Addicted Family Dysfunction 🚧

Okay, fair warning. Today's topic is going to cause you to have to take a really hard, deep look inside yourself. You're going to have to do a lot of self reflection because today we're going to talk about the role that each of us play in creating the problems and conflict around us. We're actually going to be digging deeper into our exploration of some of the concepts presented in the book the Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute. I'll put a link in the description below. Going to be applying those specific concepts to addiction. And we're going to look at that from the family point of view and from the point of view of the person struggling with addiction. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated exclusively to helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction. So you can stay five steps ahead of it and get your life back on track. As you watch this video, you're probably going to be reflecting on some of the relationships that you have in your life right now that aren't going exactly the way that you want to. And it's going to require that you get really, really honest with yourself. Because if we're having ongoing conflict with other people, hard feelings, resentment, self pity, guilt, all those negative things, then we're probably doing something to contribute to the issue. Now give yourself a little gr. Usually you're not doing this consciously. The things we're going to talk about today are really more on a deep, subconscious level. We're going to look at four really common things that cause us to justify our own bad behavior. Have you ever heard that saying that the only reason people put other people down is to feel better about themselves? Well, that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today. But usually when you hear that saying, you probably think about someone calling someone else a name or someone you know being judgmental of someone, someone else in that sort of outward, gossipy kind of way. And of course, yes, it applies there, but we're going to delve a little deeper into that concept because we all have a tendency to do this psychologically in our own mind. And we're especially prone to doing this when we have treated someone else in a way that violates our own sense of right and wrong. Basically, what I'm saying is what when your behavior acts in a way that is not consistent with your value system, you create this need inside of yourself that wasn't there before. And that need is to self justify. Because now you've done something that you feel guilty about or shameful about. And like I said, a lot of times this happens on such a deep level and so reflexively that you're probably not conscious of it. But after today, you're gonna be pretty aware of what's going on inside of you and why you're reacting to people and situations the way that you are, and how your behavior and feelings towards the people around you might be triggering them to react to you in a way that you say outwardly that you don't really want, but on some level you are inviting from that person. Now, these concepts really apply to anyone and everyone. So anyone can watch this video and get something out of it. But if you are struggling with addiction yourself or. Or you have a loved one struggling with addiction, these concepts are probably really, really, really going to resonate with you. Because addiction causes some major conflict within the family system. And when that happens, we all start taking a defensive posture, Whether we're the family member, whether we're the person struggling with addiction. And that defensiveness triggers all the other people around us to be defensive as well. And then you get sort of a domino effect of toxic behavior and relationships. And as many of you know, that is a lot of what we talk about on this YouTube channel. It's about how to undo those toxic defensive relationships that you have, because that really is the only way you can get ahead of addiction. Because addiction thrives in that kind of environment. In fact, it is absolutely necessary for addiction to continue. And if you take that ingredient out, it kind of like starves the addiction out. Which is exactly why we spend so much time talking about how to have healthy boundaries, how to get your own emotions back into alignment, how to stay out of those bad guy roles and rescuer roles when it comes to addiction in your family. You may have heard me say this before, but one of the major, major, major things that I look for and evaluate when I'm trying to assess a new person for a substance abuse disorder, as I look specific, much resentment and self pity they have going on. Of course, we all have some resentment and self pity. And where do we talk about that? In counseling, of course. So it's not so much that I think, oh, if you have any of that going on, then you have an addiction. But when you have an excessive super ton, a lot of it going on, and it seems sort of unreasonable to me, that's a sign of just how addicted someone is, because really, it's a symptom of how much a person's addiction has caused them to behave In a way that's not consistent with what they know is right. And when that happens, that need to feel justified gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And so almost anytime I see someone struggling with an addiction, they're very, very preoccupied on some sort of unjust situation that they're dealing with. In fact, they're almost obsessively preoccupied with it because they have an almost constant need to deal with that shame and guilt. Because we're medicating that shame and guilt not just with the drugs, but with the justifying the rationalizations that we're telling ourselves in our head that make us feel better. Because it makes us feel like, well, we had to treat them that way or we had to do this, or we didn't have any other choice, or you know, they made us do it or something like that. So let's take a look at how we get in those justified states and what that looks like. In the book the Anatomy of Peace, they actually call this being in the box. In fact, they outline four specific