If you lot are close to someone who is an addict or who is recovering from addiction, y'all confront a hard state of affairs – the need to set and maintain proper boundaries within your relationship.

Boundaries are "rules" that set limits on what is and is not acceptable in a human relationship.

Advantages of Setting Articulate Boundaries

Boundaries help keep relationships salubrious. If both parties know what is acceptable behavior and what is not, then it is easier to speak upward and ask for change if a behavior is deemed problematic. It is as if a contract has been broken, not just that an undesirable activity has taken place. The excuse of "I didn't know information technology was non okay" cannot be used to deflect responsibility.

Boundaries help both the addicted person and the people they interact with. When constructive boundaries are in place, trust can be built and relationships strengthened. The addicted person gains greater motivation to go responsible for their behavior, and the people who support them can feel more secure about helping them. The take a chance of enabling versus helping is reduced because at that place are guidelines and consequences associated with whatsoever assistance that may be offered.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Boundaries

All relationships have boundaries. Some are salubrious; some are non.

Healthy Boundaries :

  • Found each person'south rights inside the relationship
  • Found expectations that are designed to strengthen the human relationship and support both parties
  • Reduce the chaos and uncertainty associated with unchecked or unregulated beliefs

Unhealthy Boundaries:

  • Impairment and diminish personal values and choices
  • Encourage guilt and discourage accurate expression
  • Encourage codependency and enabling vs. personal responsibility

Have Your Boundaries Been Crossed?

In your relationship with an addict or a person in recovery, have you:

  • Felt (or been encouraged to feel) responsible for the other'south behavior?
  • Been taken reward of (ex: asked for money, asked to prevarication for them, or make excuses for them)?
  • Inverse your behavior to avoid angering them or having disharmonize with them?

These are merely a few of the signs that indicate that your boundaries accept been crossed. What you need to consider next is what should you practice about it?

Setting Boundaries That Reach the Desired Alter

In social club to set and keep constructive boundaries, ones that become the results you want and need, you must consider these issues:

  • What specific behavior(s) exercise you want to fix limits on?

    What effect do you want to attain? You cannot dictate some other person'southward behavior, but you can set limits on what you will allow in your presence, in your dwelling, with your children, etc. For instance, you lot tin set the boundary that the aficionado is not allowed to utilize in the dwelling house or around the children. This gives a specific, articulate bulletin about a particular behavior that will not be tolerated.

  • What is your motive for setting the boundary?

    You should be honest with yourself when setting a boundary. Does it actually chronicle to a beliefs that is important to set limits on? Or are you setting limits considering you wish to punish the person or gain revenge for past beliefs? For instance, it would be unfair and probably self-serving to insist that a father not see his children at all. Rather, limits should be gear up on the manner and conditions with which interaction would have place; for instance, always with the supervision of a trusted adult, and just after school or on weekend days, until it has been established that substance employ has ceased.

  • Does the boundary encourage personal responsibility?

    When setting a purlieus, you lot tin can identify stipulations that encourage positive change and increasingly responsible actions. For case, you might include a condition that if the addict attends 3 back up grouping meetings per week for six months, you volition adjust the boundary related to access to the dwelling house or children.

Consequences for Cleaved Boundaries

Setting a boundary is not plenty. Yous must be able to maintain it. But what happens if a boundary is crossed, and an of import behavioral rule is broken? Should in that location be consequences? Of form; only exactly what should the consequence be and how tin can you lot enforce it?

Here are some bones guidelines:

Brand the consequence fit the circumstances.

Some broken boundaries are more than serious than others. For instance, a boundary rule might exist that your addicted spouse is not to enter the dwelling house when he/she is using, and that if this happens, the result will be to limit further access to the dwelling by asking that the spouse's firm key be returned.

If the boundary is that the person not drive afterwards drinking or using a drug and they do, the consequences tin range from restricting further use of the motorcar, to non bailing the person out of jail if they are caught driving while under the influence.

These examples illustrate logical expectations with logical consequences. Just as you lot should not use boundary-setting to punish or to go revenge, you should not constitute unreasonable consequences that profoundly outweigh the misstep.

Larn to be okay saying "no."

If you lot find yourself in a position of needing to set boundaries, it is likely that y'all have previously had difficulty saying "no" to people. After all, purlieus-setting is only required when there is danger of someone overstepping the limits of acceptable behavior. And this can only occur if information technology is immune. You lot may want to be  "prissy" to people; y'all may be easily encouraged to feel guilty and give in to the requests or demands of someone yous care well-nigh. Your personality type may be that of a person who avoids conflict at all costs and therefore is piece of cake to prevail over. In that location are many reasons why maxim "no" has not been like shooting fish in a barrel for you.

Merely when dealing with an fond person or a person in recovery, y'all need to acquire to say "no", hateful information technology, and defend your assertion. By saying "no" to problematic behavior that is unhealthy for both you and the other person, you are not existence mean. You are not being ungrateful or uncaring. Instead, you are protecting yourself and the other also. While the addicted person is healing themselves, learning better coping skills and learning to accept personal responsibility for their actions, you are providing the safety internet that they need to avert falling back into onetime, subversive behaviors…if you are strong enough to say "no" to them.

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