LovewithBoundaries

Encore Presentation You may have seen our emails recently letting you know about AVAIYA University's latest free online event, Overcoming Toxic Relationships. Candace is honoured to be a featured AVAIYA teacher and wanted to let you know you have one last chance to tune in to classes with her and other therapists and relationship experts until end of day tomorrow Oct 29.... Tens of thousands of people are watching these classes and Healing Their Relationship Trauma. If you would like to break free from toxic relationships, reclaim your worth, and build healthy relationships, we highly recommend you take advantage of this free opportunity. Join us for Overcoming Toxic Relationships here: https://plattor--avaiya.thrivecart.com/overcoming-toxic-re/

Letting Go Isn't Easy. Life doesn’t always go as planned. You stumble, you fall, and for the most part, you pick yourself up and learn from your mistakes. Every... experience we go through is meant to teach us something. But what happens when instead of learning from our mistakes, we keep repeating them? For people struggling with substance use disorder and codependency, this is called progression. Progression means thinking and behavior become dishonest as maladaptive coping techniques replace healthy ones. Chaos and confusion make it hard for families to communicate clearly and openly. To keep the peace, families learn to hide their emotions until they can't. Then they erupt, creating more chaos, pain, and feelings of guilt. When addicted persons want their next fix, they can be aggressive, manipulative, or appear needy. Parents may tolerate intolerable behavior and give in to unreasonable demands. Some parents struggle to see the addicted adult in front of them. Instead, seeing the child they once were. Parents of addicted adult children may view them as incompetent and unable to look after themselves. It’s this misguided notion that allows denial to exist and enabling to occur. Enabling happens when another person, often a well-meaning family member, helps the addicted person avoid the natural consequences of their actions. Addicted persons spend all their time and money maintaining their habit. Parents can enable this behavior by paying for rent, gas, car payments, cell phone bills, lawyer bills, food, and spending money. This allows the addicted person to focus solely on getting their next fix. Protecting one from the consequences of their actions is never helpful. It’s disabling, and when addiction is involved, it’s deadly. Imagine a new mother. For the first few months, she will carry her baby everywhere she goes. Now imagine if she never put her baby down? She may save her child from a scrape or fall, but the child would never learn to crawl or to walk! It sounds ridiculous, but with addiction in the family, it can be like that. I worked with a 70-year-old mom whose 45-year-old son was living rent-free in her basement. She cooked his meals, did his laundry, and cleaned his room. Her retirement savings were almost gone. She reached out to me because she was feeling anxious and needed help. She couldn’t afford to keep providing for her son but didn’t want to upset him by asking him to pitch in. This lovely woman still saw her grey-haired son as an unruly teenager. She wasn’t far off, either. Although her son had grey hair, emotionally, he was a 14-year-old child. He was 14-years-old when he first started smoking marijuana to cope with his feelings. Instead of working through difficulties, he avoided them by numbing himself with drugs. This resulted in his emotional arrest. Fast forward, and he can’t hold a job. He angers quickly and doesn’t like working. He’s used to everything being provided for him via Mom, and he wants to keep it that way. His mom’s love has become fear and her help, control. Mom feels by doing everything for him, she is keeping her son safe. Her son is stuck in a role in which he feels inept, incapable, disempowered, dependent, entitled, and useless. Mother and son are in survival mode. They're doing the best they can with what they know. Without help, their pathological relationship will continue to deteriorate. Loving someone who struggles with addiction is painful. Families’ worst fear death by overdose can and does occur. To make matters worse, doing the right thing for your addicted loved one is hard. Addicted persons won’t thank you for not enabling them. Instead, they might resort to emotional blackmail. You might hear: You don’t love me! You’re the worst parent ever! I’m never talking to you again! Thanks to you, I’ll be living on the streets! If I die, it’s your fault! Without constant support, feelings of anxiety, fear, and guilt can outweigh common sense and logic. Saying no and setting boundaries is difficult. Painful emotions can lead families back into enabling. Letting go isn't easy. You may feel it’s disloyal and uncaring to stop rescuing. But letting go means you’re allowing the consequences to belong to the person who created them. Without consequences, there is no incentive to change. When you change your role in dysfunctional family dynamics, EVERYTHING changes. The best way to help your loved one is to lead by example. Instead of trying to get them to attend a meeting, go to one yourself. Remember, addiction is a family sickness. When we want the addict to change but don't change ourselves, chaos and insanity continue. By reaching out and starting your own recovery process, you cut the ties binding you to your addicted loved one's moods and actions. Inner peace begins when you stop letting someone else control your destiny and start taking responsibility for your health and happiness. Lorelie Rozzano www.jaggedlittleedges.com

