Addiction Denial MASTERCLASS

Want you to be able to differentiate between like deception of someone. Like deceiving someone else. Like lying. Right, like lying to someone else, which is purposefully misleading a situation either by telling a lie or omitting information. But that's a conscious thing that we do. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about. This is below our consciousness. We're not even aware that it's happening. And. And because of that, we can't interrupt the cycle because we're unaware that it's happening. The first step in interrupting the cycle is bringing it to our awareness. Because we can't fix something that we don't even know is there. So let's talk about the reason it is below our consciousness and the purpose that it serves. Denial, You've heard me say this before. Is a defense mechanism designed to protect you. And what it's protecting you against is some reality that for you feels intolerable. So it's just I. You cannot cope with the thought that something that's going on, it just. It's just I cannot deal with it. And that could be. I can't deal with the idea that I'm a terrible mother. I can't deal with the idea that I'm actually an alcoholic. I can't deal with the idea that the person I married and I fell in love with, who I thought was awesome, is having an addiction and that's impacting my kids. These are intoler, tolerable thoughts. And so as a protective mechanism, we start to guard against those thoughts. And so it's. It's like an inability to see something because we subconsciously feel like we cannot see. We just can't see it because it's too destructive to our ego. Okay. And so a big part of recovery is what we call like life on life's terms. It's about being able to see reality because that. And deal not just see reality, but deal with reality. Because that's the opposite of addiction. Dealing with reality, acknowledging reality, seeing truth for truth is the opposite of addiction. Because addiction is not just the behavior. It really isn't just the substance use or the gambling or the gaming or the sex or any of that kind of stuff. That's a behavior that's happening. But the other piece of it is this self deceptive loop that we stay in. This self deception propagates the continued behavior. It's both things going in correlation with each other. And it's one thing pings off the other and back and forth. When you have an addiction, the first Intolerable thought is. It's intolerable to think of life without it. Why is it intolerable to think that? There's several reasons for that. One is because somewhere along the way, whatever this substance or behavior is felt like it fixed something for you, right? Maybe it was anxiety, maybe it was boredom, maybe it was low self esteem, maybe it was social anxiety, maybe it was dealing with reality. Like maybe you're in a bad marriage or a bad situation, you don't want to deal with that. And so you found this solution, right? And you want to cling on to that solution so badly that the thought of not having it anymore is intolerable. And the further the addiction goes, the more intolerable that thought becomes. Because whatever your situation was before, however intolerable, whatever those difficulties were before, that you don't want to deal with anymore, they are now a thousand times more worse than they were originally because of the addiction. So it's just sort of this self fulfilling triangle that we get stuck in. So realizing that we're not aware that this is happening. And it's very hard to believe when you see someone else in denial. Even for me, I've been doing this for more than 20 years and it's still shocking like every single time. Like really you can't see that because it's so obvious to everyone else. But we all have the capacity to self deceive. We, we have all been in denial about something at some point and we're probably all in denial about something right now. I can tell you that I'm, I'm pretty dang good at the rational in the rationalization department. So I'm going to be, I'm going to give you my professional knowledge and I'm just going to be an expert witness for you today too, because I definitely am guilty of this kind of thing. When you look at what is the difference in abstinence and recovery, sometimes some of you guys ask me a lot about like, you know, what's a dry drunk? That's an old recovery term. And basically it's like somebody that's sober, as in they're abstaining from a substance. But usually we say they haven't worked on themselves. But a more accurate way to put it is even if you get someone abstinent to quit the addictive behavior, but they haven't addressed the addictive thinking, they're not well, and chances are they're going to go right back to the addictive behavior. But even if they don't, they don't really Feel better. They're not really any better to be around. And so they're still stuck in that addictive way of thinking and feeling. And even if the behavior isn't happening, that's what they call a dry drunk. It's super essential to deal with the addictive thinking. That is the part that you actually really need help for. You know, people say all the time, they say, you can't do this on your own. You gotta get some help. And it's kind of annoying to people who have addictions because they're like, what are you talking about? I quit last month. I quit for six months. I did that on my own. So here's the thing. You can stop the behavior on your own. In fact, there's no other way to do it. I can't