You Are Allowed To Heal

You can love your spouse and still be dying inside. If you’ve been living like the “strong one” while your partner battles addiction, this message is for you: you are allowed to heal. I share how I spent years believing my needs didn’t matter, how “sacrifice” became self-destruction, and how the obsession to fix the addict can quietly pull your marriage and your kids under the water with you.

We talk honestly about codependency, the rescuer mindset, and the emotional toll that shows up as anger, fear, control, and exhaustion. I explain why healing isn’t a selfish detour, it’s the only path to clarity. When your heart and mind start getting healthy, you can finally see your next step, whether that leads to rebuilding a marriage, setting firm boundaries, or making hard choices to protect your children.

Faith is central here, not as a slogan, but as a source of real restoration. I lean on Jeremiah 30:17 and the promise that God brings health and heals wounds, and I describe what healing can look like day to day: counseling, support, small victories, and the return of real joy. I also invite you to the Walk Right Community and mention my free guide, 10 Untold Truths, if you need a starting point.

If this hits home, subscribe, share it with someone carrying this burden, and leave a review so more spouses of addicts can find hope and practical help.

FREE Online Community for help and healing@ https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/landingpage

Free Downloads:  

Navigating Love @ https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/guide

10 Untold Truths @ https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/download

Visit us @ https://www.walkrightministries.com/

Transcript

The Hidden Cost Of Staying Strong

SPEAKER_00 0:00

For the longest time, I believed that being a husband meant that I didn't have any needs. It meant that I had to keep it silenced, that if I was struggling, I had to push it way down and keep quiet. Because she was the one that was sick, and my job was to hold it all together. And what I didn't know, me refusing and not knowing to heal and trying to keep it all together meant we were both drowning. Let me ask you this today. What if the most loving thing that you can do for you and your spouse is for you to get healing? Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your marriage. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time. Well, hello, I am Steve, and welcome to this episode of Reclaiming Your Identity Podcast. I am super excited that you're here today. Hope you're having a wonderful day. Hope you're feeling blessed and

The Lie That It’s All Them

SPEAKER_00 1:15

at peace. Hey, today's episode is called You Are Allowed to Heal, one of those 10 truths that is untold when you're partnered or married to somebody that is battling an addiction. And that reminds me of the guide I wrote, 10 Untold Truths that I wish somebody would have told me, while being entangled with an addict. It's available for download. It's completely free, and it's in the show notes below. So check that out. It's got some really good points in there that I believe will bring you healing, clarity, and the start of some transformation for you. On today's episode, we're going to talk about it. You're allowed to heal. We are allowed to heal as human beings when we're entangled with an addict. We think it's all about the addict. We think it's all about fixing them. We think it's all about control of stopping that. And if we can stop that, our lives will go back to normal and everything will be okay. It's a complete lie. And it is just an episode and a charade you go through, and the next thing you know, you look back, and it's years, many years later, and you're still stuck in the same cycle. So you're allowed to heal, and it's okay. So let's start with that today. So we think it's a sacrifice, it's a complete sacrifice to jump into this thing. You come to know that your wife, your husband, your children, they're doing something that's an unhealthy habit. And you find this out, and there's just the start of some emotions going there: the denial, the anger, the frustration, the fear, the anxiety, all that comes in. And then at some point, if things don't get better, you kick it into sacrificial mode. And what I mean by that is now you're gonna sacrifice yourself to start caring for this person. Your role is now to support, to carry, to stay strong, and to be the guide through this addiction. But what you're not realizing is it's a secret code now to forgetting and not knowing about your needs. It's ignoring your own pain that comes from that. If you have codependency, and you may not know it, but if you have codependency from trauma that you've carried

