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Good morning, Path to Warren. Episode 19 It is Tuesday morning, July 21, 2020. Hope everyone is having a wonderful day. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast and for subscribing to our channel. I just wanted to elaborate more on the previous episode with a clear versus unclear list of ways to confront or talk to someone or just get the facts in your head about someone who’s having addiction issues or co-dependency issues. I shared in the last episode about someone real close to me who has relapsed, I believe, into co-dependent behavior. And it’s only been like six months since the last breakdown where I thought we had hit bottom. And it’s amazing to sit back and watch because there’s nothing different than somebody who’s gotten sober and is clean for, just, say, two and a half years. If someone were to come up to this person and let’s just call that person me, why not? Let’s call that person me. If somebody were to approach me and say, hey, we’re going to go out to have an all night crazy throw down like old times, come on out and have some Bourbon with me and I’m sober, I would not blow up at that person. I would not flip out on them and say, don’t you know I’m sober? What are you thinking? This is ridiculous. No, I would almost chuckle. I would almost laugh at that person today and be like, You’ve got to be kidding me. No, I’m good. Thanks, but no thanks. So the same situation happened to me. What I feel I feel the same feelings that happened to me yesterday, and I’m trying to work through this. This is why I’m sharing this. Yesterday, I was basically invited onto the dance floor, theoretically invited onto the dance floor to dance in this codependent behavior of some family members of mine. And I want to first of all say that I did not take the hand and go dancing because I know how that ends. I can play the tape through just like I can play the tape through with me going out to have that throw down party with an old friend. This is the same feeling. I have the same feeling like I know how this is going to end. I know what the behavior is going to turn into. I’m going to offer my hand to help. I’m going to give them advice, give this person advice, and it’s going to somehow be turned against me. And I’m going to be saying, Put in the box of you’re not listening. I don’t want your advice. Can’t you just listen? I’ve given advice before, and I know how it turns out. It gets flipped on me and I get put into the villain real quick. And this person goes into victim mode. When you see someone that hasn’t done the work, when you see people, a group of people. This is even better. When you see a group of people that you know, that they’re aware and they’ve been to some recovery like they’ve been to a few meetings, they listen into a few recovery twelve step meetings. They heard the phrases, they know what’s going on, and then they go back out. There’s a line in AA that a belly full of booze and a brain full of AA is a miserable place to be, a miserable place to be. And that’s where I feel like they are. I’ve learned in recovery that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. It wasn’t six months ago this person that they’re trying to rescue and save, it wasn’t six months ago that they were changing the locks on the house. They were changing the combination on their garage. They were worried that the person is going to go through their safe and take out money or papers, important papers that’s stored in their safe, that they keep the door open. Six months ago, they were having breakdowns in the parking lot and this person was calling wanting help and be rescued because they’re having a panic attack. It’s like they met with a therapist. They laid down these laws with this person, they laid down the laws, and now what’s happening is they’ve relapsed. They’ve been away from recovery. They haven’t been to meetings. I don’t believe they’ve done any work on themselves since life started to get better. It’s like life started to get better and then all of a sudden they cut the ties of the therapist. They cut the ties of recovery twelve step programs. They stopped going to meetings. In fact, they didn’t feel like they needed to go to meetings much in the first place. They just wanted the pain to stop. And now less than six months, the disease is progressing. It’s so clear to me and it’s like I’m the only one that sees this. It’s like I’m the only one that sees the disease has progressed so bad that this person is going to be living in their house for three weeks as a transition to moving away to Greenville or Clemson area. Can you believe that they’re going to be living in this person’s house for three weeks? It just blows me away that nobody sees any problem with this. It blows me away that it’s just like the old saying where it’s easier to get sober if you stay sober. It’s extremely difficult to stop drinking. And I don’t know because I haven’t relapsed on alcohol, but from everything that I’ve seen, thank God, I’ve seen all this because it’s made clear to me that I don’t want to experience this, but it’s extremely hard. It’s exponentially harder to stop drinking once you’ve been sober for a little while and then you go back out. The ability to stop the second or third or fourth time is much, much harder than the first because you’ve now gotten this mind and you can justify things and you can get away with some things in your head. So what I would offer to the listeners today is take the time to make a list. When you see something like this happening really close to you with family members or really close to you, with friends that you’re concerned about, the good thing is time is on your side. I have to keep telling myself this time is on my side. It’s only going to progress for that person. But in the meantime and I don’t want pain for them. I’m not trying to cause them pain, but I have to process this and get my facts. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take the time in the next couple of days to not go dance on this dance floor with this codependent manic craziness behavior. I don’t support it. I don’t support it at all because I know what’s going to happen. This person is going to move away. That’s called a geographic. A geographic I’ve learned in recovery is where this person moves away to try to fix the problem. So guess what? This person is going to be at the destination that they’re moving to. Hello. And I’m not trying to be rude about it. It’s just I’ve read about it. I’ve seen this. I’ve told the person that’s being the codependent, I’ve told him, I said, this is called a geographic. This is where you move away or you change jobs or you change cars or you change wives. You think that a spouse will do it. The problem is still there. The problem is this person and they need to work on themselves and fix the issues to make themselves full again, to get rid of that baggage, get rid of the resentments, the fear, the sexual inventory. Get rid of that. The problem is I’ve done the work and they haven’t. I can see the problem so clear as day. I’m clear headed today. I have the ability today to say no. You know, yesterday I missed a prime opportunity to lay down a boundary, and I learned a lesson I’ve read and heard in podcast from Codependency no more recently, I’ve read that if I allow somebody to disturb me, if something that somebody says or a place that I go or something that somebody does disturbs me, I have to look at why I am disturbed. Why am I giving that person power to disturb me? At 04:00 yesterday afternoon, somebody walked into my office and told me, hey, you know, you should reach out to that person. They sure would appreciate your support during this move. Not answer. I did not say, sure. Yeah, I’ll call her. No, I didn’t say anything. I just heard what he said and I’m still processing it. What I should have said was I should have laughed and chuckled and said, no, I’m not doing that. I don’t believe in that. I don’t support that. But the person can’t see what’s going on. I should have laid down the boundary and that would have helped me to not spin about it because from 04:00 until the rest of the evening until I talked with some people in recovery about this and who already know the situation knows that this person is manipulative know that this person that’s having the issues, the manic attacks all of the personality disorders. They’re extremely manipulative and I know that they’re doing this to my person that I love. Okay. It’s hard to sit back and watch I’m going through pain sitting back and watching somebody that I love so much. I can’t break these ties. I’ve been there. The tables were turned three years ago when these people were watching me go through alcohol and drug addiction. I’m grateful today that I am not in that spot. That’s one of the first things that my person in recovery told me yesterday when I called to vent about this because my rear end was on fire 04:00 in the afternoon about this. That person said its just like someone inviting you to go drink you would first be grateful that you’re not in that position. You’re not in that low bottom. That person is trying to bring you onto the dance floor. They’re trying to bring you into the bar to go drink it. But guess what? You don’t have to do it today. You don’t have to do it. So I’m so grateful to be able to share this with you guys. If you like what you’ve heard, please hit subscribe share it with a friend who’s struggling with codependency or a relative that’s struggling with addiction and please make your contribution. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening. Bye.