do it for you. No one can do it for you. Your sponsor cannot do it for you. You're right. Only you can stop the behavior. But because this addictive thinking is below your consciousness, it is very doubtful that you're going to be able to identify and deal with your addictive thinking without some help somewhere. Now, I think there's a lot of different places to get that. I like all the pathways to recovery. I haven't met one I didn't like. So there's. There's a million different ways to do it. I'm not saying you have to do a certain thing, but I am saying you probably, you need to get some help somewhere to help you identify and correct the addictive thinking. So let's get into some examples of addictive thinking. And then we're going to go into what's underneath that. And then we're going to go one level deeper and talk about what's underneath that and what keeps this whole cycle going. And if you're watching because you have an addicted loved one, you're. And you're going to be listening to these examples, you're going to be saying, amen, Amber, my loved one does this. My kid does this. My spouse does this. My brother does that. I want you to also be thinking about yourself, because this is a parallel process. So everything I'm about to say applies on both sides of the street. Okay? And the self deception that the codependent have has is what sustains the codependency, just like the self deception that the addict has is what sustains the addiction. So you must address the addictive thinking no matter which side of that road that you're on. One sign of addictive thinking is this is classic minimizing, right? It's not that bad. You know, people do this by either comparing themselves to people that are worse, more addicted than they are. People do this by comparing themselves to people who are less successful than they are, who have less things in life. There's a lot of different ways to minimize it. All you have to do is look around long enough to find some situation that's worse than yours. And we can all do that at any given point, right? And so that's how we minimize it. That minimizing allows us to stay in denial about the situation because we're denying the severity of the situation. We'll talk more about this, but. But it's also what keeps us from being able to take responsibility from the situation, which leads to some more things. The other type of addictive thinking that you're going to see is denial of the consequences, right? Even though there are consequences happening, natural consequences that are happening, maybe it's that you're losing the respect of your loved ones. Maybe it's that you are, your work is diminishing, it's getting worse. Maybe it's the fact that you lost your job because of it. Maybe it's the fact that the legal trouble that you're getting into is totally ruining your life. There is a denial or minimization of the consequences of it. And when the consequences have already happened, the way that we do that is we shift the blame, right? That that consequence happened because those police officers have a quota and they got to give so many DUIs a month to keep their job. That consequence happened because my wife is a B, right? And she just is so critical of me and she's just trying to take my kids away from me because she just wants my money, right? It's a blame shifting process for denying consequences that are already either happened or happening. And there's also a way that people sort of denial possible consequences so things that have not happened but are very likely to happen. And the way that you do that is you just don't think about it, right? Because when you are in active addiction or you're an active codependency, which is. Is basically the same thing, there's a desperation going on. And desperation is running the show, not logic, desperation. And so you're so obsessed with this thing that you are desperate to obtain, whether that's the addiction or getting someone sober, whatever that is, that you don't have time, you don't spend the time, you don't take the time to think. Further down the road, we call it playing the tape. You don't play the tape through, because you're just constantly in the here and now, in the present, dealing with the current fire situation, which keeps you from really thinking long term. So that's denial of consequences that are going to happen or minimizing those consequences. All of this leads us to something called magical thinking. Now, in someone who has an addiction, magical thinking looks like, I can stop this anytime I want, even though there's a lot of evidence that says that you can't or that you won't. So sometimes even if you can, maybe you can. But will you? And will you do it? And can you do it before you destroy your life or someone else's life? You know, can you look at the truth? Right? It's not even just, can I stop drinking, smoking, whatever. It's can I look at the truth anytime I want? And the. The answer to that is probably not. If you're struggling with an addiction. Grandiose thinking in a codependent person can look like, if I just get my loved one to get a sponsor, it's going to fix this. If I just get them to read this certain book, it's going to fix this. If I can just get them to go to detox and treatment, it's going to fix this. It's like this, like, magical solution, basically. And. And it's irrational, you know, it's flawed thinking. And that's why they call it magical thinking. It's kind of like when you're a kid and you just think the