Setting Boundaries in Recovery

You are tired of covering for someone, and you are also afraid that one hard sentence will blow the house apart. In SAMHSA's treatment protocol for families, a boundary is not a slogan. TIP 39, updated in 2020, says family boundaries regulate the flow of information inside the family and outside it. There are boundaries around individuals, between generations, and between the family and other systems. Appropriate boundaries vary from culture to culture. Families may look unhealthy at first glance when the pattern is cultural. Types range from rigid to diffused. Ideally, the protocol says, boundaries are clear, flexible, and permeable, so movement and communication can happen when they are needed. What follows is that idea, and the practical limits a person in early recovery may need with friends and with a household. It is not a script for the conversation, and it is not a filing you take to court.

If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in a mental health crisis, call or text 988.

Closed, open, and somewhere between

TIP 39 says some families keep boundaries so strict that people outside the family cannot offer support. Rigid lines can also block talk across generations. The example is a father who says, "This is just the way it is in this house," and does not allow the rule to be discussed. Other families are too loose, or too enmeshed. Privacy shrinks. A sister tells a sibling something private, and the sibling repeats it to everyone. A child is told adult information about a parent or a sibling that the child should not be carrying.

The protocol also describes what happens when stress or a substance use disorder pulls the usual lines out of place. Sometimes families give decision-making power to a child, especially when a parent disengages because of illness, divorce, or a substance use disorder. In another passage, a young child may be expected to take a parent's role while the adult who is using takes the role of a child. The boundaries that family life needs are blurred. That role reversal is described as robbing a child of a childhood unless healthy adults step in. The patterns in SAMHSA's exhibit are named on the family roles guide. A parent who is in care has the parenting guide. The line itself is what you are looking at here.

Culture belongs in the same section. TIP 39 tells counselors not to treat every tight or loose pattern as a defect. What counts as a reasonable line differs. The questions the protocol treats as real are who is allowed to know what, who is carrying an adult's job, and whether anyone outside the family is allowed to help.

Triangulation is the protocol's name for a communication detour. Under stress, families may talk around the person with the substance use disorder, or through a third person, instead of to them. The example is a mother who calls her daughter to discuss a son's drinking rather than talking with the son. If the daughter does not redirect or set a boundary, she stays in the middle. The protocol says triangulation can include a go-between, an object of concern, or a scapegoat, and that the third person may not even be in the family. Naming that pattern is education. Practicing it in a session belongs with a counselor. Where the clinical service is described, including who may attend and when a session should not happen, is the family therapy guide.

Limits with friends and with a house

The Matrix client handbook, written for stimulant intensive outpatient treatment, faces a different doorway: the people and the rooms tied to use. One early challenge is friends and associates who use, when you want to keep seeing them. The handbook's approaches are to make new friends at 12-step or mutual-help meetings, to join activities where abstinent people are more likely, and to plan time with abstinent friends or family. Another challenge is substances in the home. You have decided to stop, and someone you live with has not. The suggestions are to get rid of drugs and alcohol, to ask others to refrain from using and drinking at home, and, if the problem continues, to think about moving out for a while.

Those lines are options printed for people in that program. They are not an order to abandon a household, and they are not instructions for changing a lease or a custody order. Asking someone not to use in the house is a request about your recovery. It does not give you legal authority over another adult. If the situation includes violence, threats, or a child who is unsafe, the next step is emergency help, not a calmer version of the same argument.

Boredom and loneliness sit beside those challenges in the same exercise. Stopping use often means the activities and the people you enjoyed have to be avoided. The feelings that follow are the loneliness guide and the boredom guide. A boundary that leaves you isolated is still a real cost. TIP 39's ideal is a line that can open toward support, not a wall that keeps every ally out. Relatives who need their own help have the family support guide. The companion for the other side of the family is the guide for helping someone who does not want help.

What a kitchen-table talk cannot carry

TIP 39 says intimate partner violence is common where substance misuse is present, and that violence creates safety problems for counselors and clients. Joint counseling is the wrong room after intimate partner violence. Extreme anger or threats of violence rule family sessions out. A plan to finally set a boundary at the kitchen table is not a substitute for a safety plan. If you are being hurt, leave and get emergency help.

The same protocol tells counselors to avoid shaming labels. Caring for someone, covering for someone, and paying their costs are discussed as enabling on the codependency page, where SAMHSA's warning about that word is quoted. A boundary is not a diagnosis of the person on the other side of it.

Whether you can ask someone to leave, what a protective order requires, or how a court will treat a parenting plan depends on your facts and on the law where you live.

Programs that include families may work on boundaries as part of counseling. TIP 39 describes that as clinician work, including help for parents to reestablish authority when lines have collapsed, and rules for confidentiality so the counselor is not holding secret side conversations. Ask a program who would be in the room, what happens if there has been violence, and whether children are included. A starting list of questions is the how to find treatment page. The federal locator is FindTreatment.gov.

Calling (800) 653-9376 is a referral conversation about programs. It is not a lawyer, and it is not a family session.

Additional Resources

Sources cited on this page:

• SAMHSA TIP 39, Chapter 1: Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Working With Families (NCBI Bookshelf)
• SAMHSA TIP 39, Chapter 2: Influence of Substance Misuse on Families (NCBI Bookshelf)
• SAMHSA: Client's Handbook, Matrix Intensive Outpatient Treatment for People With Stimulant Use Disorders (SMA 15-4154)
• SAMHSA FindTreatment.gov
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

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