How was I able to help people in need, regarding disorders, family problems, domestic violence and substance abuse while I needed help myself getting off alcohol?

I have been working in a social and education job all my job life. It alway was, s, in one or the other way, related to helping or supporting other people:

Aside from my teacher education, I worked as

– class and subject related teacher in a school for kids with disorders or problems related to social anxiety and learning problems

• class and English teacher at a school for disabled kids

• class teacher (or more or less social worker) for a class that was in dire need of structure and boundaries

• social worker in families with needs and problems

The parallels between psychic disorders and addiction was clear to me early in my career, and I always found ways to adequately support or help the kids and people with their needs. But I couldn’t rescue myself. I wondered a long time, why.

I guess the good news is that as long as I was able to help others without maneuvering myself into a burnout, it would be for the benefit of those people. I knew back then that I have my own disorders and I knew back then that I had a problem with alcohol. Reflecting on the needs and possible solutions helped me, in turn, to reflect my own needs. But, instead of taking the final step, I just kept on drinking, although I knew possible methods of therapy.

I think the big insight for me here is that I always only saw the problem in “them”, but not in “me”. Other people had severe problems, but I would be able to stop drinking anytime, couldn’t I? I would just stop tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow, or ….

Well, in the end it comes down to me ignoring my addition and my psychic disorders so I could carry on with my self – deconstructing. As long as I didn’t want to recognize my behavior as toxic or harmful, it was easy to carry on, drawing a line between my “acceptable drinking” and their “problematic drinking”, or anxiety, compulsion, whatever you name it, just substitute it with “drinking” in in the quotation marks. It came always down to “them” having a severe problem and “me” having only a “mild” issue.

That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. And I am happy that in the end I realized that it was not “me” on one side and “them” on the other, but “me and them” on one side. Once I realized that, the house of cards came crumbling down and I could finally see that all the problems I was able to help people with would be problems I needed to care about for me myself.

So, coming back to “the good news”: Reflection helped me a lot on my insights and the right motivation followed suit. Then I only needed some anchor to finally find the kick start, which I found in the various Podcasts, books and programmes.

Why am I writing this? Well, I think I always needed to pin down on what bothered me so much in the days I wanted to quit drinking and couldn’t find the right way and at the same time helping others who had similar or the same problems related to the disorders that didn’t necessarily relate to alcohol, even though the mechanisms are similar.

Until next time, keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.