Emotional Healing: Rebuilding Life Post-Addiction

So most of us realize that when you're trying to overcome an addiction, there's this period at the beginning where you have to sort of detox yourself, physically at least. If you're addicted to some kind of substance, drugs or alcohol, you may even need to go into a facility to get medically detoxed, to let your brain chemistry rebalance. There's a lot of biology going on there that we have to get back synced upright. But what most of us don't realize is that there is a sort of psychological detox process that has to happen. And when I say that, I mean a lot more than just the, like, being psychologically addicted, like triggers and cravings and that sort of thing. It's really a very. A much deeper process. I would probably call it something more along the lines of deprogramming your addicted thinking. Because for however long you've been addicted, whether that's a few months or many years, over the course of that time, not only is your body gotten like physically used to it, not only have you built the habit of doing it, but you've built up a lot, I mean, a lot of psychological defense mechanisms surrounding that addiction in order to continue to facilitate the addiction. And most of these psychological defense mechanisms kind of surround how we justify it, how we make it okay in our own head, how we make it acceptable, how we keep it going and keep our ego intact in order to do that. Because most of the time when you have an addiction, you're behaving in a way that doesn't fit. It's not congruent, it's not lined up with your value system. And so in order to keep our behaviors so incongruent with our value system, we. We fill in the gaps with all of these irrational beliefs, sort of lies that we tell ourselves. But just because we stop the addiction, if we stop drinking, we stop gambling or whatever, these thought processes do not just automatically go away. And I think this is probably the part of the process that gets the least attention, that gets the least addressed in any kind of addiction treatment, addiction therapy, addiction recovery programs. It doesn't even really get acknowledged or addressed. And to be honest, it's a shame, because it's these thought processes that are going to lead you back. It's these thought processes that are going to cause you to relapse after you get sober. And you're past that physical withdrawal part, you know, and maybe you've been sober for a week, a month, a year. If you're going back after that, it's probably having to do with some of these, some of this deprogramming that maybe you haven't fully addressed yet. So I want to spend some time in today's video really going through some of those really common thought processes that even though you're not paying attention to them, you've probably hardwired them in to your thinking so much that they've gotten to be like an automatic or part of your personality or part of your sort of subconscious belief system that's driving your behaviors. So it's really important to identify what these are and confront them head on so that they're not subliminally controlling your actions and your behavior and more than that, just your happiness. Because even if you get sober and you're, you're doing good with it, if you don't confront these beliefs, you're probably not going to feel very happy. You're probably not going to get what they call like the promises of recovery. You're going to stay in some level of misery if you don't address these. So that, that's the most minimal thing that will happen. And the worst thing that can happen is it can lead you back to relapse. So let's take a look at those. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor and I've been helping people overcome addictions for more than 20 years now. A really long time. And so these things that I'm teaching you, I didn't learn them in a book anywhere. Okay. If there's a book out there that talks about this, I don't know what it is. If there is, you guys put it in the chat. So maybe I'll read it and some other people can take a look at it. But none of this stuff is taught in counseling school. I even did an additional year long addiction fellows program and I didn't get any of this anywhere. Where I've gotten this is just from all these years of, of working with people to overcome addictions. These are the thought processes I see that are keeping people either stuck in their addiction or going back to their addiction. You know, our, our brains will believe whatever we tell them. And when you have an addiction, you have told yourself these thoughts that we're about to go over over and hundreds, thousands of times so they don't just go away just because you stop an addiction. You know what made me think about doing this topic for today is yesterday I was watching. It's on Netflix. Some of y' all have Seen it. It's like a new documentary on Netflix. It's called Dancing for the Devil, I think. And it's about, like, this cult that all these TikTok dancers were a part of and how, you know, with, like, it, with any call, you get sort of brainwashed into it. And a lot of them, even the ones that have sort of escaped the cult, were talking about how just because you're out doesn't mean all those beliefs and thoughts go away. And it's really