The Family Recovery Journey – Difficult, but Rewarding!

The Family Recovery Journey – Difficult, but Rewarding!

Those who interact with our Surfside team may notice that our team gently (but frequently) encourages parents, partners, siblings and spouses to explore their own family recovery journey. We are often met with three vastly different responses when we encourage people to explore a path to family recovery:

1. Families don’t hear us. They have no idea that we are encouraging them to find a family support group and 12-step process! Their life has been so wrapped up in their loved one’s addiction that it’s hard to imagine shifting focus. They’re not ignoring us, they simply haven’t considered this as an option.
2. Families are resistant – I’m not the one with a problem! I’m not the one who destroyed my life with drugs/alcohol! And I’m certainly not going to give any more time and attention to this problem that I didn’t create (even if that problem consumes me, day in and day out!)
3. Families are overcome with relief that there is healing for them too. Relieved that they don’t have to walk this path alone, that they can take action and experience peace.

Regardless of how you feel when a personal family recovery journey is introduced to you, we hope you’ll read on. Please understand that we hold no judgement about your response. These reactions are commonplace and not surprising to us! Our intention is to simply provide information about what a person/family may discover when they find family recovery.

What do we mean by a “Family Recovery Journey?”

If you’re reading this, you likely have a loved one that struggles with Substance Use Disorder, which is the clinical term for “addiction.” Maybe they also experience some significant mental health issues. Most people don’t voluntarily read this content unless they’ve been personally impacted!

People often describe addiction as a “family disease.” This is the concept that the entire family unit becomes enmeshed in the chaos of substance use, even if we aren’t using. We all experience fear, discomfort, dread, anxiety, bouts of hope followed by devastation – not just the person struggling. We didn’t cause it, we can’t control it, and we can’t cure it… but there is hope.

Often parents see GETTING their son to treatment as the solution. They hire an interventionist or work closely with a therapist, focused intensely on the idea of getting him to accept help and admit to a treatment program. But this is where the real, intense boundary work begins – right after admission. It’s imperative to understand that drugs/alcohol are the solution to your loved one’s problems, and he’s just lost his solution. If we don’t expect discomfort, complaints, and anxiety at this stage of his recovery, we’re in for a major shock.

The Substance as the Solution

It’s important that we understand the nature of addiction, otherwise we will be baffled by the entire recovery process. AA literature talks about alcohol/other substances as the solution to our problems. When a person starts, they can’t stop, and when they stop, they can’t stay stopped. And why is that?! Because without a substance, the alcoholic/addict begins to feel “restless, irritable, and discontent.” In 2025 language, that means they’re feeling anxious, uncomfortable, agitated, full of self-loathing, depressed, fearful, lonely, and so much more.

We are asking someone to let go of something that’s killing them, but also provides them a sense of comfort. As family members, we need to be prepared that the work starts here. The intention of a family recovery journey is that you begin to exist, rather than react. That you can find compassion when your loved one expresses their discontent with early sobriety, but not try to find a solution for them. The “BALM” recovery model simply states, “Enabling is when you are the solution, and empowering is helping them be the solution.” Our hope for families is that they can have a transformative experience as their son/partner/spouse journeys through his own recovery.

Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families

We encourage our families to review the ACOA “Laundry List” – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (or the adult child of a dysfunctional family). We become adapted to the dysfunction of our childhood, and unfortunately aren’t given a handbook on how to raise our children differently. Even if we want to be the complete opposite of our parents, we can all agree that it’s difficult to love in a way that we were not modeled. Dysfunction in our childhood home may include alcoholism, drug abuse, physical/mental/emotional abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, secrecy/affairs, significant trauma, grief/loss, abandonment, adoption, poverty, or other emotional experiences.

We share this Laundry List (AND the “Flip Side” of the laundry list) for two reasons. First, because if you identify with these traits, you can find comfort in knowing that you are not alone. Second, because there’s hope here: you can have a transformative experience with your own 12-step process. The link to find a virtual ACOA meeting or a meeting near you is here.

The Laundry List – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic

1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
10. We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

The Flip Side of The Laundry List

1. We move out of isolation and are not unrealistically afraid of other people, even authority figures.
2. We do not depend on others to tell us who we are.
3. We are not automatically frightened by angry people and no longer regard personal criticism as a threat.
4. We do not have a compulsive need to recreate abandonment.
5. We stop living life from the standpoint of victims and are not attracted by this trait in our important relationships.
6. We do not use enabling as a way to avoid looking at our own shortcomings.
7. We do not feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves.
8. We avoid emotional intoxication and choose workable relationships instead of constant upset.
9. We are able to distinguish love from pity, and do not think “rescuing” people we “pity” is an act of love.
10. We come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions.
11. We stop judging and condemning ourselves and discover a sense of self-worth.
12. We grow in independence and are no longer terrified of abandonment. We have interdependent relationships with healthy people, not dependent relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable.
13. The characteristics of alcoholism and para-alcoholism we have internalized are identified, acknowledged, and removed.
14. We are actors, not reactors.