Sacrifice Or Self-Destruction

SPEAKER_00 4:05

on your entire life, this now is going to get woven into the fabric of the addiction. And that is going to just complex the entire situation, especially if you are a person that sacrifices, if you're a person that is a caretaker, my codependency was I was the savior, I was gonna fix everything, I was always fixing people because that's where I felt that I was needed and I felt validated and felt important. So when you tie that into an addiction with somebody, you're now gonna stop that addiction to be the hero. And that all gets interwoven and together, and it just becomes a complete hell. A complete hell. You go into the sacrificial mode, and it's a myth, it's a lie, because you think you're doing the right thing, but you're not, because you're not thinking about your needs, you're not thinking about you healing, you're not thinking about any of that, you're just focused on the addiction. Stop the addiction. That's it. That's the focus. When you start realizing you can't sustain this forever, like 13 years like I did, it starts to wear on you. All these things we talked about in these previous episodes. You think you're in a prison, you're alone, you can't do this, you can't do that. I mean, you just get pushed into this corner, and you can't sustain it any longer. And something bad is gonna happen. And what I mean by that is you're gonna blow up at some point if you haven't already, you're going to take everything out on your kids and not realize it. You're going to go from a loving, caring spouse that really wants to fix the addict to destroying your spouse verbally because you just are so angry and just can't handle the emotions. So the sacrifice thing is a myth. You have to understand this. Sacrifice that destroys yourself is not sacrifice, it's self-destruction. It's self-destruction dressed up in a myth. And you think you're sacrificing, the only thing you're really sacrificing is you and what you need and your emotional needs, and you're getting healthy. That's what you're sacrificing. So when you're in a sacrificial myth for years, it could be months, it could be years. Like I said, for me, it was 13 years, everything just came to a screeching halt. I mean, it was one just traumatic episode after another, and after another, and after another. And then when I walked away from the church and I walked away from God, and I moved out of the town and just got away from everybody and thought, I'm gonna do this on my own, it was just gonna be me and the addict, and the fight was on. And that hell was just unlivable. And even when I was angry at God and with God and had a little bit of hope that he was still there and helping, when I took all that out and thought I'm gonna sacrifice everything to fix this, man, it just went downhill quick. And it was hell. It was hell. Self-destruction is real when you're entangled with an addict. You

The Turning Point Toward Healing

SPEAKER_00 7:50

have to know that, you have to understand that. But I want to encourage you today because there is a turning point. There will be a turning point someday if you have somebody like me that had somebody that stood beside them. I had one person, he knows who he is, stood beside me, and wanted me to go to a Christian counselor. And it was like pulling teeth to get me to go. Because I'm a guy, I know how to fix this, I'm gonna fix this, I'm focused, I know what I'm doing, I'm good. She's the problem, the addict's the problem, the addiction's the problem, the medicine's the problem. I'm fine if I can stop that life goes back to normal. Gosh. Do you hear me? How stupid that sounds? And I lived that way for 13 years, and I don't want you to live that way for 13 years, but backing up here, we need to have somebody like that in our lives, or you listening to this program, or you jumping into the community, which I'll talk about later. Because in any of these situations, the guides, the community, a counselor, a therapist, somebody at church, a pastor, anybody, once you get in front of them and start to talk, there's five words that are going to change your life. You are allowed to heal. You're allowed to heal. You are allowed to heal. You don't have to heal the other person. How about you heal yourself? Once you heal yourself, you'll be able to gain clarity on how to move forward. When you realize that healing for yourself isn't selfish, that it's healthy, you'll shed a lot of weight. A lot of that just toxic relationship weight. Because you don't understand in the midst of all of this trouble, you're destroying your kids if you have 'em. You're destroying your soul, yourself, you're destroying yourself. You're destroying the person who you love that is in the midst of this addiction because the verbal abuse is there, the anger is there, and the tongue hurts worse than anything. And you can't take any of that back. You can't take what you said to your partner back. You can't take the frustration that you said on your kids' back. They'll carry that around for the rest of their lives. I'm living that folks. I've got two older boys that were in the midst of this addiction that are just hurting right now. And it breaks my heart every day to watch them hurt and that pain that I partly caused. Now, obviously their mother did a great part too, but I have to be responsible for what I did, and it breaks my heart to see them the way they are. There's so much more to life than what they're living. And they're stuck in that prison right now. So remember that it's okay to heal. It's alright to heal. You can do that. So, Steve, what does choosing to heal look like? I don't know what that looks like for you. Um I'd like to say it's the community that I'm gonna talk about here at the end. It's a shameless plug, I know. All seriousness. It's getting in community with other people that are going through what you're going through. It could be a therapist, it could be a counselor, it could be a pastor, it could be somebody that has walked through it, just walking you through it. But the most important one, I think, is God. God wants you to heal. God wants you to be a part of being healthy emotionally and mentally. He wants that. And it's gonna bring me to my Bible verse today.

