Confronting the Devastating Effects of Addiction and Trauma

Otherwise, in fact, there are so many variables that go into how and why people make the decisions they do that it's kind of mind blowing. And once you hear about some of this research, you might feel a little unsettled about it, because like I said, we like to think we're in charge, but we're not nearly as in charge as we think we are. There are so many factors like, like trauma, like your childhood experiences, like how your morning has gone, like whether or not you're hungry or not, about your subconscious biases. All these things impact how we make decisions. Our environment controls our decision making much, much more than you. And I like to think that it does. And I want to pull apart some of this. I want to tell you about some of this research, and then I also want to tell you how to empower yourself to take more control, especially when it comes to addictive behaviors or having an addicted loved one. You can see that the decision making, your own control over your decision making when you have an addiction or you have an addicted loved one gets greatly reduced just by that. And when we add in these other factors, when you feel like I'm going crazy and why did I make that decision and I don't even understand what I was thinking, then you're probably right. I can't tell you how often, like, you know, I'm working with people and they're doing really good for a while and they relapse. And, and the question, you know, especially their family, the question they first get asked is, why did you relapse? What happened? And a lot of people will say, I don't really know. And when they say that, the family tends to think, oh, you just don't want to tell me. You, you were, you probably been relapsing for a month. You, You've been thinking about it or whatever, and you think that they're, that they're lying. And then other people will say, well, I think it was, I got an argument with my wife or I was really stressed out or work demand or something like that. They'll give you a reason. And it. That one, it makes you feel better because it. When we can pinpoint and identify, okay, there was a trigger, there was a reason. And we can like plan around these triggers and reasons. Gives us more of a sense of being in control and we feel better about it. But actually, decisions are actually made first. And then we look for facts and evidence to support our decisions. What we think, we think it happens the opposite of that. We think that we're objective and we think through all the pros and cons, and we're rational about things. And once we weigh all the information and evidence out, then we make a decision. But that's not how it works. What we do is we make a decision, and then we look for evidence of that. And that's a big key part into one of the things that I talk about on this channel all the time. That thing being how people with addictions will blame other people often because they're making these decisions to keep making bad decisions over and over and over again. And then they're looking for a reason, because oftentimes they don't understand all the reasons why they're really doing it. So they're trying to understand themselves. They're trying to rationalize and justify. And that's a big part of what goes into the denial process, what goes into blaming other people. And guess what? It's not just people with addictions that do that. We all do that to some degree, Especially when it comes to we feel like we made a bad decision or something that we regret or we're shameful or guilty feeling about, then we definitely want to pinpoint all these external reasons and what. What all went into it. But it's just not near as clear and concise as all that. It's kind of complicated, actually. Let's start with the effect that traumas can have on our decision making. Now, most people know there is a connection between addiction and trauma. A lot of people think that everybody that has an addiction has childhood trauma. I'm not necessarily one of those believers. I think there's a strong connection there. But I've certainly worked with a lot of people who had no significant childhood trauma that they can identify. However, even when you look at that connection, it probably isn't contributing in the way that you think. Most people, especially family members, they think, oh, this person, they're having, like, all these, like, terrible memories. And it's causing them so much distress to remember all these bad things happen, which is a thing. I mean, that happens then. Then they're going out and using to make those memories go away. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen. But actually what really goes on, that connection between trauma and addiction and just trauma and decision making in general is especially if it's gone on in your childhood while you're. Like brain wiring is taking place, then it actually makes your brain form differently. For example, like your amygdala, your stress response systems. If you are living in a very chaotic home and childhood, your stress Response systems develop very differently than. Than other children because it's a survival mechanism. Like parts of your brain will be bigger and parts of your brain will be smaller because of the environment that you grew up in. And it's your brain, it's your body's way of trying to protect you. It's like giving you a really strong alarm system. And when you grow up with a really strong alarm system, you tend to be a lot more hypervigilant. You tend to take things much more personally. You tend to have a hyper awareness about what's going on around you, which when you're in the trauma, is helpful. You need to be hyper aware of what's going around you so you can protect yourself, so you can make decisions to keep yourself safe. But then later in life, you still have that big, giant alarm system. And it doesn't just go away because you grew up or because you got out of the situation. And this happens not just in childhood, by the way. Like, any trauma can cause this. It messes up your, basically your fight or flight system. And so you develop these adaptive mechanisms that are still at play. And so the connection there between trauma and addiction is when you're so hyper vigilant, when you're so reactive, when everything is coming in like your senses are coming in really, really strong, that's pretty uncomfortable. And so you could see why someone might want to medicate or soothe the