Boundaries with an Addict or Alcoholic that you ABSOLUTELY must keep!

So we all know that dealing with an addict or an alcoholic is frustrating. Even the best people, when they have addictions, lie and manipulate and split people against each other and basically just turn your whole life upside down. But what do you do when that problematic behavior actually becomes aggressive and sometimes even abusive? Well, that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. But before we do that, I want to send a special thanks out there to our follower who recommended this topic. For those of you who don't know me or who are new to the channel, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this is Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated to helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can be five steps ahead of it. So if that sounds like something that you might need to do, consider subscribing, and I'll make sure you have all the information you need to make that happen. Now, like I said a little earlier, I've gotten these emails and these messages from people who've been longtime followers, who've watched a lot of my videos. And they were describing to me these situations in which they were really being treated very badly. And they're like, amber, I tried this. I tried empathy. I tried understanding their point of view. And it was like they tried all these things that I talked about in my video. And that's what made me realize, oh, I am not, like, communicating very effectively. The balance between protecting yourself, looking out for yourself, your own boundaries, and in the other things that I teach, which is how to motivate someone towards recovery, which involves a lot of empathy and restoring of the relationship, there is a balance point between these two things. Although I am a strong believer in doing those things. Helps motivate people toward recovery. Really want you guys to know that I don't expect for you to be doing that at the expense of your health, your safety, or your dignity. We all have to find that line between where helping someone else is harming us. And that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to find that balance. So in this video, we're going to cover specifically when people become psychologically aggressive. And in part two, we're going to cover specifically how people become physically aggressive. We're going to look at each of those types, go through. We'll identify some examples of what that looks like and how to respond to it. Okay, I'm about to tell you three forms of psychologically aggressive behavior, but by no means is this like, the full list. There are a lot of things, but I want to focus in on three specific things. And I'm going to give them to you in the order of severity, meaning I'm going to start with the least worst and go to the worst. I'm not saying that like they're not bad. I'm just saying that we're gonna start with level number one and go all the way down to level number three. Alright? The first psychologically aggressive behavior we're gonna cover is turning everything back on you, making everything your fault to the point that they're being mean to you, that they're name calling, that they're seriously, seriously hurting you, deflating your self esteem and basically tearing you down so that they can control the situation. Now, almost anyone with an addiction, when they get caught or they're in trouble, they feel like they're backed into a corner, they'll spin that around and make that your fault somehow. That's not atypical. And if you've watched my videos on manipulation, then you probably already know what I'm talking about and you have a little bit of skill on how to deal with that. But sometimes that really escalates into where it's like they're trying to intimidate you, they're trying to get you to second guess yourself, to back off, to sort of crawl into a little hole and give them whatever they want or let them do whatever they want to do. Now the hard thing about understanding all this is being able to see someone is unhealthy, who has a disorder or an illness and they're really a good person even though they have this. It's hard to be able to imagine all that. But at the same time understand that it is perfectly okay to set that boundary for yourself. I don't care what someone has, it is not okay to treat you abusive. Even when my son is sick and he's like 8 years old, I feel so bad for him. I will bring him anything he wants. I'll tuck him in the covers, I'll bring him drinks with straws, I'll baby him to the nth degree because I love him and he's sick and he's my baby. But if he gets really nasty with me, which happens from time to time when he's sick, I'm like, hold up. I know you're sick and I know you don't feel good, but that's not on me. I'm here trying to help you. You need to rein it in. Because even though he's sick and he feels terrible and he's Eight years old, it is still not okay to let people treat you badly, especially being mean to you. And the thing of it is, addicts and alcoholics, they know exactly what your buttons are. They know right where your sore spots are. And when they get backed into a corner, they will hit it with a sledgehammer. When this happens to you, what I want you to do is call it out. Not in a art, not in a loud, in your face, like, let's fight way, but in a calm, rational kind of like I do my son and say, hey, what's up with this? Like, how did this conversation become about that? A lot of times what I'll see happen is the person with the addiction will bring up some fault or flaw or something that the family member did a long time ago that maybe was something that they shouldn't have done or a mistake or bad. And that's perfectly appropriate. But they'll bring it up at a time time as a way to deflect the conversation off of what's really being discussed right now. And so if that happens, I just want you to bring that right up to the surface and say, hey, I can understand you have some hurt feelings about that and I'm perfectly willing to discuss it. But right now we're talking about this. Now is not really the time. So you can do that. If it's on a minor level, if it's verbally threatening and just really, really intimidating, then I want you to leave the situation. I don't want you to stand there and fight with them. I don't want you to stand there and try to talk sense into them. I want you to physically leave the situation because anything else is probably going to validate that it's okay to treat you that way. And it's going to be really hard not to get sucked into a full blown out argument. Fight with them because you're human and you can only take being