By Amanda Scott-Telford - IPHM Certified Trauma-Informed, Mental Wellness and Recovery Coach
For the People Who Love Them · Part 4 of 4
You got smaller. You trimmed down your plans to accommodate their crisis. You began to match their moods. You learned to read rooms before you entered them. You learned to listen for things that might be going wrong.
The grief nobody names
Loving someone who is still alive but no longer themselves can be a very lonely place. You are not mourning their death, but the person they were, the future you had envisioned, and the ordinary day that used to be devoid of such worry. This is called ambiguous loss — a very real grief that is without end and for which there is no ‘normal’ way to grieve (Boss, 1999).
Even though there may be no cards, flowers or condolences sent to you, the grief you are experiencing is real. Grief that is not named can leak out in other ways, such as in anger, numbness or even in a deep sense of tiredness that sleep cannot alleviate.
What it’s doing to your body
Living in a constant state of alert can take a toll on the body. It can cause problems with sleep, digestive issues, a sense of ‘on edge’ that you cannot quite put your finger on and a sense of exhaustion that cannot be relieved by sleep. These are not signs of weakness but are symptoms of a body that has been in war mode for a long time (Orford et al., 2013).
Even the smallest thing can help. Take a few deep breaths, with a longer exhale. Go for a walk without your phone. Have a meal and actually taste it. You are trying to help a system that is stuck on high to come back down to the ground.
Three things that are true
There are some simple truths that people in your position need to hear and then to hear again.
You didn’t cause this. Your loved one’s wiring and history were already in place before you came along.
You can’t control it. No matter how much you love them, you cannot make them change. Even the most loving, boundary-setting person cannot make another person make different choices.
You can’t fix this. It is not your job to cure them.
All of the above can be quite difficult to accept but it is not giving up. It is acknowledging that you cannot carry something that is not yours to carry. You can focus on your own life.
Coming back to your life
You can have a life. It doesn’t have to wait until they get better.
This could mean reconnecting with friends you’ve lost touch with, returning to a hobby you’ve given up, or getting the support you need as the sole caregiver. You deserve to have people in your life who care about you and ask how you’re doing, and mean you.
You’re becoming whole too. That work is allowed to start before theirs does.
The throughline
The series of articles follows the understanding of why the other person behaves as they do, how to stay kind and clear, to maintain boundaries and finally to come back to ourselves. None of these articles will fix the other person but they will change how we survive loving them.
The free workbook ends with a check-in that’s only about you. That’s the place to start.
References
Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.
Orford, J., Velleman, R., Natera, G., Templeton, L., & Copello, A. (2013). Addiction in the family is a major but neglected contributor to the global burden of adult ill-health. Social Science & Medicine, 78, 70–77.
