Help Page #2

What if my loved one with a problem does not want to get help?

It is very common for family members to realize their loved one with an addiction needs help—long before the one with the addiction admits their need for help.

The family needs to recognize their limitations and their power to help their loved one. 

Your Limitations:

1. You can’t force your loved one to get help.
2. Giving your loved one money will not solve his/her addiction problem.
3. You cannot stop the damage being caused by the addiction of your loved one.

Your Power:

1. As a member of the family, you may be in a very powerful position to influence your loved one to get help—especially if this person is living with you.
2. You can put conditions on their living with you. If they do not agree to honor these rules, then you can require them to move out of your home, if they are 18 or older.
3. You can refuse to give them money for their legal fees, fines, or other bills.
4. You need to speak the truth into their lives, not once, but over and over, until they get help. A person living with a life-controlling problem or an addiction is living with false beliefs—they are in delusion. Speaking the truth is one thing that will help break through this delusion.
5. Enlist the help of family members, relatives, and close friends and work associates of the one with the problem. Get them to agree to the same restrictions and truth talking you are using.
6. Conduct an intervention in the life of your loved one. Teen Challenge or other trained persons can guide you through the process of confronting your loved one with their need to get help.
7. You may have heard the saying, “You have to wait until they hit bottom before they will get help.” There are ways you can “raise the bottom” to speed up this process.
8. It is important for you to realize that if your loved one does not get help, he/she will get worse before he/she gets better.

Additional Resources

What can
you do for your loved
one when They don’t want help?
(Click here)

You’ve
heard, “They have to hit bottom before they get help.” Why not Raise
the Bottom?
(Click here)

Enabling: Are you offering the wrong kind of help to your loved ones?
(Click here)

Overcoming the trap of Delusion, Denial, Deception.(Click here)