For the family members of someone struggling with addiction, we find so much hope in the Flip Side of the laundry list. We will be able to love without trying to rescue someone – what a gift! But the “Flip Side of the Laundry List” is the result of hard, soul-searching work within the ACOA fellowship. Just like we tell your son… what if there’s true freedom on the other side of everything you’re afraid of?

The “Be A Loving Mirror” Path to Family Recovery

Many of our Surfside families have explored BALM (short for “Be A Loving Mirror”) as a path to family recovery. For some, this is in conjunction with an Al-Anon or Nar-Anon program. For others, this is an alternative to the traditional 12-step route.

The BALM program’s 12 Principles:

1. The family has a crucial role to play in a loved one’s recovery.
2. Change happens in stages.
3. It is important to let go without giving up or giving in.
4. You can be your loved one’s best chance at recovery.
5. When you take your focus off your loved one and put it on yourself, you will both benefit.
6. Your primary task is to be a loving person.
7. Don’t set a boundary unless you are determined to stick to it.
8. Getting support will greatly enhance your recovery.
9. It is important to explore and/or heal your relationship with your spirituality.
10. It is important to heal your relationship with yourself.
11. It is important to heal your relationship with others.
12. Be A Loving Mirror is the journey and the destination.

The BALM program offers beautiful, powerful insight into our relationship with someone struggling with addiction, and how our sense of love has been hijacked by the disease. Here’s a snippet from Beverly Buncher’s BALM book, in the chapter titled “The Loving Path:”

“There’s a misunderstanding that when a person gives and gives and gives – or, on the other side of the spectrum, yells and begs and cries – they’re declaring love.

But these forms of love are very selfish in that they make us feel better – they don’t actually help our loved one recover.

What we’re talking about is a whole different level of love. This kind of love is brave, is willing to do the inner work, is able to stay calm in the face of great difficulty; it’s willing to look within, to see one’s own shortcomings or wrongs or to see the things that are not working and take the brave stance of making change. This kind of love is willing to learn all about substance use disorder or other use disorders and how they affect the loved one. By doing so, the family is willing to act on that knowledge and understanding rather than on their gut.

If you say to yourself, “I love him and so I’ll do anything for him,” is that true? Are you doing the things that are truly helpful, that will potentially keep him alive and encourage recovery? Or are you just doing the things that you’ve always been doing, which have just barely been working and could in the long run kill him?” – page 25, BALM: The Loving Path to Family Recovery.

How Do I Get Started?

Maybe you’re anxious to explore a family support group. Maybe you’re in pain, but it’s also really inconvenient to think about sacrificing your personal time to do this work. Maybe you’re still angry, and this feels like it’s been dumped on you. Whatever you’re feeling, we acknowledge that it might be a really intense emotion – that’s to be expected!

Our first suggestion is to explore a therapist for YOU. The Surfside team is deeply connected throughout the country – you can always email Alyssa directly to ask for a confidential therapist recommendation. You can also use the website Psychology Today to explore therapists near you who specialize in Substance Use – our recommendation here is to see a fully licensed therapist (that means there’s an L in front of their credentials, or maybe even a PhD – LPC, LMFT, LSCW, LCADC, etc.)

Next, hop on the Surfside family support group. If you are a Surfside family, you are getting this email every week (not getting the email? Check your spam folder. Still not there? Email Alyssa). You might not hear your family’s exact story, but we encourage you to do what we ask your son to do: identify with the feelings, and don’t compare. Attend more than once. Remind yourself that there are three indispensable tools in recovery: Honesty, Open-Mindedness, and Willingness. With this, a new experience is possible.

Consider attending meetings for other 12-step groups. If you saw yourself in the ACOA Laundry List, visit the ACOA website to find a meeting near you. You can also visit the Al-Anon and Nar-Anon websites and use their meeting finder tool. If you were moved by the reading from the BALM book, you can purchase the book here and visit the BALM website for more information on their program.

We invite you to explore your own recovery process with an open heart. Find a meeting. Listen. Build a network. You do not have to walk this path alone – you deserve to live without fear, shame or anger. Just like we promise our guys that recovery is possible, sustainable and rewarding… we believe this for you as well.