God’s Promise And Self-Compassion

SPEAKER_00 12:06

It's in Jeremiah, and it's chapter 30, verse 17, and it's real simple, real simple verse. It says, But I will bring you health and I will heal you of your wounds. That is from the mouth of God. In fact, the Lord declares it. And I don't know how much of the Bible you know, and I'm not gonna try to teach you the Bible in an episode. I'm just trying to let you know that God is the most important thing inside of your getting healing and transformation and becoming what I'd like to say, confidence and peace. And when you can live in that confidence of peace, walking with the Lord, who knows he's transformed you, and you don't base your life off of circumstances, and you can just live freely loving other people in the midst of their hell, that is healing. This is a word from the Lord to Jeremiah, and it's about restoration. They were in captivity, and the Lord says, Write this down, and starts to talk about how he's gonna restore the people to the land he gave the ancestors and how he was gonna restore them and heal their wounds, and it was all about healing and transformation and restoration. And when the Lord says, I will bring you health and I will heal your wounds, he means it. And he wants it, and you don't deserve it, and that's what mercy is. You are okay to heal because God says it's okay to heal. Self-compassion is not lowering your standards, it's extending the same grace you've been giving other people. And you might be going, Steve, I really want this. I've been listening to these episodes, and my gosh, I want this. I want what you have, I want it, I want this all fixed, I want it to go away, I want it to hide, I don't, whatever. It took me a very long time to get to where I'm at, but you can get there. And you can get there a lot quicker with a lot of help from people that have gone through it and the power of the Lord's healing promises. I'm gonna be honest and tell you what the journey looks like. There's good days, there's horrible days, but during those days, there's joyful victories in there. You'll get victories in there that give you hope and give you excitement to get to the next day. And next thing you know, this thing just starts snowballing and snowballing, and you're getting clarity and you're gaining confidence and you're gaining peace, and you're able to move forward. I started rediscovering passions that I once had that I shoved weight down because the addiction took over everything, and me wanting to fix the addiction took over everything. Laughter started to return. True laughter, not a nervous laughter to be fake and hide behind pain, but actually true laughter that came out with my kids was amazing and joyful. And there was no motive behind it except for

Messy Progress And Returning Joy

SPEAKER_00 15:30

just pure happiness at times. Healing is not a straight line, it's a messy journey. But there's those little victories in there, those uh ups and downs, but you're on a path that you know is the right path. There is an end to where when you're battling the addiction, you're stopping the addiction, you're only basing it off a hope. You hope it will stop. But when you're in a place of allowing yourself to heal, that's exciting. Because you know that there's gonna be an ultimate end to the goal. And then that's what we talk about a lot is clarity will come. And once you're healthy and you can show your kids that you're healthy, and you can start showing clarity on a consistent basis, and you're not just emotionally triggered doing different things when different things pop up, like they still take medicine, or they still do the addiction, or they just they drink, or whatever it is that they are doing. And when you can control that trigger and not be sucked back into that, that's clarity. And once you gain that clarity and you have that confidence, that's when you can make a decision for your family. That's when you can decide how to move forward. This can go nine million different ways, I'm not gonna lie. This can go from okay, I'm healthy, the kids are getting healthy, and then the spouse tags into that healthiness, and they get healthy, and then the whole family has a victory because they see what you have, and God gets a hold of them, and then they get transformed, and then they stop the addiction, and then you just move on with a great testimony to God about how he just saved your family. Then there's the other one. You gain clarity, the other person wants no part of the healing, denies that they even have an issue, continues to do the destructive behaviors they have, and at that point it's time for you to save your children. Whether that's divorce, separation, whatever, some people have separated, and that was the last straw for the spouse, and they realized, oh my gosh, this is it, and then they get better and things go back to being great again and again, victorious, and praise God for the transformation. Or, like me, it just went the other way. I had to go through with divorce, I had to save my kids, I had to get custody of my kids, I had to do all that stuff, all that painful stuff. You know, like I said, the journey to healing is not joyful all the time. It will be joyful, but there's a lot of ups and downs through there. Fighting over kids and getting custody over kids and trying to battle with somebody that's lying about everything, it's just it just wants to set you back 20 paces every

