The Importance of Setting Healthy Boundaries With a Loved One in Recovery

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If you find yourself among the millions of people who battle with addiction and want to stop, chances are you have questions as to where to start. We’re here to help.

Your support is a major asset along your loved one’s addiction recovery journey. Having family in their corner can be just what they need to stay the course, especially when they face challenges (and challenges will happen). But sometimes when your loved one is trying to get sober, the best thing you can do for both them and yourself is to put healthy limits on your interactions together. That’s why it’s important to know how to set boundaries in a relationship with someone in recovery, whether it’s with your significant other, an immediate family member, relative, friend, or another key influence in your life.

Enabling an Addict vs. Helping an Addict

Loving an addict is a difficult, complicated dynamic, especially when it’s someone close to you. Simply put, addiction takes its toll not just the addict themselves. It also negatively impacts your family—including yourself. Someone struggling with addiction is not healthy, and they’ll usually do whatever it takes to maintain their addiction. When it comes to family relationships, an addicted loved one will often seek ways to take advantage of their closest family and friends in manipulative ways. By doing so, they can continue their chosen lifestyle, which in their minds takes precedence over anything else, even if it causes collateral damage.

As a loved one’s addiction impacts your family, it can create unhealthy behaviors inside the family, too. Your good intentions to support your loved one can become intertwined with codependency, as you do whatever it takes to keep them happy. As a result, the “help” you think you’re providing actually ends up enabling an addict to continue his or her unhealthy, damaging behaviors.

So, as you’re reading this, you may already know that your addicted loved one needs to make changes to get sober, such as entering into a residential substance abuse treatment center. But it’s often the family that needs to make changes, too. For many loved ones of addicts, this means setting healthy boundaries as a first step, which in the end, helps your addicted loved one much more in the long run than enabling their present behaviors.

Setting Healthy Boundaries: Why It Matters

Setting boundaries in a relationship means putting physical or emotional restrictions in place with another person to protect your own well-being. But in the case of your loved one in addiction recovery, these boundaries can protect their well-being, too. Healthy boundaries can keep your relationship with your loved one supportive and respectful for all parties involved, allowing everyone to flourish in their own way safely. They give you and your loved one the essential space you both need to be yourself, adhere to your values, and express what matters to you. Boundaries are not, however, meant to be manipulative or controlling.

If helping an addict involves setting boundaries in recovery, how do these boundaries actually help your loved one and your family? For starters, having boundaries in recovery cultivates self-respect both in the loved one and in individual family members. Because boundaries are meant to enhance well-being, setting and honoring boundaries shows that you care about the things that matter to yourself and to your loved one, promoting self-worth on all sides.

Learning to set the boundaries in a relationship also helps you develop better relationships together overall. Boundaries will keep your interactions healthy, preventing them from going back into toxic, codependent, or enabling relationships that let addictions fester. They also provide guidelines to enhance communication between your family and your loved one in recovery, teaching everyone to understand what they can and can’t do or say. This also keeps your family from becoming a source of triggers that could hurt your loved one’s sobriety.

Is it Okay to Set Boundaries With Your Friends?

While it’s one thing to set boundaries with a family member in recovery, doing so with a friend in recovery may seem entirely different. It’s natural to fear losing people after setting boundaries with friends in addiction recovery, as they’re not tied as deeply to you as your family. However, learning how to set boundaries in a relationship with a friend is just as important. You may think you’re risking the future of the relationship, but by setting healthy boundaries, you’re setting the stage for your friendship to thrive in the future. And if your friend is not willing to maintain or respect the healthy boundaries you need, perhaps they’re not a friendship worth keeping.

How to Set Boundaries in a Relationship

When you’re thinking about the boundaries to set in a relationship with a loved one in recovery (no matter if they’re a family member, significant other, or friend), it’s important to know about the type of boundaries to keep in mind, including:

  • Physical boundaries: These boundaries are all about your personal space. This may be related to your needs around physical touch, using your belongings, or visiting your home or workplace.
  • Emotional boundaries: Emotional boundaries help protect your feelings. Often, setting emotional boundaries involves limiting what vulnerable details you’re willing to share (or receive) with your loved one. Yet this also can include the amount of emotional support you’re willing to provide as well in this season.
  • Time boundaries: A healthy relationship respects your time, so time boundaries lay out parameters for how long you’re willing to spend time with, speak to, or even be near your loved one.

Once you have an idea of the type of boundaries that are important in your relationship with your loved one, you can begin to put them in place. Here are a few actionable steps to set boundaries that you can take alongside your loved one and your family:

Define What Matters to You

Knowing how to set boundaries in a relationship requires you to first understand who you are—your values, core beliefs, and personal rights. After all, your boundaries in a relationship should allow you to be yourself and safeguard the things that matter in your life. Knowing yourself and what you need will allow you to put boundaries in place that are healthy for you.

Prioritize Self-Care

You may already know that self-care is an important component for a recovering addict to stay sober. Self-care activities may include eating healthy, getting good sleep, exercising, and participating in hobbies that lift your spirits. But self-care is also important for you, too, as a friend or family member of a loved one in recovery. So make sure your boundaries reflect that priority.

Establish Non-Negotiables

Setting healthy boundaries involves clearly knowing the lines you (or your loved one) can’t cross. That means coming up with a list of actions, situations, or requests that you’ll always say “no” to, no matter what. These non-negationless keep your relationship from drifting into unhealthy, enabling levels, while also protecting your loved one in recovery from self-sabotage.

Consider Your Loved One’s Needs

While your boundaries should reflect your needs, they also need to respect those of your loved one in addiction recovery. If you’re setting boundaries with an alcoholic, for example, perhaps you should make sure you’re not drinking in front of them during a visit. And if you’re a bad influence right now, you may need to limit your time with them in general (and get the help you need) for the sake of their sobriety.

Communicate Your Boundaries (And Consequences) Clearly

It’s critical to clearly communicate your boundaries to your loved one in recovery, as well as the rest of your family. This is best done when everyone is in a healthy, calm mindset to discuss your boundary needs. At the same time, you need to share the consequences of what can happen when your boundaries are broken. This not only keeps your loved one accountable for their actions, it protects you and your well-being.

Tips for Maintaining Healthy Boundaries in Recovery

Loving an addict in recovery is about more than just setting boundaries in a relationship. You need to maintain these established boundaries well, too. But how can you do so in a healthy way that doesn’t leave you riddled with guilt? Here are a few tips:

  • Uphold and Enforce Boundaries: If a boundary isn’t respected, speak up and enforce the consequences. You may feel guilty in the moment, but following through on your boundaries is needed if you’re ever going to make progress. Sometimes tough love is what’s best for your family member or friend in recovery.
  • Join an Addiction Recovery Group: Support groups aren’t just for those in recovery. They exist for family members of addicts as well and can be a helpful outlet for you to find the support you need as you uphold your boundaries.
  • Revisit Boundaries Down the Road: Recovery is a journey. As your loved one makes progress in their sobriety, it’s a good idea to discuss your boundaries again and consider revising those that are no longer relevant based on your loved one’s level of healing.

Find Substance Abuse Recovery Support at Defining Wellness

Setting healthy boundaries is just one of many ways you can support your loved one—and yourself—in recovery. At Defining Wellness Centers, our family program can give you the resources you need to bring hope and change to your loved one’s sobriety journey, as well as establish a healthy family dynamic long-term. To learn more about how we help both your loved one and your family heal from addiction, contact us now.

Begin your Recovery Today

If you are ready to take the step towards a new life, call Defining Wellness today and learn more about how we can help you.