Have you ever had a friend in life who keeps coming to you for guidance, advice, and support, but never seems to take it and instead continues to remain in a vicious cycle of self-defeat?
In the realm of my recovery from past addictions, I come across this quite often and honestly when I do it’s totally frustrating. I know of several people in fact at the present moment who are just like this. With each, I do my absolute best to help them, yet every time they call, they’ve taken no steps to change anything. I’m seeing now that I have to be careful not to coddle them because it’s only going promote the growth of codependence, as well as enable them to stay spiritually sick.
The reality is that there’s nothing more I can do for anyone who’s unwilling to follow any advice or take the necessary steps towards their own spiritual growth. The best I can do is maintain my boundaries and offer the same suggestions I’ve already offered, because at some point, when the pain becomes great enough for them, they’ll do the work.
I should know because I used to have various people in my life that I could call up constantly and cry about my life. But I never took the advice from any of those people. Instead I just wanted that little pat on my butt to let me know they cared. Eventually though, they stopped caring, because I never did the work.
Look, people get drained from that sort of behavior and I know I definitely drained a lot of people over the years due to me engaging in it. I still some work to do around this, but I’m far better than all those days in the past when I would do it on a daily basis. It makes sense now why so many of my friends stopped taking my calls at one point or another.
I guess the hard part these days though is how to handle this when someone else is doing the very same behavior with me, especially when it’s someone I really care about. Case in point, about a year ago, I told a friend he was in a spiral out of control when he came to me for direction. His relationship, his addictions, and his health weren’t in good state and week in and week out there was a lot of drama happening in his life. Unfortunately, he never took any of my advice and things have only grown worse ever since.
When we spoke the other day, I felt bad at first because I was rather stern about the cycle of pain he continues to live in, but I realized that there really is nothing more I can do for him, until he becomes willing to do the work himself. As they always say in recovery, people usually don’t do the work until the pain becomes great enough. I only hope that this will happen soon for my friend, because he truly deserves a much better life than the one he’s allowing himself to have.
Nevertheless, the bottom line is that I don’t believe it’s healthy to keep coddling someone over and over again who’s not willing to do anything to change their situation. The best and only thing anyone can offer a person like this is to keep giving them the same advice and pray that one day they will take some of it and finally step onto a much healthier path…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthurz Dawson