better and I secretly resented him for it sure I'd been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at the time it was common in my childhood with his behavior increasing my capacity to cope in my last year of high school he stole my medications and and and script and there were several occasions in which he'd rummage through my room and my parents' bedroom he sounds like a brother I used to have who has not survived his behavior deeply upset all of us but I felt like I was the only one to really struggle with wrapping my head around this new angry and tortured older brother my parents would sweep this under the drug like it was normal and continuously paid off his debts in their best in their best interest and the focus was on him he would have multitudes of violent outbursts and became abusive toward us siblings hitting choking and punching my younger brother oh dear all right at times he and my eldest brother would fist fight and in attempts to Abate the domestic fights he'd only hit harder asking for more my younger siblings and mother were always a witness to this dad was not around to see it sadly it was something we got used to there were so many occurrences like this and frankly my mind Associates when I think back to that time period as it was so intense and traumatic yeah I understand my eldest brother moved out eventually with his partner so it was just us five at home eventually he met a new girl and moved into a rental they fell pregnant a year into the relationship and he was around 22 at the time we so hoped this baby would be our miracle baby to save him yeah I'm afraid of where this is going the truth of it he stayed clean off drugs just never stopped smoking I think you mean weed okay weed is technically a drug but I know what you mean okay or do you just mean cigarettes oh yeah no you mean weed this was fine as weed was the least of our worries and he is a fairly okay father my younger brother and I became close with him over this that period and our relationships FLIR because we saw him change his behaviors and become a decent dad he wants what's best for his one-year-old but his relationship with his girlfriend was constantly on and off she's extremely domestically abusive toward him and the kid W was a witness to this and began to notice their fights recently it became too much for him knowing that his child would grow up to see this the responsible thing was to move out but unfortunately our family house was his rock all the pentab brid and internal guilt was reduced onto our family it got too much for my younger brother and too much for my parents and me he'd have no money and spend it on weed invade our space never clean up after himself and constantly played the victim card he never takes accountability for anything and laughs it off as a joke it was chaos when one night he intentionally really hurt my little sister eldest sister and my younger brother I won't go into detail we kicked him out that was my last straw because we'd given him more than enough chances my younger brother Elder eldest and younger sister got a restraining order that was that very night against him it was the hardest thing I ever had to do so you weren't part of the restraining order just them okay from then on I didn't consider him family I vowed never to see his face again my parents understandably still consider him their son and allow him to meet outside the house for ketchups my younger brother cannot cope with this and is hugely suffering when his name is said it's a huge trigger at first I was glad and happy that I wasn't going to enable his behavior anymore I want him to choose to get better I just don't want to hear about it he has a lot of work to do and plenty of apologies to make so going back to my question I've recently begun feeling the grief and loss of this connection especially with my nephew whom I bonded with in every moment I feel numb yet okay at the same time any suggestions would de deeply support me thank you for reading this all right Izzy I'm so sorry I relate so much to this it's What a Sad thing addiction is a monster and it got your brother so from what you're saying about this it sounds like you have some knowledge of how families can sort of detach and have um the best possible attitude about a family me member that's an addiction but one reason I thought maybe you hadn't gone very deeply into like the literature for family of Alcoholics and addicts is because you give a lot of because about his behavior you go well you know he he got cheated on and so he became an alcoholic and what I've learned from reading the literature is like you know people with alcohol and drug problems like anybody are going to have some ups and downs and definitely trauma can make people more likely to succumb to addiction but there's some element of it that is quite outside of it any cause we can name it's perhaps genetic or you know we just don't know in my family it's about 5050 the whole extended family about 50% of them have serious alcohol and addiction many of those have died young as a result the other 50% don't have it when we have the problems we have which are considerable sometimes you know you're not like home free if it wasn't alcoholism and addiction but it sounds like in your family well it was fairly fairly healthy family and you have the support of the siblings so he ended up with the bad role of the dice so that would be one thing I just encourage you to read the literature and kind of learn what