Boundaries for helpers

The hardest skill in helping is the boundary. People in early recovery are in pain, often at inconvenient times, and the helper's instinct is to drop everything. Doing this regularly destroys the helper's own recovery and creates an unhealthy dependency in the person being helped.

Decide in advance what you can sustainably offer. A weekly call. A reliable text response within twenty-four hours. Availability for one crisis per quarter. Whatever it is, communicate it clearly at the start of the relationship. 'I am happy to be in this with you. The way I can sustainably do that is [X]. For [Y], here are other resources you should also have.'

Do not be available at 3am unless you are. Unsustainable availability is a form of dishonesty. It promises something you cannot deliver, and when you cannot deliver it, the person you are helping experiences abandonment at the worst possible moment.

Protect your own recovery first. If a relationship with someone you are helping is destabilizing your sobriety — too much contact, too much absorbed pain, too many crises — you have to step back. Step back kindly, with a referral, but step back. Your sobriety is the well from which all your helping comes. You cannot help anyone from a dry well.

Some people you try to help will relapse. Some will die. This is the brutal arithmetic of addiction work, and you have to make peace with it before you start. You did not cause their relapse. You cannot prevent it through sufficient effort. Your job was to show up, do your part well, and hand off when needed. That is enough.

Helpers who do not have a strong boundary practice usually do not last in helping. The ones who last are the ones who said no when they needed to, rested when they needed to, and let other people in the network carry what was theirs to carry.