magic fairy godmother is going to come along and fix everything for you and it's going to be fine. The other type of addictive thinking that you see is rewriting history. And we rewrite history as a way to not deal with the current present situation, not deal emotionally, not deal with what's coming down the road, but also as a way of dealing with our own mistakes. So we look back on things that have happened, and we selectively pull out certain pieces and we remember them and we ignore other pieces. And that creates a false narrative in our own head. Whether you're on the addiction side or. Or the codependent side. Both. In both cases, this stems from insecurity. It stems from shame. And we're going to talk more in depth about how the shame part comes into this cycle and how the insecurity part. But it's like, I can't tolerate the idea that I was wrong on something or handled something wrong or that the situation is what the situation is, because it's so scary that I'm Rewriting history to create this narrative, which helps me feel better about myself. It's a way of self medicating your shame, the rewriting of the history and of not dealing with the situation at hand. You can also do this by like selective, you know, it's basically just selective remembering. It's really interesting and fun in our office because we, we have always seen both sides of an addicted family. The addiction side and the family member side. And when as the counselors, we call it lawyering a lot, when the lawyers, the counselors meet behind the scenes and we talk about, you know, the way that our client is seeing it, the family can tell the same story. The person with the addiction tells the same story. And it's like, is this really the same story? Like, are we talking about the right husband and wife here? Like, are we on the right family here? Am I thinking of someone different? Because even though it's like they're telling the same story, the version of it that gets told either on the family side or on the addiction person side is missing a lot of pieces. And we have learned that over and over and over again. And it's still surprising to us every single time. And that's why it is so important to get both perspectives. Because there is a rewriting of history, there is a selective memory that's going on. And we all naturally do that. It's not even purposeful. Like I said, this is below our consciousness. I mean, sometimes you mislead your counselor because you don't want them to give you a piece of advice or because you feel embarrassed about something or whatever. But a lot of times it's just the way you remembered it. And you remembered it that way because subconsciously you're selectively putting more emphasis on certain events and less or no emphasis on other events in order to propagate this narrative that you have. And the purpose of that is to protect your ego, protect your sense of self, to keep you from having to look at something that you're not ready to look at yet because it seems too awful, too scary. So those are just a few examples of addictive thinking. I have tons of videos on this channel where I talk about even more examples of addictive thinking. But the, for the purpose of this video, I just want you to kind of understand those addictive thinking patterns is what keeps people in denial. All of that, all of those self deceptive thought processes lead us to a very bad self esteem, a very low sense of self worth. Our confidence goes out the door. The shame volume is getting turned Up. And the more the shame, the more the low sense of self, the more scarier life seems, the more the addictive thinking pattern takes in to protect. And you see how we're just in this cycle where one thing's leading to the other thing. The reason why the self esteem goes down so low when you're in this addictive thinking pattern is because when you look back at what's going on in your life over the last few years, when there's been active addiction or active codependency, it's one bad thing after another. It's one mistake after another. It's once. It's a situation that didn't work out after the other, after the other, after the other. And you look back on that and then you start to feel this sense of hopelessness. That's why there's a more emphasis here on shame than there is on guilt. Yes, there's guilt involved in this process of addiction and codependency, but there's more shame involved. And the difference in the two is guilt's actually kind of productive. When we feel guilty, it triggers us to change our behavior when we feel shameful. And that leads to a sense of hopelessness, which leads to a sense of self pity, which leads to mostly just allows us to give up on changing and allows us to avoid responsibility for situation. If you say I did something bad, then there's inherently in your thinking, there's room to correct it, fix it, do something different next time. If you're telling yourself that I am a horrible person, I am a bad person, that doesn't leave room for changing behaviors, taking accountability, you're. It's more of a sense of hopelessness and more of a sense of I'm a bad person versus I did a bad thing. A lot of what happens in recovery is shifting the shame over into guilt. Not that we're trying to make people feel guilty, but actually guilty is a more hopeful, manageable feeling. Right? Because there's a solution there. Right? I can correct a behavior, I can make an amends in some cases, I can do it differently going forward, and I don't