If you are up against someone who is struggling with an alcohol addiction dealing with disappointments is a regular event. Problem drinkers have a way of letting the people down in their lives who love them the most.
I’m going to reveal to you the number one key to not getting disappointed in an alcoholic’s behavior.
I’ll let you in on a secret; they cannot help letting people down when they are in the throes of the disease that they battle with daily. So, don’t take it personally, they really don’t mean to be this way.
Here’s the key. If you have no expectations of the problem drinker, then how can you experience disappointments? That sounds crazy doesn’t it? Please stick with me on this point.
If you are already disappointed in them, then just let the situations go and start over.You will find some helpful tips here: Forgiving The Alcoholic. When you decide to start over again, this time let them live their life however they choose without you holding expectations over them. Try not to place demands on them in any way. If they were supposed to join you at a certain time to do something and they don’t meet the commitment, then find someone else to do that thing with you. You could also just do it by yourself. I used to always keep a couple of good books with me so I could just go find a nice restaurant and read if they had ditched me for the date we had planned. This is a great way to overcome being mad at an alcoholic.
I guess the biggest thing is to hold commitments that they have made and promises loosely and always be prepared for them to disappoint us. That’s just the way that alcoholism works. Your case is no different than the neighbors down the street. If you knew each other well enough, I’m sure the similarities would be shocking.
If you can grab a hold of this point, then your life will radically change for the better. If you think about that for a moment, wouldn’t there be more peace in your life if there were fewer frustrations to handle?
When we don’t hold people to such high standards, then there are fewer things for us to get irritated about when they fail our tests. So, why not stop giving them the test by expecting them to perform and live up to our expectations. Makes sense doesn’t it?
When we start understanding how an alcoholic’s mind works, then we will have more peace in our lives. This article is a good one: Alcoholics Don’t Listen.
If we can only understand that our place in their lives is to love them until the fall flat on their face and cry out for help. When they finally do that we tell them to help themselves. Hopefully, they will really mean what they have said and get help to get rid of their drinking problem.
Every time we have an expectation we have set ourselves up to be disappointed and we are then positioned for experiencing resentments.
I promise that if you can stop having expectations, then the disappointments will be fewer. Dealing with your own emotions and actions is the key to overcoming the damaging behaviors of active problem drinkers that you have in your life. There will always be reasons for us to get upset if we choose to focus on all the things that the problem drinker is or is not doing.
I promise you, the more you try to control them, the more disappointed you will get. Alcoholism is cunning baffling and powerful, much more powerful than your expectations of how you want them to live. Stop nagging and start letting go of the problem drinker and living your own life. You will experience fewer let-downs and disappointments if you can do this.
[…] who drinks every day is to attend support group meetings. As you listen to others methods of dealing with the problem drinker in their lives you begin to learn how to do things differently. These tips and techniques have been […]
Thank you for this helpful tip, however, how do you just go about moving forward with your own plans when the plans you had were at your home? For example, we had my son over for dinner and were playing games. I knew my spouse had been drinking excessively but we included him because he wanted to play. Eventually, the alcohol took over and he became verbally abusive to me, name calling, etc., to the point where my son had to intervene. Of course, he didn’t remember anything the next morning and he continued to drink as though it was a wonderful evening and everyone had a great time. My son was horrified at the situation that I am in on a daily basis with my alcoholic spouse.