Why Fixing Someone You Love Is Destroying Your Nervous SystemWhy Fixing Someone You Love Is Destroying Your Nervous System
The Biology of Trauma™ With Dr. Aimie
Dr. Aimie Apigian and therapist Karen Moser talk about how trying to fix a loved one’s addiction can damage your own nervous system and sense of self. They describe body-based and group approaches that help families recognise old patterns, release shame and reclaim parts of themselves that were lost in the chaos of addiction.
41:42•24 Feb 2026
Why Trying to Fix Someone You Love Is Breaking Your Own Nervous System
Episode Overview
- Trying to manage a loved one’s recovery can severely dysregulate your own nervous system, often more than the substance use does for them.
- Relational Trauma Repair uses group exercises and body-based work to help people safely feel and name emotions rather than numbing them.
- Families of substance users commonly carry anxiety, anger, shame and unresolved grief, rooted in earlier relational trauma and childhood roles.
- Over-helping often becomes enabling, keeping the substance user in their pattern while draining the health and identity of the caregiver.
- Healing involves reclaiming lost parts of self, recognising survival roles as roles rather than identity, and bringing the “alive and strong” part of you into present challenges.
“Bring the part of yourself that is alive and strong into whatever situation you’re facing.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between medical physician and trauma and addiction expert Dr. Aimie Apigian and relational trauma repair therapist Karen Moser centres on a group that’s often overlooked: the families and loved ones of people with substance use issues. Instead of focusing only on the person using alcohol or drugs, this episode looks at what happens inside the nervous systems of those who care for them.
Karen shares her experience from inpatient addiction centres and family work, explaining why, as one colleague puts it, “the family cannot forget what the substance user can’t remember.” While the person using substances numbs out, the family’s nervous system stays on high alert, often ending up even more dysregulated.
You’ll hear how Karen uses Relational Trauma Repair (RTR), a psychodrama-informed model, to help both substance users and their loved ones reconnect with their bodies and emotions in a gradual, tolerable way. She talks through practical tools like “floor checks” and group processes that let people name feelings such as anxiety, anger, shame and even joy, and realise they’re not alone in how they react. A big theme is the hidden cost of trying to fix someone you love.
The episode highlights how parents, partners and children often sacrifice their own health, become stuck in old roles from childhood and burn out trying to manage someone else’s recovery. Karen underscores that “the more you help a substance user, the more you enable them to stay actively using,” and shows how group work supports people in grieving, reclaiming lost parts of themselves and building healthier patterns.
It all comes together in Karen’s simple invitation: “Bring the part of yourself that is alive and strong into whatever situation you’re facing.” If you’ve ever lost yourself while caring for someone in addiction, this one might hit close to home—are you ready to ask what your nervous system needs too?
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