Partner & Family Guidance
Support for Loved Ones Affected by Addiction
Addiction does not only impact the individual, but it also ripples outward, affecting partners, children, parents, siblings, and even close friends or colleagues. Watching someone you love struggle with addictive behaviours can be painful, confusing, and exhausting. Feelings of fear, anger, helplessness, or betrayal are common, and many families describe walking on eggshells, not knowing how best to help.
This page is designed to offer guidance, reassurance, and a way forward for loved ones. Whether you are a partner, parent, sibling, or part of a wider family network, my practice in London’s Harley Street Medical Quarter, St Pauls in the City of London and online offers a safe and confidential space where your experiences are taken seriously, and where you can access specialist support tailored to families and loved ones of those struggling with addiction.
Why Support for Loved Ones Matters
Addiction can isolate not only the person affected but also those around them. Loved ones often carry the weight of secrecy, shame, and responsibility, while neglecting their own emotional needs. It is common to feel:
- Exhausted from trying to fix the situation
- Confused by mixed signals of denial, relapse, or temporary recovery
- Torn between care and resentment
- Worried about enabling the addictive behaviour without meaning to
- Afraid for the future, unsure of how bad things might become
In my professional opinion, support for partners and families is as important as support for the individual in addiction. Without it, loved one’s risk burnout, emotional distress, and even developing their own maladaptive coping strategies.
How I Work with Loved Ones
I offer confidential therapy and guidance specifically for those who are supporting someone with addiction. This may include:
- Psychoeducation about addiction and recovery, understanding what’s happening beneath the surface.
- Emotional support to process feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, or betrayal.
- Boundary setting strategies to help protect your wellbeing while staying engaged.
- Practical communication tools for navigating difficult conversations.
- Guidance around relapse, denial, or treatment refusal, so you feel less alone and more prepared.
- Exploration of co-dependency patterns, where the partner or family member becomes overly enmeshed in the addiction.
Where helpful and with your consent, I may collaborate with trusted psychiatrists, GPs, psychosexual therapists, or other specialists to ensure your support is clinically joined-up and well-contained.
Sessions can take place individually, with couples, or with family members together, depending on what feels most supportive and constructive.
The Role of Boundaries
One of the hardest parts of supporting someone with addiction is knowing when to help and when to step back. Families often oscillate between trying to control the behaviour and withdrawing completely out of frustration. Neither extreme tends to bring sustainable change.
Therapy provides a neutral space where we can explore boundaries that:
- Protect your emotional wellbeing
- Encourage responsibility in the person struggling
- Reduce enabling behaviours that might unintentionally maintain the addiction
- Create a healthier relational dynamic moving forward
Boundaries are not about punishment; they are about clarity, safety, and balance.
When the Addict Refuses Help
It is a painful reality that not everyone struggling with addiction is ready to accept treatment. Families are often left in limbo, unsure how to cope or whether anything can change.
In these situations, therapy for loved ones can help you:
- Understand what is within your control and what is not
- Find healthier ways to respond to denial or manipulation
- Preserve your own stability while remaining supportive
- Reduce cycles of conflict, secrecy, or emotional burnout
Even if the person with addiction does not seek help immediately, support for the family can still be transformative. By changing how you respond and by strengthening your own resilience, you create the conditions where recovery becomes more possible.
Supporting Partners
Partners of those struggling with addiction often describe a sense of loss of trust, intimacy, and stability. You may find yourself questioning whether the relationship can survive or feeling conflicted between loyalty and self-protection.
Therapy can provide space to:
- Process betrayal, anger, or fear
- Explore whether the relationship is sustainable and under what conditions
- Re-build communication and trust, where appropriate
- Strengthen your own sense of identity and self-worth, which may have been eroded
For some couples, this work supports healing together. For others, it helps a partner step away with clarity and self-respect.
Support for Parents and Siblings
When a son, daughter, or sibling struggles with addiction, families can feel caught in a relentless cycle of hope and despair. Parents often describe grief for the child they once knew, while siblings may carry anger, resentment, or shame.
Therapy for family members can help:
- Process feelings of powerlessness and fear
- Reduce conflict within the wider family system
- Learn how to offer support without enabling
- Navigate practical issues such as finances, secrecy, or safety concerns
- Re-establish a sense of family identity beyond the addiction
Support for Family Teams, PAs, and Trusted Advisors
In some cases, a family member may not reach out directly to me. Instead, it may be a personal assistant, secretary, or trusted advisor who takes on the responsibility of finding appropriate support. This is very common in high-pressure households and among clients with demanding careers or public profiles.
If you are part of a family team supporting someone struggling with addiction, please know that you are welcome to contact me in confidence. I work discreetly with representatives, offering:
- Initial guidance on the best therapeutic pathways for your client or family member
- Advice on intervention planning, including how to approach difficult conversations
- Confidential consultations that respect the privacy of both the family and the individual concerned
- Ongoing liaison, where appropriate, to ensure care is coordinated smoothly and sensitively
Your role is invaluable, but it can also feel overwhelming. Having professional guidance ensures that your support is both effective and boundaried, without taking on more than you should.
My Approach
As an accredited addiction therapist, qualified sex addiction therapist, and HCPC-registered Art Psychotherapist, I bring over a decade of clinical experience to my work with families.
My approach is:
- Discreet and confidential, respecting the sensitivities involved
- Trauma-informed, understanding the impact addiction has on everyone in the system
- Holistic, integrating emotional, relational, and practical dimensions of family life
- Flexible, offering both short-term guidance and longer-term therapeutic support
In my professional opinion, the healing of the family system is just as vital as the recovery of the individual. When loved ones are supported, they are better equipped to set boundaries, maintain stability, and encourage recovery.
Begin the Healing Journey
If you are a partner, family member, or trusted advisor supporting someone with addiction, please know that you do not have to carry this alone. I offer private, discreet, and specialist therapy for families and loved ones, based in Harley Street Medical Quarter, St Pauls in the City of London and available internationally online.
Together, we can explore your experiences, strengthen your resilience, and create a path forward, whether or not your loved one is ready for treatment. You deserve support, too.
Book a complimentary consultation or a private therapy session.