How to Help Your Parent in Rehab: A Guide for Children of Addicted Parents

When your parent endures addiction, whether they eventually achieve long-lasting recovery is not your responsibility—but you can help. By learning to set and maintain boundaries, ceasing enabling behavior, and promoting progressive treatment options, you can help shine a light on the recovery path that your parent must walk.

Participate in Family Programs

One of the best things you can do to support your parent in rehab is to learn more about the nature of addiction and treatment. The best place to learn is at a professional treatment center that also values family participation to improve recovery outcomes. Program staff will be able to guide you in finding the right balance of independence and interdependence during the recovery journey in the present and into the future. When you attend family sessions, you’ll be able to offer valuable insight to help counselors and therapists better understand the situation and better help your mother or father in their recovery. Together, you’ll be able to peacefully resolve conflicts in your relationships and evolve family dynamics in productive ways. Plus, your parent will be able to experience your care and support directly during this critical time in early recovery.

Set and Maintain Boundaries

The more you learn about how addiction plays out for an individual and also for those close to them, the better you will be able to distinguish their burdens from your own. It’s easy to take personally the devastating consequences of a parent’s addiction, but their well-being is ultimately their responsibility—just as your well-being is your responsibility. It’s rarely simple to understand clear boundaries between ourselves and those who are closest to us, but it’s incredibly important to grow into this understanding for your own long-term health and the health of your relationships. Professionals who are very knowledgeable about addictive behaviors can help you to put situations into perspective, to recognize where you need to draw boundaries for yourself and others, and to have the strength to hold those boundaries even when you’re tempted to give your parent slack at your own expense.

Put an End to Enabling and Codependency

Dissolving codependency goes hand-in-hand with having healthy boundaries. The denial that many families hold onto, sometimes for years or decades, blurs those boundaries. It becomes “our addiction” rather than “his” or “her addiction” without intention or realization. “Our addiction” can be a lot harder to break and recover from because so many more details and complications are tangled up than if it were “his” or “her addiction” alone. So, an early step in the right direction is to untangle the family members’ parts—to understand that it is actually more supportive, more loving to give a parent full responsibility for their choices, actions, and well-being, even when it feels tempting to put their comfort first and shoulder more than your appropriate share of the burden.

Getting connected with a comprehensive residential treatment program is a solid step in the right direction because, here, your parent is removed from the automatic family patterns, and their own responsibility to work toward recovery is posed as first and foremost. The usual stressors and habits of everyday life are no longer distractions in the treatment environment. You can learn how to play a role that is positively integrated for the sake of everyone’s best recovery path forward.

It’s a heavy but appropriate responsibility for your parent to own their recovery journey. For the same reasons, it is necessary for you to claim your own responsibilities to your holistic well-being. Yes, taking care of your will prepare you to better support your parent. But, more importantly, you deserve your own compassionate attention for your own sake. Don’t put off identifying your needs, keeping your health and your stress in check, and getting help because the healing path is one of connection, not one of isolation.

Accept the Value of Outside Support

Apart from the family therapy sessions you will experience through your parent’s rehab program, it can be tremendously supportive and transformative to have someone you can talk to one-on-one. This may be a grounded and patient family member or friend, but it may be particularly helpful to speak with a professional who is trained to help you keep all the complicated parts of your life in perspective—to maintain the boundaries that are the foundation for a truly healthy life. Over time, in this therapeutic dynamic, you can also process some of the important memories and emotions you carry from your life with an addicted parent, including the trauma that may be inaccessible to you but still affecting you on a daily basis.

Manage Your Stress

Whether your burdens derive from past trauma, current struggles with your parent, or work and general life pressure, it’s up to you how much that stress will weigh you down. The more it does weigh you down, the more your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health will deteriorate. While we can’t control all of the events in our lives, we can manage our relationships and reactions to these events. If this seems like overwhelming and unfamiliar territory, your counselor or therapist is the right person to guide you through it.

Take Responsibility for Healthy Coping Strategies

When the storm of your parent’s addiction feels unbearable, you may feel desperate to relieve some of the pressure. It’s important to be aware that addiction can be passed through the generations, and you are at a greater risk of substance use disorders if family members suffer from the same. Just as your parent in treatment is becoming aware of their behaviors and compulsive tendencies, you can open your eyes to any of your own coping habits that may not be altogether positive. Remember that regardless of what is going on around you, the choice about how you handle that pressure is your own to make. If that choice feels out of your control, it’s time to reach out for assistance—you don’t need to be alone in your suffering.