have to stay stuck. Whereas when we have that hopelessness there, there is no solution. And not only is it that we feel horrible about ourselves because of all these bad things that are happening over and over and over in our life. Because when addiction's happening, it's one bad thing after another, right? The unmanageability is coming from every direction. But also because of the addictive thinking, we are subconsciously refusing to deal with the reality of a situation. And because we're not taking accountability and we're not solving the problem and we're not dealing with reality, the situation just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. And we feel more and more and more terrible about ourself. Which then makes us cling to these addictive thought processes even more. Now we really need them because now the situation is very, very intolerable, right? The idea of reality becomes more and more intolerable the further you go and to addiction. And now we have this sort of like self perpetuating cycle. So we have the addictive behavior. Underneath the addictive behavior is the addictive thinking. Underneath the addictive thinking is the low self esteem and shame. Underneath that, or maybe as a result of all that, you have a spiritual void. Now for some people, they may have felt this spiritual void before the addiction took over. But even if you didn't have it before, you will have it as a result of. And that spiritual void, it's not a religious void, it's a spiritual void. It's a feeling of hopelessness. It's a lack of a sense of purpose, purposefulness, a lack of sense of autonomy. And so because of that, your spiritual needs are not being met. And as human beings, we have spiritual needs. We're the only animal on the planet that has spiritual needs, right? We have physical needs just like all the other animals. And we have instinctual behaviors just like all the other animals. But we have this higher level thing, humans have this higher level thing that no other animal and plant has, which is a spiritual need. And there is, even if you're not religious, almost everyone agrees on this sort of emptiness that we have this, this need for connection or creativity or purpose or service. Like there's this something else that we have and if we are not dealing with that, you know, the sense of self, the sense of I matter, I'm a worthwhile person, I'm giving something to this universe. You don't feel right, you slip into depression, you slip into hopelessness, you slip into despair. So that is why it is a human need. And so that need, maybe that void could have been there before, but it is certainly going to be there as a result of maybe you were totally awesome before, things were going great, you felt totally fulfilled, you had purpose, drive, motivation. But as this whole addictive process goes on, that void is going to feel bigger and bigger and bigger, which leads to more sense of hopelessness, which leads to not taking responsibility and not fixing a situation, which leads to bad self esteem, which leads to addictive thinking. Can you see why we get stuck in this process? Now, when you really understand the levels of what's driving what and what is causing the denial, it's going to help you figure out how to fix it. Once you really understand it, number one, you're going to be aware of it. But number two, the answer is going to seem more and more obvious to you. For example, if you know that your loved one is in denial because whatever the reality of the situation is, is too scary and intolerable for them, and that's why they're continuing addictive thinking, and that's why they're continuing the denial, then you start to realize that the solution to that is not to make the reality seem scarier, which is what you've been doing, right? When you're in that codependency role and you are in your own subconscious cycle, you're trying to get their attention by yelling, screaming, threatening, punishing, telling them how horrible it is, telling them how they're screwing up their life, telling them about all these bad things are going to happen. And every time you do that, you're making reality seem scarier. What do you think? Are they more likely to deal with reality if you're making it seem scarier or if you're making it seem, like, dealable? That's what I call it. That's not a word, really. I guess maybe it's a word. But when I deal with people who are in active addiction, not only do I help them see that actually the reality without the addiction is so much better, right? But I also help them to see that it is attainable. And so often family and sponsors and treatment people too, and counselors too, we go at the person by trying to trigger fear like a scared straight. And that does not work because it just triggers more addictive thinking. It just triggers those defense mechanisms because it's too freaking scary to come out from underneath the covers. You know, we don't want to look outside. We don't want to open the door and look out there, because freaking scary out there. The idea of living without my one thing that makes me feel better, the idea that I have screwed up so bad I have to dig out of this giant hole. I've messed up my career, I've messed up my marriage, My children are mad at me. I hate myself. That's a pretty scary reality. So trying to make someone feel worse, whether it's the addictive person or the codependent person, is not likely to result in a positive change in behavior. Helping someone to see reality