Do you have someone in your family who just can’t seem to get their life together? You might have family members who won’t engage in healthy behaviors, are depressed, and are often addicts.
Do you find yourself worrying about them so much that it is taking away from your enjoyment of life? Do you feel compelled to help, yet frustrated, hopeless and helpless about the situation?
If so, you are not alone. I regularly talk with anxious caretakers who want me to help their loved ones. Some realize that they would be more effective as caretakers if we worked with them first, but others don’t seem to appreciate their own contributions.
Caring for a difficult dependent is exhausting and stressful. Caretakers often are over burdened with people depending on them, and end up neglecting their own self care. This in turn leads to increased stress and burnout.
How Are You Showing Up?
Luckily, my client, who has a few addicts in her family, realized that to best serve her family, she needed to work on how she showed up.
We helped her set better boundaries, increased her confidence in interacting with her challenging family members, and released helplessness about helping them. It also helped her let go of a lot of the worry. The next time she talked with her son, she noticed that she felt less guarded, less judgmental, and more helpful.
Her son, in turn, seemed better at listening and responding to her concerns. He even seemed more interested in getting healthy than before!
We can easily get stuck in relationship patterns that don’t change. Beliefs and emotions come from our past experiences and we all carry them with us. When we are stuck in these patterns, we can’t see the big picture and find ways to solve problems.
Helping Others More Effectively Starts with You
To change how we show up in our relationships, we have to release subconscious beliefs and emotions that drive our addictive thought patterns. Helping others more effectively often starts on our side of the relationship.
Sometimes helping others is not always the wisest choice. If we have a tendency to want to take care of others, then we might not be trusting that they can take care of themselves. This not only increases your burden, but enables them to not take responsibility for themselves. If you have a habit of co-dependency, it is important to understand why you feel others must depend on you. Often people who are co-dependent sacrifice self-care for the care of others. They are often stretched thin, exhausted and don’t feel appreciated. The stress increases their own susceptibility to chronic diseases and health issues. This is not sustainable. If you have this pattern, look for a co-dependency support group, and work with someone like me to address the root causes.
Sometimes, you have to be the primary caregiver for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to take care of themselves. You can not do this alone! Make sure you have the support you need, so that you have the time to renew. It is essential that you can ask for help when you need it!
Are you trying to support someone that needs to change? Change how you show up in those relationships. The most effective way to help someone is to be able to see the issues from a wide-angle lens. That means that you aren’t in conflict with them, you aren’t taking their behavior personally, and you aren’t acting in a way to satisfy a subconscious unmet need. The more objective you can be, the greater access you will have to your wisdom in order to effectively help them.
To be the most effective in helping them, you have to show up as the most empowered, loving and wise version of yourself.
When you are able to occupy that emotional and wise space, the people you want to help are much more likely to listen to what you have to say.
That is what happened with my client, and many clients since.
If you need support to access your wide-angle lens, not get caught up in the drama of the relationship, or if you need to be empowered to get the support you need, releasing subconscious barriers is a fast and effective way to help you change your perspective and state of mind. Contact me if you’d like a complimentary consultation.
