Self-Care in the New Year
Is your child struggling with substance use? Believe it or not, taking care of yourself is critically important to helping your son or daughter. This New Year, resolve to take better care of yourself so that you can be more relaxed, balanced and resilient – and be your best self and the most effective helper to your child.
If you have a son or daughter with a substance use problem, worry, frustration and feelings of helplessness probably consume large amounts of your time and energy. As you focus on your child, taking care of yourself probably falls to the bottom of the list, if it makes the list at all.
You might reason that you’ll feel better when your child gets better, so it makes sense to prioritize his/her needs at your (and perhaps the rest of the family’s) expense for now.
This impulse to suspend paying attention to your own health and happiness is understandable, but may contribute to more problems than you realize if it causes you to be reactive, anxious or easily frustrated. Your child is struggling with a variety of issues and she/he needs you to be strong, calm and optimistic. It helps if you are sleeping, eating well and finding some comfort and joy in your life. It helps if you don’t hang your well-being on his/hers. Having your health and outlook on life be dependent on the choices your child makes can be too much for a child – even an adult – to bear.
Taking care of yourself is vital to helping your child and the rest of the family. Try to resist putting your life on hold and living only in emergency/panic mode. How can you possibly go to the movies when you’re worried that your child is out getting high again?! Well, what if taking a break from worrying is the most helpful thing you could do right now?
Remember the safety announcement on planes before takeoff: secure your own oxygen mask first before helping someone else. This is for the benefit of the whole group. Helping works the same way on the ground. You need a certain amount of “oxygen” (sleep, nutrition, exercise, socializing and fun) to sustain you as you help your child. Without attention to your own needs, you risk collapsing before you manage to help. Even if you stay standing, you won’t be able to think, plan, act and troubleshoot as effectively as you can when you’re healthy, optimistic and resilient.
Helping your child change his/her relationship to substances will likely be a long-term project that’s better approached as a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll need to keep your energy reserves up and pace yourself for the long and sometimes bumpy road ahead. You’ll need to prepare for hills, weather and competition. Even if your situation improves fairly quickly – and we hope it does – you’ll be more helpful if you bring your best self to it.
We are not being touchy-feely psychologists when we say this. We are trying to help you be tactical in the midst of a difficult struggle, and it matters.
We recommend that you spend some time each week doing something that makes you feel good, relaxed, content, soothed…something that’s a WANT, not a SHOULD. We recommend that each week, you take a few minutes to review how your self-care is going and to set reasonable, SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) for taking care of yourself in the week ahead.
You might find yourself wondering how in the world you can make this a priority when you have so many other, more urgent demands to attend to. We ask you to try, because the oxygen mask metaphor is true: you won’t be any good to anyone else if you are not taking care of you.
So, what’s your self-care goal for this week?
Key Takeaway: Taking care of yourself is vital to helping your child and the rest of the family. Spend some time each week doing something that makes you feel good, relaxed, content and soothed.
Additional Resources:
- Download The Parent’s 20 Minute Guide, CMC’s guide for parents about how to help their children change their substance use.
- If you’re feeling overwhelmed or have a question about your child’s drug or alcohol use, call the Partnership’s toll-free Helpline where you can speak with a trained and caring, master’s-level support specialist at 1-855-DRUGFREE (1-855-378-4373).
- Get tools and resources to help you better understand what may be going on with your child, make a plan and learn skills to effectively address his or her substance use. Visit Get Help >
- Research suggests that families can set the stage for positive change with a more effective approach. Read an overview of Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) which includes self-care.
We are grateful to Cindy Brody, Director of Intensive Services at Center for Motivation & Change (CMC), who contributed to The Parent’s 20 Minute Guide from which this post is adapted.
