Having a partner who is struggling with addiction has many challenges. As your and your partner’s lives are intertwined, their choices impact you dramatically. However, as you learn more about addiction, you can make a difference in aiding your partner on their road to recovery. By caring for your own needs, drawing boundaries, and encouraging your partner to seek addiction treatment, you help them take steps towards living a life free from the many challenges of addiction. New Creation Recovery believes that your support and care can make all of the difference. Therefore, family involvement is encouraged as it is a part of an effective treatment strategy.
Learning About Addiction
The first step in encouraging your partner to seek addiction treatment and supporting them is to learn about addiction. Addiction is a disease that creates a chronic desire to use drugs or alcohol or participate in certain behaviors. When you are not struggling with addiction, it can be difficult to understand the ins and outs of why your loved one is struggling.
According to the National Insitute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), addiction is a disease that impacts how the brain functions. Your partner is not choosing to continue to use drugs or alcohol. Instead, the pleasure centers of their brain have been hijacked to direct them to continued substance abuse. The specific brain changes vary depending on a person’s unique experiences, drug use over time, and genetics. However, the changes in the brain help you to understand that your partner’s compulsion is not voluntary. Instead, it is part of the disease of addiction.
Necessity of Addiction Treatment
As addiction is a disease, treatment is vital for your partner’s health and well-being. Effective treatment for addiction often includes medication, detox, and therapeutic interventions. Through these methods, your partner can heal physically. Additionally, they learn how to live their lives after treatment free from the challenges of addiction.
While there are many changes that you and your partner can make at home to help support their recovery, addiction is a disease that requires treatment. This is due to the physical changes that occur in the brain. In treatment, the physical changes in the brain are addressed. Additionally, the skills learned help them to remain sober long-term. When your partner is struggling with addiction, they may not understand the need for treatment and how it will help them to be successful in recovery.
Encouraging Addiction Treatment
Supporting your partner to make a change in their life is challenging. While you are impacted by their struggles with addiction, it is ultimately their responsibility to get treatment. However, as a partner, you can discuss addiction, including the need for treatment, and guide them towards getting the help they need. In addition, drawing boundaries can help them to see the need to seek addiction treatment.
Discussing Addiction
As you learn more about addiction and addiction treatment, it can be helpful to discuss what you are learning with your partner. Their situation is unique. However, the common threads with addiction are often helpful in your partner learning more about what addiction is. Over time, this information will often sink in.
Additionally, it is helpful to discuss why treatment is vital when seeking recovery from addiction. These conversations can be focused on addiction. However, they may also be spread out depending on what is most helpful for you and your partner.
Guiding Them to Get Help
While providing information to your partner can help, you can also guide them in how to get help. This is particularly helpful as once your partner sees the value of treatment for addiction, they may struggle to take steps towards treatment. Guidance does not mean that you need to do all of the work. Instead, you can help them by providing information on treatment centers. Additionally, you can be a sounding board for them in figuring out what the next step is in getting treatment.
How Drawing Boundaries Encourages Addiction Treatment
As a partner in a healthy relationship, you want to encourage and support your partner. However, part of helping your partner is caring for your own needs. This is because when you care for your needs and express how your partner is impacting you, it helps them see the value of getting help to change their actions. As a result, treatment at New Creation Recovery involves partners and helps them to partake in the healing process.
Part of caring for your needs is drawing boundaries. Your boundaries will be unique to meet your needs. However, they may include things like financial boundaries of what you are willing to support, emotional boundaries involving how your partner speaks to you, or time boundaries. Regardless of the specific boundaries that you draw, they show your partner how they are impacting you. As a result, they can help you to care for your needs and encourage them to seek treatment for addiction.
When your partner is struggling with addiction, it can feel like it is impacting you, and you do not have any control. However, as a partner, you can educate yourself regarding addiction, learn how to encourage your partner to seek treatment, and draw boundaries that help you and your partner to heal. At New Creation Recovery, we encourage family participation and offer treatment that helps your partner build skills for long-term recovery. If you and your partner are struggling, we can help. Call us today at (877) 868-5730 to learn more about our treatment program and speak to a staff member about how we can help your partner recover from addiction.
