7 Things Loved Ones of Addicted Adults Should Refuse to Do This Holiday Season

The holiday season often brings heightened emotions, cherished traditions, and the hope for connection. But for those who have loved ones battling addiction, the season can also be fraught with stress, heartbreak, and difficult decisions. As Christians, we are called to walk in love, wisdom, and grace—even in challenging situations. Here are seven things to refuse this holiday season to protect your peace and honor God’s guidance in your life:

1. Refuse to Compromise Your Boundaries

Boundaries are not just healthy; they are biblical. Proverbs 25:28 warns, “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.” Boundaries protect both you and your loved ones. Refuse to bend on boundaries you’ve prayerfully set, such as requiring sobriety at gatherings or not enabling harmful behavior. Loving someone doesn’t mean allowing their addiction to dictate your life or disrupt the peace of your home.

While giving in and compromising your values may make your ALO happy and the immediate situation more peaceful, in the long run, it damages both you and them. You cannot control their choices, but you can control yours. They are incapable of having healthy relationships while addiction controls their choices, but you are. If there is going to be anything healthy about your relationship with them, it is going to have to come from you. Keep your side of the street clean and make the best God-honoring decisions you can especially in your relationship with your ALO. It’s not easy but God rewards obedience.

2. Refuse to Take Responsibility for Their Choices

It’s tempting to feel guilt or blame when a loved one’s addiction spirals out of control. However, Ezekiel 18:20 reminds us that each person is responsible for their own actions: “The one who sins is the one who will die.” While you can pray for and support your loved one, their decisions and consequences are ultimately between them and God. Release the burden of trying to fix what only God can redeem.

Their addiction is not your fault. I’ve yet to meet a mother with an adult child struggling with addiction that didn’t blame herself – no matter how “good” or “bad” she was as a mother. Have we let them down in some way or hurt them? It’s very possible and we need to be honest with ourselves about our failings and do the very best we can to make amends. Once we have apologized and made amends, regardless of their reaction, we must forgive ourselves and let it go. We are not responsible for what they do with their circumstances.

Even if you are the rarest of cases where you are to blame for their addiction, continuing to enable them is only making things worse. You can’t change what you have done in the past but you can make better decisions today – decisions that promote healing and recovery vs continuing to harm themselves with drugs and alcohol. If you take responsibility for their choices, then they never will and that is where recovery begins.

3. Refuse to Hide or Enable Their Behavior

Enabling may feel like helping in the moment, but it often prolongs the cycle of addiction. Ephesians 4:25 encourages us to “speak the truth in love.” This means refusing to cover up or make excuses for their actions. Honesty, delivered with compassion, can be a powerful step toward accountability and healing.

Don’t let shame or embarrassment lead you to cover-up and enable their behavior. Will people judge you on their decisions? Maybe some of them but you and your ALO are two separate people, and you are not responsible for their behavior. Their behavior does not reflect your character, your behavior and ethics do. We can’t take credit for their success, and we should not be taking the credit for their failures. Maintain your own integrity and allow them to make the choice to maintain or neglect theirs. Suffering the natural consequences of their own choices is the only thing that teaches them how to do that for themselves.

4. Refuse to Let Bitterness Take Root

Addiction can cause deep wounds, but Hebrews 12:15 urges us to “see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble.” Bitterness only adds to the pain and can hinder your ability to extend grace. Choose forgiveness—not as a justification of their behavior, but as a means of freeing your own heart to love and heal.

When you first began looking into this loving-someone-in-addiction-thing, I’m sure you heard the phrase “tough love” at least 1000 times. Tough love works but not necessarily in the way most people understand it. Tough love is not bitter, mean-spirited or hateful. It’s still love - it just requires us to make some really tough choices. Loving someone in addiction is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do and you are in for a roller coaster ride of emotions.

You are going to get angry and heart-broken and devastated and disappointed and any other emotional state you can think of. It’s okay to feel those things. God doesn’t ask us to repress our emotions, he asks to express and process them in ways that honor Him.

We don’t have to pretend that we don’t feel those things but we also don’t have to berate them, lash out and beat them over the head with every feeling we have around them especially at the holidays.

Shame and guilt has never changed anyone in a positive way long-term. Grace, compassion, and forgiveness has time after time after time. Feel the feels and process them with your like-minded accountability team. If you need to express them to your ALO come up with a plan to do that in a way that honors God.

5. Refuse to Expect a “Perfect” Holiday

The holiday season often comes with high expectations: for picture-perfect gatherings, joyful interactions, and meaningful moments. But life with addiction rarely follows a script. Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” Release the idea of perfection and embrace the reality of this season, trusting that God is present even in the messiness.

Expectations are pre-meditated disappointments and resentments. Norman Rockwell has been gone for nearly 50 years and even in his day his paintings were art not reality. We can’t achieve perfection ourselves so it completely unfair to expect it of our loved ones.

Expect nothing and take things as they come. Focus on fellowshipping with the people you love and making meaningful connections. Keep your eyes on the blessings that you do have instead of missing what you don’t. Enjoy the ones that show up instead of crying over the ones that don’t.

6. Refuse to Neglect Your Own Needs

Loving someone with an addiction can consume your thoughts, energy, and emotions. However, Jesus Himself modeled the importance of rest and self-care (Mark 6:31). Refuse to neglect your physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Spend time in prayer, lean on your support system, and prioritize activities that bring you joy and renewal.

When we talk about self-care, we tend to think of bubble baths and full body massages. There’s certainly nothing wrong with those things but loving someone in addiction is very much a spiritual battle and we must strengthen ourselves spiritually to withstand it. Get in your Bible and read it every single day. Spend time in prayer every single day, for your ALO, for yourself and for those around you. Keep a prayer and gratitude journal. Write your prayer for the day and 3 things you are grateful for. At the end of the year, you’ll have a list of 1000 things you are grateful for. Build an accountability team of people who are going through similar struggles and are pursuing recovery and healing. Choose wise, God-honoring counsel and accountability. Have people in your life that will seek Godly wisdom alongside you and tell you the truth.

It's a tough battle but if we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, regardless of the outcome, we can grow closer to Him and stronger in our own faith. There is no greater gift than that.

7. Refuse to Stop Trusting God

Addiction can make the future feel uncertain and prayers seem unanswered. But 2 Corinthians 5:7 calls us to “live by faith, not by sight.” Refuse to let despair overshadow your hope in God’s power to heal and restore. Trust that He is working behind the scenes, even when progress seems slow or invisible.

God is at work in your situation and His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We want our prayers answered and relief from our pain right now. We want answers to the current, most immediate problems, while God can see what is coming behind these circumstances. We have a very narrow vision of the problem but God sees and knows it all and He is working all things to our good and His glory. That’s not to say that it’s the good we want, when we want it. But it is so good that when we get it, we would not trade it for the world. Trust in God’s timing and God’s work.

I had a dear friend tell me one time that with God, you can never tell the good news from the bad. Sometimes that thing you are trying so hard to prevent is the very thing that God is going to use to turn the situation around. So many times in my life, when I thought the worst had happened, God was just beginning to deliver the miracle I had been praying for. If there is breath in your lungs, God is still working in your life and He has a plan and a purpose for you. Trust Him with that!

Final Encouragement

This holiday season, let your actions and decisions reflect God’s wisdom and love. By refusing these seven things, you create space for peace, hope, and God’s work to unfold in His perfect timing. Remember, you are not alone—God walks with you, providing strength, grace, and guidance every step of the way.

What will you refuse to do this holiday season to honor God and protect your peace?