My robot vacuum (her name is Wonder Woman) reminds me of how I approached my daughter’s substance use when it first started.
Several days in a row while I was sitting at my desk working, I noticed Wonder Woman was struggling to get into my office.
The transition into my office is higher than the rest of the rooms in my house, so sometimes the vacuum struggles.
Most of the time if the first approach doesn’t work, she backs up and tries a new approach and she makes it into my office.
Other times she backs up and moves forward with the same approach over and over trying to get a different result.
The result is always the same though.
She just wastes her battery until she has to go charge before finishing the rest of the house.
I sat there watching the vacuum thinking that I have the capability of higher thought than the vacuum, but sometimes I do the same thing.
When my daughter first started abusing substances I was in denial, uneducated about it, and unsure of how to handle it.
I didn’t know what to do, so I kept trying to make the parenting that worked before substance use work again.
It didn’t work the last ten times, let’s try it again!
Smart, right?
It’s like trying to speak English to someone who doesn’t understand it, so you talk slower and louder but it’s still totally ineffective!
They still don’t understand you and everyone is frustrated.
Same thing with my stale approach to substance use with my daughter.
In order to parent in the new land of substance use that I felt like I was dropped into overnight, I needed new tools.
Life Coaching gave me many of the new tools I needed.
I’ve shared some of those tools with you in my weekly blog posts.
Books were another one of the ways I educated myself about substance use.
I needed to understand what I was dealing with.
This week I want to save you some research and share my favorite book about substance use.
It’s called A guide for families, Beyond Addiction, How Science and Kindness Help People Change.
I listened to it on audio book from my library and then I bought a copy from Amazon so I could read it and take notes. It’s that good!
Check it out. Link to AMAZON. I listened to it on audio for free from my library then I bought a copy so I could read it and refer to it. It’s that good!
Be like Wonder Woman on the days she conserves her energy and take a new approach.