is known about it and there's some difference of opinion some people say all addiction is trauma driven some say it's um you know it's just of it's just something that passes and you get over it but when it comes to what you're talking about as a garbage pale addict which is somebody who takes everything in sight whether it's genetic or some sort of aspect of the personality or spiritual thing like it's bad it's very bad and it's not it's like no matter how easy life gets or how if a baby comes in or the ex cheats or anything like that like they're going to they're going to use and drink either way and it just sounds like your brother is back in it again whether you know it or not I don't think uh people who are just smoking weed and that's working for them get as bad as you're describing in this the latest chapter of this it feels to me like there's more going on I could be projecting because the addicts in my life and there have been many like they get clean sometimes or they just go to weed or you know there's everybody's got their version of partly cleaning up or all the way cleaning up or trying to people please everybody so that everybody will like them again and then the relapse comes again I've just been through it so many times I guess I'm a bit cynical it's pretty hard to count on recovery in people who aren't really really really doing it so it didn't sound like that it sounded like yeah it sounded like one of those partial deals so that means a little bit of Hope is always in order you know we can always hope for the best for people but there's this idea you know in 12 step recovery there's a program called alanon I think you probably know that for families of Alcoholics and sometimes addicts there's also ACA adult children of Alcoholics and other dysfunctional families but what I hear in this I don't know you sound pretty healthy to me it just sounds like you're dealing with somebody who's doing this and you're trying to figure out like what to do with the sadness and you I'm afraid I'm afraid he's half lost now my brother died eventually he we went through all this kind of behavior for years and years and years and then he died and when he was 38 I was 31 in a way at that point I was relieved there I never I it had gotten so bad and it was just so Perpetual that every time the phone would ring from him I would just go oh no here we go again there was going to be trouble and violence and broken glass and threats and demands and yeah it was um sometimes I would feel like an emotional Hostage to his behavior and I moved out of state from where he lived which helped when he died I had this false idea that oh it wasn't like a real loss of a brother because he was so addicted for so long that I sort of knew this was coming that was my false thinking and I'm not saying your brother is definitely going to die but he's certainly at risk at Great risk especially these days but you with addicts you lose them in stages you know one stage is when their whole soul and personality succumb to the drugs and then if and when they die that's that's the final loss but at the time I I I've had several people in my loved ones die of alcoholism and addiction and overdoses and every time early this was earlier in my life I would just go well it's not quite the same as if somebody who didn't have an addiction died well of course it's the same it's just that the loss began while they were alive and not like somebody who has a terminal disease you could consider addiction to terminal disease but but it's not like that the way they turn against you the way the person you know has disappeared sometimes I say that somebody with an addiction is like a planet that has this terrible dark side of it and sometimes you're looking at this sunny planet and they're so nice and you're like oh Planet it's beautiful and then you know Night comes and you see the dark side and they don't know you and they don't connect with you and they're unfamiliar to you and it hurts and it's jarring and sometimes they say terrible things and they steal your stuff and betray you and it's a loss like that is a loss and so if you're deciding to not have him in your life right now uh yeah it's going to be sad because a little bit because there's hope but probably a lot because you remember the person he once was the person who conceivably he can be again he might be that person person again and I bet if he gets into recovery he'll let you know he'll come and apologize but if the people I've known a lot of people who needed to recover and never did who did recover who I met you know before they did and then they did and I met a lot of people after they recovered and I feel like I have a pretty good like representative sample of what happens and people who don't want it with all their heart and go all out and go every extra inch and mile to to try to recover they don't tend to stick they don't tend to stay clean and sober it's a terrible disease like that and some of the drugs especially you know are worse than others in terms of trapping people in there so it's both a loss and it's a threat that you're going to lose them and what can you do so after I lost my brother um as it happened I had just started going to alanon before he died about 6 months before he died I didn't know that he was going to die it was it was I started going at the time my mother died and 6 months later my brother died and so I didn't know he was going to die that was you know out of the blue but well not