Are You Sabotaging Your Loved Ones' Chances Of Recovery From Drug Or Alcohol Addiction?

Could you be inadvertently sabotaging your loved one's chances of getting sober? I gotta tell you, we see it with our clients all the time. In fact, today I'm going to tell you five things that I regularly see family members do. That is basically like undoing all the work that I'm doing with the person who's trying to find sobriety. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the shovel down. This YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction. In fact, we want you to understand this thing from every single angle because we want you to get five steps ahead of it, get your family and your life back on track, get back out there and live the life that you want to live. Now, this is the only channel out there helping you understand addiction from the individual perspective and the family perspective, because we want to put families back together. Alright, families, about to call you out here. Before I do it, let me just say this. I've done every single one of these, so I'm not really getting on to you because like I said in the introduction, most of these things are inadvertently, you are not trying to sabotage in any way. In fact, most of these things are quite natural things to say. But I do want to shed some light on it and explain why that when you say these things, it's probably pretty counterproductive because not only is it not helpful, but it is pulling everything in the wrong direction. It's the direct opposite of what I try to do with clients who are in my office. So the first one, number one, is negative forecasting. Now this can come in a lot of different ways and I get why you'd want to do this. So negative forecasting is basically kind of like making future predictions that the person's going to fail or it's never going to work out. Like I said, this happens in a lot of different ways. So let's look at some different ways this might show up. Maybe you just have it in your head, but that your loved one can never get better. The problem is if you have that in your head, then you're sending those messages out somehow. Even if you're not directly saying it, you're not very hopeful that the situation can get better. So you're probably looking for evidence that fits with what your theory is. And because you're looking for that evidence, you're probably accidentally reinforcing that evidence because you've decided in your head that it is hopeless and it can never get better, probably helping that negative outcome come to fruition. Even if you, you don't even realize it. And the second way that this shows up is when you're constantly reminding your loved one, your addicted loved one, about all their failures. Now, before you freak out, I totally get it. The reason why you do this is because you want them to see, hey, you've tried that, it didn't work. Why are you doing that again? But again, when you're constantly reminding them of their failures, guess what? Gets implanted in their brain? Then they believe they are never going to get better. Most of the time when we do this, we're wanting to get them to either shift of thinking or try something different or do it a different way. But all you're really doing when you're reminding them of all the things they've done in the past that hasn't worked, is you're telling them they're never going to get better. And how can they get better if they can't even imagine themselves getting better? Number three. Now this one may be a little bit surprising. Another way that families sabotage people trying to get sober is that they're constantly reminding them that it's genetic or that it's a disease. Now, I know when you do that, you're trying to have empathy for the person and you're trying to make them feel less shameful. But again, in some ways, it's another form of sending messaging that says, you can't help this, you're doomed, you're cursed with these genetics or this disease. Now, a fourth really common way that I see family sabotage is they ask this question. I mean, I hear this one a lot. The question is, so what's gonna be different this time? Or what are you gonna do different this time? As you can see, the question kind of comes across as fairly sarcastic, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it all before, same old story, nothing's really ever gonna change. Instead of saying something like this, maybe what you could do is you could find what's different this time. Sometimes with a client, I might say something like, you know what? You really just have a lot more conviction in your voice this time than I heard in the past. Because you know what I'm doing then as I'm sending a message that, hey, I'm hearing something different this time. I think this time is going to have a different outcome. When you can plant those kind of seeds in someone's mind, then you're setting in motion positive changes that can happen. I know it's really hard. This is not a beat you up session. Even if it feels like it Family members, Because I get it. I get why you'd say these things. I get why you'd be frustrated. And guess what? A lot of these things are probably true, valid things to say. However, they're just not that helpful. And as you know, on this channel, we don't talk about what's fair. We talk about what works. This is strategic. You need to make strategic decisions about what kind of questions to ask, what to say, how to set the stage with your loved one. Because everything that you say and every way that you interact has an effect, and it's pulling in one direction, one, the other. Not only that, but when you say these things kind of negatively to your loved one, they're gonna feel defensive, and they're probably gonna respond back to you negatively, which is only gonna reinforce your already negative belief about what the outcome is gonna be. Can you see the cycle here? Another version of this is when families say, you always say that. I've heard that before. If they're saying something to you positive, like, hey, I'm gonna stop drinking for 30 days, or this is it on Monday, I'm gonna change. I get why you would be doubtful of that. Right? But if you can positively reinforce that change, even if they've tried that a million times before, fair warning, I'm about to say something cheesy. But just remember, the difference between success and failure is one more try. In my book, if the person's still alive, they're still in the game. Now, if you struggle with some of this negative thinking, don't worry. It's quite natural. And pretty much anyone in your situation would think and feel the same way, albeit not very productive. If you want to learn a more strategic, more helpful way of communicating and interacting with your loved one that actually motivates them to take steps towards recovery, then you should definitely take a look at my video where I demonstrate for you some counseling techniques called motivational interviewing. In fact, I have this session that is like a real session that's recorded where I talk to a young man about some changes he wants to make. And you can watch these types of techniques play out in that session and throughout that session, I have them labeled for you so you can kind of see what's happening there. I'll put the link to that video in the description below in case you want to check it out. And up next, I'm gonna put my playlist up here for you about ways to motivate someone to take steps towards recovery. These are the things that actually work. So replace some of these negative thought patterns with some of these positive, strategic steps, and you're bound to see which is gonna get some positive movement going for your family.