haunting, and it really plagues you, and you have to fight with yourself about it. And I. As I was watching that, I thought to myself, I'm like, yeah, that's so true. And that's just like, addiction recovery. Like, just because you got out of the cult doesn't mean the brainwashing isn't still there. So this is like, today we're talking about addressing the brainwashing that goes on with addiction. The thing of it is that these are the ways that we brainwash ourselves. My apologies. Turn that off. These are the ways that we brainwash ourselves into, like, how we convince ourselves that what we're doing is okay. So let's take a look at some of those thoughts, and like I said, if there's some, I miss you guys. Add them to the list, because this definitely isn't an exhaustive list. This is just. These are the ones that I very, very commonly hear. The first thought is that you are convinced not just of the substance or the addiction, but of the lifestyle of it. You have sort of grabbed onto probably, and developed sort of an affection for and a love for the lifestyle. No objection. Can't make my phone stop talking. Just last week or maybe a couple weeks back, I was talking to a fellow, and he was talking about how he wanted to stop using drugs, but he's also, you know, sales drugs, and he's also a part of this, you know, community that he's lived in for a long time. And he kind of has a name and a reputation, and he. He's wanting to stop drugs, but he doesn't want to give that up. And as you can imagine, that's not going to work very good. Right. Because he likes the fast pace of it. You know, there's sometimes there's this sort of, like, glamorization of it, whether it's drugs or. There really is when it comes to alcohol, there's this total, like, romantic notion about it, this glamorization of it. A lot of times it's not even as much the substance that we don't want to get rid of. It's the idea of the lifestyle, the culture that surrounds it. Because we've convinced ourselves that that is the best lifestyle, that that is the best culture, that that's the way to be. And it's what you like and it's what you love because you've been in it for so long, you've had to convince yourself of that to make it okay and acceptable in your mind. Not only have you convinced yourself that it's like the better lifestyle, but also you. You've convinced yourself that it's an acceptable lifestyle. And some of the things that I hear people talk about would probably. If you, if you don't deal with addiction, you've never had it. You, if you heard these things, you probably. Your head would probably just like pop off of your shoulders or something because you'd be like, what? Because it. When it's your everyday, it becomes totally normalized and eventually you can find yourself doing crazy things, believing crazy thoughts, find yourself in like, ridiculous situations that because they're so normal to you, you just think that they're regular and normal. And you, you lose touch with how abnormal some of these circumstances are. You know, you can find yourself in places that just like before you had an addiction, you think, you would think I would never be in a situation like that. But then it becomes your normal, right? Like, like a drug house, like being in a crazy part of town, like muggings and Robbins and all kind of crazy stuff like going to jail, in and out. Like you become so used to it that it's like normal. That stuff has to be deprogrammed from you. The lifestyle parts of it have to go. If you really going to stay away from the substances because the substances or the addiction, even if it's gambling, because it doesn't just have to be a chemical addiction. It can be gambling, sex shopping, any of it. It's all. It has a culture built around it. And we have to learn how to sort of let go of our ideas and beliefs around that in order to free ourselves from it. Another really big one, and this one you've probably heard me talk about before in other ways, but that we have to let go of is we've probably also like convinced ourselves that somehow we have some kind of special unique power or we have found like, the secret loophole to how we can manage our stuff and we're balanced now and it's okay. You know, other people, they can't. They can't manage their stuff. You know, they can't hold their liquor. They can't do all these things. But we've somehow tried to convince ourselves that we found this magic loophole that makes it either okay or makes it where we can keep doing it and it's not really that big a problem, or that we're just, like, outsmarting the whole process. And I hear this kind of thing all the time. Like, one of the most shocking moments that just, I don't know, will just never leave my memory just stands out. I was talking to this. This guy. I think he was like, he was either in his very early twenties or late teens, and he was shooting up meth. Okay. I mean, that's pretty hardcore. I mean, it doesn't get a whole lot more hardcore than that, right? And I think most any person who hears that that's not in that culture is like, oh, my gosh, that's so dangerous. Right? Like, yeah, I think we could get a common consensus on it. But this young man had convinced himself that he had done the research and Googled it up enough and figured out scientifically, chemistry