4 Things Addicts Do To SABOTAGE Their SOBRIETY Without Realizing

Sometimes people unknowingly sabotage their own recovery, and most of the time it has to do with mental thought processes more than it has to do with whether or not they're going to meetings or whether or not they're talking with their sponsor or whether or not they're going to counseling or coaching or any of that stuff. It is about the mindset. And so I want to talk to you guys about the 4 really common things that people do mindset-wise that end up sabotaging them. And then we will also talk about 4 things you can do that actually bolster your recovery and make you in a much healthier, more resilient mindset. All right, so I want to start by telling you about a client that I had a year or so ago. His name is Shane. His name is not really Shane, but we're going to call him Shane. Okay? And so Shane came to see me Um, after his wife had just found out that he had been doing cocaine again, they'd already been fighting about his drinking a lot. He wasn't drinking every day, but he was binge drinking on the weekends, and he was very unpredictable and difficult when he drank. And so they've been fighting a lot about that, but the wife had no idea that he actually started using cocaine again. She knew that he had done that like back in college, um, and he even told her he had a little bit of a problem with it, but he had stopped doing it. And that was years ago. Well, suddenly she finds out that he's using cocaine again, and that was it. I mean, she was just done. I mean, she was already frustrated to the end of her rope about the drinking, and that was sort of like a final straw. So she was extremely upset, and she said, if you don't deal with this, if you don't fix it, I'm out of here. That's how— that's the situation that prompted Shane to end up in my office. And so a lot— and actually, that's a situation that a lot of people— it's the way a lot of people wind up in my office. That's not an uncommon kind of situation that ends people up with me. But what was slightly different is that when Shane came into my office, he actually seemed very remorseful. He didn't try to blame anyone. He didn't try to make excuses for himself. In fact, he was just really kind of mad at himself. He's really down on himself. Because he knew that his behavior was out of bounds and he knew it was having a bad impact on his family. And it was so important to him because he had told me about his own childhood and his own upbringing, and he'd sort of always promised himself that he would be a better father than his father was. And this situation, this bit of a, it's sort of a bottom for him, I think, kind of opened his eyes to the fact that he was not living his life according to that value. So he actually came in already. Pretty humble and willing to work. So he was seeing me, but he was also going to a local recovery support group a couple of times a week. He was doing well with that. He was doing everything the group asked him to do. He was working really hard on trying to rebuild trust with his wife. In fact, to show he was serious about rebuilding trust, he actually asked her to drug test him at home every week, and he got himself on the Soberlink on his own voluntarily. It wasn't even like his wife asked him to do that? And he said, first of all, I want to hold myself accountable, and I want to help you know that I'm really serious. So he did all that on his own, which is quite impressive. Everything was going pretty well. Um, he was doing everything he was asked to do, saying all the right things, doing all the right things. Things were moving along. His wife eventually moved back into their bedroom because previously she had been like— she didn't leave the house, but she was sleeping in another room. It was, it was cold in the house, as you could imagine. And eventually, things weren't perfect by any means, but both of them were Feeling more hopeful, and she did make the move back into the bedroom. So we were on the upswing here, um, and I had actually, um, started seeing him a lot less because he was doing so good. So we had went from every week to every other week. But then one day I noticed, and it was just the slightest little statement he said, it just had a slight difference in what he was saying to me than what he normally said to me. And, and I didn't call it out, but in the back of my head it was like red flag warning sign. I was like, here it is. This is it. Because he said, um, he was telling me how good he's doing. He's telling me how to sponsor, blah blah blah, all the things. And then he was saying that, um, it's— he said, he said, I'm trying to think how he said. He said, well, I mean, it's not like I feel like I'm like— I'm not saying I'm never going to drink again, but I know that I feel a lot better right now, so I'm glad I'm not drinking. But that one little statement of It's not like I'm never going to drink again. That was a bit of a U-turn from how he had previously said. It's not like he said, I'll never drink again or anything like that, but it was like I knew immediately when he said it that he was thinking about drinking again. Right? And so I could tell just the teeniest little amount in his mind, he started to Minimize the drinking as part of the issue. And he started to tell himself that really it was the cocaine that was out of bounds. And yeah, he might've been drinking too much, but now that