Change This One Thing, And Break The Cycle Of Addiction Forever! (No more relapses, EVER)

In this video, you're going to learn how to break addiction in just one step. No, seriously, I mean it. One step. And this is 100% guaranteed. If you can do this, you can, and you will break your addiction. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you're watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel designed to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life back on track, recover your loved ones, and get back to living the life that you want to live. Now, on this channel, I usually say, if you follow the advice I give you, you will stay five steps ahead of addiction. But in today's video, if you'll follow the advice that I'm about to give you right now, you will be addiction. You will break the cycle. You will be done with it. You'll be back to being a person that you like, that you care about, that you are proud of, and that the people around you like, care about and are proud. Okay, so are you ready? This is big. It's one step. Maybe you should get your pen ready. I'm gonna tell you now, it's not an easy step, but it is pretty simple. Ready? Here goes. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. That's it. Because that is the fuel that you're using to continue your addiction. Victim thinking is always underneath the psychology of the people that I deal with in my office every day for years and years now who are using drugs and alcohol. It's to get real honest with yourself. This is the way that you justify continuing to make bad decisions, continuing to do things that hurt you, that hurts the people around you, and ultimately, the way that you're justifying continuing to make decisions that cause you to be a person that you don't like anymore. And those of you who follow this channel, you know that recovery is about becoming a person that you like, that you respect. And when you can do that, you will have much less need for drugs, probably no need for drugs or alcohol at all. So let's take a look at the ways that we get into this victim mentality, that we justify continuing to make bad decisions because we feel sorry for ourselves, and we make it okay to continue down a road of destruction. Hey, not just our destruction. Don't lie to yourself. This isn't just you're hurting you. This is you hurting everyone around you. This is you robbing the world of all of your talents, gifts, and abilities that you were created to give to the world. Addiction will put you in a very, very selfish mentality that does not mean I'm saying you are a selfish person. My guess is you're not a selfish person at all. But addiction puts you into a selfish state of mind. And in order to get you in that selfish state of mind, it's going to tell you a lot of reasons why it's okay to do what you're doing. It' justify it for you. And the way it's going to justify it is to get you into that victim thinking. So I've got a whole list of these victim thoughts for you. I hear them every single day in my office. So let's go through a few of those that I hear all the time. Some of these are going to sound really, really familiar for you. And make sure you watch this whole thing because after we go through these, we're going to take a hard look at what the real truth of the situation is. So let's cut off the fuel line to addiction. If you can do this, you're going to get the biggest reward. You're going to get your life back, you're going to get your family back, and best of all, you're going to get your self respect back. Okay, here's the list. Are you ready? Maybe you come from a family where everyone's high achievers and you know, you're just not a high achiever like they are. And the expectations are just so high and it's just not fair. You feel sorry for yourself. Maybe you feel sorry for yourself because you're so young. Like you, you can't quit drugs now, you're not even 21. Come on now. Maybe you feel sorry for yourself because your dad, he loves your brother more. That's not a reason to continue to use drugs and alcohol in a problematic way. Here's what I hear all the time. So let's pay really close attention to this one. If you're married, here it is. I use or I drink because my spouse is too controlling. My wife is too controlling, My husband's too uptight and he tries to control everything I do. The truth of it is, most of the time when I hear this, the spouse is being a little controlling. But the reason is because the person is drinking or using too much. So let's be honest, I hear it all the time. I'm only sneak drinking because my wife goes crazy if I drink anything at all. So I have to hide it. No, you sneak drinking because your wife goes crazy. She goes crazy because you have a drinking problem. Let's get real with yourself. You might be telling yourself Something like, well, I don't really drink too much. My spouse is just overreactive because their dad had a problem or their brother had a problem or something like that. No, your spouse is reactive because your substance use is problematic. Maybe you're drinking because you feel like you just do everything for the whole family and everyone's just so ungrateful and no one appreciates you or respects you and you're just totally self sacrificing. Self pity. See that I deserve it thought. That's a self pity thought that comes from a resentment that you're building because you feel like you're being taken advantage of. If that's the case, it's your responsibility to do something about that. It's your responsibility to change these things, not to use the situation to feel sorry for yourself to justify making more bad decisions. I'm not saying none of these things ever happen. Of course these things happen. Maybe your dad does like your brother more, maybe your spouse is controlling. Maybe no one in your family appreciates you. Maybe you are 16 and having to get sober and you're not going to get to go to prom. These are realities. But it's not a reason to continue to be okay to make bad decisions. And remember, hang on because we're coming to the truth of the matter. So definitely keep watching. But first let's go over some more of these really common self pity thoughts that I hear every day. I think