Avoiding an Addict’s Manipulations and Lies
Avoiding an Addict’s Manipulations and Lies
Living with an addict is difficult and confusing. Addicts learn to manipulate people close to them. They do this to provide the resources and behaviors that allow them to continue their habit. Their skills are sometimes astounding. They can focus minutely on the desires and needs of their target. They can then turn these needs and wants to their own advantage. Understanding their ability to do this can help friends and family members urge their loved one into treatment. With a little information, you can gain tips on how to avoid an addict’s manipulations and lies.
A Game of Hearts
People around the addict must understand that his or her thinking is completely distorted by the addiction. Trying to reason with the individual is futile. They are not able to think along rational lines. Appealing to the previously close relationship with the addict does not work either. He or she no longer experiences the normal feelings of connection with others. Nor is the person held to the rules of normal relationships.
In fact, your desires to “keep the family together,” “understand what she’s going through” or “prevent her from getting into further trouble” are apt to be more ammunition for an addict’s manipulations and lies in order to continue the substance use. The addict can easily use your efforts to interact with them normally to get money from you, have you drive them to where the substance can be acquired, pay off debts, or actively work to keep them out of legal trouble.
Web of Deceit: Avoiding an Addict's Lies
- Avoidance – Diverting efforts to deal with the growing addiction problem
- Denial – Denying the extent of the problem
- Rationalization – Explaining away relapses and negative consequences
- Justification – Projecting responsibility for the consequences
Hiding the drug use, covering absences, making excuses for irresponsibility, and stealing money are common behaviors of the addict.
An Addict’s Manipulations and Lies: Playing on Hope of Loved Ones
Even when friends and family know about the drug use, an addict’s manipulations and lies escalate. The user may make promises about stopping the drug use, focusing on school or work duties, going to rehab, and a variety of other actions that will make the situation better, but they are unable to deliver. They deeply sense how much their loved ones want the situation to change, and their efforts are always turned toward making it appear that this will soon occur.
For loved ones, it becomes a long and tortured waiting game, with the resolution just over the horizon. Meanwhile, the addict continues the substance abuse, often taking it to new levels as they play on their family’s complaisance and confusion.
Psychological Dysfunction in Addiction
Deep within the actions of an addict are some disturbed thinking patterns that cause them to treat loved ones like tools to help them continue their addiction, rather than treating them as beloved friends and family members.
- A belief in personal exceptionalism; a thought pattern tells them that rules do not apply to them and that everyone else exists to serve their special needs.
- A feeling of victimization if others do not comply with his or her needs.
- Obsession with the drug, and resenting anyone who gets in the way of continuing its use.
- Construction of a separate reality in which the drug dominates every other consideration and other people are simply tools for use in maintaining access to the substance.
Addicts are classic narcissists, focused entirely on their own needs and will go to any extremes to get what they want.
Breaking the Cycle of Manipulation
Families often have difficulty recognizing that they are being manipulated. It can take many years before they are able to see the steps that comprise the game the addict plays to get what he wants. Once the family understands their part in this process and knows about an addict’s manipulations and lies, they can learn to stop playing and force the addict to confront the many problems his behavior causes.
Help for Addicted Loved Ones
If you are dealing with a drug addict, it’s an endless game of manipulation. Encourage him or her to get into an inpatient treatment program that can help them to alter their dysfunctional thought patterns and resume their normal relationships. Inpatient treatment can provide intensive help for the mind, body, and spirit of the addicted family member in a caring environment. Call today to begin the journey.
If you would like more information on avoiding an addict’s manipulations and lies, call our toll free number today.
