About the episode
The holidays can be complicated when your brother or sister is struggling with drug or alcohol addiction. Between family gatherings, requests for money, gift-giving, and changing traditions, you might find yourself questioning how to show up for your sibling while taking care of yourself.
Should you give them money if they ask? Do you keep old family traditions alive? What if your sibling shows up to a holiday gathering in active addiction? And is it okay to skip the celebration altogether?
In this episode of For Love of Recovery, Dominique Dajer shares personal experiences and practical advice for navigating the holidays when addiction affects your family. From setting financial boundaries and having difficult conversations with parents to rethinking holiday gifts and family traditions, we explore how to approach these situations in a way that feels right for you.
If you're unsure how to navigate the holidays with a sibling in addiction or early recovery, this episode offers practical guidance and reassurance that there's no single right way to handle it.
This episode will help you
Set financial boundaries when your sibling asks for money, without feeling pressured by guilt.
Navigate difficult conversations with parents and family members who may have different perspectives on addiction.
Decide whether to attend holiday gatherings and establish boundaries or an exit plan if needed.
Find thoughtful ways to show love and support through gift-giving without relying on cash.
Cope with changing family traditions and shifting expectations.
Find a balance between supporting your sibling and prioritizing your own well-being.
Resources
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[00:00:00] He asked me to drive him to buy drugs and I had said, " I won't drive you there, but I'll drive you home and what you do after that is up to you." A boundary isn't a punishment. It's you deciding what you can do and still be okay.
Welcome to FLOR for Love of Recovery, where I'm your host, Dominique Dajer. Sibling relationships can be so unique, but they can become more complex when there's drug or alcohol use involved. If you find yourself questioning how to help, you're not alone.
Join me on this journey in restoring hope and healing.If you're listening to this, there's a good chance the holidays bring you some level of anxiety.
It could be anything from the empty chair at the table, a loved one who is in active addiction or living on and off the street. It could be the exhaustion from rehearsing conversations in your head over and [00:01:00] over. It could be being tired and fed up of broken promises that are never kept.
I'm not gonna tell you that there's one way to navigate
the holidays, but i'm gonna giveyou some words to help you navigate different situations so you're not walking in empty-handed.
But before we get into talking about the holidays, I wanna be honest about something: when I started this podcast, I was in the middle of chaos. I was desperate in trying to understand how to help my brother during his active addiction, and I was stuck with all of these emotions as a sibling in trying to find the thing that I should or shouldn't be doing. I was being told from some people that I needed to cut him off so that way he can hit his rock bottom, but I knew in my core that's not something that I really wanted to do.
It just didn't sit right with me because it didn't align with my values, and I set out to find all these resources.
You probably know that my brother has been in a long-term recovery program for the past year and a half, and things are a little bit calmer in my life [00:02:00] and in my family. But I want to continue to build content that is designed around you and your family needs and your experiences navigating your sibling's addiction.
I'm gonna ask you guys how to help me figure this out, so stay tuned till the end.
But first, let's talk about why this holiday season is so hard.
Siblings are often stuck deciding how they wanna show up for their brother or sister struggling with addiction.
And there's no right way to navigate the holidays. There's just a safe way and the right way for you and your family.
Here are a couple of situations that I hear about the most. The first being your sibling asks you for money, what do you do? There's no right or wrong answer to that, but the answer does lie in your values. If you wanna be able to provide them money because it's a form of harm reduction and you wanna minimize the chance of them doing something dangerous, getting hurt, doing something illegal in order to get that money, [00:03:00] then you need to decide what the risks and what the benefits are.
I've been at both ends of that spectrum, and I have and have not given my brother money when he's asked for it.
And what I would suggest other people do if they're in the same situation and their sibling is asking them is figure out, am I in a situation to provide them money? Am I financially stable to do that? Two is, am I going to hold this against them later? Am I going to shun them or blame them or use this against them because I gave them 20 bucks or whatever it is?
Because if you're gonna throw it in their face later, subconsciously or intentionally, don't give it to them.
Think about other ways in your life that you show up for your sibling. Is there another way that you can support them that doesn't involve providing them with something of monetary value or cash?
If you decide that you do not wanna give them money, there are a couple of ways that you can do [00:04:00] that depending on your relationship with them and the language that you feel comfortable using.
You could say, "I love you and I'm not gonna give you any money, but I'd be glad to support you in another way."
Or ask them a little bit more directly, " I can't give you any money," but let me know how else I can support you." So being a little bit more direct, but also feeling like you're providing them with a space, that way they can come to you if they have questions or need help in another way.
If they ask you again, you could say, "My answer is no. That's not going to change, but I'm still here for you And if they ask you again or you need to be a little bit firmer with your response, you can just say, "I can't do that." No is a complete sentence.
