Debbie Gail Zane

If you have a teen or adult child with mental illness or addiction and you are struggling to find your path to peace, you may be making one of these mistakes-

Taking things personally. When things are not going well with your child, do you blame yourself and make everything that is happening about you? Not taking things personally helped me emotionally and in my relationship with my oldest son. His actions and choices were not about me. Even when he lashed out at me, it was not about me; it was about his anger about his predicament. He lashed out at me because I was the safe person who he knew would love and accept him unconditionally. Internalizing this meant I didn’t need to get defensive, blame myself, or make things about me, and that left me with more peace in my life and in my communication with him.

Not accepting your limitations. Part of finding peace was accepting my own limitations of not being able to fix my oldest son’s illness. As a parent, I had seen myself as being responsible for his behaviors, his choices, and his decisions. I believed it was up to me to fix things. This led to becoming frustrated with myself; it did not lead to peace. Instead, I learned to practice self-compassion—being gentle, kind, and patient with myself. Realizing my limitations was a key step for me and allowed me to be more compassionate with myself.

I learned that I had the choice to take responsibility for my own life and that having peace was a result of my own decisions about myself and how I lived my life.

I had a choice to blame myself for not being able to fix his illness or addiction, or to make a decision to have compassion for myself, practice self-love and self-care, and discover what I could do to bring joy into my life. I chose the latter.

What choice are you making?

Sending love and light,

Debbie

Look for my book, Finding Peace and Purpose amidst the Tears, to come out later next month, where I share my journey of the love and loss of my son through his mental illness and addiction and how I found my path to peace.

If you have a teen or adult child with mental illness or addiction, acceptance is an important part of your path to peace.

This may include accepting that your lives are completely different than they were before mental illness and addiction, accepting difficult events that happened, what your child is feeling and what they are dealing with.

Acceptance does not mean you have to like what is happening; it means you are acknowledging the facts of the situation and not focusing your energy on why it shouldn’t be that way.

Acceptance does not mean you have to agree with your child’s decisions or that you would make the same decisions yourself.

Accepting your child allows you to focus on loving them as they are.

Acceptance will allow you to stop the war within you that may have been going on for years, the struggle to fight against reality.

Fighting against the reality of their mental illness and addiction uses up a tremendous amount of energy. That will drain you.

Rather your energy can instead be used on positive things such as becoming more resourceful with helping your child and enjoying your time with them, your other children, and your family and friends.

Sending love and light,

Debbie

When you have a teen or adult child with mental illness or addiction, you may find yourself living in fear much of the time.

I understand, as I was there too.

I realized that behind the fear was a need for certainty—certainty that my son would be okay, that he would be safe, and that things would work out (the way I wanted them to).

The problem is there is no absolute certainty. We can never be certain when it comes to other people, places, or things.

As I learned from Tony Robbins, if we make certainty our top need, we will never be happy.

I realized that certainty had become my top need, so every time I felt myself wanting and needing certainty, I replaced it with something else.

What really helped me was replacing certainty with contribution to others outside myself.

Certainty can also be replaced with love and connection.

Spending more of your time and energy consciously focusing on contribution (such as helping others, contributing to their lives, being there for your children or partner, serving those in need) or love (such as loving relationships in your life, meeting your need for love, self love, loving your partner or your child), can bring you relief from the need for things to be certain in your life.

And this can bring you more happiness and less fear.

Let me know if you can substitute something for your need for certainty.

Sending love and light,

Debbie