what to do with the guilt and regret when your child is experimenting with or addicted to drugs or alcohol, with Brenda Zane

Host: Brenda Zane, brenda@brendazane.com
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Show Transcript:

Speaker: Brenda Zane

Welcome friends, I am so glad you're here with me today, it means that you're actively working on finding ways to make your life better while you have a child who is struggling. And that is not easy. And I know it's not even easy to just do a search for a podcast like this or to do a search for other resources, treatment programs or counselors. And so for you to actually do a search, find this podcast and then hit play is amazing. And I just want to acknowledge you and say that I really, really commend you for making the effort. And plugging into a community here of parents who are on the same journey that you are, it can make such a world of difference. So if you feel like you're not doing anything, well, you can give yourself points today for listening to this. 

Today, I am going to be talking about guilt and regret. And my guess is if you have a son or daughter who's misusing drugs or alcohol, these are feelings that aren't unknown to you. I shared a bit of this in my weekly email this week that goes out to my community. And based on the response that I got, I'm pretty sure many of you can relate. And if you want my email, by the way, you could just go to Brendazane.com/email. And you'll get an email from me every Wednesday with topics like this. 

So I was thinking about this and wondering where are these feelings come from, because they can be so all-consuming, and they can really drag us down. And I think that they can come one of the places they can come from is a myth that says, if we had done everything right, and well as parents, our kids wouldn't need to use substances to cope or to numb things out. If we’ve done our jobs as parents, our kids would be well-adjusted content, thriving, all of those things that we dream about for them. Which means fundamentally, that we are somehow lacking in our lives, in our knowledge of how to parent of our ability to protect our kids from bad things happening to them. Because if they had been better prepared or better educated or protected, or whatever, they wouldn't need to use these substances, right? 

Well, two things about that nonsense. One, it's nonsense. And two, that's a pretty big load for you to carry as a mom or a dad. And it's one that I would really love for you to let go of. And we'll talk a little bit about why that is. No, I'm not saying that there aren't things that we can do as parents to help our children learn how to cope with life and everything that it brings them and I'm not saying That we don't make mistakes along the way we do. There isn't a parent on the planet who has done this perfectly. But where the flawed thinking happens is when we blame ourselves for the actions and choices of our kids. 

As a case in point, I'm sure you have probably sat and scratched your head, as have I at how some kids can grow up in the most highly dysfunctional, actually dangerous childhood situations, and come out as these incredible, resilient, capable people who contribute to society enter a positive force in the world. That happens, despite having little to no positive parental guidance, witnessing things like violence and drug use, and experiencing real physical pain. So these are the proverbial make lemonade out of lemons, people. And then you have kids who have every possible advantage socially, economically, racially, they have two or more loving parents and an extended family, they have resources for things like sports and education, they have opportunities for spiritual growth, and yet they struggle, they make really bad choices, they get themselves into trouble. And it is mind-boggling as a parent how this could happen. 

So we feel guilt and regret, we figure it must be us, it must be something that we did or didn't do, or did at the wrong time, or whatever it is, we find that and we put it on our back, and we carry it around with us. So this is what we're going to talk about today, because there's a fairly obvious downside to guilt and regret. But there's also an upside that I want you to consider. 

So we'll start with the more obvious - the downside of these feelings of guilt and regret. When you carry around that big of a load of guilt, and shame, and regret, it can cause actual physical pain and unhealthy symptoms that can't be explained by medical science. And this load taxes your body to the point where it starts to backfire on you. And it lets you know that it is not happy about it. So this might be an unexplained pain in your neck, or shoulders or back or your hips, or maybe digestive issues that you've never had before. A lot of people start getting colds and they get sick more frequently. And then those colds and illnesses don't go away as quickly as they used to. It's sort of an always-on level of feeling bad feeling under the weather. And this toll on your body can rob you of the ability to do the things that you'd like to do, and it drains you of really precious energy. So, no-good. 

But also spending time in the past, ruminating on things that you could or should have done might cause you to make poor decisions. The reason is because of what we were just talking about. The physical and mental toll on your system leaves you in a state of brain fog, physical pain, and just general distraction and worry. It leaves you functioning at less than 100%. And so then when things get difficult, and you're faced with hard decisions and hard circumstances, you're just not equipped to make a great decision in that moment. 

These poor decisions might be and they often are about how you react to your son or daughter substance use, how you handle your relationship with a spouse, a partner, or an ex-spouse or partner or even about things or surrounding your own health and your own wellness. So then the guilt trip cycle continues because now you're making less than great decisions because of the load of the guilt and the shame that you're lugging around with you. And you tell yourself see, I'm responsible for this or that if I hadn't yelled at her when she came home high or if I had spent more time researching programs, or if I'd explain things better to my ex-husband. 