uncomfortableness of that anxiety, that feeling upset, having your feelings hurt and then got. I'm sure most of y' all can follow all that because you're probably like, yeah, that makes sense. I got that avenue that. Now let's layer in on top of that, your attachment style. Some of you have seen my videos on attachment, if you haven't. Attachment style is a whole, like, genre in and of itself. There's a lot of great YouTube channels about it. But basically in your very early childhood, like we're talking like infancy childhood, up to being toddler, you know, your ability to attach to other people is. Is that's when that wiring comes in into your brain and based on events that happen, will will determine your attachment style. Whether or not you're an anxious. Attachment means you're always worried about your relationships. Does someone really care about me? Are they going to do me wrong? Maybe I should leave them before I get hurt. Maybe I should call them 400 times a day to make sure we're cool. You've got that attachment style, which is layered in on a very subconscious level that's making decisions, particularly relationship Decisions and how to interact with other people in the world. Attachment styles layered in there. You also have the regular old. What's going on in your environment right now plays a big part in your decision making. For example, if you started out your day and it was a bad day and something terrible happened at work, and then you get a call from your spouse at lunchtime asking you some questions and want you to make some decisions, you might make those decisions very differently based on your mood, which was being impacted by what happened earlier in that day. Let me give you some examples. I had a. Had a client not, not too long ago, a few months back, who had been doing really good in recovery. He had been sober, he had really worked hard. I mean, he really worked on himself as a person. He'd come a long way. He had months and months and months sober. But he was on, he was on a work trip one day where he had to drive a long time and he had a. And he had a relapse. And, you know, he made some bad decisions in that moment. And, and he was confused as to why, and his family was confused as to why. And they, that's when, that's when I met him. So all that leads up to when he comes to me and they're like, okay. And we're like. And even he's like, why did I do this? How can I keep this from happening again? Trying to understand it. And most people, they're looking for some kind of deep, like, giant secret. Like, maybe he wasn't even trying at all. Maybe it's because he won't get a sponsor. Maybe it's because. And we're trying to find these big reasons. But when I analyzed the situation with him and we sort of played it back step by step by step about what happened and even, you know, the weeks preceding that, I'm sure there were many factors, but the big factors that came to my mind was he was on a really, really long work trip. And he had driven many hours that day and had a couple of stops in there where he had to like, do business meetings, you know, which are stressful. So you've got this long day of driving, you've got these business meetings. He's sort of a health conscious kind of person. So he tries not to eat like junk food. So he's trying to wait till he gets to where he's going so that he can like, you know, eat something healthy. Well, he stops at the gas station to get gas and that's when the bad decision was made. Can you see how it was really not so much this like giant premeditated thing like he wanted to drink or use the whole time. It wasn't because he wasn't calling a sponsor. It wasn't any of that that most people think. I truly believe after a lot of discussion it was because he was hungry and tired. And when you're hungry and you're tired, your willpower gas tank is real low. And once you get real low in your willpower gas tank, you tend to not be able to delay gratification or restrain yourself in just impulsive decisions and things you say to other people, how you act, how you conduct yourself in general. I mean think about it like the Snickers commercial, right? Are you hangry? We all know what being hangry is like and we will make drastically different decisions when we're hangry. And that's just one element of factors that's coming in that impacts the way we live our lives. There are so many more things like for example, just your general sense of yourself, like your self confidence, your self esteem, who, who and how you see yourself. One of the things I work on a lot with my clients who have addiction is, is getting them to change self view. Sometimes they have a self view of well I've tried, you know, 10 times to stop and I always go back and I, I never make it past three months or something like that. And I'm like, okay, first of all, when you're seeing yourself through that lens, you're almost like writing it in stone that you're not going to make it past three months because you've decided you're not capable of it. And that's actually not true because being sober on day you know what 91 is the same as being sober on day 60. There's nothing different about that. And so there's magic line in the sand. But people come to believe these things about themselves. Or people believe like I'm weak or I'm lazy or I always screw it up or always self sabotaging. When we have those self beliefs, we may not be aware of it at the time, but when we're making those everyday decisions, all of those things come into play. I was listening to this researcher guy, this real academic guy recently who wrote a book I think in and I can't remember exactly, but I think the book is called you have no free will. And when you look at his theories on it, he literally says you have zero free will. We just think that we do. And one of the studies that he talks about or sites in in his book and in this interview I was watching was he talks about and I never heard this before, but for me I was like, what? Like I knew all this, but like when you hear it in this study, it's just like, you know, the study was about parole hearings. So, you know, when people, they make bad choices, they go to prison, they get prison sentences, and after so long, most of the time they can be eligible for parole means released from prison. And when that happens, you go before a panel of people. I didn't even realize they were judges until this guy s. But it's judges or whatever who make the decisions about