#76 Karen Perlmutter: The Mountain: Reframing Addiction for Families#76 Karen Perlmutter: The Mountain: Reframing Addiction for Families
The Unbreakable Boundaries Podcast
Therapist Karen Perlmutter and host Jennifer Maneely talk about addiction as a shared ‘mountain’ for individuals and their families, highlighting parallel struggles, shame and misplaced self-blame. They discuss value-based boundaries, suicidal language, and why family support and education can be as vital as treatment for the person using substances.
1:00:55•25 May 2026
Reframing the Mountain: How Families Can Reset Boundaries Around Addiction
Episode Overview
- Families often develop their own obsession with fixing a loved one, mirroring the compulsions of addiction in a different form.
- Removing shame and the belief that parents caused the entire problem is a crucial first step before meaningful change can happen.
- Effective boundaries are rooted in core values like safety, honesty and consideration, rather than anger, guilt or attempts to coerce change.
- Suicidal statements sit on a wide continuum; families are urged to seek professional help and focus on clarifying language rather than acting as clinicians.
- Deep emotional processing usually comes later; in early crisis stages, the priority is practical safety, stabilisation and finding supportive communities.
“You tried to respond rationally to an irrational disease.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation between host Jennifer Maneely and therapist Karen Perlmutter shines a light on the often-forgotten side of addiction: the family. Karen, who has spent around two decades working in addiction and mental health, shares how she came to see addiction as a “mountain”, with the person using substances on one side and their family on the other.
Both are climbing the same peak, but with very different challenges and almost no view of what the other side is going through. Families, she explains, can become just as obsessed and exhausted as their loved one, only their obsession is with fixing them.
As she puts it, “You tried to respond rationally to an irrational disease.” You’ll hear a clear, practical breakdown of how addiction affects biology, psychology, social life and sense of purpose, and why parents don’t “cause” the whole problem, even if they might own a small piece they can work on. Karen talks about removing shame, dropping the idea that A + B must equal C, and stopping the endless self-blame loop.
A big chunk of the conversation focuses on boundaries. Instead of anger-driven rules that change with every crisis, Karen teaches “value-based boundaries” – limits rooted in safety, honesty, consideration and sanity. Rather than trying to coerce a loved one into change, families are encouraged to raise the standard for how they themselves live and relate.
They also tackle heavy topics like suicidal statements, language precision, and the difference between an immediate crisis (“get the cow out of the ditch”) and the later emotional work that can only happen once the fire has cooled. If you’re a stressed-out parent, partner or sibling feeling like you’ve fallen into the “co-addict stew”, this conversation may give you language, structure and a sense that you’re far from alone.
What might change if you started setting boundaries around your values instead of your guilt?
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