involves not lying to them, right? You have to be honest with people because dealing with reality is what recovery means. But helping them see that, it's not that scary, it's doable. And if, if you're trying to help a loved one and you're just off the rails angry and you're off the rails mad, and you're punishing them, they're just going to cling tighter. And that only makes sense. And once you realize why they're in denial, that's what I mean when I say the situation becomes more and more obvious to you, right? And it's kind of like you hear, you hear people say in treatment, like only one of ten of you people in this room is going to be sober. Why do we tell people that? First of all, it's not true or accurate and secondly, it's, it's almost like we're trying to scare you into thinking. It's so hard. Almost no one does it. Why would you tell, why would you tell people that? Like, does that make you be like, yeah, I can do this, or does that make you want to just give up? Of course, it just makes you want to give up. And then that creates like self fulfilling prophecy, right? If you said something like, most of you will deal with relapse after you leave, but in the long run, most of you are going to figure this out and get better. And actually thousands of millions of people get better from this all the time, then you feel more hopeful, you're more likely to keep trying, you're more likely to pick yourself up from a relapse than you are to just stay stuck in the pit in the bottom of the hole. Hopelessness. Making someone feel inadequate, hopeless and scared is not the way to make someone come out of addictive thinking. It's the way to make sure that they stay with their head under the covers because too freaking scary out there. So recovery is all about not just abstaining, it's all about dealing with reality, which means confronting your addictive thinking. And once you can spot your addictive thinking, once it's into your consciousness, it doesn't mean it won't happen. But once you're aware of these things, it's really hard to go back into denial. You can go back into addictive behavior, but you know the truth. And it's like, even when you're lying to yourself, you know you're lying to yourself. And it's not nearly as fun. It's a. Recovery is a total buzzkill. Once you know the Trade. You go back out there and do whatever you're going to do, but you're going to, like, literally, it's going to be like you're outside of yourself. Watching yourself be in denial, watching yourself lie to yourself, watching yourself rationalize, watching yourself making bad decisions. You know, when you're in denial, it's kind of cozy because you don't even realize how bad it is because all of this is below consciousness. But once you know, you know, and there's no going back. And so that's the hopefulness that I try to tell people and families about the relapse situation. I'm like, yeah, sure. Like, they can. They can get themselves in a situation where they allow that addictive thinking to reoccur, because that's what relapse is. It's more than just a reoccurrence of a behavior. It's the reoccurrence of the thinking, because that is going to come before the behavior almost every single time. Occasionally people find themselves in a situation where they're just almost like in this weird auto zone where they just relapse without even a thought about it. Like. Like it's a habit. Like someone just passes the drug to you and you just use it without even thinking about. Someone just hands you drink, you know, and there's like a. It's just almost an automatic. But even then, you can catch it pretty quick, right? Relapse is when that addictive thinking comes back. And it usually looks like I can control it differently this time. I probably wasn't that bad before. See the minimization, there's this grandiose fantasy that somehow you're going to be more powerful, more strong than all them other drug addicts and alcoholics and all them other, you know, 5,000 people that your counselor saw you somehow different. You're going to manage it different and you're going to get a different result this time. When that thinking comes back, it leaves the room for the behavior to come back. Right? But if you've known the truth, you can catch that pretty quickly. You can. You can call yourself out, you know what the problem is, you know what the solution is, you know where to get help and how to get to the solution. And you can get yourself right back on track. Chances that people are gonna have relapse, I guess I would say now 9 out of 10 people have a relapse, but that doesn't mean, like only one out of ten people make it. Right. A relapse isn't necessarily a sign of failure. If I'm walking down the street and I'm trying to get to my office, I may fall as I'm walking down the street. But that doesn't mean I'm starting all the way over. I can get myself back up. Maybe I was halfway there and I can walk the rest of that distance. And if we start to think of relapse that way, it's just a more positive, optimistic look. It's actually a more realistic look, right? Not just that we're trying to make it seem like sunshine, rainbows, it's actually more truthful. Look at the situation. That hopelessness is not truthful. That hopelessness is connected to. The shame is connected to. I don't want to deal with this. So I'm just going to say either I don't have what it takes to fix it, and I'm just so horrible and so low down that it's not, it's not manageable, I can't do it, or