not 100% but we had connected a lot around the loss of my mom and talking about it and her death was very related to alcohol and drugs and so we were talking a lot about it and I said hey I started going to alanon it's amazing and I'm changing and I'm working the 12 steps and I have a sponsor and you know I just feel like the whole family should do it which is what people in an early Elan on recovery want to do come on everybody let's do it well they didn't want to do it but um my brother sent me a letter and said you're going to be so proud of me I went to an AA meeting and I I got a sponsor and I started working the steps and I'm going to get sober and you're going to be so proud of me and I said and he said and you're going to love me again and I said I already love you I was he' put me through so much but I did I genuinely loved him the the essence of him I didn't like the behavior at all and it was torture but but I loved him and he had been a dear brother to me at one time well then suddenly he died and it was a nice feeling to know that I had expressed that love to him and I had learned i' had been in alanon just 6 months when he died but I had learned enough that it was possible for me to both express love and have a total boundary around him and I didn't see him and I didn't want to see him but I wanted to let him know that I was encouraging him and I loved him and when I went to clean out his apartment after he died sure enough there was like some work there and it was incomplete you know it he hadn't done very much he had sort of misunderstood like by that time I was an expert on the step six months right but I mean I was doing them myself so I knew a lot and I could just sort of see he may not have been totally understanding the whole thing so I don't think he had gone very deeply into it but still God bless him he tried he tried and it was there in his papers so I know he tried and um and I love that about him too and I miss him but I sure don't miss the crazy and the violence and the horrible holidays and the worry that he was going to show up at my door and those things so it's a complicated kind of love isn't it I feel for you I feel for I know a lot of people who watch this also have this in their families or had it and there's just no way around it it's a sad thing there's no platitudes to be like yeah except everything's great it's just it's just sucks it's just it's just a very sad thing and what we can do is we can learn how to be happy whether they change or not it doesn't being a happy person doesn't mean you're not going to be sad about loss or Miss people being a happy person means you pursue your own life and so everything that you told me in this letter like it was relevant information but sometimes what I see is people will write to me about an addiction and all the information is about this other person very detailed about their feelings and their reasons and the person who's writing me is lost in all of this so don't Lose Yourself Don't Lose Yourself I encourage you to keep finding yourself have a strong self and actually you you with ongoing self-development is the best possible influence for other family members Whatever May Come Along on the path they might not need you today but they may need you tomorrow so keep working on yourself and I encourage you consider going to alanon it's so helpful it's so helpful there's some weird property about people who who have um addiction or alcoholism and you know we all want to focus on them and how they have problems but all of us who are affected by them who are in their sphere are vulnerable to be affected too and I'll tell you I was like this is what I always describe it there's for people of my age there's like archetype characters Lucy and Charlie Brown right Margaret and Dennis the Menace just kind of the the older girl where nothing's good enough and is always like trying to tell everybody what to do I so had that energy in me and alanon help me relax that some and just kind of be with what is it's understandable why a person like me or possibly you I don't know maybe not you but me and I'm not the only one just get kind of hard-hearted as a way to cope with all the craziness so alanon is where I learned to have compassion I learned some practical ideas you know I got to be friends with a lot of people who had been through similar things or were going through similar things and there's a really nice way that we can help each other when we understand each other at that level I wish you good luck in finding peace in yourself and continuing to grow while your brother sorts himself out I hope he does I really do so if you or anybody watching wants to try the tool that really helps set me free and process all the feelings and thoughts that I had as a result of growing up with all of that stuff and then also coping with the loss of people in my life it was the daily practice I teach it for free it's a free course you can access it and register for it and take it right now if you feel like it and if you do you will receive invitations to join me on free Zoom calls that I do twice a month my team does them uh twice a month as well and there's lots of opportunities to connect with us without spending a penny and you can take that course right there and I will see you very soon [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 15,241

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Id: or7i25zhIfQ

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024