Welcome to the sober and happy podcast where we talk about all things recovery-related, how to navigate the challenges that we will face along the way on our journey towards our best lives, and how we can go from living a life of simply just being sober to a life where we are both sober and happy.
In a perfect world, when we decide to start our recovery journey, everyone around us will be understanding and supportive of our journey. Although you will find that many people are, we will often have people who simply are not. Maybe it is the family member who is constantly pointing out your past mistakes, the friend who keeps insisting that “you can have just one”, or co-workers who keep trying to get you to go to happy hour with them after you told them you don’t want to be around alcohol yet.
Although we can not control how other people act, there are steps we can take that will help us navigate what to do when we do not feel supported by those closest to us. And that is what we are going to talk about today.
So buckle up, this is going to be a great episode.
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OK, now back to the episode.
I remember sitting on a plane flying home from rehab. I had been about 60 days sober at that point. Surprisingly, walking past airport bars on the way to my gate was not as hard as I expected, but there was this lingering fear that I couldn’t kick, and as the plane got closer to home, the anxiety kept growing.
I had no idea how my friends and family were going to react to me being sober. Were they going to completely abandon me now that I didn’t drink? Were they going to pressure me into drinking? Were they waiting at home for their chance to finally tell me all the things I had done wrong to them?
What I found out, is that although I experienced a few cases of all of the above and then some, for the most part, the people closest to me supported me the best they knew how. But I didn’t know how to handle the people that did not. Over the years though, I have found ways that have been helpful in dealing with these situations, and things you can do to get the support that you deserve and need.
The biggest thing that will help you in this situation (and honestly life in general) is to communicate with the people in your life. Most people do no not know the best way to support us, so unless we communicate our wants and our needs, there is always going to be a gap between what they think is the best way to support us and what we need to feel supported.
I know I spent way too much time angry thinking things like “They should know that isn’t helping” or “Why would someone do something like that when they know I am trying not to drink?” And I don’t know about you, but anytime I start an argument in my head, it always gets blown out of proportion.
For example, I had one friend who constantly liked to point out all the things I did wrong in the past. Sometimes it was retelling stories of stupid things I have done drunk, others he was reminding me of the really hurtful things I did to him and other people. Every time I hung out with him, I would sit at home later and just wonder why he insisted on constantly beating me up. Why would someone want to make someone feel guilty when that is a huge trigger for drinking? There were times I even wondered if he was trying to get me to drink again.
Finally, after months I asked him why he did it. He looked at me completely confused. “I am trying to help you, man,” he told me. I looked at him and said, “How the hell do you think making me always feel shitty about myself is helping?”
As we talked more, I realized he grew up being parented on what we often call “tough love”. He thought that constantly pointing out the person that I was in my past would make me not forget the type of person I was when I drank and would make me less likely to drink again.
So the person I thought was one of the least supportive people in my life, was actually trying to support me the most, we just had a completely different view on how I needed to be supported.
I explained to him how it actually made me feel and how much I struggle with guilt, and guilt is the emotion that brings me the closest to drinking. I told him that pointing out how good I am doing now and giving me positive feedback would help me more. He said he never realized that, he was deeply sorry, and that he was going to work on doing that. Although there were times he slipped, he began supporting me in a way that I actually felt supported.
Months of anger, resentment, and misunderstanding could have been avoided if I communicated earlier. Lesson learned.
He did drop one thing on me at the end of the conversation though. He looked at me and said, “You know, you haven’t even apologized for some of the things you did”.
At that point in my recovery, I was struggling with a lot of people still not forgiving me, however, I had done nothing except stop drinking to begin to heal some of the wounds that I caused.
What I found is, that people are more likely to forgive you for your past if you actually say you are sorry, and take steps to make start making things right. I know that sounds completely obvious, but I had been putting off this step indefinitely just hoping that by being a better person, people would just forgive me. Nothing beats the impact of an honest apology followed by consistent action.
However, not everybody was quick to forgive even when I took action towards making things right. So how do we handle those people in our lives?
The first step is with compassion. I know I have hurt some people very deeply. I also knew that some of the people I was apologizing to had heard this song and dance before, so they were obviously skeptical.
People heal at their own pace, and as much as I wished people could forgive me quicker, I had to allow people to heal and forgive on their own time. However, that does not mean that I get to be their punching bag while they are going through their healing process.
There is a fine line between allowing someone to justifiably air out their grievances with me and them simply trying to hurt me back as some kind of justice for what I had done. This is the approach that I found that worked for me.