Yep, I know all the conversations. I know them all. I know all of the things that you're saying in your head, and then that cycle continues. So while the downside is somewhat obvious, we tend to still drown ourselves in those feelings despite what they're doing to us. This, friends is your permission slip to let it go. Kind of. 

So let's talk about the upside. The upside of guilt and regret is less obvious than the downsides. So while I just said to let it go, I first want you to do something. If you're ruminating over a choice that you made, or regretting an action that you took, or didn't take, consider taking some time, not forever, but a little bit of focus time to dissect the situation. 

You'll ask yourself a couple of things. One is, why are you feeling that way, two is, consider what information you had to work with at the time. And then third, whether what's happening now is actually a direct response to your choice or your action. We'll dive into each of these. And I'm going to do it through the lens of an example because I think it can be more helpful than just giving you generic information. I will say though, it's a little bit uncomfortable because I still struggle with this. So please don't think that this is a magic wand. And once you go through this exercise, you're never gonna feel guilt or regret. Again, you will, that is just reality. But this will give you a tool to help navigate it and not have to have it cause all of the downsides that we just talked about, or perhaps fewer of those downsides. 

So here's an example.

For years, I felt a huge amount of guilt, and regret about how much I worked. when my kids were young. I had a corporate job where I worked kind of insane hours, and I traveled extensively. Some years, it was up to 50% of the time. For the most part, I really loved my job. So it was always a challenge to balance, my desire for a career with my desire to be a present and quote-unquote, attentive mom. And I had massive guilt about putting my kids in daycare for not being there at every single event activity, parent-teacher conference game. Somehow in my mind, I made it about me and my presence. And if I had been at each of those things, it would have shown my son that he was important and he mattered. And maybe then he wouldn't have picked up weed in the eighth grade. 

I also loaded myself up with guilt about getting divorced when my boys were in what I consider to be very vulnerable years when they were eight and 10. These were the years when their little hearts just didn't understand why their world was imploding. And in my mind, I was not there and I was in a meeting halfway across the country, or all the way across the country. In reality, their hearts and world were imploding regardless. 

I also regretted not getting them therapists to help them through that period, I regretted hiring an Au Pair instead of working less, I mean, everything, everything was my fault. And if I had done those things differently, my son wouldn't have gotten into drugs and a really dangerous lifestyle. 

Interestingly, I never stopped to think about the fact that I had another son who was also hurting, but didn't take that destructive path of drugs and dangerous lifestyle. Somehow, that had escaped me at the time that my kids experienced the same thing, but how they process them. And what they did with those experiences were very different. So your guilt may be around similar things like this. Or it could be that your kids were exposed to things that you wish they weren't, or you feel that you could have prevented them from being in a particular situation. There are so many things that we feel and believe.

But you know what that thing is that gnaws at your stomach? So if you think about that thing that's annoying to you, ask yourself why you feel this way? Why do you feel that you could have changed or avoided that? Why is it that that thing is what you're focusing on? When I asked myself why I felt that way, it wasn't because I truly thought it was the reason for my oldest son's substance use. If I was really truthful with myself, I felt guilty because I had missed my kids desperately when I worked and traveled so much. And I knew that I had missed out on parts of their childhood that I would never get to redo. 

I was also in a lot of pain and felt so confused about my divorce. What if I would have tried harder? What if I could have been different and we could have stayed together? What if, what if, what if, so we can take these feelings of not being good enough or not making the right decisions, and then project those on to what's happening with our kids. And I realized that rather than take a long, hard look at myself, it was just kind of easier to send that pain somewhere else and shift my focus there. So spend some time looking at Worried at the feelings that you're feeling, this is not easy. And you might want to do this with a therapist, I would highly recommend that it could be much easier and safer to have someone alongside with you, but look inward and see if these feelings are really more about you. 

The next thing to do to get to the upside of guilt and regret is to look at the information that you had when you are making these choices or going through these experiences. When I considered what information I had to go on at the time, it was negligible. When my son started getting into trouble and drinking a little and smoking some pot, I didn't know anything about addiction, and to be totally honest, drugs and alcohol addiction or something that I assigned kind of as this misfortune of the homeless, and to kids who had been abused or neglected. And trust me, even when those words come out of my mouth, and now I still wince at how ignorant I was at the time. It's actually a big part of why I do what I do so that other parents aren't as ignorant and uninformed as I was. 