he had his life back in order, he didn't have necessarily like a date I'm going to drink. He wasn't for sure about it, but I could tell he was entertaining it. And I could tell because I've been doing this for a long time. And I can just see when someone starts to minimize their substance use in the back. Sometimes they'll sort of rewrite the story a little bit, and then you'll just start to hear little, I don't know, teeny tiny little inklings that they might be thinking about it. Nonetheless, we move forward, and then another month or so goes by, and then he tells me— he starts to talk to me about the fact that his best friend's wedding is coming up, and he's supposed to be the best man in his best friend's wedding. And Naturally, I was kind of worried about him going to the wedding. And then he threw— I was already worried about him at the wedding. And then he threw into the mix, he said, and I feel obligated to throw a bachelor party because I'm the best man. I was, I was super nervous about this, but I understood where he was coming from. So we had a lot of conversations about how he was going to navigate that, you know, what was his plan and what would that look like and all the things. And so he had a conversation with his best friend about it. And he said, look, I'm not going to be drinking. I'm not going to be drinking. Which will be great because I'll just be the driver. I'll drive all you guys around and that'll be good. I'll be the designated driver. I'm not gonna drink at all. And honestly, I was not sure if he was gonna make it through that. I really wasn't. But believe it or not, he actually did make it through the bachelor party without drinking, which is pretty impressive, right? Like, wow, okay. So I'm like, wow, I actually didn't think you would make it, but he did. And not only that, but he made it through the wedding too. I was like, all right. That was impressive. And then another couple of weeks go by. At this point, he's got, I mean, coming up on like coming up on 6 months of sobriety. I don't think it was quite there, but I think it was coming up on it. And his wife was going to go out of town for some kind of work thing, a convention or something. I can't remember. Um, and so she went out of town. Now he didn't, he had, we had talked about the fact she was going to go out of town. I sort of knew it, but he had been doing so well. Everything seemed to be okay. But while she was out of town, he relapsed with the alcohol and he got caught because, well, I'll tell you how he got caught. Well, he missed one of his Soberlink tests, but he was able to sort of make a reason or excuse that his wife believed or whatever. And, um, so he was going to get by with that, but then he had drank too much the night before and he failed his Soberlink test in the morning when he thought he would pass it. And so there was a positive result. And so since he had missed the night one and he had failed the morning one and his wife had got the message. Like, she— there was no talking his way out of it. And as you could imagine, she was through the roof. She was very, very angry, um, because it wasn't just the fact that he relapsed, because she knew— she'd been working with our family counselor, she knew that that could happen, right? She was prepared for that. But it was the fact that he had relapsed while he's supposed to be watching their kids while she was out of town. She was— Live it because she felt like her trust was broken, that of all the times to relapse, that was the worst possible time. So it wasn't good. She was mad, as you could imagine. And from his point of view, from Shane's point of view, you know, this— the situation is, I think it's a couple of triggers coming into play here. I think it started all those weeks back when he made that one statement to me. I knew he started to think about maybe alcohol wasn't the problem. And, and I'm not gonna drink right now, but maybe one day eventually I might, you know, have a drink sometime. So we already had that sort of lingering back there in the background. And then when the wife leaves to go out of town— and, and listen, I would never tell her not to go to town. She would have called and told him, asked me, even if I thought for sure he was gonna re-up. So I said, yeah, you got to go out of town. You cannot just sit here and babysit. So it was not that she shouldn't have went. That's not the thing. So she went out of town and that creates a trigger that I call the coast is clear trigger. And that of all the triggers is probably the biggest trigger because he had already been thinking about it and not talking about it a lot, just kind of like little voice in the back of his head. And then once she was gone, as you can imagine, that was a bad combination. In his mind, he was having a few beers, watching the ball game. Um, and watching his kids, and there was no issue about it. Wasn't driving, he wasn't going anywhere, wasn't partying. It was— in his mind, it was no big deal. And as you could imagine, in her mind, it was a very big deal. So I know you guys already know this, but just in case you're new here and you don't, let's talk about why it's a big deal. It's a big deal not because he had a couple of beers, it's the sneakiness of it. And it's the fact that he, he did it when he was watching his kids. Now you might be thinking, well, I drink a couple beers, watch my kids all the time. Yeah, like most people