wise, that he was totally fine because he knew exactly how much the dose should be and where he was in the danger level and where he wasn't. And he would totally believe that because I was like, dude, like. Because he wasn't just doing that. He was doing that plus a bunch of other stuff. I'm like. And the stuff he was doing, I'm like, this. This young man is going to be dead. Not just from the drugs, but from everything involved in the whole lifestyle, everything he was having to do to get everything. And I was like, dude, you're gonna be dead before you're 25. And he said, no, man, I got it all figured out. And he, like, starts telling me about this whole how he's done all this research and how he knows exactly what he's doing. And I've actually heard that a lot of times for a lot of different drugs. And it just makes you want to be like, are you serious? Because immediately my mind goes into about, I don't know, 20 arguments against that statement that he's saying. You know, first I'm thinking, first of all, you're getting us off the street. Do you really know what's in it? Can you really do your chemistry formulas well enough that you can manage it just right? Because you really know exactly what's in there. Of course not. That's my first thought against it. And my second thought against it is, okay, even if you have, you know, put your mad scientist uniform on and you're all like Walter white and you figured out the scientific formula of exactly how much you can do that's safe. Okay, let's just go with that for a minute. I didn't say this just so you know. I'm just thinking this. Even if you Walter whiting the whole situation and you got it figured out because you're like a mastermind or whatever, if you're addicted, you're gonna do more than you told yourself you were gonna do. Because that is the nature of addiction. It's one of the criteria of addiction. It's like, I promise myself I'm only going to do X amount, only going to drink so much. And I keep going over it. So I'm like, even if you have figured out this magic formula of what's okay and what's not, and even if we can trust where you're buying it from to know exactly what's in it, are you really going to stop and maintain your own limit? Because that's what addiction is. We keep crossing our own lines and our own limits for it. So that argument just does not make sense in any way. But people say stuck on that for years of finding this loophole of figuring out like, how can I keep this in my life and not totally give it away. I was talking to another young man just very recently who's got himself a drinking problem. And he, you know, he's had a lot of car accidents. He gets in fights and arguments when he drinks, has all this chaos. But now he thinks he's got it figured out because he's only drinking at home. And that way, in his mind, he's not going to get into all this trouble. He's just fine. He knows how much he's going to drink. He buys it on the way home. He just drinks at home when there's no one else there. And so he thinks he's got this loophole of figuring it out. But actually, and I know this person well enough, I actually did say this to this person. But I'm like, actually, that's just a level of how the addiction has progressed that now you're not just doing it socially, you're doing at home by yourself. And there's no. There's. There's absolutely no accountability because he lives by himself. There's no regulation of anything of it. And so my guess is it's going to make it 20 times worse now that he's only doing it at home by himself. Yeah, I think it might can help with the DUI thing. Or something like that. But I don't even trust that because my guess is he gets in his car and he goes get some more and all that kind of stuff. But, but still the only doing it at home, it really fast, fast tracks itself because you know, at least if you're out at a bar or something, you're buying it like it costs so much money, it has to slow you down a little bit. But when you're, you know, got the Costco plan and you're buying it by big case, giant things full or whatever, you, you really expedited the process at this point. But what I'm saying is almost everyone that I deal with has these beliefs that they've reinforced over and over and over about how they have the magic solution for it, how they're going to control it or control the consequences it or how it's not affecting somebody else or whatever. But in every case, it's always a lie that a person's telling to themselves. It's not, I mean it wouldn't take, you don't have to do much to poke holes in the theory because there's just so many holes in the theory. Another one that's a big, big one that, that I hear in, in almost every situation is, is in order to deflect and distract ourselves from the shame and guilt we feel about the addiction. About either the addiction itself or the things that we have to do to obtain the addiction, or the lies we've told, all the things, you know, it's just all of it built up in order to deflect from that. We focus on resentments towards other people and self pity. And so we project out blame everywhere. Normally that blame goes to the person closest to you. So it's usually like your spouse or your parent or. I have seen it in cases where it's like your sibling because like your