really common boxes that we tend to get ourselves into that allow us to continue to justify bad decisions, decisions, bad behavior, and unfortunately continues to instigate conflict and problems and difficulty in our lives that we don't really want. If you want to get rid of that conflict, if you want your life to be better and your relationships to be better, then you're going to have to gain a deeper self awareness about these tendencies to justify and how our behavior is, whether we like it or not, contributing somehow, some way to, to the problem. Because you see, when we've wronged someone else, we have a tendency to almost reflexively, immediately horribleize that person. What I mean by that is we make them out to be way worse than maybe what they really are. So we take their, their character defects and their flaws and we sort of magnify them. It's not so much that we totally make them up. There's usually like a grain of truth in there, but we fixate on that, we obsess about that and we exaggerate that in our brain as a way to make us feel better about some behavior we're doing that we kind of know isn't right. We tend to dwell on our hardships when we have a need to justify bad decisions. Okay, let's take a look at those boxes. Box number one is what the book calls the better than box. And the better than box is kind of what it sounds like. It's sort of a state of thinking and being in a way that we justify ourselves by Feeling the better than other people. It's a little bit of a narcissistic point of view. And I don't mean like you have narcissistic personality disorder. I just mean this might be your primary defense mechanism, is to make yourself feel better than, smarter than, faster than, more capable than, whatever the people around you. When you're in the better than box, you see others as inferior and irrelevant. And when you're in the better than box, you feel impatient, you have disdain for the other person, and you probably are sort of oozing out this indifferent attitude towards the situation. This comes from a worldview that the world is competitive and that other people need you. Alright, let's move on to box number two, which is called the I deserve box. Now we have a tendency to get in the I deserve box when we feel mistreated, unappreciated, taken advantage of, or that others are simply ungrateful for all that we do for them. This is the box that I call like the I'm a martyr box. Have you heard that term before? I'm a martyr. That's exactly like the I deserve box. And typically this defense mechanism happens when you feel like you've extended yourself, like you've been so nice and other people don't appreciate you. The I deserve box comes from this really ingrained, hardwired view of the world is unjust and unfair. Did either one of those two boxes sound familiar? Now don't feel guilty because we all get in these boxes sometimes. The point isn't to make you feel bad about what you've done or what's going on. The point is to make you aware of it. Because when you're aware of how you're feeling and how you're behaving and how that is dominoing around you, then you can get control of it, you can make some decisions about it, and as I like to say, you can get strategic about it and stay five steps ahead of it. Okay. Box number three is called the need to be seen as box. We tend to get in the need to be seen as box when we have this deep seated need for other people to think well of us. Now this doesn't mean you're a bad person most of the time when you're in the need to be seen as box, you're probably well mannered and well behaved and make right decisions and do outwardly you may look like you're doing the right thing, but a lot of times that's coming from this defense mechanism is you need to be seen as the good kid, the teacher's pet, and the need to be seen box leads you to feeling stressed, needy, overwhelmed, and anxious. If this is a box that you get into regularly, you may have a deep subconscious belief that the world is judgmental and that others are always watching and judging us. Okay, the number four box is a little different. It's called the worse than box. And when we get in the worse than box, this is when we sort of take this stance that we beat ourselves up, that we have like a lot of negative self talk and we think negatively of ourselves. If you have a tendency to get in the worse than box, then you probably see yourself as less than deficient and not as good as other people. And you probably see other people around you as having it better than you. They're smarter than you, you know, they're blessed, they're privileged. Basically, it's sort of a grass is greener type worldview. When you're in the worse than box, you're going to be feeling helpless, jealous, bitter, resentful and depressed. And these feelings come from the hardwired worldview that the world is against you or difficult, or that others just plain out ignore you. If I wrote the book, I would probably call this the self pity box or the my life is more difficult box, or I'm a worse human or I'm the most terrible person in the whole world kind of thinking. I tell my clients all the time that, you know, beating yourself up is just as problematic as beating someone else up or someone else beating you up. Because when you do that, when you're mean to yourself and you judge yourself and you call yourself names and you have all this negative self talk, eventually you're gonna come in there and rescue yourself and you're gonna let yourself off the hook for bad behavior and bad choices. Now let's see just how honest you can get. Which of these boxes do you tend to get into the most here? I'll get us started. And I'll admit to you that probably the box that I'm most likely to fall into would be the need to be seen as box. See, we all tend to get in boxes, and if we can identify that, then we can get control of that. Have you ever heard that saying, admitting you have a problem is the first step? Well, right now's your chance. Which of these boxes do you get into now? To learn more about these roles, take a look at our video on the drama triangle. I'm going to link it right up here for you to watch next.