Clarity For Marriage And Children

SPEAKER_00 18:50

day on your healing journey. You're trying to go to counseling, you're trying to get healing, you're trying to get clarity, and then you have to deal with reality, and then it wants to set you back. I mean, it's just it's just journey's a mess, like I said. The end result may not be what you think it is, but it's what God wants it to be. If you're tuned in with Him and focused on Him. He doesn't want the entire family to go down with the shit because you made a vow and a promise before God in a church when you got married. He wants to work on you individually. He wants to work on your kids individually. He wants that relationship all to himself. It's great if you're all in Christ together. But this is about you and God. This is about you and him. Don't talk to me, talk to him. Get clarity from him. And I'm just telling you how he guided me. Because we have this fear. Choosing to heal does not mean you're giving up on your spouse. It doesn't mean you're walking away from them. Choosing to heal doesn't mean that they lose and you win. It's not a game. Choosing to heal doesn't mean your marriage is over. It doesn't have to be that way. But again, you can't figure that out until you gain clarity and start the healing process at least. Choosing to heal yourself doesn't mean you love them any less. But again, it's gonna bring clarity to that. As you heard me in the last episode, when I gained clarity, I realized I wasn't in love with this person anymore. I was just in love with their addiction and wanting to stop the addiction. And I don't think they were in love with me either. They just wanted to battle me and just win. It's it was all about who was gonna win every single day. Was the codependent gonna win? Was the addict gonna win? There was no love in there. It was all about one up and you know, doing one up on each other, trying to battle who's gonna win. I won today, I'm going to bed, I'm one, yeah. I destroyed my kids, I yelled at my kids, I kicked the dog, I yelled at my wife, I punched a wall, I mean, whatever. But I won. It doesn't mean you love them any less. It just means that there's gonna be a lot of clarity in that statement. The most important thing is when you choose to heal and know you're allowed to heal, is you're refusing to let the addiction take down two or more people. You're refusing to let that do it.

You Can’t Pour From Empty

SPEAKER_00 21:30

We're gonna end on this. You might want to write this one down. In the midst of all this trouble that you're in, in the midst of all this chaos that you're living, battling with an addict, entangled in the emotional mess of that, and all that, you're trying to fix them, you're trying to be there for your kids. You think you're there for your kids, you're doing all this stuff. The most important thing that you need to know is that you can't pour from an empty vessel. You can't pour into your kids what's not there. You can't pour into this addict what's not there. You can't pour anything out of an empty vessel. And more importantly, you have to understand you were never meant to be an empty vessel. Never were you meant, designed, created to be an empty vessel. You were created with a new wineskin. You were created to be overflowing with love, joy, peace, happiness, a light to other people, whether it just be your kids or your family, but you can't even do that if it's empty. I tell my kids all the time that they were trying to get a drink from me growing up, and my cup was empty. Man, it hurts. They see the transformation. They question it. That guy's dead. That guy's no longer. That guy was killed a long time ago. Don't forget that you're allowed to heal. It's okay. It's okay.

Community Invitation And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 23:45

So as we wrap up the show, I do want to invite you to the community. It's called Walk Right Community. It was just launched. It's for people like us. People like us that can help others stuck in the midst of this hell walk through it with clarity, hope, and transformation. We can get together and help each other out and encourage each other, love on each other, and watch people claim victories and get out of the mess way earlier than I did, or maybe you did. There's all kinds of faith-based teachings in there. Don't let that scare you. God's good and He wants to transform you. But it's everything I walk through. It's courses, there's lessons, there's a lot of stuff to do. There's a lot of homework in there. If you really want to get healing, you have to take it seriously. And there's a lot of work to do. But there's live sessions, there'll be live group going over the worksheets, there'll be devotionals, there'll be all kinds of stuff to keep you interacted in the community. But most importantly, it's that word right there, community. It's to get people together to become friends and support each other and love on each other. That was the dream and the passion, anyway. I don't want to see people destroy their kids anymore. Because that's the pain I still carry every day. Even though I've forgiven myself for being a horrible father, it's still a pain that's real. I want to thank you for watching this episode. Please, if this is resonating with you, would you like, would you subscribe, would you share it to somebody that maybe needs to hear it? Would you maybe comment? And if you're on YouTube, would you subscribe and like and comment as well? And I just want everybody know that you're loved and you're holy and walk away today knowing that it's okay to be healed. I will see you in the next episode. God bless you.