do. And I'm not saying that in and of itself is a problem, but the sneakiness of it is what makes it in the addictive realm. It's, it's not the fact that he had the 2 beers, it was the shadiness of the way everything went down that makes it in the addiction realm. And I was so sad for him. I mean, he did eventually get back on track, and it worked out in the end, but it took him like a year of like trying everything to get her trust back. Like, she moved out, she went to stay with her parents, she was gone for many months. It was a long process before she trusted him again. And I mean, I mean, rightfully so. Even though he's my client, it's my job to take up for him, which I did take up for him, but I mean, I also can see her side too. So I want you guys to be aware of what are the sneaky little thoughts that if you spot in your own mind, you start to feel these little thoughts coming in. I want for there to be a big red warning blinking sign that starts to just like go off with an alarm inside your head. Because I knew when he said it to me, I knew eventually we're going to have a relapse because when people say that, they're not done. It's coming back. I didn't know when. I thought it would be during the bachelor party, to be honest, but it wasn't. He lasted longer than I thought, but I knew it was coming because it's, it's somebody starts to entertain that thought again. And the fact that he was entertaining enough out loud to sort of say it to me, to sneak it in sort of, sort of not super directly, but just kind of like BTW, just sort of in this mild way that it had been thinking about it a lot. And in fact, the, when he, the way someone tells it to me is much milder than what it really is, I'm sure. So if you find, here's the first sabotaging thought. If you find that you're doing something similar to Shane, which would be like you start to suddenly minimize the past addictive behavior, like up until a certain point you're like, yes, that was terrible. You know, you're saying all the things, you get it. You know, you're an addict, you're alcoholic, whatever. And you're saying all the things to yourself. And then all of a sudden you start to rewrite history and you start to say, well, that one thing was a problem, but I don't really think that other thing was that big of a problem. It wasn't like I was drinking every day. You start to, like, in the 12-step, they would call it, you start to take back your powerlessness. And most of the time people aren't going to say this out loud. So that's why I'm telling it to you, because it's up to you to catch this thought. When you start having this thought, I want you to call it out and say, hold up, let's look at the evidence. Because when we get far away from it, we start forgetting the bad stuff that happened. And we start romanticizing the good stuff about it. And that's a bad combo, right? And then once we decide, usually once someone decides, well, I might, you know, have a beer at some point in my life, in their mind, when they first have the thought, you know, that's like 2 years down the road. But once that thought gets in there, it's not going to be 2 years down the road. It's going to be probably in the next few months or 2. Or 3. Um, because it, it gets in there, it starts to sort of build. Then there's another sort of fall. I think he didn't say this, but my guess is, is that the, um, even though he didn't relapse at the bachelor party or at the wedding, that, that played into it a little bit because number one, he was around it a lot. And of course, I think it probably triggered up the I'm missing out feeling, right? So if we combine all those things together. Those triggering things, and then the opportunity, which was the wife being out of town—that is the relapse formula. It's trigger plus opportunity and vulnerability. If you have those three things, it's not good. If we take one of those things out, you're probably going to hold through it. But if you get all three of those in place, it's danger zone. So if you start rewriting history, you start minimizing it, you start to sort of. rethink what you've already decided about it, about your recovery, it's a bad sign. The next thing I think that's a bad sign, that's a relapse warning sign, would be if you are not taking care of your relationships. And that can be your romantic relationship, that can be with a family member, that can be with your boss. But if you, if If there starts to be more and more problems with a significant relationship in your life and it's not getting better, and I'm not even saying that it's your fault, right? Maybe it's something else that's going on, but there's a problem and it's building and it's building and it's an important relationship to you. That is a sign that you might be more vulnerable to relapse. And so, so much of recovery is about managing your relationships because relationship turmoil will trigger you and put you over the edge as much or more as anything else. So managing relationships. Um, and then you, you kind of know when the relationship's getting out of whack because you, uh, build resentment and you start to resent this person. And when you nurture that resentment, eventually that resentment turns to self-pity, and self-pity always turns into a bad decision. And that's the case for all of us, not just for someone who has an addiction problem. You know, when we have this resentment and then we feel sorry