How do you love through the most unlovable behaviours?

When someone you love is struggling with drug use, it’s difficult to know how to best support them. Through Teen Challenge Tasmania’s work with young people, we see first hand the complexities of loving someone through the most unlovable behaviours.

With this in mind, we established an online support program called the Concerned Persons Group (part of our Solutions Projects). The Concerned Persons Group is primarily for those who want to help someone close to them who is enslaved by the stronghold of a life-controlling problem. This group is also for people who are suffering the consequences of a loved one’s life-controlling problem.

Quite often these participants are struggling with very sensitive and emotional issues. They need compassion and comfort. Group members encourage and strengthen one another in God’s love. As they receive comfort from God in facing problems, they can then pass that ministry on to their troubled loved ones and others.

The Concerned Persons Group meets weekly for nine weeks and, during each 90-minute Zoom session, participants cover topics including comfort, hope, codependency, feelings & defences, care-fronting (caring and confronting) and ministering to one another. Ample time is given for participants to share their own journey and receive peer ministry by way of loving, caring and constructive feedback and prayer.

Jane and Peter* heard us sharing at their church and reached out to talk about their grandson, a young man who had experienced significant mental and physical harms from drug use. We connected them with the Concerned Persons Group for people who are loving, living with or wanting to help someone with a life-controlling issue.

“My grandson was a bright young man, getting awards at school,” Jane explained.

“We were really pleased that he was going to make something of himself. Of course, that was before the drug business.”

Dylan* accessed drugs via the dark web and his life spiralled. He was expelled from school, lost his job, lost his driver's licence and his drug use saw him in and out of hospital for the past few years due to psychotic episodes.

“It’s very difficult when you’re a grandparent. You pray for him and hope that he will come right, but in the long run, he has to make that decision for himself. We just have to put it in the hands of God,” Jane said.

“When I look back on our lives, I was a midwife when I was 23, not much older than Dylan. We’ve all come through a family where nobody’s been unemployed. He’s had a good and caring home, which makes you wonder, why?”

Jane and Peter said the Concerned Persons Group enabled them to share their frustrations, grief and confusion in a safe and supportive space.

“Parents and grandparents do need a lot of support, because they understand more so than the person taking drugs, the danger of what they’re doing,” Jane said.

“We learnt that we’ve got to be patient and understanding. We can’t intrude too much. We all get support from each other, and Tanya and Peter are wonderful.”

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.