parents always liked your sibling better. But there's, there's some kind of outward projection of this is why I'm doing this or there's are this person's making it worse. There's some focus of resentment towards someone else's wrongs that keeps us distracted from being honest with ourselves and looking at our behavior and being clear with ourselves about what's happening and what the fallout of that is. This is one of the things I think that takes like the longest to deprogram in someone. This idea that it's just my wife, that she's a nagging, controlling, uptight, whatever, that it's just my parents, they just don't even Understand, they're just ridiculous. Like, they don't know what it's like to be young these days or something. You know, like, these are very entrenched beliefs that you spent so much time dwelling on when you had an addiction. I mean, you spend hours and hours and hours thinking about it, dwelling on it, feeling sorry for yourself. It's like licking your wounds kind of process that you've reinforced this and you have decided, you see, maybe it's your job, maybe it's your boss, maybe it's the government. You know, it's like. Or the millennials, I don't know, it's this sort of external, outside, bad organization, person deed that you spend all your time focusing on politics. Maybe it's a politician or something. Like, instead of looking at your own wrongs. Right. The thing of it is, is when you're addicted, somebody else could do the slightest wrong. Like, maybe they promised you something, but they couldn't follow through with it. For some reason they said they're gonna show up, and they didn't. You'll focus on that. Oh, my gosh, and just roll it over in your mind and just make this person the most evil person. Even though maybe you haven't fulfilled your last 15 promises. Right. It's a way of distracting ourselves is to focus on other people's wrongdoings. And a lot of times, especially if someone's married, it's usually the spouse. And the person has almost, in most cases I see, they've convinced themselves that the spouse is the problem and that if they could just get out of this relationship or the spouse would just go away or leave them alone, that they wouldn't have these problems and maybe they wouldn't drink as much, or maybe they wouldn't have to, you know, lie or leave or whatever. But what's really going on is it's really your addiction talking to you, trying to get rid of this other person because it knows that this other person's holding the floodgates back. And if you could just get rid of your spouse, then wouldn't be anybody nagging you or watching you or keeping up with what you're doing, and you could just do whatever you want. And so it's these defense mechanisms that are very, very difficult to undo because you've been telling yourself four years over and over and over. And just because you quit the substance doesn't mean these thoughts go away. The next one that I hear a lot is that you've convinced yourself somehow that you have to have it, that you need it for Some reason or that even. Even if you're not commissioned up with that, that you really like it when actually by the time people get to see me, you know, they've convinced themselves that, oh, my gosh, like, alcohol's the greatest thing ever. Okay, the best thing ever, whatever. And I'm like, okay, like, let's look at that. Okay, so it's like the wanting it thing. I'm like, is it really that fun for you anymore? Like, let's look at it. Is it maybe it used to be, like, greatest thing ever, awesome. But by the time you get to me, I'm like, is it really that fun anymore? Okay, let's put on a scale of how much fun it is. Let's write it out. Tell me the fun part. Well, it's usually fun for about an hour or two. And that's if you can, like, especially if it's a chemical, if you can just like, get this sort of magic sweet spot of exactly how much for how long and what doses. If you can hit this magic sweet spot, it's great for a few minutes, but other than that, it's a lot of stress relief, worry, anxiety, constantly, like, obsessively figuring out, how am I going to get it, how am I going to get enough, how am I going to hide it? And then coming down from it, and then the feeling crazy, and then having anxiety and then having sleep problems. I'm like, okay, so let's measure it out. If it is the greatest thing ever, how much wonderfulness are we actually getting? And when we look at it, the wonderfulness, if there is any left, a lot of times it's not even fun anymore that you're just doing it to not be sick. There's like this much wonderfulness left and like this much horribleness. And so you convince yourself that you want it, that you're in love with it, you know that you need it. And then this need it thing is another level of it. Because it's more like, if I don't have this, I won't be creative enough. And my work requires me to be creative. If I don't have this, I can't function in society because I have social anxiety. If I don't have this, it's my only way of dealing with my anxiety or my trauma. And that's like a next level. It's not just like, I love it and I want it. It's more like, I have to have it or else this horrible thing. And maybe it helped you with something initially, right? But once it forms into an addiction, it's doing the