for ourselves, that's when we fly off the handle and say a bunch of stuff we shouldn't say. And then we justify by saying, well, that was the truth or whatever, you know, uh, when we start being passive aggressive with someone, when we start not showing up for work, right? When we have that resentment and self-pity, it is a bad sign. So watch out for that. And usually that comes from some kind of relationship issue that's not being dealt with. Another thing that I watch out for that I think can make people extra vulnerable for relapse is if they're not being assertive. And what I mean by that is they may be doing all the right things and saying all the right things, but it's almost like they're doing and saying all the right things too much. You know, when I'm listening to somebody and somebody's like, yeah, my wife wanted me to do this and that and the other, and she said this and I just knew she was right. And they just never are upset about it, or they just They never disagree. I'm like, this ain't good because come on, we always disagree at some point. Like, everything is not okay. And so when someone isn't, they're agreeing to things they don't really agree to. And they're either agreeing to it thinking, screw that, I'm not going to do it at all. Or they're agreeing to it and they do whatever it is, but they sort of half-ass do it and they have a resentment about it. Then that thought, that lack of assertiveness leads to the second one we just talked about, which is the relationship issue, which leads to the resentment, which leads to self-pity, which leads to bad decisions. Okay. So when someone is being overly passive, that usually starts, eventually it turns into passive aggressive. And like I said before, eventually that turns into a bad decision, even if it's not necessarily a relapse, but maybe it's, it's a bad decision to impulsively quit my job or something like that, which then sets in a whole nother chain of events that can set you up for relapse for a million reasons that you could imagine why. And then the last one, number 4, kind of connects to that other thing. And that is that you are letting a problem build up on you and you're not addressing it. It comes back to that assertiveness. When you're not dealing with things, That's what we did when we're addicted, right? We did whatever addictive behavior we were doing as a way to avoid something, as a way to not feel feelings about something, as a way of not dealing. And so if you start getting yourself in that situation where you're not dealing with your finances, with being super unhappy in a job situation, with an ex that you share a child with, and there's these constant arguments and battles and custody things, and you start just sort of avoiding it and not dealing with things and just shoving it down. You're not using at that point, but you're already sliding back into that addictive behavior. Now, usually when you have a problem, I don't think that you should necessarily deal with it immediately, right as soon as it happens. In fact, I think that you should give yourself time to think about things and come up with a smart way of dealing with it, you know, to make sure about how you feel about it, make sure what you do about it. So I'm not saying if you're not dealing with something immediately, but when I have clients that come in and like week after week after week, the same frustration, the same issue is building up and building up and building up and they're just not addressing it. And they have a lot of good reasons for not addressing. I mean, a lot of times it's like, maybe they're in a terrible job and they freaking hate it and it's never been the right job for them and they knew it from the beginning. But they're like, I need to provide for my family, especially with all this Problem I just caused, and I had to go to rehab, and that costs a lot of money. Like, I cannot just, you know, upset the apple cart career-wise right now. So it's not so much that it's like a bad intention. Most of the time it's they're trying to do the right thing. Maybe they're just not dealing with their baby mama, right? Or their baby daddy. And so they're, and they're holding it in and holding it in and holding it in. Again, all of these things end up Leading back to resentment, which leads to self-pity, which leads to bad decisions. That is the relapse formula. If you can prevent one thing, you're going to be all right. If you can prevent yourself from feeling sorry for yourself, if you can just not get yourself to that point where you're just, I mean, we all feel sorry for ourselves, like sometimes, right? But I'm talking about when you start wallowing in the self-pity and it starts To stick around for days at a time and then weeks at a time, it is not good because we almost always make a bad decision from that place. Now let's talk about a few things that you can do that make things better, that strengthen your recovery and your resilience. One of them is, as you might think, which is relationship management. When things are going awry, I'm not saying you have to deal with it immediately, but you cannot run from things. You have to address things. You have to have uncomfortable conversations. And then the next of the 4 things is related to the uncomfortable conversations. You're going to have to be assertive. And what I mean by that is I know you're playing nice guy or nice girl and you're trying to do the right