The third and final article in the series about workaholism is now available in Real Business . In this article called Are You or Your Loved One Tired of Being a Workaholic? 3 Strategies to Help You Heal, Candace Plattor shares ways to help you both shift your thinking and your behaviour. Learn more: https://realbusiness.co.uk/loved-one-tired-workaholic-3-str

Is your relationship toxic? Are you ready to reclaim your life after a toxic relationship? Candace Plattor wants to share an amazing opportunity for you to join her for a FREE, Avaiya University online event that she's participating in called Overcoming Toxic Relationships: How to Deal with Toxic, Difficult & Emotionally Abusive People. ... During this 7 day online event, Candace will be talking about "The Importance of Self-Respect When in a Toxic Relationship. Please register here: https://plattor--avaiya.thrivecart.com/overcoming-toxic-re/ #toxicrelationships #selfrespect

Candace Plattor, M.A. was asked to share her expertise on addiction in an article the Daily Express in the UK did about actor Steve Coogan and his addictive behaviours called "Steve Coogan: 'I will always be a recovering addict' - expert advice on addiction." In this article, you'll find Candace's insights midway through, starting with a definition of what addiction is and what it isn't and the importance of reaching out for help for both the addict and their families. Read more: https://www.express.co.uk//steve-coogan-health-addiction-d

We are pleased to share Candace Plattor's second article in a series in Real Business called "Self-Respect and Self-Care When Your Loved One is Overwhelmed in the Workplace" When your loved one is overwhelmed from work, your first thought may be: What can I do to make things better? What if you try considering something different that might shift things even more quickly. What if you started with this thought instead: How do I help myself, first? Read more https://realbusiness.co.uk/self-respect-self-care-loved-one

Candace Plattor was recently asked about the issue of screen-time addiction by Gail of MumForce an online parenting and lifestyle blogger in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the article "Is Your Child Suffering from Screen-Time Addiction?" Candace shares how to set boundaries as a parent, and what you can do if you think that your child is spending too much time online. Read more: https://www.mumforce.co.uk/screen-time-addiction/ #screentimeaddiction #lovinganaddict

Did you know that when you begin to grow your self-respect, you can also begin to conquer your codependency? Listen in when Candace Plattor joins Ande Anderson of AVAIYA University for the Conquering Codependency & Finding Self-Love Summit. Candace shares that Self-Respect is The Key To Overcoming Codependency For Addicts & Their Loved Ones. Those coping mechanisms that we have in place as a result of our childhood environment often take the form of codependency and people-pleasing - but there is help. Listen to the interview here: https://youtu.be/skSeBIMvngY Want to listen to more interviews in the Conquering Codependency & Finding Self-Love Summit? Access them here: https://www.avaiya.com/selflove/?affiliate=plattor

In 2019 Candace Plattor had an amazing opportunity to present at TEDxBearCreekPark. In this presentation, she talked about How to Love with Boundaries if you have an addicted loved one in your life. Awareness, education and prevention about enabling is a huge part of the solution we need to address, in order to stand strong against addiction. It is time to begin Saying N.O.P.E. to the addicts we love. We need to stop loving them to death - and begin loving them to life. Watch my talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VadN5wpk_-0 #enablinganaddict #lovinganaddict

Counting on it!!!

Change... #LoveWithBoundaries #lovinganaddictlovingyourself

We are pleased to share Candace Plattor's latest article in Real Business called "Is Your Loved One Feeling Overwhelmed at Work? Here's How You Can Help!" If you have been noticing some subtle - or not so subtle - changes in your loved one's behaviour it may be because of extra stress at work. Sometimes these behaviours can cause issues at home and potentially even health issues, so it's important to take some steps to help your loved one. In this article the first of Three Success Strategies is shared - with more to come in the next 2 articles in the series. Read more: https://realbusiness.co.uk/is-your-loved-one-feeling-overwh