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Does Your Loved One Get Angry When You Bring Up Their Addiction? 😡 #shorts

2 Dec 2022 · 1 min

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0:58

Short YouTube clip by Amber Hollingsworth describing why an addicted loved one may react with anger or defensiveness when confronted: either shame/guilt or a deliberate defensive "porcupine" tactic (often both). The speaker recommends a more productive "side door approach" to move someone from denial toward recovery and notes a link with more information will be provided in the video description.

Chapters

Does your addicted loved one get really angry and defensive every time you bring up their addiction or even any behavior related to their addiction? Well, if so, it probably means one of two things. First, it can mean that they feel really actually kind of guilty and shameful and bad about it. And so anytime you bring it up, it brings up this wall in which they won't do anything to make you stop talking about it. Or the second reason that could be happening is because they use all that anger to be kind of like a porcupine and put their spikes out to make you shut up and not talk about it. As in, it's a diversion tactic and literally training you do not bring this up. In most cases, it's actually a combination of both of those two things. So if you keep running into this wall of defensiveness, I want you to know there are much more productive ways to get someone out of denial and into recovery. It's actually much more effective to take what I call the side door approach. If you want to know more about how to do this, I'll put a link in the description.