thing. And maybe you even feel so guilty about like all the things that happen in your addiction that's making it worse where you feel like you don't have a leg to stand on or you shouldn't be able to say no or have an opinion. But when you start agreeing to things that you don't want to do or that you don't even intend to do, but you just are avoiding the hard conversation, not good. Like, like, I'll see it frequently. Like, um, a lot of times I'll see it like the family maybe wants you going to a meeting every day or getting a sponsor, and you don't want to do that, and you think it's not helpful, and you're agreeing to do it, but you really don't want to do it, and you think it's ridiculous. And maybe you Do it for a while at the beginning, but then you start to slide back from that because you're agreeing to something that you don't really agree with. And that could go for a lot of different things. You know, if you're— especially if you tend to be like a conflict-avoidant type person or a people-pleasing type person, maybe you're agreeing to take shifts or work longer because you have a coworker that's always calling out sick, right? And at first it was okay. You understand people have issues and You know, you would want them to be there to cover for you, but it turns into a situation where it's like every week something is happening and you're having to fill in and you don't really want to, but you're saying yes when you don't want to say yes and you really mean no. That lack of assertiveness is not going to serve you well. You think you're being nice, but I promise you, in the end, it's going to destroy that relationship with whatever that person that you think you're being nice to. You're not being nice, okay? Because it's gonna— you're gonna end up either just breaking their trust, losing your cool and volcanoing out everything you've been feeling all the way, being passive-aggressive, ghosting them. In the end, this lack of dealing with things assertively is gonna do the opposite of what you want it to do. And One of the other things that you can do, which kind of counter— like counter, it goes against the last 2 things I said, is, and this is really important, I think, early on in recovery, is not to be so self-focused and focused on other people. Now, that doesn't mean you're agreeing to things you don't agree to, and that doesn't mean you're putting up with stuff you shouldn't put up with. But addiction brings us to a very selfish, self-involved place because we're doing things against our value system and we have to rationalize and justify that. And depending on what we're doing addictively, sometimes we get to a point where we have to do something or we need to do something, and it just becomes all-consuming. And we're spending all of our emotional energy, all of our time, all of our money, everything else chasing this addiction. And that's a very selfish place to be. And maybe you look nice on the outside. Maybe you say all the right nice things. Maybe you're the PTO president and you're like volunteering organizations and raising money for homeless children or something. I don't know. Maybe you look nice on the outside, but really what goes on the inside is you become very more and more and more selfish and self-involved. It's not like you have an addiction because you're selfish. It's more like if you have an addiction, it will eventually bring you to a selfish place. So watching out for that selfish point of view, that's what will actually keep you out of the self-pity zone, right? Is a focus on other people, a focus on not being ran over, but doing things that you feel proud of, being a better father. Maybe you do something recovery-wise to help somebody else get into recovery. Maybe you do something at your church. Maybe you do some kind of volunteer. Maybe you're just nice and you're mentoring the guy next door or something like that, but it's, you're involved in something that makes you feel like a good person. I want you to differentiate that from being ran over. Okay? That's not what I'm talking about. So getting involved in thinking about yourself less and other people more, what that does is it makes you proud of yourself. It increases your serotonin, which actually protects you, makes you more resilient towards relapse. And then of course, obviously don't let the problems build up. As you can see, a lot of these have to do with lack of assertiveness. You wouldn't necessarily think that that lack of assertiveness is what leads people to relapse, but it really does. And most of the time when we're doing it, we don't even realize we're doing it. They're not doing it on purpose. They're not necessarily thinking, I'm going to— that's going to end up me in relapse. It's their thinking either, I don't want to have uncomfortable conversation, or I'm protecting this other person, or I'm being selfless and I'm just like taking care of other people. You usually are coming from a good place, but it's not going to end well. Those are my 4 for today. Of course, there are more of them, but these are the big ones. And these ones are the sneaky, hidden, quiet ones that's actually just happening in our thought processes that other people can't usually see and that we can trick ourselves about. So that's why I wanted to bring these things to The surface. We are about to the point, if you're watching live, thanks for being here live, you guys are awesome. We're