who to get released and who not. And what they found, and this study has been replicated more than once, and it's consistent findings, is that your chances of getting parole if you were early in the docket were like 60, I think 5%. If you were on the docket late in the day or you one of the last cases, you had almost zero chance of being paroled. And if you were right around lunchtime, right before or right after that had the biggest impact on whether or not people got paroled or not. If you, if you got to come before the judge, right after the judge ate and had some blood sugar and he was full and you know, he was thinking clear, you have a much, much, much larger chance of getting paroled. Now when the, when judges look at this, they, they think, no, that's not true. You know, we want to fight it. You know, like I have all this education and I'm making these decisions based on all of these factors. And it gives us the illusion that we're being rational human beings. But in fact, we're oftentimes not being rational human beings. We're making decisions emotionally, we're making decisions because we're hangry. We're making decisions because of something that happened to us in our childhood. And now something's happening in the current that reminds us of that. And we either react favorably or unfavorably, depending on our experience earlier in the day or way back. There are just all these things that come into play. And when, when I think about that, it's really amazing that any of us overcome any of these, any of our long term habits. I mean, when it comes to addiction, that's, that's like crazy to think about. You got to overcome these habitual patterns that you've done over and over and over and over again until you've like created these giant entrenched grooves in your brain of neuropathways. But you got all these other factors coming into play. There was a. There's also a. I think this is still Netflix. I watched this a year or two ago. But there's a cool show called. I think it's called 100 humans. Have you seen that? Put 100 in the comment section if you've seen this. This is really fun and interesting to watch. But it's like they take 100 humans and they're doing all these, like, psychological experiments on them. And one of the tests that they do is they. They take the participants and they put them in an environment. It kind of looks like, like police training, like you see on tv. Like police. You know, it's like they train and things pop up and they have to decide if it's a bad guy or a good guy, and they shoot it. Or like Men in Black. I don't know if y' all remember Men in Black, where they try to, like, get the aliens and not the people, but they. They put the participants in the situation where it's dark and they have a gun on them, and they have to decide in a millisecond, like a fraction of a second whether or not someone is a threat to shoot or to not shoot. And so they put these, like, I think they use actually live people as the props instead of like, like cardboard cutouts. And some of them had guns in their hand, and that would represent a threat. And you would. You would be like, I need to shoot that thread. He's about to shoot me. And some of them had cell phones in their hand and you had. They would sort of pop out. It was. It was fairly dark. And you had to decide almost without thinking, I mean, really, really fast, to shoot or to not shoot. And the findings of this, kind of alarming, honestly, because what, what they found across the board, the factor that influenced that wasn't what was in the hand. It wasn't whether it was a gun or a phone. It was the color of the skin of the person that was the prop in the. In the experiment, the person that was holding the gun or the cell phone. And you might not be too surprised to know that research shows that darker skinned people got judged or viewed as a threat more quickly, more often. But you might be surprised to know that darker skinned people got judged more threatening more quickly by all the study participants, no matter what their race was. So it's these subconscious biases that we have that we're not even aware of that are coming into play in our decision making. Another one that I thought was, it's also on the show Hundred Humans. You guys should check it out. It's kind of fun. That I thought was interesting is one of the. One of the experiments they did is they. They had these three guys, three girls, and they're. So there's six people total, and there's three couples between them. And they had them sort of all mixed up. And then they had participants come in and. And literally pull the people and match them together. He said, there's three couples here, group them together. Who do you think are the couples? And so all the participants, they come up and they group them, you know, indifferently or whatever. But everybody grouped them all. Man, woman, man, woman, man, woman. And it was actually one heterosexual couple, one homosexual couple, men, men, and one homosexual couple, women, women. And all the participants, except I think one, grouped them man, woman, man, woman, man, woman, even participants that were not heterosexual themselves. So again, it's our automatic thinking that comes into play so much more than we realize. We can be going through our day, and there can be a smell in the environment that we're not even aware of. And maybe it reminds us from something in our past that's an unpleasant memory, or maybe it reminds us something in our past that's a pleasant memory. Like, for example, when I go to the beauty shop, when I go to the hairdresser, even if it smells like hair chemicals, it reminds. I have a fond memory of that because my mom used to do hair. And so when I was younger, me and my friends, me and my sister, we would, like, go sit at her shop on Saturday. She would do, like, little ladies, blue hair, like, tease their hair up for the week. And we would sit there and have fun. We watch, wash each other's hair. We would do makeup and hair all day long. We did all the stuff. And it was back in the time everyone's getting perms, so it always smelled like perm. And if I smell those smells, it just makes me happy because I have those good memories associated with it. My husband is the same when it comes to, like, going into, like, Lowe's or Home Depot, because his dad is. Is like an electrician and. And plumber. And so it reminds me of his dad. And he has good memories just going in there and, like, smelling