When we’re struggling with conflict and unresolved issues in our relationships, couples counseling is one of the healing tools we can try, to help us with our conflict resolution patterns, strengthen our communication skills, and deepen our connection. When one or both of us is living with addiction, the counseling dynamic can be impacted in multiple different ways. We can struggle with discomfort and fear that we’re being judged by our partner. We might be dealing with excessive substance abuse that is threatening to tear the relationship apart. We may be watching as our partner relapses over and over again, unsure of how to help, afraid we’re enabling them in certain ways. When we’re in couples counseling while also struggling with addiction, there are some things we can keep in mind.
Reasonable Expectations
Whether or not we’ve tried couples counseling before, in this relationship or another one, it’s a good idea to have reasonable goals and expectations for the therapeutic work we’re doing. We can’t hope for the issues to be resolved immediately, nor can we reasonably expect our partner, or ourselves, to be cured of our addictions overnight. Recovery is a lifelong journey, and when we’re in a relationship with an addict, or when we ourselves are addicts, we may face relationship issues related to our addictions for quite some time before we come to any resolution. This is because we’re dealing with deeply ingrained emotional and psychological issues, sometimes for the very first time. We’re confronting old traumas and wounds that predate this partnership. We’re dealing with relationship patterns that stem from our family dynamics and from the things we witnessed and experienced as children. We’ll want to be patient as we unearth and uncover these difficult issues, and we’ll want to try to let go of any predetermined timelines and expectations for when and how we hope things will get better.
Personal Accountability
Another important thing to keep in mind is that while our interpersonal relationship dynamics are related to both of us, and while we often are in very codependent relationships, our problems with addiction are specific to us as individuals. Healing from our addictions is our own individual work to do. We can help and support one another, but we can’t do the work for each other. We can’t take on the burden of the recovery for our partners, nor can we expect them to for us. We have to establish independence and personal autonomy in our recovery. We have to take responsibility for our addictions and hold ourselves accountable. In the context of a close relationship, sometimes these lines can get blurred, especially when we are compounding one another’s addictive patterns, and this is one of the many issues we’ll want to address in our counseling work.
At The Guest House Ocala, our recovery programs include family therapy in addition to individual and group therapy.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488