this problem is so big and so huge that there's no sense in even trying because you can't, you can't overcome it or whatever. And so it leads us to that giving up, which actually is not reality. You may tell yourself, you know, I'm being a realist, but that's not actually the truth. We can convince ourselves of anything we want to convince ourselves of. And everything I'm telling you in today's video, it's not just about what people with addictions do. It's what we all do to some degree when we're making a decision and we're behaving in a way that doesn't fit with who we are. We, we don't deal with that discomfort, that, that spiritual discomfort. Well, that cognitive dissonance. And so that cognitive dissonance makes us feel real squirmy inside. We don't like to think about those things and look at those things. So that's when those addictive thinking processes come back into play where we start going, sliding ourselves back into denial. You can see someone sliding back into these processes before they relapse. We call this relapse warning signs. And it can look in a number of ways. It can look like someone's just feeling overwhelmed by reality. They're starting to. Their self esteem starts to go in the dumps. They start to feel like they don't have. Like they're not confident, like the problem is hopeless, like it can't be fixed. And when you're seeing this, this is a return of the addictive thinking which happens like I said before. Almost always before the return of an addictive behavior, you can see it coming. It's real hard to intervene, but you can see it coming in yourself, and you can see it coming in someone else. And again, this is why you need some help from somewhere to beat addiction. Because if you understand that about yourself and you're just cool with it and. And you're. You can deal with it because it doesn't make you feel shameful, because you realize that we all do it. Amber does it, for sure. Then you don't have to feel shameful about it, because you can just be like, yeah, this just thing human beings do. And then that allows you the room, the space to be able to go to someone, to your counselor, to your sponsor, to your cousin in recovery, to your dad, your mom, and say, hey, this is the way I'm thinking here. This way I'm seeing the situation. Is there something that I'm missing? Is there a different way to look at this? Is there something I'm not acknowledging or something I'm not seeing? And that other person, they don't even usually have to be trained so much. It's just easy to see, you know, somebody else's stuff, right? And they'll say, yeah, like, you're not. You're not thinking about this part. You're not remembering that part. You're denying the reality of this or whatever. And then that's you confronting your addictive thinking and not allowing yourself to go back into that denial, right? And you don't have to feel guilty. We all do it. Everybody does it. I do it every time I eat something unhealthy. You do it every time you pay more money for something than you should have. Like, this is a human condition. So don't. Don't feel shameful about it. Just deal with the fact that you do it. And maybe if you have an addictive personality, maybe you do it a little more than some people, and then just say, all right, I know I do that, and here's how I'm going to fix that. I'm going to go to meetings that make me have to remember that I do this addictive thinking thing, not that I drink, not that I smoke, not that I use, but that I do this addictive thinking thing and what the solution to it is. All right, I feel like that was a lot. My throat's getting all dry and scratchy. So we're about to take some questions, comments and concerns. We're to that point before we do that or as you get them up there, Bri is behind the scenes. She's going to be putting some questions up here on the screen for me in just one second. If you put question marks before it or like word question, I'll capture them. It lets Bree as she sorts through them, it lets her see it faster. And if it's on topic, it's also more likely to get picked. So get those in there. As always, I'll remind you there are resources in the description. If you are dealing with someone in denial, then you may want to look at our invisible intervention because that is our online program specifically for how to get someone out of denial. What I've told you in this video is the understanding and the philosophy behind what's happening. What you learn in the invisible intervention is the step by step by step process for like, how do I get someone to come out from underneath that blanket? It literally tells you what to say, when to say it, how to say it, how many times to say it, what does not do all those things. It gives you the step by step. But this is the underpinnings of what that is built on. So you can check that out. There's lots more resources in there. Let's see what kind of questions and concerns you have. Gypsy Feet says dumb question. Does this also apply to hoarding variety? Yes, and that's not a dumb question. I mean, I feel like hoarding is. It's an addictive, compulsive behavior. There's. There's maybe a little bit of difference, but not a whole lot of difference in addiction. Right. It's just a different kind of addiction. Right. Having stuff makes me feel secure. It's a self medicating. So yes, it definitely applies. Linda Steele says, how do I get my son to start taking responsibility for his actions? When I try to talk to him about anything