Overcome Outloud
Welcome to Kimberly and Lyle on Charlie Smith’s Overcome OutLoud podcast. We hope you will enjoy listening to our story. We are both Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists and Lyle is a Licensed Advanced Alcohol and Drug and Counselor. We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to participate in Overcome OutLoud with Charlie Smith. It was such an honor to share our personal journey from the perspectives of mother and daughter in navigating the realities of family addiction.
Charlie takes us back to the beginning, where it all started for us, which considers intergenerational trauma and the impact that can have on each member of the family and how we found our way through when addiction landed in all our laps. We all do the best we can given the tools we have at the time. If trauma is our backdrop whether we had trauma in our childhood or the current situation with family is traumatic, it can produce an overall feeling of fear in the background which then becomes our barometer for making decisions about how to navigate our loved one’s addiction.
The initial shock and disbelief of discovering a loved one’s addiction and the overwhelming emotions that follow are challenges that ultimately families find their way through. Some more successfully than others. We explore our fear, guilt and uncertainty as we faced this daunting challenge head on, and as we both embraced our own recovery, learning to keep the focus on what we could control, our own behavior. As you can imagine this was no small task. We all feel triggered by loved one’s behavior and unless we have coping tools and language skills we can often make choices that support our challenging feelings.
From tough love to tough decisions as mother, and challenging choices as a daughter to pursue her physical and emotional sobriety, we share what worked for us as we traveled this road which was not linear. We talk about our strategies and interventions that were implemented in a mom’s desperate quest to help her daughter, and the highs and lows, the setbacks and small victories that marked our tumultuous journey. From the perspective of the loved one with addiction, Lyle shares her story and how her mother’s willingness to get well and stop the enabling behaviors created and environment Lyle could start to safely thrive in.
While we realize each person has their own journey and no two look alike, we hope our vulnerability in opening up about our struggles and seeking support from others can become a source of strength and resilience in your own path to recovery. We hope that our story will be a beacon of hope and inspiration for those who may be facing similar challenges.
Remember you are not alone, and recovery is possible. Reaching out for help is the first step in getting well. For two people side by side, getting well does not always happy at the same time and we must keep the focus on ourselves and trust the process. Having faith in our own process of wellness, that if we keep doing the next indicated action and we take contrary action making tough choices that do not fuel and enable our fear and anxiety is a giant step in the right direction. Together we can navigate the storms of addiction and emerge stronger on the other side.