opposite of that. Whatever problem that you are using, whatever problem you're trying to solve with this addiction has now been made a thousand times worse. It is the thing that is creating the problem, you know, once you get past a certain point, not the thing that's helping with the problem. And it is hard to get people to be honest with themselves and see that. It's particularly hard when it comes to like, pain issues and somebody has a pain pill addiction because sometimes people started down the road of pain pill addiction because they had actual pain. But what happens is once you get dependent, a lot of times the original pain either heals up or gets to a manageable level. But because you become dependent on pain feels, then you have no pain natural pain defense. So your pain is, feels like it's worse than it was when you started because now you have withdrawal pain and you have no natural pain defense. So what felt, it feels like the problem isn't going away and that you still need it. And the only way to really figure that out is to get somebody's pain receptors and stuff to reset. But you got to convince yourself, you gotta like, believe that, like, okay, maybe it's not as bad. I don't want to say as I'm thinking because the pain is real that you're feeling, but maybe the pain is there because, either because of a draw or because you haven't let your natural pain defenses kick back in. And that's a hard thing because it's scary. I don't like being pain either. I don't blame you. But it's another one of those I need it kind of situations that we have to confront. I find a lot of people that are using pain pills to, to deal with chronic pain, if once they are able to get off, they're like, yeah, I mean, my back still hurts, my, this still hurts. But honestly, I can take some of my perfect, I'm fine. Eventually, that's what they're telling me, you know, after years and years and years and years of telling me otherwise. Another one is maybe you have convinced yourself that you can't stop. And this is kind of like a learned helplessness is what this is. Because maybe you've tried to stop a bunch of times and it hasn't worked. So you eventually just sort of give in to this idea that like, maybe you, you, maybe you realize, I need to stop, I want to stop. I don't want this anymore. You know, you've confronted a lot of those other irrational beliefs, but you've decided you don't have what it takes for whatever reason. Or maybe you've just, well, I don't have a hundred thousand dollars, so I can't really go to treatment or I'm just a mess up. I've tried before and I always relapse. The thing of it is, is like when people are stuck on that one, I, I tell them, like, dude, it takes everybody at multiple times. No one gets this base covered on the first time. If you did, it wasn't an addiction. Okay? So like that's good that you've tried multiple times. You haven't figured it out because. And that you weren't successful because every time you tried and it didn't work, you figured out something new about this thing. Right? It's a learning process and you've probably figured out something new about yourself, something new about addiction. And actually those past attempts, which you may be considering failed attempts, is actually still recovery. It's still the change process. There is a lot of trial and error that goes on. And so if some of us have just convinced ourselves I just can't do it. And then unfortunately there are. You may even be getting that reinforced and validated from outside people. You've tried 100 times, you always relapse and other people are telling you that you can't do it. And then you go to treatment and then counselors telling you, like, oh, only, you know, like one out of ten people beats this. So not only are you telling yourself that, but other people are telling you that in all these different ways. And so you come to believe that when that's actually not true, you really just have to have one thing to beat addiction. That's humility, right? You could do it without money, you can do it without going to treatment. Usually even if you do have to have detox, there are ways of getting that. So this idea of I can't stop is, is not true. And that's one that we have to confront. Pretty head on too. Another one that's kind of a little, a little different is a lot of people, because of their years of addictive behavior, come to believe that they're not capable or competent somehow. Like, like, like that they're like this eternal forever screw up. Because maybe, you know, they have these beliefs of, well, I always, I don't follow through or I'm not good at this or I'm not good at that, or I always give up on things, or I always screw up relationships or always screw up a job because the addiction has caused you to Be unpredictable, unreliable. And you probably have over the past bunch of years, screwed up jobs, not followed through, been not good at things, messed up relationships, all these things. And so you come to believe that that's about yourself, it's about who you are. And actually it's really just about the addiction. And that's a hard one. You know, I, I confront, you know, we talk about these beliefs. I talk about these beliefs with the people that I coach. Like, especially in our, our strengths based recovery