First, I would actually apologize for what I did. If there was something that needed to be done to make things right such as paying back money owed, I would work out a plan with them. Then I would ask them if there was anything I forgot or that they would like to say to me. And then, I would allow them to get whatever they needed off their chest. I wouldn’t interrupt them with excuses, justifications, or corrections of the details of the story. I would allow them the space to let it out. I will tell you that this can be tough, but it also can be healing for both people. I would make sure I had someone in my support group on call after I would go to do this, and I would call or go see that person every time after one of these, whether I felt like I needed to or not.
And then, I would be done with it. I would no longer allow that person to beat me up for my past. I wouldn’t tell them that in the initial conversation because I found that it can feel disingenuous to set rules going into an apology and it honestly wasn’t needed with many of the people after I allowed them to vent the initial time.
However, I still had some people who never passed on the opportunity to continue to remind me of how horrible of a human being I was when I was drinking.
Whenever this happened, I would stop them and say something like this: “I completely understand that you are still angry, and in no way am I saying that you should be over it. However, I am working really hard at changing and no longer being the type of person that would ever do to you again the type of things I have done to you in the past. For me to keep moving forward, I cannot stay stuck in the past, and being reminded of the person I was, takes me back there. I love you and want your support in this part of my life, and this is something I need your support on, so I am asking you that we no longer rehash things that I have done and have apologized for.”
Here is the hard part of this process. I had more than a few people refuse to accept the boundary I set around that, insist that I deserved all the anger they still had, and basically tell me to take it or leave it. For my sobriety, my personal well-being, and my continued growth, I had to walk away from some of those friendships.
There is no other way to say it… that sucks.
But I had to look at the bigger picture. Anytime someone chose to try to keep me in my past life, it held me back from moving toward my new one. And those people simply had to go. Some people ask me “Isn’t that selfish?”. No that is called self-love. A guy in the Sober and Happy Facebook community posted a comment that I have repeated many times since I read it. “Self-love isn’t selfish, it just feels that way sometimes”.
That is one of the tough realities of getting sober. Things in our lives are going to change. Sometimes subtle and for the good, sometimes we are going to have drastic changes that hurt at first like losing some friends.
Not everybody is going to support us. Not everyone is going to forgive us. But what I found is that most people are willing, but may simply not know how.
The process I walked you through in those two examples can work for almost every situation when you don’t feel supported. Communicate your needs, have compassion for yourself and others, set healthy boundaries, and understand that not everybody is meant to be on this part of your journey with you.
When I had friends who would pressure me to have just one, I would explain to them why getting sober is so important to me, how I am done drinking forever, and how much their friendship and support is important to me, but it is hard to hang out with them when they are trying to get me to drink. Most of them responded with some version of “Oh man, I didn’t realize you were serious this time, I am sorry, I will stop.”
I had drinking buddies who would still want me to come down to the bar and just drink soda. I told them that right then being around alcohol was just too hard and I get a serious case of FOMO when they invite me out, so as much as I appreciated the offer, I needed them to stop inviting me to the bar. Most of them stopped. Some would still reach out and ask if they could swing by my house to say hi and catch up, but with most, we found that all we really had in common was drinking together, and those friendships naturally finished their course.
When I stopped making up excuses with my co-workers for suddenly skipping a happy hour or saying no to a drink at company events and was honest about not drinking anymore, my coworkers didn’t judge me as I feared. They supported me and not only stopped inviting me to happy hour but also stopped talking about it during the last two hours of the workday leading up to it. On top of that, after a couple of months, they told me how much they missed hanging out with me outside of work, and would start replacing happy hour every once in a while with non-alcohol-related activities like going to an escape room.
What I have found is that the majority of people in my life want what is best for me and are willing to support me. It didn’t feel that way in the beginning, but I first needed to learn how to properly communicate how I needed to be supported.
Not everybody is going to be on board, but at least I was able to separate the people who were willing and able and the ones who were not. And I found that one of the most important aspects of growing and evolving is allowing the people who want to drag us down to be removed from our lives. It is painful at first, but when we do that, is make more room for people who are going to love and support us to come into our lives.
And if you do that, before you know it, you will be surrounded by people in your lives who support and lift each other up. And you will finally have the support that you need and deserve on this journey.
I want to thank you for listening to this episode and I hope you are finding value from listening to my podcast. If you are, I am asking for two huge favors from you this week that would help me. Share the episode with one person you think would find it impactful, and please subscribe to the podcast, both of which will help it grow.
New episodes come out each Friday, so I look forward to connecting with you next week. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and keep living sober and happy.