about to that point. Bree is going to put some questions, comments, concerns up here. It helps Bree if you guys put either some question marks in the front of the question or write the word question or something like that. It helps her to, to know that you're asking a question, not just talking to someone else in chat. And if it's related to the topic, it's even more likely to get put up there. So while you guys get those Into the chat. I will remind everybody there are resources in the description. I actually put you several new resources in the description. I put the link in there to daily habits for healthy recovery. I put in there the link to— and these are free— I put in there the link to the list of nightly questions you should sort of ask yourself to make sure you're taking care of all these things we just talked about and you're not letting things build up on you. It's kind of a, just a little like Checklist you can go through super quick in your own mind. Is this in place? Is this in place? Is this in place? To keep yourself solid. And if you're watching because you have a loved one who has an addiction, I've put 2 or 3 downloadable resources for you. The links are in the description, so don't forget to check those out. And of course, there are other resources down there. And I also want to tell you, I've made a post about this other day in writing, but I wanted to tell you guys. In March, at the end of March, March 29th, which is a Saturday, I'm going to be in Oklahoma City and doing a— giving a talk live for the Hope Is Alive 10th Annual Conference. And so if you live near there, if you could get there and you want to come live so, you know, we can meet in person— so many of you guys, I feel like I know you, but I've never met you. I've never seen your face. It would be awesome if you want to come out. I've put the link in there. You can get a ticket to that. You can It's really sort of a 2-day thing. It's like a Friday night thing and then a Saturday thing, and you can come to one or both. I will be talking on the Saturday. I think my talking time is like at 11, um, and I would love to meet you guys out there. So that link is down there. It's going to be super fun. It's going to be awesome. In fact, one of the speakers, one of the other speakers, I didn't know it, but Bree, y'all know Bree, the behind-the-scenes moderator, she, um, messaged me the other day. She's like, I can't believe you're gonna get to meet so-and-so and so-and-so. And I was like, I don't even know who that is. Apparently it's a big deal person. The lady that's going to speak the night before, apparently she's a big deal because Bree got like the starry eyes. So, um, what's her name? Is her name Lisa? Bree? Lisa Turski, something like that. Am I, am I close? Okay. Anyways, Bree says she's awesome. So she's like got all of her books and she does these devotionals. So she's gonna be good. So now I'm kind of excited about meeting her because Bree's got me hyped up. So, all right, let's take some questions, some concerns. And see what's going on. Amy says, that's the thing. We are on edge because we listen intently to what the addict is stating, on alert, trying not to accuse them when we hear keywords, what they may mean, then they will use again. How do you react to these things when they say? This is a really good question because even in the story I told you about Shane, like I heard the statement, What I— here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you to pounce. Okay? And I know you're kind of like hypervigilant about it and you're just like, and you just like freak out. So the most important thing is what you don't do, and that is do not pounce. Do not freak out. Do not let them see that your red alarming bells are going off in your head. Just play it cool. Okay? And if you're calm enough, then you can just ask them some questions about it. You can say, Oh, what makes you, what makes you say that? Or tell me more about that. Or like, let me hear your thoughts on that. You can explore it more to kind of pull it from that hidden secret thought that's simmering in the back to the surface. Um, and, and that's okay to do that because actually the more someone talks about it out loud, the less likely that they'll actually go through with it. Because usually if they talk about it out loud, they start to come to their senses. They start to see the other side of it. But. That's tricky and that's a little risky. So most of all, do not pounce. Whenever I try to bring up the many lapses with my husband, he gets defensive and says, first be happy with the progress I've already made. Is this a minimization or is he just asking for appreciation? I don't think, Christy, that this is a minimization. I think that he feels horrible about it and he's so sensitive to it and he feels shameful about it that he doesn't tolerate it being brought up very much. And so it is not usually helpful to bring up people's past failures, relapses, the 20 times they said it before. Not that it's not valid, not that it's not fair, not that you don't have every reason to want to bring it up and think that way, but it's not usually helpful because even if the person agrees with you, they, they get naturally defensive. And to be honest, if you think about your own self, we all kind of get naturally defensive when we feel like we're being called out, even if we know the other person's right, even if we agree