Is Tough Love Appropriate?

February 5, 2014

Is Tough Love Appropriate?

Yesterday, Sheryl Underwood of “The Talk,” spoke of her struggles with tough love.  She had lost her husband to addiction and detailed their attempts to overcome his dependency.  Her emotionally charged conversation with her fellow hosts moved us all.  She felt that you shouldn’t abandon a person in crisis. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s girlfriend, Mimi O’Donnell, had separated from him before his death, taking their children with her.  Ms. O’Donnell made the appropriate decision for her and her children for a number of reasons.  First, you simply can’t have children in an environment where there is drug paraphernalia about.  Second, Hoffman was purchasing illegal substances from dealers.  These people aren’t choir boys.  They are dangerous.  Third, by leaving she set boundaries.  Hoffman had to know that there were consequences for his actions.  Her leaving should have been a wakeup call.  Fourth, addicts often drag down their loved ones with them.  O’Donnell had to put her own well-being and that of her children’s first.  The environment was unhealthy.  Finally, the children shouldn’t have to witness the self-destruction of their father.  Thank God, they weren’t the ones to find him.  Ms. O’Donnell was the one person who truly knew how bad it was.  Only she could decide the appropriate course of action.

I sympathize with Sheryl.  You don’t stop loving someone when they are in the throes of addiction and you shouldn’t.  However, if the desire for change doesn’t come from within individual, there are steps that must be taken.  Tough love is one of them.

Intervention is one of the steps.  Family members confront the individual in an attempt to make them understand the affect their addiction is having on themselves and others.  When this doesn’t work, the person has to understand that there are consequences for his actions, that although you love them and support them in their attempts to become clean and sober, you won’t be an accomplice.  You won’t stand by and watch them kill themselves.

Sheryl did the best she could under the circumstances.  She deserves our love and support.  So does Mimi O’Donnell and her children.  No one should experience the tragic losses that they did.  Both women have my sympathy.