Other ways that you can say no but also acknowledge the situation that they're in is, "I know you're frustrated. My answer is still the same." Oftentimes guilt and love show up at the same time, but you need to make sure that you're operating in a way that [00:05:00] is true to you.
There's been a couple of different instances where my brother has asked me for money or for something that I wasn't comfortable doing. One example is like he asked me to drive him to buy drugs and I had said, " I won't drive you there, but I'll drive you home and what you do after that is up to you."
It has definitely hurt me in the past to set those kind of boundaries with him. When I didn't set boundaries, I felt like I was letting myself down instead.
That's the worst feeling because the one person that you owe anything to is yourself. And I feel like the holidays become harder because it's, quote, "the season of giving," and you're trying to find other ways to show up in this person's life. And cash often feels like the easy thing to do. But it's not always right for every situation or for every relationship.
In situations where I had a hard time setting boundaries with my brother, I had to remind myself that a boundary isn't a punishment. It's you [00:06:00] deciding what you can do and still be okay. It's deciding how you're choosing to show up for this person or choosing to show up for yourself in that matter.
Sometimes the hardest conversation isn't with your sibling, it's with your parents about your sibling.
When you're in the midst of chaos, it often feels like everything revolves around your sibling who's in active addiction, and that conversations at the dinner table or leading up to the holidays or their own personal anxiety about your sibling being there or not being there, it can feel like the whole conversation revolves around them.
And you're allowed to have your own feelings and frustrations about that. You can say "I love you, Mom or Dad, but I'm not gonna talk to you about this anymore," or, "If you wanna find out how is doing, I'd rather you just ask them directly."
There's also situations where maybe your parent or another family member is asking you, to do something that you're not comfortable doing in support of your sibling. You can just flat out [00:07:00] say "No, that's not something I'm willing to do."
Another question that often comes up is deciding on how you wanna spend holiday time with your sibling, or if you want to attend a family function or an event that your sibling may or may not be at. Those can be really complicated questions depending on who's gonna be there, what state your sibling is in, are your parents there, or just the relationships that you have with the other people at the gathering.
The first big question that you should be asking yourself is deciding whether or not you want to show up in the first place. Not because you're worried about who will be there or because you're worried about what people will think if you are or aren't there, but think about the setting and if that's the type of group you want to be in.
Are the people there going to support you? Are they going to engage with you? Are they going to listen to you in a way that you want to be listened to and spoken to? The second question I would ask yourself when deciding whether to show up to a holiday event is, what do I need to feel okay? If I start [00:08:00] to feel overwhelmed or anxious about talking to this person or having this type of conversation, what do I need to have in place to be able to walk away or end the conversation?
Prepare ways on how you can set time limits around being at this event. Maybe you're just going for a short visit, maybe it's a couple of hours, or you'll visit another day when certain people aren't there. Or skipping it all together and maybe sending a gift or calling instead.
It's okay to attend, skip, or do smaller versions of holidays if it means protecting your peace.
You can flat out say "Hey, I'd love to be there, but I can only come for a couple of hours," or, "I won't be there this year, but I'm thinking of you all." However you wanna put it, you can build boundaries that feel authentic to you.
A couple of years ago when my brother was in active addiction, I hadn't spoken to him in two or three months, and my family and I were getting ready to go to [00:09:00] my aunt's house, and I had no idea that my brother was gonna be there until a couple of hours before when my mom had called me and gave me a heads-up.
And in that moment, I had to think about whether or not I wanted to go to their house in the first place, and what kind of conversation I wanted to have with my brother, if at all. I decided that I did wanna go, and I told my brother when I got there that I wanted to talk to him outside so I can share a couple things that were on my mind before we went into our aunt's house and enjoy the rest of the evening.
I created a boundary with myself that I was going to say what I needed to say and not continue to bring it up inside. I also felt safe and comfortable enough where I didn't really need to have a game plan or an exit plan if things got a little hairy and I needed to leave.
But in situations where I felt like I needed an exit plan, I would go to the bathroom and text someone that I was comfortable talking to about how I was feeling or honestly, just escaping into the garage or another [00:10:00] room that nobody was in and just like, taking a minute. Those types of tactics, like real tactics, helped me survive not just holiday gatherings, but a lot of gatherings and events that I felt even the slightest bit of discomfort.
Another question that I hear asked a lot is how to handle gifting during the holidays when your sibling or a loved one is in active addiction.
It can be tough to find the balance around showing how you love and support someone without setting yourself for disappointment or without going in with some kind of moral obligation that you need to provide a gift.