around his problem, all he will do is raise his voice and start telling. I think you meant yelling at me all the bad things his brother's doing. Right? I love this, Linda, because this is a perfect example of minimizing it or blame shifting like drinking and drugs. He is mad at him for not giving him money for the substance or doing the substance while he's there. Totally blaming his brother. Right? So it's like every time I start to talk to him, I start seeing more attic thinking. He starts telling me all these addict thoughts. What that means is, is probably it's. And I'm not saying you do it on purpose. I'm not even saying you're doing it wrong, but what's happening is you're triggering his shame, which is making the reality of the situation seem intolerable, which is triggering more of this addictive thinking. So we have to figure out how do I bypass stepping on that booby trap, basically. And there, there are ways to do it. We talk about it on this channel all the time. We talk about it in the invisible inter. But a big way I do it is I, I help someone see reality in a way that doesn't threaten their ego, right? By sometimes normalizing it by validating like some of their thoughts like about why they're doing it and what it does for them. Like if you can see their side of it and if you can make it seem not that horrible, they're more likely to look at it. David says question, can we have hope without guilt or shame? Gosh, this is kind of a deep question. David. I have to think about this for a second. Yeah, I mean, I think so. Because you can be hopeful about something that you don't feel like you contributed to in a negative way. But when we, when we move out of addiction, we have to sort of pass through that phase. If you think about it like you're, you're on a journey from here to there. It's a phase you're going to have to step through. But a lot of times the hope comes before you address the guilt and the shame because you got to be, you're not going to trust that you should even start taking those steps if you don't have hope. So it's hope, then trust and then that allows you the strength to walk through the guilt and shame. Debbie says, my loved one says I'm the last person or friend he has on the planet. He left rehab and is back on the streets. What can I say to make change seem more attainable? This is a great example of hopelessness and low sense of self. So, so this person, it looks like this person is to some degree accepting responsibility. You're my last person or friend. But really it's more of a self pity statement, more of a way of not taking accountability. And I don't, I don't know your son, Debbie. So it's hard for me to say exactly. You can make it seem more doable or, you know, like if I knew this person, I knew them well enough, if it was my client, I might say, oh, you're just saying that so you don't have to fix this. But, but that would be, you have to have enough trust to do that with someone. BB Question I have flopped back and forth from being hopeful towards my addicted loved one to being negative. How do you keep positive and recover from being negative? I struggle with this thinking, I need to say something. I think one thing that helps BB is to realize that what you're dealing with, it's a craving to get something out, which is exactly the same as your loved one is dealing with. It's a craving maybe to get something in. Okay. And it feels like if I say this, if I express my emotions, if I tell them how I feel, if I get this anger out, I'm going to feel better. Does it make you feel better? No. It makes you feel worse. I can tell from your comment because then you feel guilty and shameful because you said the negative thing and you're like, I'm trying not to say the negative thing. Right. That's the same. If you can take that and see how hard that is, which is valid, and realize that that's that same thing you're asking them to do, then you'll have more compassion for them. You'll realize that you slip up, too. They slip up, too. It doesn't mean you're not trying. It doesn't mean you're not going to get it. It just means you're human being. You, you, you pick up, you brush yourself off and you keep moving forward. So one thing is not to beat yourself up about it too bad, Right? And to realize that it's part of the process. Right? It's just like it's part of the process for them to relapse. Right? The more you can identify and relate to the struggle they're going through, the less negative you're going to feel about them because you're going to have more empathy and understanding, which also makes them treat you nicer, which makes it a lot easier to have empathy and understanding for them. So it's a. It's a cycle that you can go on in a positive direction. So if you mess it up, just say you messed up. Just like, if they mess up, don't you wish they just come to you and be like, I messed up. I'm really sorry I drank yesterday. Here's why. Here's what happened. Here's what I'm gonna do about it. Wouldn't that make you feel better? You feel a lot better. You'd be less angry. So you, you model the same thing. You do the same thing to them. Aisha says, what if the addict thinks he has the liberty to fall all the time and get up, so be in active addictions. I think what you're saying Aisha is, what if the person basically is just giving themselves permission? Because sometimes people don't even like it when you say, like, relapse is part of recovery. Because it's almost like you're giving someone