the wood, you know, all the smells in there. And all of those things are impacting our decisions. Sometimes we're aware, like, I'm aware about the hairdresser thing. My husband is aware about the Home Depot thing, But there's a lot more that we may not have memory of, but our Brain, at any one second or moment is taking in thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of information through our senses. And we're only aware of a few of them because we can only consciously. We can only consciously think through a few of them at a time. And the rest of it is. It's in there. All the information is being taken in. But. But we're not necessarily aware of it, and we don't know what it is. And because we're not aware of it and we don't know what it is, we don't know how it's affecting us. And when we, when all those things are subconscious and we don't know how it's affecting us, we have less control over our decision making. So when I think about all that, it's kind of frightening, to be honest, because I like. I like to think I'm in charge of me. I like to be the boss of me. And, and I like to think I'm in charge of my fate, my future and everything like that. I'm kind of sassy that way, I guess, but there's a lot more going on in there. It's kind of frightening. However, you can use that same information, this knowledge and you. And once you understand the environment is why you make the decisions you do, then you can choose to control your environment. That is the most powerful, empowering thing that you can do to influence your decisions. Because if the environment is influencing your decisions, then if you put yourself in certain environments, you have to be honest with yourself about the power that you have over that environment. There's some other really cool. Well, I don't know if they're cool, but super interesting to me. Studies about evil, about why people make evil choices. And there, there's a TED Talk and I can't remember the guy's name. It's really good. You should watch. I used to show it to my IOP group. But, you know, he says everybody thinks it's like one bad apple ruins all the other apples in the barrel, but that's not true. The barrel ruins every apple in the barrel. And, and he talks about this from some of those old. What was it called? Somebody telling us called. I've like, blanked on it. The study. You. Everybody learns about it in psychology where they had a group of students and this really happened. A students, college students come in and play prison guards and they put them in a real prison and a group of students that came in and, and they were prisoners. So you had the, the guards and the prisoners and they put them in A real prison environment, and they let it play out. And what they saw was massive abuse of power, like major mistreatment of the prisoners by the prison guards. And there it wasn't. They picked only, like, mean jerk people to play the prison guards. It's the environment, it's the setup. And we see this in war crimes. We see this play out in real life over and over and over. If you think that you're not capable of making a horrible decision, you are wrong. If you think you're not capable of killing someone, you're wrong. If you think, oh, my gosh, you know, you look at other people and you judge the decisions they've made, and you think, I would never. You got to be careful about that because you're. We're all capable of any of it in the right situation. So it's so, so important to control the influences in your life. For example, if you met, well, many of you who watch this channel, you, I hear, like every day. I read comments, and the comments says, oh my gosh, I wish I would have found you five years ago. I was doing it all wrong. And now I've just been doing like, your stuff for like, three days, and it's already better. So they watched some videos and that changed their decision making, right? And then once they made some different decisions and it worked, then that behavior is getting reinforced. And so then they're more likely to do that again and again and again. Whether or not they are a person trying to overcome addiction or a person trying to help a loved one overcome an addiction, it's the same way. So it. That's because of an influence you put in front of you. And that happened because of influence I put in front of my own self. Right? So we talk to people in early recovery about people, places, and things, and we say, don't hang out with your using friends. And hey, I stand by that. That's good advice. But it's more complicated than that. Usually I tell my clients, don't hang out with people who have crappy energy. Don't hang out with people who have bad attitude, who make bad decisions, who aren't doing anything with their life, whether they use drugs or not use drugs, because that influences you, how you feel, how you see the world, and how you make decisions. And if they use drugs, you're a lot more likely to do that, right? So if you're a family member and you're trying to get through this with a loved one and you're constantly subjecting yourself to movies that end really badly, about this. And you belong to support groups where everybody's negative and nobody ever makes it out. And you're looking at terrible, like research, statistic numbers. Guess what? You are literally implanting it in your brain that it cannot work, that no one gets better. This is a hopeless situation. And guess what? Your situation will be hopeless because you have inundated yourself with that information. It works the same way with people in early recovery. It's like people say, do you have to go to meetings every day? I'm like, hey, I love meetings. You go to meetings every day because that's a good influence. It keeps your head on straight. But there are other ways to do it too. You just need an influence, right? Whether it's church, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a different kind of meeting you want to go to, all of the. A book, anything. You're just. If you will control the influence, you'll control how solid you feel, whether you feel hopeful or hopeless, whether you're in a good frame of mind or a bad frame of mind. That affects how you interact with other people all day, which affects how they interact with you, which affects how stressed out and triggered and where your willpower tank is. All of these complicated factors come into play. It's just not nearly as simple as we think. And if I could get one thing across to you guys