The Top 10 Ways to Know if Your Life is being Negatively Affected by Another Person's Addiction(s).
Category: Emotional Healing, Recovery, Coping, 12-Step (BE61)Originally Submitted on 7/29/97.
Addiction can take severe toll of the people around the addicted person (the AP). If you have an addicted person in your life, whether it is a significant other, a child, parent, sibling, or friend, sooner or later you will have to take giant steps to avoid having your life, too, damaged by that person's addiction. Some ways to tell if this is happening to you:
1. You rarely spend money on yourself, yet there is never enough and you don't know where it goes.
2. There are major gaps of time for which your AP has no explanation. You have given up asking about them because it just causes anger and confrontation, and you no long believe what you are told anyway.
3. You spend a lot of time waiting by the phone, and have learned to rarely make plans that involve your AP because when you do they usually fall through.
4. You have become used to giving and not taking, and you feel it is a sign of strength that you can manage everything on your own without help from the AP.
5. The AP frequently asks to borrow money, always giving good reasons for needing it and making promises as to when it will be repaid. It is rarely repaid, but you continue to make the loans anyway.
6. Your lifestyle and most of your decisions revolve around the AP. You are increasingly not the center of your own life.
7. You increasingly socialize only with your AP's friends, and are often uncomfortable with their behavior. You find yourself making excuses for adjusting your standards of behavior downwards.
8. When you do see your own friends, you get angry if they ask why you stay around the AP rather than branching out on your own, but you cannot admit even to yourself that you do not have a good answer.
9. You make excuses for the AP's behavior, both to yourself and to others. Sometimes you even lie for the AP.
10. You secretly feel proud, even a little noble, at being able to "help out" so often. It is nice to know how much you are needed, and that people see how much you can be depended upon.
About the Submitter
This piece was originally submitted by Coach Diana Robinson, PhD., CASAC, Professional Life Coach, Writer, Editor, Counselor, who can be reached at Diana@choicecoach.com, or visited on the web. Coach Diana Robinson wants you to know: As a Professional Life Coach I welcome the chance to work with people seeking to reconnect with their own strengths and their own authenticity, people who are seeking balance in their lives, and to whom inner, as well as outer, success is important. I offer a half-hour complimentary coaching call and a free twice-monthly e-mail newsletter. For more information see my web site. The original source is: Myself, my life, my observations.
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