with the other person. It's an instinct to get kind of defensive. So I don't necessarily think it's a minimization. I think it's a, this is really uncomfortable for me kind of thing. What can a parent do when they see an adult child sabotaging? Is there— Sheryllyn, can you tell me more about what you mean when you, like, what kind of sabotaging thing that you see? Most of all, I'll tell you sort of what I told the person before, which is don't pounce. Keep your calm, keep your cool. The worst thing you can do is for you to relapse, and you can relapse as a parent by doing all the other things that you used to do that you know were not productive. And you get triggered too. So this is a trigger for you seeing and noticing these things in them. And so your job is to not relapse yourself, and that is going to make things go much smoother. Smoother. If they're already showing relapse warning signs and then you lose your cool and you relapse, I'm not saying that you're making them relapse, but you're not helping. So you hold your steady. No matter what they do, and even if they do relapse, they'll come out of it faster. Do not get back on the roller coaster. Dale says, how do I address a red flag we see without being the bad guy? I think that you don't put an opinion on it. You can validate a part that's validatable. Like if they're in a job that's really crappy, you can say, yeah, I kind of I see where you're coming from. It's not the best fit for you, right? I can see why that would be upsetting. I can see why you would eventually want to be able to have a drink every now and then. It's not giving them permission, but if you don't pounce, if you don't get into the bad guy role about it, then they're more likely to talk through it with you. But if you're the family member, realize you don't have to be the counselor. Okay? I can give you these little techniques to do. And that helps. But the biggest thing is not to be the bad guy. Like, I know I give you a million little techniques, but if you just do that one thing and you don't do anything else I ever teach you and you stay out of the bad guy role, you are 80% there. That's the most important thing. When things are good, she self-sabotages. That could be happening for a few reasons. A couple that come to the top of my mind immediately are Sometimes when things are going good, people get overconfident and they let their guard down. And so they're not as protected against relapse. And so suddenly they don't mean to, but suddenly they find themselves in a bad situation. Maybe they've let their guard down. They've stopped doing whatever they were doing to help the recovery, like doing their daily reflections, going to counseling or whatever it was that they were doing that's helping them. They stopped doing that. They stopped being so vigilant. So it's called overconfidence. Um, and then some people have this, um, thing. It's not, it's not as common as the overconfidence thing, but some people have this, what we call like fear of wellness. Like they're super scared. It's almost like it's subconscious, but there's like, they don't know what to, how to deal with life if there's no drama. And it's almost like they, they subconsciously self-sabotage back into that because Maybe it feels boring, or maybe they're scared. Like, everyone's happy with them. What if I let everybody down? It's like this fear of wellness, which is kind of an opposite of the overconfidence. Those are the 2 things that come to the top of my mind as far as why that could be happening. My alcoholic brother is isolating after his jail relapse, after his jail release. His son is abiding by his wishes to bar all family members of no contact. The son is angry at him, shaming and yelling after relapse. How do I break that cycle and be a good force for my brother? So your brother is alcoholic. He was in jail. He's out of jail. I'm just trying to make sure I understand this right. He's out of jail. He's staying with his son. But he's told his son he doesn't want to talk to anyone else in the family, but he's also mad at his son. Am I getting that right, Bri? He's also really mad at the son and this— or no, no, he's not really mad at some, but the son doesn't handle it well. The son is— his son is abiding by his wishes to borrow family contact, but the son is angry at him, shaming, yelling after. I, I think if someone sets a boundary that they don't want to talk To you, no matter if you agree with that boundary or not, that you need to that you're that you're going to have to sort of respect that. I would not try to break through that boundary. Now, if the son talks to you, you know, maybe you're not talking to your brother, but maybe you're talking to your nephew. Then you might can help your nephew with some of the things he's going through. You know, you can you can be a good listener to him. You can send him some videos if he's open to that. Don't push that. You know. And then you can be helping your brother by helping your nephew. So don't break through someone's boundary, but sometimes you help a person by helping a person close to them. Says, when my partner tries to get sober, he seems disconnected, like void of personality, not affectionate. It makes me feel horrible and confused. Do I ignore and not take it to heart, and how long? I don't know exactly why that's happening. Sometimes people are just more introverted, and when they use substances or when