Recovery for Loved Ones III

13 May 2023

In the first of these three blogs, there was a nomenclature issue cited: do we call those people who have an addicted loved one family + friends (F+F), loved ones (LO), or what?  Shanmugam (2021) solved this challenge with the term affected family members (AFM).  Shanmugam’s approach, in writing up his research, was to reveal its efficacy with regard to a learning model—which is less important to us than what he found amongst this population: AFMs.  Although the research was done in Malaysia, where larger family networks prevail, the findings are insightful.

Under the biological lens, Shanmugam (2021) treated addiction as a disease.  SMART Recovery, and many others, treat it as a disorder.  However, regardless of that conception, what’s common to both is the discovery, by family members, that this disorder can take on a life of its own, becoming deeper, more frightening, and less manageable to the person with the addictive behaviours and her family members.  In the face of this dysfunction, AFMs have a choice: reinforce the problem or its amelioration (Rane et al, 2017 as cited in Shanmugam, 2021, p. 202).  The purpose of this research was to discover how initial psychoeducation and training helped the AFMs to cope with a more ameliorative approach to the addictive behaviours. 

Part of Shanmugam’s work was encouraging AFMs, as well as those with addiction, to work jointly in therapy once the person suffering addiction had agreed to begin treatment.  Four goals were listed:

1. Understand addiction and beliefs and emotions that accompany addiction;
2. Understand the family’s belief systems particularly, negative emotions, responses systems, and change;
3. Identify roles in unhealthy family systems; and,
4. Understand codependency (Shanmugam, 2021, p. 203).

Two ideas were cited as being part of that study: trauma bonding and learned helplessness (Carlson, 2010 and Beckwith, 2014, respectively, as cited in Shanmugam, 2021, p. 203).  One definition of the former goes like this: Trauma bonding is a psychological response to abuse.  It occurs when the abused person forms a connection or relationship with the person who abuses them (Zoppi, 2020, p. 1). It gets more interesting.  When Zoppi dug into this she asked how and why these bonds develop.  The answer, attachment (attachment 1 attachment 2) with unhealthy attachment styles (the majority of the addictive or traumatized communities) are most susceptible. 

Per the bracketed comment above, this puts AFMs in a similar developmental category to our addicted loved ones.  As I have mentioned in more than one SMART Recovery meeting, a very experienced psychologist related that if you put two AFMs in a room—with many other non-AFMs—those two would find one another.  Interesting, eh?  There’s a culture and a cycle here which are mutually reinforcing.  This came through in some of the findings.  For example, a 47-year-old female stated that “…it took us a long time to even realize there was a problem.  Most family members don’t even know they have a problem” (Shanmugam, 2021, pp. 204-5). 

As people who have attended multiple Al-Anon or SMART Recovery Family + Friends meetings have probably heard, people show up at these meetings—not to fix their own lives—but to fix the lives of their addicted loved ones.  The expression of that desire is my first indication, as a facilitator, that that person has found the right room to begin facing themselves and their own issues, which sometimes helps their loved ones to move on from addiction. 

Although passivity was described as part of the Asian culture, I have seen identical problems in our Western population namely “…the struggles [of AFMs] to draw boundaries and be assertive [with their addicted loved ones]” (Shanmugam, 2021, p. 210). 

A few paragraphs ago, the term learned helplessness was used.  I find the history of this concept to be heartbreaking and frightening at the same time.  Learned helplessness was identified by two of the fathers of positive psychology, as quoted below.

In 1967, Martin Seligman and his partner, Steven Maier, were researching animal behavior when they accidentally discovered the learned helplessness theory. They found that the dogs who had been exposed to a series of inescapable shocks stopped trying to get away from the electric shocks altogether.

When Seligman and Maier tried this experiment with human beings (replacing the shocks with loud noises), they found that people had a similar reaction. The ones that couldn’t control the noise in the first experiment didn’t even bother trying to control it in subsequent trials — even though the aversive stimulus was now escapable.

This research led to a new understanding of trauma. People that experience repeated abuse and other aversive situations eventually learn to become helpless if nothing they do changes it. It’s as if they internalize that since nothing worked in that situation, nothing will work in similar situations, either. The trauma begins to erode two other critical aspects of mental well-being — self-efficacy and internal locus of control.

--Cooks-Campbell, 2021

These are some of the impacts on AFMs of living with chronic addictive behaviours.  In short, the impacts are deadly serious.

Shanmugam (2021, p. 210) reported a 71-year-old female participant stating that, “…the knowledge in the book has helped me.  Everyone should read it.”  This resonated loudly as I have heard people, for years, say about both the 12-steps and SMART Recovery, “Everybody should be doing this.”  I second that.

Dan Chalykoff is (finally!) a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying).  He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

References

Cooks-Campbell, A. (2021, November 3).  What is learned helplessness, and how do you ‘unlearn’ it?  BetterUp  https://www.betterup.com/blog/learned-helplessness#:~:text=Learned%20helplessness%20is%20what%20social,when%20a%20solution%20is%20accessible.

Shanmugam, P. K. (2021) Psychoeducation impact for family members of substance users: An evaluation the workbook “Addiction: A Family Disease”, Journal of Substance Use, 26:2, 202-211, DOI: 10.1080/14659891.2020.1807632

Zoppi, L. (2020, November 27).  What is trauma bonding?  Medical News Today, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/trauma-bonding