KEY TAKEAWAY
Allow consequences; stop rescuing to support recovery and personal responsibility.
Dear Diary,
Today, I realised something.
I didn't make a conscious choice to live like this...
But I'm the one living with it.
Every day, being shaped by decisions that addiction is making.
And yet I'm the one adjusting my entire life around them.
But recently, I've started asking myself: is smoothing things over actually helping them...or preventing them learning the real lessons?
I read that real consequences give real feedback.
And without that feedback, they can keep believing the addiction isn't costing anything.
So now I'm going to try something smaller.
I'll wait before responding to a crisis, that isn't life threatening.
This lets them experience negative consequences and try to solve the problem themselves, without me stepping in.
It's brutal.
But it creates space for them to feel the weight of their own choices.
And it reminds me: *I didn't cause this, I can't cure it, and I can't control it*.
The person I love is still in there.
But right now; I have to let them find their own way back.
Because me carrying them isn't working.
