Do You Love Someone with Addiction or Mental Health Difficulties?

How do we handle the crises that keep coming our way when we love someone with addiction hardships, with all of the heartbreak and exhaustion we feel from their relapses, varied treatments, financial troubles, chaos, desperation, arrests, and overdoses?  How do we manage the engulfing waves of our own helplessness when our beloved struggles with panic attacks, anxiety, depression, altered states, off the charts ADHD, or devastating highs and lows?

When I’ve been hit with tough news about my loved ones, I can’t just suddenly “alter my mindset” and find relief, or snap my fingers and begin to “think positively” about how the light accompanies the dark. On this journey of loving someone with a mental and behavioral affliction, I need a step that is a precursor to this. 

My step: acknowledge what Is, saying: “Hmm. Now, there’s this.“ I assertively surrender to the moment.

When we bring ourselves into the new Now with authenticity, fierce strength & tender openheartedness we’re empowered. We join forces with our circumstances instead of fighting against them. We say and live a “Now, there’s this” approach, integrating an acceptance of what IS throughout our days and nights. 

Letting go of past moments when things were different, we become adaptable, resilient & brave.

Part of this approach means: having self-empathy, acknowledging our real feelings, breathing consciously, re-setting and coming back into presence, & living from whole-being awareness, not just from our mindsets. “Now, there’s this” gives us more empathy for others, and greater insight into the brave steps we need to take next.

Assertive surrender to the Now is a very strong stance. Who wants to yield though, right? We’re taught that surrender is defeat. It’s just the opposite, however. Bowing to circumstances is a dignified honoring of what has been presented. We think, “Now, there’s this” & with our whole beings we breathe into the moment, arrive fully in our bodies and hearts, & recommit to accepting what Is just for this moment. This moment won’t last. Things will most certainly be different in a month, or a year. 

Staying present with our whole experience in any situation is the brave stuff that helps us partner with our circumstances and create solutions for ourselves & our loved ones.