it's just ridiculous that I can't have a drink, a glass of wine or champagne at my own child's wedding. Self pity thought. It's not fair that everyone around me gets to drink, use drugs and have all this fun and I can't even be a part of it. Self pity thought. Maybe you're justifying your drinking or using because you you lost your job or you lost a lot of money in the stock market. Hey, I get it. That sucks. And it's okay, I guess, to feel a little sorry for yourself about some of these things, but not to the point that you use that to justify continued bad decisions. I'm telling you, when you can stop the justification and the rationalization, you can get really honest with yourself. The addiction will stop because it needs this. Telling you this is the fuel line that's driving the problem. Okay, here's one that I heard in my office just yesterday. I'm using and I'm acting this way because my family treats me like a drug addict and it's just totally ridiculous and not fair. Let me give you a little backstory. On this. This same person that's sitting in my office that's telling me this four months ago, came into my office and told me, yeah, I'm a drug addict. I got off the chain, I was crazy wild, threatened to kill myself, threatened to kill people, and got sent to the psych hospital. But now this same person says that they're continuing to use substances because their family is treating them like a drug addict. I know. Confusing, right? It doesn't make any sense. I'm telling you, the thinking around addiction causes you to get just so distorted in reality. And the answer is honesty. The answer is truth. The answer is not letting yourself off the hook. When you have a bad day, when other people have something that you don't, when things just don't seem fair, it is not a reason to let yourself off the hook and make this bad decision. And don't worry, we're coming to the truth about why that really, really is the case. Maybe you're telling yourself that you're using drugs because you have to, because the only way you can make money is to sell drugs because your mom kicked you out of the house. Well, let's stop and think. Why'd your mom kick you out the house? My guess is it might have something to do with the fact that you were using a lot of drugs. So let's be real, let's not use these excuses anymore. Here's one I heard last week. You know, it's not so much that I have a problem with alcohol. It's just that my parents are so religious. They just think any drink or using at all is like a total sin. So it's not so much that I'm out of bounds, it's just that their thinking is totally off base. Here's one. I just want to have a normal teenage life. I just want to have the normal college experience. Getting wasted, making bad choices and hurting all the people around you isn't a right. It isn't something that you have the right to, and it isn't something that you're being robbed of. That is a complete misconception. You're not entitled to go around and get messed up and destroy everything and everyone around you just because you're young. It's just not the way it works. And here is the most common self pity victimization thought that leads to relapse that I see, period, across the board. Are you ready for it? This is it, number one right here. I just want to be able to drink or use sociably. Now there are a lot of Variations of this thought, it can sound like, I just want to be able to have a few drinks. I, you know, on the boat with my friends in the summer, I just want to be able to have a couple of glasses of wine at a family wedding. I should be able to just smoke weed occasionally with my buddies at a college party. But when you're being really honest with yourself, you're gonna have to say, can you really do that? Can you really just have two drinks? Can you really just have a couple of beers on the boat with your buddies? Can you just occasionally share a joint with some friends at the college party? My guess is probably not or you wouldn't be watching this video. My guess is you've tried that and it hasn't worked. Honesty is the cure for addiction. The more self responsibility you can take, the more you can live a life of integrity. And by that I mean living a life that is consistent with your value system. The more you're going to like yourself, the more you're going to respect yourself. And being in recovery, not only going to be easy, it's going to be way easier than living that addicted life that you were living. Because let's be honest, that's miserable. Let's have the truth of it. Do you deserve to be miserable? No, you don't deserve to be miserable. So why are you making all these excuses and justifications to keep that misery? Okay, so I know I told you, we're going to get to the truth. The truth of it is when you're behaving that way, you're acting in a selfish way, in a way that is hurting all of the people around you. That's the truth of it. And so you're going around here feeling sorry for yourself because you can't have two glasses of wine at a party, but you're feeling sorry for yourself to the point that you're embarrassing your child at their wedding, that you're ruining the family event, that you're forgetting to turn in your college final paper because you got wasted the night before and you overslept your final exams that your parent paid $10,000 for that semester. So truly, is it you that you should feel sorry for yourself about, or is it the people around you that this addiction is destroying? I'm not trying to say that you're a bad person. I'm not trying to say that you don't care about people. I'm trying to say that if you let this addiction control your thinking like that, then this addiction will hurt everyone around you. It takes a willingness to look at some really hard things and, and to confront some not true thoughts that we've been having. So if you've made it this far in the video, then you're in the mindset where you're taking a real hard, honest look into yourself, into your thinking, and into how to beat addiction. And so for that reason, you're perfectly set up to watch this video next. It's your next step in getting honest with your thoughts and your feelings and your behaviors. I'm put it right up here, so just click on it.