today to help you really understand this. I want you to pay attention to the decisions that you're making. And if you will slow it down and you will watch yourself, you'll notice that you make a decision and then you find the evidence, right? Like, for example, maybe you go to the mall and you buy a really expensive pair of shoes because they look cool and you wanted them. And then you tell yourself, well, I really. I had to buy some new shoes because I have this big presentation coming up anyway, and I really need some nice shoes. That's what I mean when I say we make a decision and then we find the evidence on the back end. A person has an affair in their life, and then they start looking for how their spouse, or maybe they want to have an affair, but. And then they start looking at how their spouse isn't treating them right, isn't doing, you know, what they should be doing and is unfair and all these things, because we're trying to support the decisions we make, and we gotta get. We gotta get that in. In reverse. Especially if you're trying to overcome an addiction because your mind is being controlled by so many things already. Without the addiction, you throw the Addiction on top. And. And it really does kind of put you in a powerless situation. But you don't have to stay there. The best way to do it is to control the environment and the influences. All right. I felt like I was preaching today. I feel like I was on the soapbox or something. We're about to take some questions and comments for those of you who are watching live. For those of you who are watching on the playback. Hey, we're glad you're here, too. We know you can't always come live. You got work, you got stuff. But if you missed it and you want to be on here live to ask a question. We are live every Thursday at 1pm Eastern. And I actually have my son with us today because he's out of school. This is summertime, and he had an orthodontist appointment anyways, so he's gonna be my moderator because Bri is gone for a little trip. So he's watching your comments. So get him up there because he's trying to figure out which ones he's gonna put on the screen for me. I'm gonna bring him on here in just a second. And while you guys get those comments up there, I will remind you there are, as always, more resources in the description. We have a free Facebook group for families. We have a coaching group for families. We have strength based recovery coaching, which is all about mindset. It's all about controlling the influence and the factors and the way you think. All those resources are down there. The links are there. All right, Weston, you ready to come on here? This is Weston. This is my son. He's almost 13. He's about to be out for the summer, and he's going to moderate these questions. You got. You got some questions you're going to give me. All right, pop them up there. All right. Oh, I'm g. Have to put my granny glasses on. Weston. I can't even read. I know. All right, this one is from Hope. And Hope says, my addicted loved one and I are separated because of use. How do I handle the affection? He tries to give when I'm not attracted. And I feel repulsed by him knowing he wants connection and probably will bring us closer. Well, I think it depends on which way you. You want to handle that, Hope. Like, do you want to be more receptive to the affection? If you want to be more receptive to the affection, then put influence in your life that makes you feel more hopeful, that makes you see that people can change. That makes you feel like, okay, we are going to get through this, and that will help you be more optimistic about it, which will help you let your guard down. If you're trying really hard to stay solid no matter what he does, because you don't want to go back, then keep influencing your life. That keeps you like on that path. So I don't know which way you want to lean, but I know that there are things you can do to reinforce either which direction. What else we got, Weston? All right, this is from Judy. Judy says, what about children and adolescents experiencing constant trauma because of addiction and now are in fight, flight or free state? That's a really great question. It's such a big question, Judy. I probably won't do it justice here, but a lot of us grew up in traumatic environments. And some of those things that happen to us serve us well. And they turn into gifts of ours and sometimes it turns into curse, a curse for us. It's kind of, I usually say your, your superpower is usually also your kryptonite. The thing that makes you great is the thing that will take you down. And so if you understand about yourself what your triggers are, what your, the things that remind you of childhood are and how you react to them, you, you have more power and control because you're bringing them from the sub subconscious into the conscious. And there are other things that you can do. It sounds crazy, but you can do some things to resolve that trauma. I was listening to an expert the other day, and he was talking about just experiencing that trauma. Telling someone else and having someone else witness that trauma with you means just sit with you, hear you, understand you have an emotionally corrective experience, have that person respond to you in a way that's, you know, like care for you in a non judgmental way, the way you should have got cared for as a child. That can actually help rewire. So there's some ways to rewire that. But most of all, if you can bring it up to your conscious awareness, it won't control you nearly as much. Maymay says my husband will tell me constantly how he's struggling acknowledging his addictions. I tell him there is no shame in seeking help, and he will tell me I'm making it worse. How do I encourage him? Leave that up there for a second because sometimes I have to like reread it. I'm slow processor here. Weston. Is he telling you, I guess I have a question for you, Mama. Is he telling you, like when you say, you know, you should get help, there's no shame in that. Is he saying you're making it Worse by telling him that, like, in that moment, or he's trying to say, like, you're making it worse. The whole reason I'm addicted is because you're like, a naggy wife or whatever. Is he saying, like, in general you're causing it or because you're saying that typically. And I have some videos on this, too. Mei May is. Instead of saying the words get help to people, because I know it seems minor, and it seems like, gosh, it's