program. These are the things that we're working on. Because usually by the time someone gets to me in that program, they've actually decided that they, they want to stop, right? And they, some of them actually already stopped. But most of the time, even if they have already stopped, they still have these lingering thoughts about themselves, about the world that really need to be confronted and addressed. Because see, these thoughts will definitely for sure lead you back over and over and over again. When somebody, when I'm working with somebody in early recovery and they tell me they're bad at something, I said, well, okay, maybe you are convince me that you're bad at it. You know, like, I mean, we're not good at everything. So I'm open to the idea. I could tell you 10 things I'm bad at. It's not so much that I'm like, oh, you're great at everything. It's not that. But I'm like, are you really bad at it or have you not been good at it because of your addiction? Like, like, maybe you think you're bad at doing school because you've started college five times. I'm like, okay, but is that because you're bad at doing school or is that because you have had a cocaine problem for five years or something like that? You know what I mean? And so sometimes when you can sort of, okay, how do you start? What happens? And then what happens? And you get somebody to really like examine these thoughts and beliefs deeply, then they can confront them and say, actually when I start, I'm always like, I'm good. And I promise myself I'm not drinking and I'm not doing this. And then eventually, you know, two months in, I start doing this, and by the end of the semester my grades tank. I'm like, so your grades are great until X time in, and then they tank and then you quit or whatever. That's really about the substances than about your capabilities. So you gotta like, look at these things and deprogram your thinking around these areas. And, and this takes a while, you know, to Detox and get your brain chemistry right now happens long before these pro. These thought processes really get deprogrammed. And it happens over a long period of time. And if you don't confront them head on, sometimes there's. They're still back there, lingering, forever bothering you. And a lot of times you'll. You'll give into these thoughts. You'll go back to these thoughts. It's very similar to deprogramming in, like, cult cases, right? Because you've. You've spent so much time convincing yourself that these are truths. It takes a lot of work and a lot of honesty and a lot of confrontation to unconvince yourself of these things. But when you look at the evidence, I mean, you could. You could sort of get your lawyer hat on and really examine these as pieces of evidence. And they're not. They're really not hard to poke holes in. If we just look right below the surface, we can see that, well, that's actually not true because all you got to do is look underneath the lid just a little bit, and you're going to see that these are not truth. And these thoughts, even after you confront them, they'll pop back in your head and you may have to sort of be like, no, I already thought this through and here's my truth. And confront these thoughts, push them away. Eventually you stop having them because you're not reinforcing them anymore. But it does take some undoing. In just a second, we're going to take comments and questions. Bri is back there. She's behind the scenes. So if you're watching live and you have a comment or question, pop it in the chat. Now. It helps me and it helps Bri if you put some question marks in front of it or write the word question in all caps or something like that, because some of you guys are talking to each other back and forth or commenting. It helps us to pick out those of you that are sending us the questions while you're getting those up there. If you need additional help, there are resources in the description. If you or your loved one needs help confronting these, then you might want to consider, like, our recovery coaching, because this is what we do. We look at these thoughts, we examine them for, is this really the truth? Why do we believe this? What's really going on there? So that we can get underneath the lid of this and get back to who we really are and see things accurately and truly, find our own truth and deprogram this stuff. All right, Brida, we have some good questions. Wendy, Says, oh, I gotta put my glasses on. Here we go. Wendy says the addict is doing all the work, making amends. Sober one and a half years. But sibling. Siblings refuse to see it. His being sober has not played out with the rest of the family like I thought it would. Does it just take time? A lot of times it does just take time, but sometimes you've damaged. Sometimes an addiction, you've damaged a relationship beyond repair. And maybe the person is. Maybe it's not so much the person doesn't believe that you're sober, but they are just done with the relationship. And it's interesting that you say siblings, because a few years back, I did a video with a couple of friends of mine in recovery, and they were talking about, like, the amends process, and both of them talked about how the last person to forgive was a sibling. You can check that video out. It's on my channel. It's about amends, if