Man has an invisible blanket10/10/2023 ![]() ![]() I’ve come to believe that a lot of suffering that happens in families comes from our reluctance to have difficult conversations and, frankly, addiction or substance abuse may be one of the most uncomfortable conversations to have. For the purposes of this metaphor it can be something as simple as pointing out what is going on and starting to talk about it honestly and accurately. ![]() One of the quickest ways to begin a path to recovery is by eroding the addiction dynamic’s power by “throwing some flour” on it. However, this often leads to a family unwittingly supporting the ongoing addiction or substance use problems. In the short term, it feels more comfortable to not raise concern about what everyone is seeing because it avoids painful conflict. ![]() When a family is dealing with a loved one struggling with addiction or substance abuse it’s easy to put your head down and pretend that there’s not some invisible force causing chaos. One of the surest ways to give addiction the power to do that is to let it remain invisible. It’s interested in meeting its own ends regardless of its impacts. As a dynamic, it is not interested in using “its” powers for good. In this case, addiction is the “invisible man” in the family system and is causing chaos and hurt. As a result, they remain invisible and are allowed to run amok and unchecked. Her essential point was that there are often invisible dynamics, aka “the invisible man”, that are happening within human interaction and that people often avoid talking about them. This particular metaphor snatched my attention and I immediately sought my friend out to discuss further. As someone that has the attention span of a hummingbird, I often fall in love with metaphors as they allow me to take complex ideas and reduce them into something quick and applicable. Early in my clinical career I had a psychologist friend in a treatment team meeting suggest the clinician “throw flour on the invisible man” during a family session. Nonetheless, I can try to explain further to try to give some context to a potentially horribly ineffective metaphor. Often, the chaos is experienced but not discussed openly.Īt this point, if you’re still reading I commend you and also question your sanity. It takes on a persona of its own and runs amok in a family. Addiction is something that rarely, if ever, only impacts the person abusing substances. It may seem like a random and arbitrary thought, but I think it functions as an appropriate metaphor for how family systems most often unwittingly contribute to addiction issues of a loved one. Thought experiment: How would you behave if you were given the power of being invisible when you wished for it? I suspect you’re probably similar to me in that you’d hope you wouldn’t abuse your powers, but probably also know the temptation to abuse the power would be ever present. ![]()
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