just coming from a loving, supportive place. It can seem. It can come across as judgy or pointed or like you're saying something. It's kind of like if you ask somebody, like, have you taken your medicine today? I mean, you're definitely saying something, right? It's like, oh, you crazy when you don't take your pills, so please take your pills. There's an implied messaging there. And. And sometimes. And even though you don't mean it that way, sometimes people will take it that way. So I usually encourage people not to use the word help or doctor or professional or something, like, because it just can be triggering. It's like, oh, you're saying I'm crazy or whatever. And instead of telling someone, encourage, just say, what do you think would help? And let them come forward with the ideas. And it's like all these questioning techniques. It's like the invisible intervention program. I literally teach you how to interact with someone which changes their environment, which will absolutely 100% change the way they interact with you, and you can influence their decision making. If you didn't think that people could influence other people's decision making, you wouldn't send them to counselors. Right? You feel like, oh, the counselors have the magic power. Not really, because we can only control the environment for, like, 45 minutes a week. And if they live with you or around you, you control the environment a lot. So you have so much more influence and power than, like, a counselor could have. It's just that you just need to know how to use your influence and power to create the right kind of environment that's more conducive to someone making a decision for change. What else we got, Patricia? Childhood trauma and coping mechanisms plus attachment style do not change in my experience. Because he got sober, how do you approach that topic with him? Oh, you're. I mean, you're right, Patricia. Someone gets sober, you know, they may have had a tat. You know, their attachment style has been there before they had an addiction. Some of these defense mechanisms have been there long before they had an Addiction. The addiction was probably just one of their, like, maladaptive coping mechanisms. So we took one of the defense mechanisms away, but the other ones are still there. One thing I would say to you is a lot of people in this situation, they'll want to call the person a dry drunk. And that's a term that basically means, oh, you're not drinking or using, but you haven't worked on yourself, so you're still like alcoholic. It's old recovery term. I wouldn't use terms like that because I think it minimizes someone's progress. And I think it feels like everything that the person does is because of addiction. And it's not. And we all have character defects. The first thing I would do is I would normalize whatever those things are and I would come at it in a non judgmental way and, and help that person to realize why they attach or don't attach in the ways that they do or don't and help them identify their own defense mechanisms. Because all you're trying to do is bring it from the unconscious awareness into the conscious awareness. And once you're aware of that, you will decide differently. CB says, isn't trauma just part of the deal of growing up with addict? How would one ever start to work on noticing our actions because of trauma, growing up, seeing it, and now dealing with it again? Example, I can never see someone get hurt because they are a mess. I have to stop and breathe for a while and move on. Okay, go back up to the first part of that, Weston. Yeah, that. Yeah, there you go, huh? The first part of what you're saying is, isn't trauma just a part of growing up? And then you're also saying with an addict, I think to some degree we all have some life changing experiences. We might not call them trauma, but Lord, if you've been to middle school, you've got a little trauma, right? If you went through middle school, right, Weston, Middle school's traumatic, isn't it? It is. Right. And so it may not be like trauma to the level that you identify as trauma, but we have experiences which shape our brains and shape our reality. So the question is, is yes. And if you grow up in a home with an addict, then yes, there's a certain amount of trauma that's associated with that. Even if the person's not like a screaming, aggressive drunk or something there, it is still a. Affects everyone else in the house. What else we got? Okay, you're doing awesome. Question. Sharon says, why does the addict blame me? It's so frustrating to Know I haven't done anything wrong. That's a really good question, Sharon. And we talk on this channel a lot about it. So, I mean, I have video after video about it. But I'm just going to give you the short answer here. Here. Will you put. Yeah. Sharon back? Yeah, There we go. So part of it is, is because they're using, like I said before, it's like they're making a decision, and then they need a reason why they made that decision. So we. We're justifying on the back end. And one of those. I always say when. When someone is an addict or an alcoholic, there's going to be a villain in the story. Like, there has to be a villain in the story because it's part of how they continue to justify and continue to make decisions that they don't feel good about deep down inside. And they kind of know it wrong. They deflect their own shame and guilt by focusing on the wrongdoings of others. That's the first half. The second half is while you're watching someone become more and more addicted, you kind of get more and more crazy because they're lying, sneaking, hiding. They're not being themselves. They're not taking care of the responsibilities. And so you start to change as a person. And so you actually start to. On the villain role. So not only are they, like, trying to mentally say that you are, it puts you in a position where you can become, you know, not yourself. And so there's just a lot of factors that go into it, but that those are the big two. All right. I believe this question. All right. All right, here we go. My daughter's room is cluttered corner to corner. She currently lives in the street, and when she comes home, gets overwhelmed. So should we clean it for her? It may really upset her. Torn. Mom, I think you should ask her. I think you should say, you know, I know it's, like, overwhelming for you when you come home to see all that and you probably don't know when to start. Would it help if we