they're in their addictive behavior, it actually brings them out of their shell. So they seem more affectionate or more outgoing, and actually what's happening is they're returning more to their own baseline. So that could be what's happening to him. It could be, you know, Obviously, I don't know. I'm just theorizing here, but it could be that he's mad at you, but it could just be that he's dealing with a lot and he just needs some space. I think that you— I don't— well, I don't want to say ignore it, Christina, but I don't think you should push it. And in fact, I'll tell you this. I told this to Campbell yesterday, and this isn't specific to addiction. I'm going to tell you this because, Christina, I see a lot of husbands. Mostly that's what I do is I see men and most of them are married. And so one of the biggest complaints that men have, and this isn't addiction related, just like marriage related, okay, or relationship related, is that their wife, girlfriend, whatever, says things to them like, you're not emotionally present with me. Such a girl thing to say, isn't it, Christina? I hear you though. I understand. I know what that means. I've felt that way before. And we want them to be more engaged with us and more present with us. And sometimes I think, number one, I don't even think men know what you mean by that because sometimes we're not even clear. So if we're going to ask for that, like tell them specifically, what does that mean? Does that mean ask me about my day when I get home from work? Does that mean cook me dinner? Does that mean Get me Valentine's gifts. What does it mean? Be specific. Because a lot of the guys I talk to, they're like, I'm trying. I did this and this and that. Texted her during the day. I don't even— like, they're confused and they're like, I don't even know what I'm— they're like trying and their girlfriend or wife's still mad at them and they don't have any idea why. So there's that. And then this is my own theory. Okay. This isn't about addiction. This is my own personal opinion that comes from Years and years of years of seeing mostly males is that sometimes we want too much from them. I've been there myself. We want them to be men. We want them to go to work and be strong. We want them to be the one that gets up in the middle of the night when there's a noise that's scary. We want all that, that masculine stuff, but then we want them to be emotionally available. And sometimes I think that's on us. I don't know if that's what's happening. That's just a little tirade. because it was on my mind yesterday. So that, that's probably not what's going on in your case. That was just a little public service announcement, Christina. This question: What is the best response to seeing a red flag? My son is 29, lives on his own, but sees us often, sees a therapist, and is on medication for psychiatry from the psychiatrist— ADHD and depression. You don't necessarily have to do anything. Pointing it out can sometimes make it worse. Okay. As you can see, I chose not to confront Shane when I heard him say that, and that was a strategic decision on my part. I mean, I heard it. It was hard. I had to ignore some warning signs in my head, but calling it out is usually going to make someone defensive and it's going to speed up the process, or it's just going to hurt the relationship. Like if I called Shane out on that, what was most likely to happen wasn't that it would've fixed the relapse warning sign, but it would've made him more reluctant to tell me things in the future. That would've been the outcome. So you got to think, what is the pros and cons of me saying something? If I say something, what's the chances? What is going to be the outcome of this? Right? It's about what works. And so a lot of times calling it out isn't necessarily Helpful. Definitely don't want to say you're having relapse warning signs. Don't say that. Erica says, should I tell my loved one's sponsor if he relapses? I know it's a tough spot, but I'm doing it more concerned. Love one. No, you should not. That is a boundary violation. That is his sponsor, and unless he's told you to tell the sponsor something like that, then you should not because you're going to be going behind. Your loved one's back, probably. I'm just assuming that you're going to be going behind your loved one's back. Then you're going to put the sponsor in a strange predicament, whether or not to tell their sponsee, your person, that you called them. I don't like it when that happens to me. I'm like, if you're going to tell me something, like if I'm the coach or the therapist or whatever to the person, and then the family member calls me up to secretly tell me something, I'm like, don't do that because I can't do anything with it. And then it makes it look like we have this Like secret alliance. So if you're going to do it, you got to tell them you're going to do it. But I think calling a sponsor is probably even more out of bounds than the therapist because I just wouldn't do it. I vote against that. No. All right guys, we are at the end of our time for today. You guys are awesome. You keep me on my toes. You ask really good questions. Um, don't forget there are resources in the description. If you can come to Oklahoma at the end of March, it'd be super awesome. I can't wait. I hope to get to meet some of you live and in person, and I'll see you guys next Thursday, always live at 1 Eastern. Bye everybody!