Don't Try So Hard

     At work yesterday, I took a crisis call from someone who was calling for a friend; a person that sounded like they have some serious mental health and addiction issues.  I listened to this person's concerns about her friend, and she eventually got around to asking about when she could bring this person in to our agency.
 "Ok, well, does your friend want to get treatment?" I asked.
     Apparently this really stumped the caller.  She went on to explain that her friend was an adult who was throwing their life away with their drinking and really needed to get help.  I validated her concerns, and applauded her efforts, but I came back to my original, yet-unanswered question.
"Does your friend want to get help, and do they even know that you're calling us?"
     When she got around to it, it turns out that the friend wasn't aware of her call, and her friend had not, in fact said that they wanted to get help.  I got the feeling that it hadn't even occurred to the caller to ask her friend this important, basic question.  Out of her concern about a situation that was obviously out of control, she just gave us a call.
     This conversation is never a pleasant one for me to have with a concerned friend, spouse, or family member of an adult with behavioral health issues.  It just seems so simple; you see an obvious need or problem they have, so they should too, and they should be grateful for your efforts.  And it's not limited to people with behavioral health needs; it could be a friend who's made a bad career move, or entered into an unhealthy relationship.  Having personal experience with family with mental health issues, I can completely empathize with the way this caller was feeling and thinking during our call.  The urge is so great to just "fix" that person, to connect them to the help that you know they need.
     But of course it's not that easy.  It comes down to the definition of the problem or need; sometimes our perception of someone else's problem doesn't align with their view of the situation.  If they don't see 4 DUI's as a sign that they have a drinking problem, for example, they're not going to be motivated to enter into treatment and stop drinking, and so, no matter how many treatment programs you call for that person, it's not going to help them become sober.
     Oftentimes, being helpful to someone that you're concerned about necessitates a fair amount of healthy detachment; to realize that you can't fix them or do the work for them to get through whatever issues they face.  To communicate to them that you care about them, and why you're concerned for them, is usually as far as you can go (unless of course they're being unsafe, and then, that's a different matter).  And then, you  have to simply let go of it, and allow them to make whatever decisions they may (head's up: they're probably not going to make the decisions you want them to make, at least in the beginning), and then decide for yourself what sort of relationship you want to continue to have with them after that.  This is especially crucial for dealing with people with addiction issues, so as not to get sucked into the cycle of enabling and co-dependency.  It's really difficult, but sometimes you have to just let people hit their own bottom, and find some sort of personal motivation to get some help.  That's the only way it'll even stand a chance of being successful.

"Don't Try So Hard" is from the 1991 album Innuendo