either helped you with that or did that for you? Just ask. If you don't ask, it's a bit of a boundary issue. And you're right, she might feel upset. So I would just ask. All right. Laura says, how do you help someone that only asks for money, keeps leaving rehab? She doesn't talk to family unless she wants something. It is very hard to have influence over someone when they don't communicate with you. And I say all the time, like, the techniques I teach, they. They definitely Work, but you have to have, like, contact with the person if they're only talking to you when they want something. And that means the only influence you have at that moment is whether or not to pick them up from rehab or give them money or not give them money, either which way is, like, a bad choice, right? It's like, if I don't pick them up, then they're, like, screaming mad. I'm the villain. If I do pick them up, then I'm enabling. You don't have any good choices. It is very difficult to influence someone when you don't have contact with them because you're not in their environmental every day. CB how does one know if action we have as a partner or parent of the addict is from trauma? Well, that's a good question. My first instinct when I read that CV was to say, after you do the action, do you. Do you feel good about it? Like, do you feel like, okay, that's what I wanted to do, that's how I wanted to handle it? Like, that was reasonable, that was rational? Or do you feel like, dude, I lost my mind? If you lost your mind and you did something that you're looking back on and you're like, I don't really even know why I did it that way or how I handled it that way, then probably you're having a reaction to the environment, to the situation, which is chaotic. I mean, just someone else's energy impacts you. If you're around people, they're sad. You're gonna feel sad. If you're around people, they're happy, you're gonna feel happy. So if you're around someone who's addicted, they're, like, on emotional roller coaster. They're up, down, sideways, doing backflips and all this other stuff. And just their energy, even if they say nothing to you, they're just in the room with you, is going to impact you. And that's like. Almost like. Like some kind of magnetic force that you. That you have no control over. So, and. And that in some ways, that's the environment influencing you and how you react. We got. We got more. I'm doing my best. You're doing good. Barbie says my son relapsed last night, and I was supposed to take him to rehab early this morning. He was starving, just got out of jail, and is now mia. What can I say when he calls me today, I still want him to go say, where are you? I'll pick you up and we'll take you there. If he calls you later today and Then that's your. That's your chance to say, hey, I. I know you probably got scared or got freaked out or whatever, but I'm still here for you. I'll still pick you up, and I'll still take you. If he says no, then say, that's okay. You can change your mind. Let me know when you're ready. Sharon says, when can an addict stop using trauma as an excuse? He's 56 and doesn't do anything about his addiction. I am not one. Even though I'm making this whole video saying all these things influence our decisions. I'm not one that says that you can claim anything like that and let yourself off the hook. Like, I can't hit my child and then say, well, my daddy hit me. And that's. I can't help it. Like, uncool, man. Because once you're aware that it is trauma that's causing it, it's not in the subconscious. It's up here in the conscious. Now you have some ability to decide how to influence that, Decide whether you're going to get help, to be aware when you're being treated. There's so many things. And so for me, understanding it, an explanation is not an excuse. And that's what I. So, yes, there's an explanation for it, but doesn't. Once we're aware of that, we can't just keep using as an excuse. Use. Asha says question. I feel like saying whatever toxic behavior he did and how he is getting what he sews, it's coming back to him because he used to be mean, narcissistic personality. But now I think I got some leverage. Is there more that. Oh, I think. I think there's a little bit more. Yeah, right there. How do I handle it when finances is in his control? Yeah, that'd be helpful. Thanks. What the first part of what you're saying, I think, is you're saying he's reaping what he sows. So it's kind of like he's. He's put a bunch of bad junk out there and he's getting a bunch of bad junk back. But the second part of what you're saying or your question, I think is. Is different than that. If I'm understanding right, Asha, you're saying, how do you handle it when he controls the finances? This probably isn't the answer that you want to hear, but the. The answer is, is you get yourself more financial independence. Whatever you need to do to do that, because otherwise you're kind of being. You can be held Hostage by that. Like if you have no means to support yourself, no income, no access to finances, that's just a bad position to be in. So figure out how to, to get yourself more financially independent and then you have more decision making power about whether to stay, go, how long to stay, go, all those things. All right. Julie says, how do I give validity to an anxiety issue, but also looking at the issue of addiction? My husband wants me to see anxiety as manny issue, but I feel he has to address the addiction first. Oh, as the main issue. That's what you're saying. I actually, I have some videos on this. Julie. It's a really good question. And, and you're right about it. It's like people think, well, I'm. I'm drinking or musing because I have an anxiety disorder, this or that or the other. And, and maybe there's some truth in that. Maybe they had some anxiety that it. That did kind of get the process started out. But you can't address anxiety or trauma or anything else as long as someone is using. I mean, they're pouring chemicals on their brain, for goodness sake. There's no way you can get in that brain and heal some of these other things or address these things effectively when they're pouring constant chemicals on. It just doesn't work that way. You can sometimes do it simultaneously, or you can do the addiction first and then the trauma. But I, I personally don't think it works to do the anxiety or the trauma or the depression or whatever without addressing the addiction. I mean, I've met other people