It is exhausting to watch someone you care about keep making choices that hurt them. Especially when you can see what is happening and feel like you have tried everything to help. You have had the conversations, offered support, sent the information, and explained yourself every way you know how. Then you find yourself lying awake thinking about what else you could say that might finally get through.
Maybe it is a family member who refuses help, a friend who keeps returning to the same situation, or someone who makes commitments and never follows through. You are frustrated, worried, and probably a little resentful. You keep thinking, If they would just listen.
I know this place. Recovery has given me tools to recognize when I am in it, but I still have to use them. I can get so focused on what someone else needs to do that I miss what is happening to me. I am distracted. I am checking my phone. I am having conversations in my head with someone who is not even in the room. Meanwhile, my actual life is happening, and I am barely in it.
Sometimes I have to admit that the person understood what I said the first time. They heard my concern. They know what I think. They are choosing something different, and I am having a hard time accepting that. I try to honor autonomy today even when it’s hard.
That can be painful to acknowledge. When you love someone, their choices can affect you deeply. There may be real consequences, and your concern may be completely justified. But concern does not give us control. We can offer help, tell the truth, make requests, and decide what we are willing to participate in. We cannot make another person become willing, ready, honest, or responsible.
I have to watch for the moment my helping turns into needing someone to do what I say so I can feel okay. That is usually when I start repeating myself, pushing harder, or offering help I will later resent giving. I tell myself I am doing it for them, but sometimes I am also trying to get relief from my own fear. If I can get them to make the right choice, maybe I can finally relax.
The problem is that I have now made my peace dependent on something I cannot control.
I coach clients to actively look for when they are powerlessness and in unmanageability. It is easy to see how someone else’s life has become unmanageable. It takes more honesty to notice what happens to mine when I become consumed with theirs. Am I sleeping? Am I keeping my commitments? Am I present with my son? Am I taking care of myself, or spending the day trying to manage someone who did not ask me to manage them?
I can have a valid concern and still need to change how I am responding to it. Both can be true.
A big part of this work is developing a healthy relationship with reality also known as sanity. For me, that means being willing to see what is actually happening, even when I wish it were different. Someone has declined help. A promise has been broken again. A person is showing me what they are willing to do right now. I need to let that information matter and I can choose from there.
I can believe in someone’s potential and still make decisions based on their current behavior. I can understand why they struggle and still acknowledge the impact on me. It gets difficult to make good decisions when I keep substituting what I hope will happen for what is happening.
There is often grief in accepting reality. You may have to feel the disappointment you have been trying to fix your way out of. You may have to acknowledge that a person cannot give you what you keep asking for, or that someone you love is not ready to accept help. Those are hard things to sit with. It makes sense that we would rather find one more solution.
But I do not have to like reality to have a healthy relationship with it. I have to be willing to recognize it. Once I do, I can make a decision that fits the situation I am actually in.
When I think about returning to sanity, this is part of what I mean: getting enough perspective to respond to what is in front of me. I ask myself how many times I have tried the same thing and what has happened afterward. What am I expecting another text, another lecture, or another rescue to accomplish? Am I responding to something that needs my attention, or am I struggling to tolerate the fact that I cannot determine the outcome?
Sometimes a return to sanity looks like putting down the phone and going to bed. Sometimes it means calling someone I trust and being honest about how consumed I have become. It might mean keeping a boundary, allowing someone to be upset with me, or getting back to the responsibilities I have been neglecting.
The situation may still be unresolved. I can still eat dinner, do my work, laugh with my family, and get some sleep. There does not have to be a solution to someone else’s problem before I am allowed to participate in my own life.
This is where I come back to my side of the street. What have I said? How have I behaved? Have I been honest about my limits? Am I offering something freely, or am I expecting compliance in return? Is there an apology I owe or a boundary I need to follow through on?
There is plenty for me to work on without taking over someone else’s part.
I can say, “I love you, and this is the help I am able to offer.” I can say, “I cannot keep doing this.” I can stop volunteering for something that leaves me resentful. I can make a clear request and allow the other person to answer. Their answer gives me information, and then I get to decide what I will do.
Letting go does not always feel good right away. Sometimes I feel guilty. Sometimes I feel afraid that if I step back, everything will fall apart. Those feelings can be strong, especially if I am used to being the person who steps in and handles things. I have to give myself time to feel them without immediately reaching for the phone.
For me, this is where faith becomes something I practice. I ask my Higher Power for guidance. I talk to people who help me see clearly. I take the next responsible action available to me, and I practice leaving the outcome alone. Some days I have to do that over and over.
If you recognize yourself in this, think about one situation that has been taking up too much space in your head. What are the facts? What have you already tried? What is yours to do now? There may be a conversation to have, a limit to set, or support you need for yourself. There may also be nothing more to say today.
I can care deeply about someone and allow them to make choices I would not make. I can be disappointed and still take care of myself. I can want things to change while making honest decisions about where they are today.
That is what I keep coming back to: seeing clearly, taking responsibility for my part, and staying present for the life I have.