Addiction often brings out the worst in people. And sometimes that means
trading gifts or money for substances. It means cashing in on valued and cherished items in exchange for money to buy substances. This is not always the case, but it's a very real reality for a lot of families, and it can make gifting feel incredibly [00:11:00] unsettling. But there are ways that you can still show someone that you support them and love them despite their active addiction that doesn't require you to dish out tons of money.
Similarly to setting boundaries around giving money in the first place, think about the type of intention that you wanna set with this gift or with whatever it is you wanna provide them and showing them that you support and love them. it could be the gift of time, thinking about how you want to grab coffee with them or take them to do something that you know that they've loved in the past, and it could be going for a walk or whatever it might be.
A lot of those types of things bring uncertainty because it's difficult to even think about if the person is gonna be in the head space to go on a walk. As simple as it sounds, those aren't always realistic things that your loved one might be able to do if they're in active addiction. But thinking about what they might actually need, like when my brother was living on and off the street, giving him things like water bottles or a [00:12:00] coat, even if he was going to lose it at some point, or maybe he didn't appreciate it as much in the moment, being a consistent presence in his life was important to me, and it was providing a gift of time and presence, sometimes that family member might not necessarily need a gift, but it could be just being reminded that they're loved.
Sometimes a letter which shows that you're being present, even if it's not being physically there, something that they can store and remind themselves why they're loved or who they are and what you loved most about them.
The same year that my brother was on and off the street and had came to my aunt's house, I decided to gift him with a scrapbook with all the reasons why my family loves him.
It had some of our favorite pictures of him and specific moments that we've captured over the years, and we all took a chance to write down something that we love about him and gave it to him for the holidays.
The most important thing to remember though is that there's no right answer. There's [00:13:00] only what feels honest and safe to you.
The other question and grievance that I hear a lot about during the holidays is breaking away from family traditions. It can be very upsetting to break a holiday tradition that's been important to you or your family because your loved one can't be there or because your loved one is not healthy enough to be there or in the presence that you'd like them to be in.
Something that was really important to me growing up especially having a younger brother, was getting everyone excited to open up gifts on Christmas morning.
There were many Christmases where he wasn't around, or he was under the influence, or he wasn't able to be around us until much later or early in the day. So it made things really hard. There was one Thanksgiving where my brother couldn't be there because he had survived an overdose. And I didn't know this at the time, but I actually just thought that he was out on the street and under the influence, [00:14:00] and he just wasn't around. But over the course of a year, I had learned from my mom that he actually overdosed that day and my parents needed to Narcan him. So sometimes making space in your life to take a break from traditions or create new traditions or with the loved ones can be an important and very necessary way to move forward during the holidays. And Create the life that you want to have rather than relying on tradition and expectations and other people to create the experience that you wanna have.
For me and my family, this holiday season is going to look very different. My brother is going to be transitioning from his long-term treatment program that's a couple of hours from where we live, to a closer transitional housing setup, and he'll actually be able to be home for the holidays this year sober for the first time in a very long time And I don't really know what that's gonna look like.
[00:15:00] And while it sounds positive, there is a lot of uncertainty around his recovery, around what our family's going to look like and what our traditions are going to look like.
So while you're navigating the holidays, just remember to do what keeps you safe and keeps you steady.
Figure out what that looks like for you, and find the language that you're comfortable using to help you set boundaries. While that can apply for you and your sibling, it can also apply to your family, your parents other loved ones and relationships that you have in your life.
And it's okay if those boundaries change and evolve over time. Just because you set one boundary six months ago or last holiday season doesn't mean you need to uphold the exact same boundary today.
Earlier in the episode, I had mentioned that I wanted your help. So When it comes to the holidays, which ones of these experiences is the most challenging for you? Is it saying no to money? Being stuck between your parents and your siblings?
Deciding how to show up for your [00:16:00] sibling or how to show up at holiday gatherings, or is it something completely unrelated?
I'd also wanna hear more about what you want from this show. Is it more personal stories from other siblings? Is it specific resources from mental health professionals? Is it learning more about other approaches to supporting a sibling that are beyond 12-step work or therapy?
Is it getting engaged in certain communities? Whatever it is that you feel will help you in your situation.
If you'd like to see something specific, leave a comment, send me a DM, or reply to our monthly newsletter.
I read every single message, and if you want our free sibling e-book on how to navigate a sibling's addiction, the link is in the show notes.
Thank you so much for being here. The holidays can be a very daunting time when your sibling is in active addiction or in early recovery and things are just uncertain. But just remember you're not doing it alone.
[00:17:00] Thanks for listening to this episode of For Love of Recovery. If you enjoyed this episode or know somebody who might, please leave a comment and share it. You can also join our Facebook group, siblings for Love of Recovery. If you're looking to have deeper conversations around your siblings drug or alcohol addiction. And remember whether there's hope, there's healing.