that feel differently, but I, I have personally have not seen that work. And they will use that as an excuse to not deal with the addiction. They'll kind of hide behind it. So you validate the anxiety, but you, you also make it clear, but this is an issue like this isn't solving it, or you help them come to see. You don't really say it to them that way because that doesn't help, but you help them come to see that. Olivia says, how do you balance building trust with an addict who is trying to recover from fear of being lied to and trying to protect yourself again? I think that if you examine Olivia, if you examine why you're so fearful that they're gonna lie to you. I think we over worry about being lied to. I mean, I have clients lie to me all the time and I just know it sometimes. I know exactly that they're lying because I've talked to Campbell or Kim. They've already told me what happened. And I'm just trying to see if they're going to tell me the truth. And sometimes they're lying because they're shameful. I mean, people lie for all kinds of reasons, and addiction always will show itself. You don't have to look for it. You don't have to search out all these lies. You don't have to collect evidence. If someone is addicted, the unmanageability will make itself very, very clear. And so if you let yourself off the hook of even needing to be like the lie detector and know when you're lied to, because most of that's just about ego. When you let it go and you're like, okay, get a lot of me here. It's going to show itself. It's going to manifest, and you don't have to catch every lie. Then you just feel calmer. Liz, how should I talk to my kids, 14 and 19, about their father's alcoholism? I tried covering it up for most of their lives. I. However, in the past year, it's been hard because I'm done emotionally. This is a. This is a really complicated question. I think Kim and I did a video on this. It's been a good while back, but it's on this issue about talking to kids. If they're not aware that dad drinks at all, then it. Then it's. It's kind of like if you're the one says dad has a drinking problem and they're not. They're completely not aware, then he's going to blame you. He's going to say, you're turning my kids against me or whatever. But if they're already aware that dad drinks too much or has a drinking problem or whatever, and you just say, well, it's alcoholism, and just explain to them some about it, that will help them understand what's going on. But also, you don't want to. Sometimes as adults, we try to make it better by saying, I know your dad said or did those things, or he didn't show up, but you know, he loves you deep down. And it's like the. The kid is upset, but we're invalidating. They're being upset about it. And I think it's okay to let them have their emotions. I know that was upsetting and that wasn't right. And you're not saying that you don't villainize the other person, but you don't want to say, he. He can't help it. He didn't mean to do that. You know, he loves you. Like, let's say dad drinks too much and he yells and screams and he throws things, and the kid is really upset about it. You can say, you know, daddy loves you, and he didn't mean that stuff, and he was drunk. He didn't know what he was doing. All of that is true. But. But the kid's experience needs to be validated, and you're not piling it on to try to, like, turn them against their parents. But you can say, I can see why you're upset about that. You know, he really let you down or whatever. You just listen to them and hear them and. And take their lead on it. Mostly some of them want to rescue the parent and they want to keep contact because they think they can help them or whatever. And some of them want to move completely away and they don't want to talk to them at all. And if they're 14 and 19, I think they should have at least some decision making in that. I think this is a question, but let me know. All right, let's see what we got. Green says, I'm new to this, learning about addiction, and I hear a lot. Whatever help. Whatever you help addicted person, you enable them. Oh, whenever you help an addictive person, you enable them. What are the studies to support? Invisible intervention versus the old method. That's a great. That's a great. If you want to look it up, the old method for intervention is called a Johnson Stall intervention. The invisible intervention is my methodology for doing it. There's a big piece of. That incorporates the craft method. So it's like the craft method, which you can find the research on, which shows that it's like, almost two to three times more effective than the other way. But in the invisible intervention, that's my method. It's the craft method, plus a lot of other, like, counseling techniques and some other things that I teach you just to give you more skills. But my thinking on enabling is the most enabling thing you can do is play the villain. Because, you know, we worry about money, we worry about giving them a place to say. And we say, if I'm giving them money, they're never going to stop. If I'm giving a place to stay, they're never going to stop. I'm not saying you should do those things. I'm just saying, like, rich people get sober, Rock stars get sober every day and have plenty of money and plenty of places to stay, and people standing right there ready and waiting to give them drugs and alcohol. So it's about creating the environment that helps them to see what the problem is and to feel like there's hope in a better way out. So it's about the mindset, not the money. And you have a lot of influence over that mindset. Not complete. I don't want you to feel responsible for it, but I'm saying, like, you do have some influence over that. I think that's it. Is that it? Yeah. Did we do good? I think. Did Weston dig it? I thought Weston did good. Let me know. Brie says. Brie says it's hard. She says it's, like, stressful keeping it Last one. That was stressful. Yeah, you did. You moderated once before, and it was super stressful. Thank you, Hope. Thank you, all of you. Who put the sweet comments? I did see those going by. I appreciate you guys showing up live. I used to do these and literally there was no one on here and I was talking to myself. And let me tell you what, it feels real silly. So I super appreciate you guys showing up and I also appreciate you guys watching on the playback. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. And hit end. Want to end us?