permission. That is in itself, it's. It's an addict thinking. Right. It's a minimization of the damage of the relapse. Right. Because maybe they can relapse a million times and get themselves back up, but every time they do it, it's harder and harder and harder. And anyone that's had the relapse will tell you that that is true. And even if you can keep relapsing and you can keep pulling it back together, which you can, it freaking sucks. It's freaking hard. I don't know why you'd want to do that. It's not something that you want to do because it's crappy. But also, even if you get back on track, it doesn't mean you're not still burning bridges. So you might get back on track, but you're you. That might be the last straw for the other person in your life or for your job. So you don't get to get back up without the scrapes. And so it's just. It's. It's a rationalization. It's a minimization. It's an addict thought is what it is. Is that Dejana? I don't know if I'm saying that right, but here's the question. How long do you play along and treating it as if it's normal before you give up on an addict and move on with your own life? I'm glad you asked that question, because sometimes I think I, like, say parts of it and then forget to say other parts. So I'm saying you can normalize it but also ask for change. Right. So even though I may normalize it for a client, I may say, hey, happens, happens to all of us. Here's what we need to do about it. It doesn't mean I'm denying the reality. I'm just making it seem less scary. But it. But it doesn't mean that I'm saying it's okay to keep doing it. I'm just saying, yeah, here's why it happened. And, yeah, there are good things about it and bad things about it. It's just acknowledging the truth that is there. But it doesn't mean that you just have to pretend like it's okay because it's not okay for them or for you. Yep. Sharon B. Says question our Son drug journey has led to delusional thinking. He has bugs in his skin. He wants to show us and agree in reality he just has normal skin. How do we handle delusional beliefs? This is a good question. This is, this is psychotic thinking. This is psychosis, which is a different level than like these other kind of addictive thinking. It's sort of delusional because, because it's, it's not seeing reality. But then there's psychosis, which is what Sharon's talking about. So drug, it can be drug induced psychosis where you're like seeing, hearing, believing things that are not accurate. True or there you cannot talk someone out of a, out of a delusion. Hallucination. This is a, this is a hallucination. And it could be that he's visually seeing them, but it could be that he is feeling, feeling them. That's called a tactile hallucination. So you can have auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, tactile hallucinations. Sometimes people feel like the bugs are crawling on them and that, like I said, that's a tactile hallucination. And you can't argue about it. You can't talk someone out of it. And the more you try to talk them out of it, the more entrenched it gets because then they're just going to be, well, you can't see them because only people who can see them are. I don't, I don't know. You have this, the same superpower. It's just like, it's like the more you try to argue with them, the more complicated the psychosis and the delusion will get to maintain the belief that they have. So mostly you avoid talking about it and you redirect. And then if you have, if they back into corner, which they sometimes will do, you can say, well, I can't see them. But it doesn't necessarily. May not believe you. You know, you can just kind of, you don't want to lie, but you kind of sidestep it. Basically. It's either going to clear up on its own because the drug gets out of the system and it just fixes, or they're going to have to have medication to fix it. If it doesn't clear up on its own, they're going to have to seek a medical professional. But you can't just convince them that the bugs are not there. Maury says, what are the strategies to deal with a teenager in sweet marijuana days who doesn't want to stop? I have a whole little playlist on marijuana and most of those videos are directly talking about dealing with a teenager. So I encourage you to check it out. I can. There's, like I said, there's a whole playlist. There's a lot of advice in there. One thing I can tell you is don't. Don't try the scared straight thing. Don't say, well, it's because it's illegal, it's because of this or that. Because like I said, the more you come directly at someone, the more they're going to have this addictive thinking, the more they're going to rationalize, minimize, blame you, and it's actually driving them further into addiction. So check out that playlist. You'll find it if you just go to our channel page. All right, guys, we are at the end of our time. You guys are awesome as always. Thank you so much for all of you who show up live. I know you're busy. I know you're at work, Smell of work day. You guys are awesome. You ask great questions. I look forward to seeing you every week. And you're helping me spread recovery. There's resources in the description. And I'll see you guys next Thursday. Bye, everybody. Oh, yeah. This coming Tuesday, we're releasing a video called how to Get Around Alcoholic Defense Mechanisms. So it goes more into strategy of getting around. So it's a good follow up for this video. So make sure to be on the lookout for it. See you soon. Bye.