Rumbling with the Anxiety of Your Loved One's Addiction

Anxiety is something that everyone rumbles with.  When dealing with your loved ones addiction, anxiety is especially high. This week we talked about different tools to recognize when you are struggling with anxiety.

Brene Brown discusses over functioning and underfunctioning.  When you find yourself keeping so busy that you forget to eat, or not spending time with your family, you might be an overfunctioner.  (I know I am!).  The opposite, there are times when life gets so overwhelming, you just want to sleep or veg out and watch netflix.  Sometimes that's ok, but sometimes it's also important to look a little deeper and figure out what is causing us to under or over function and address that concern.

The other tool is checking your locus of control, is it internal or external? There is a circle of influence, versus the circle of concern. Alina shows a diagram of what that can look like.  External factors are things that we do not have control over, the government or society (Circle of concern).  The internal factors are your reactions, transferable skills, things that you do have control over (Circle of influence). By focusing on the circle of influence, that circle gets bigger, lower anxiety, while your circle of concern begins to get smaller.

These are just examples of the tools that we can help teach you during our individual or group session.  If you or someone you know has a family member struggling with addiction and the anxiety that surrounds it, please give Harper Therapy a call at 813-464-3639.