Amber HollingsworthRecovery Conversation Simulator, Amber's Recovery Practice Lab · Interactive learning tool trained on Amber methodoloy

Don't be that guy

15 Dec 2023 · 1 min

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0:33

Amber Hollingsworth explains how some people cope with addiction by adopting an identity-based justification (e.g., "I'm just alcoholic") that becomes a long-standing defense to avoid guilt and shame. She notes this can sometimes be expressed with pride and is reinforced by repetitive justification processes over years.

Chapters

A third thought that I listen for or pay attention to is some kind of thought that's kind of like, it's just who I am. What happens here is that this is just sort of, I give up. I'm just gonna accept it. Like, I'm just alcoholic. Like, that's just me. Sometimes people even say it almost like, with a pride about it, like, oh, yeah, I could just drink you under the table. They've been living that way so long that all these justification processes have happened over and over and over again for years and years and years in order to protect yourself from feeling, like, guilty and kind of shameful about it, that you have this defense mechan of just being accepting it.