When my son started his journey into this world. I was basically just bumbling around in the dark, I didn't know the first thing about the journey I was on, I didn't even know I had boarded the substance use train. So to look over my shoulder and be angry at myself was just sort of pointless. So, reflect back, rewind in your head and think about what you knew. And when you knew it, there's a really good chance that you have absorbed a lot now, or you're in absorption mode. And it can be easy to shake your head at yourself wondering how in the world did you do what you did, or didn't do what you didn't do. And this is important because you're unfairly evaluating your actions based on today's knowledge level. And that's just really unfair to yourself. 

Then finally, you can look at whether what's happening now is actually a direct response to your choice or action. And usually, because life is fluid, and people are people, it's pretty rare that there's one specific action that caused what's happening to be happening. In my example, where I blamed my career and divorce for my son's substance use if I asked myself, was it truly a direct response from that? I couldn't honestly say yes. 

Let's say I had had a part-time job with consistent hours, or that I stayed home with my kids as I thought I should for many years, knowing myself, I would not have been happy, I wouldn't have been fulfilled as a person, as a woman or as a mom. I know my kids did benefit from much of what I learned, and what I gained from having a career, and from the independence that it taught them. And on the flip side, I've talked with so many moms who did choose to stay home or worked part-time, and their son or daughter is struggling and they blame themselves for their choice. So this is why being really brutally honest with yourself is so important. Same with divorce - would my kids have been better off witnessing an unhealthy marriage? Had we stayed together and my son started using substances would I have then felt guilt and blame myself for staying in the marriage. 

This is a game that we play with ourselves that has no possible winning scenario. So do the work to look at yourself, be brutally honest. And do it with a therapist if you can. And then move on to this final step, which is to learn. The true upside of guilt and regret is that we can learn so much from this examination of the past, the hurt the shame and anger that can grow so big that it really can almost take over you until you feel like you're going to explode. And once you've done the hard work of figuring out why you feel guilty, you put a marker in the sand around what information you had at the time. And you get super honest about whether your actions or non-actions are really the direct reason for your child's problems, then you're in a place to learn. 

In my example, a few of the learnings that I gleaned were that my kids can handle hard things. But I need to talk to them about what's happening and not pretend like it's all fine. They may be hurt but with some more communication and more information, they can process those feelings and make sense of what's going on. And I also learned that my kids are incredibly resourceful and creative at solving problems. They have a perspective that I don't and they can come up with solutions that I never would. With this knowledge now, knowing how they think and feel and respond, I know how I can best love them through hard times. And I also know how I can better navigate the inevitable bumpy roads that lie ahead in our lives. Because the reality is, there are going to be more hard times. And by doing this hard work around guilt and regret, I'll be better prepared for them, I'll be better prepared for the future hard times, and my kids are going to benefit from that too. 

Well, I didn't mean for that to get so deep, and it does make me feel very vulnerable to put all that out there. But it's so important, it is so important not to dwell in these feelings because they're not helping you or your child unless you turn them into a gift of learning. So please just allow yourself the time and give yourself the support that you need to do this reflection, and absorb whatever you can from the guilt and the regret, you’ll probably have to squeeze it out from the dark corners of you. And that can feel scary. But if you do that, you can take the good, and then you can let the rest go and take that load off your back. 

Just don't let it weigh you down. Don't let it rob you have more precious time and energy, you don't have enough of that. And so once you free up some of that space in your heart in your mind, you can use that for loving yourself, which is really important and loving your son or daughter. Or you can also then start to share your learning with somebody else who hasn't yet been where you are and could learn from what you've been through. 

Well, if you're a reader, and you would like to download my free ebook called HIINDSIGHT; Three Things I Wish I Knew When My Son Was Addicted To Drugs, you can go to www.BrendaZane.com/hindsight and drop your email there. And we'll send you a copy of that. It's short, but it's packed with a lot of really good information that I truly wish I had known when my son was starting down this path. So I hope it'll be helpful to you and just give you a little bit of guidance and things to think about. 

Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that you are learning and growing through what I share here. And if you have 30 seconds right now it would mean the world to me. If you would rate the Hopestream podcast in whatever player you're listening in. That just tells Apple or Spotify or Google that people are listening and then more parents can find the show. Have a good rest of your day and I will meet you right back here next week.

Also, if you want to get on my email list, so you can get the email every Wednesday that I send out just as a way to support you and what you're going through you can go to Brendazane.com/email and just drop your email there and I'll send you a short kind of one-pager email on Wednesdays, and I would love to be able to do that for you.