attacked so much before you're gonna say a bunch of mean, nasty stuff. And so you can even say that, you can say, listen, I feel myself getting heated and I know nothing good is gonna come of all this, so I'm just gonna take a little break. We'll come back to it. Excuse yourself. Moving on to psychologically aggressive tactic number two, gaslighting. Now, we covered gaslighting in one of my previous videos on manipulation. But like with anything else, there are levels of gaslighting and problematic behavior. Addict or an alcoholic will sort of make you think that you forgot or you don't remember it right. To try to throw you off the scent of something in the moment. I'm not saying that's appropriate, obviously, but it's a deflection tactic. And other times, someone with an addiction problem will literally launch like a full out gaslighting, like, strategic, manipulative, ongoing plan. And if you don't know a lot about what gaslighting is, it's basically when you make someone else feel like they're crazy. Like you set them up and you. You set the situations up in such a way that makes them really, really doubt themselves completely. Like they, like you want it. Like you can't trust yourself at all. And so they may move things around in the house. They may say things and then deny it later. They may have people come and tell you a totally different version of a story. There's all kinds of ways of doing this. But when this is an ongoing, manipulative, strategic plan, this is literally crushing you and bringing you to like, the point of nervous breakdown. And you can't even trust yourself. And you're just torn up inside. That is a time that you need to back away from the situation, that you need to consult someone that you trust. Now, the hard thing is, because when you're dealing with an addict or an alcoholic, they're really good. I mean, really good. You guys know me. I know how to call out this stuff. I deal with addicts and alcoholics every day. But if I didn't deal with their families, I would fall for some of this stuff. That's why I won't see them. I'm not seeing the family because I'm like, I don't know. I wouldn't know what to believe. And so they'll get even the people around you and on their side, because they're gonna spin some stories about you to your friends, your other family, to the counselors involved, that talk. Then, you know, they're gonna say that you're mean and you're controlling and you're evil and you're, you know, you're emotionally crazy and all this kind of stuff. They're gonna spin these stories and then when they get you in front of those people, they're gonna push your button in such a way that's gonna cause you to act that way. They're gonna set you off. So now you've just sort of proven in front of these other people that everything they've been saying about you is right. And this is another one of those ways in which they're really intentionally and purposefully setting you up. Don't let yourself be Treated this way, get an objective point of view, call it out. If you think that's what is happening, say, hey, I feel like you're setting me up here, like what's going on? Because when you take those secrets, those things that are going on and you calmly and you rationally bring them up to the surface, it's really hard to deny. And they may start, start to backpedal and they may start to argue with you and they may get a little bit more escalated. But I just want you to hold your calm and if they get mean or violent, I want you to back out of the situation. Do not allow yourself to be treated really badly. Do not put yourself in a dangerous situation. That's not okay. So some of you have heard me say this. My formula for dealing with people is safety first, then what's therapeutic. And I think maybe that's the point that's not coming across completely on some of my other videos. There's a lot of things that I can teach you to do to get an addict or an alcoholic to come around, to get out of denial, to stop enabling them. And a lot of those things involved empathy and all those other nice things. But that does not surpass safety. So remember, safety is first, alright? The last psychologically aggressive behavior that we're going to cover in this video is emotional blackmail. And this is when a person is literally holding you hostage from a threat. Not a threat to like hit you or kill you or blow up your car or something, but a threat to do something that would emotionally devastate you. Sometimes the person with the addiction will actually threaten themselves. They'll say, well, if you're not gonna give me that, I'm so sick I'm gonna be in withdrawal and I'll probably just kill myself because I can't live with that. You see, that's like, give me this money, because if you don't, I'll be so sick I'm gonna kill myself. Oh my goodness. That is emotional blackmail because now you're really held hostage. Other times they do it in slightly more subtle ways, like they'll say things to you, well, if you don't give me the money, then I'm just gonna have to go out on the street and get it. And so then you start imagining all these terrible things that they'd have to do on the street to get it. Or say, well, if you don't give it to me, then I'm just gonna steal it and I'll probably even get arrested. And I guess that'll be on you, you know, they'll flip that on you, but they'll emotionally blackmail you with threats to their own safety and well being. Other times they may threaten other things. You know, they may know a secret about you and literally blackmail you with it. They may say, well, if you don't do this, I'm gonna tell the kids about X, Y and Z. You know, so it's that like holding something over your head. And in that kind of thing, you cannot let emotional blackmail work. You gotta call that immed. And if you don't know how to do that, especially if you have someone that has a tendency to sort of threaten their own self in some kind of way, then make sure you check out my video on what to do when someone threatens suicide. Because in that video I go through exactly what steps to take. Even if you think they're bluffing, even if you think they're just trying to manipulate you, I want you to take those steps. Because remember, safety before what's therapeutic. This is all about getting back control of your self and your life. And that is truly the first step to getting control over your family situation. And I'd love to hear more from you guys. What are some psychologically aggressive things that you've had done to you or that you've done to someone else? Because these stories, when you share them, could really help someone else. So let me know your experience in the comments.