Night Time Rituals

Everyone seems to have before bed rituals. For most they are personal. Seems for most people they do not change no matter where you are; on vacation, at home, traveling on business, whatever or wherever you happen to be at the time.

For the parent of an addict there is always a thought or a prayer to end the madness in that bedtime ritual. Many times tears are a part of laying your head on the pillow.

Something I incorporated into my night time ritual was to deliberate on a simple question. "What did I learn?" It's a simple short question but is so powerful for the parent of an addict.

Self care is critical for any person with a loved one suffering from addiction. Self care may include a massage or a vacation but the most important self care I found for me was knowledge and information.

When we ask our self, "What did I learn?" it opens the door to new learning and unlearning. There are 3 types of learning; old learning, new learning and unlearning. Unlearning is the hardest, when we learn what we thought to be true but find it isn't, we unlearn and find a new path to learning.

As we begin a process of self learning we build a knowledge base that works for future days.

At times as I begin to process the learning, the day and experiences I would play out scenarios in my mind on how to handle future encounters for myself and my loved one. By applying my learning each day I was better prepared to handle any crisis or drama the next day.

Learning and preparation provided me a small measure of peace each day.