you want to hear that. But. But, yeah, and. And sometimes people just don't. They just decide maybe they've forgiven you, but they've just decided they don't want to continue that relationship. And. And I do think that you have to accept that sometimes. Iva says, my husband is a cocaine addict and in recovery, and ask if, you know, others in his position if they felt like they had to lie to their friends and relatives out of fear of being seen as less than human if they relapse. Oh, yeah, of course. Sure. Definitely. You. You know, if you've been doing really good and you're in recovery and you've been, the last thing you want is to let your family down again. Right. And to have to own up to and admit to a relapse. So, yeah, it can feel definitely very tempting to lie about it, but normally lying about it increases the chances that it'll keep happening. And I have a video about this specifically called if I have a relapse, do I have to tell my family? And. And I. And I go into it a lot deeper. I go all the way into that conversation about who to tell, when to tell, what to tell. I know you don't have to tell everyone, but you do need to tell someone. That's the brief version, but you can watch the whole video if you want. Steph says, so what do you say to a person who gets stuck in the loophole of I've got it figured out? There's not a lot you can say to that person. Sometimes what you have to do is you have to let them try their loophole enough times. So they can prove to themselves it's kind of that stuff. It's that bargaining thing that I talk about so much on the channel. You know, if I just do it this way, if I set the circumstances up, the stars align just right. Like, then this works out, child or whatever. And there's definitely a period of letting people try it their way after they've tried it that way several times and you've built a good enough relationship with them. You have the trust rapport. Like, if you're. If you're in our invisible intervention, we call it credit. If you've built enough credit and you've let them try it several times, then you can say, look, dude, like, you've tried that 10 times. You know it's not working. Like, there are clients I could say that to, and they'd be like, you're right, you're right. But you cannot just say that unless you've let them try. And you definitely can't say that unless you've built enough trust and credibility with the. The person to pull that off. I mean, you could say it, but it'll backfire on you. Ashley says, I'm holding a lot of grudges toward my partner for her alcoholism. How do I work on the anger, mistrust, and staying connected when she's sober? I'm really glad you brought this up, Ashley, because I didn't even. I didn't even get into this in this video. I thought about it, but I didn't go into this topic because I thought it would just be too much. But family members, loved ones, partners, have to deprogram their thinking, too, because over this period of time where this has happened with your partner, you've probably told yourself over and over, I can't trust this person. They're never really going to do it. I'm just an idiot for staying with this person. They're just going to lie to me always. They're always going to relapse. And you. Sometimes you're not even aware of this. But a lot of times what families do is they. They convince themselves that they can't get their hopes up and they can't believe in this person or believes personal truth because they'll either be made a fool of or their hopes will be dashed again. So some of it is about deprogramming some of your own thinking. And, and what I would tell you about that is the way I would confront that kind of thought. Ashley would be, I would say, are you really protecting yourself by not allowing yourself to have joy or Trust this person? No, because if, if they relapse and something bad happens, you're going to just as devastated. I promise you're not less devastated if you kept your guard up the whole time. All you really do in that point is to be like, see, I knew it. And you just reinforce your own belief with it. So it feels like you're protecting yourself, but you're not. You know, you're really making it more likely that the bad outcome will happen. Sophia says, how can I help my partner to implement some healthy habits? I think that besides his amphetamine addiction, he also has adhd, which makes things more complicated. Let's see, there's more of it. He finds it's hard to keep a job. He becomes bored and very quickly and just doesn't have that discipline, plan or persistence. He slips back after two weeks to his old habits, which keep him stuck. Okay, so. Oh, there's more. I know he has the best of intentions to change. He has also started psychotherapy recently. But I think that he had his self worth. He also has a problem regulating his emotions. He's not violent. Is that every. Okay, okay. This is interesting, Sophia, because if he's not getting past two weeks, you know, if he's, if he's kind of falling back every couple of weeks or so, this kind of goes back to that irrational belief that we talked about earlier, the one about competence. And I'm like, is it really you that can't keep the job or whatever, or is it that you, the, the substances is always making you fall back? It takes it. With ambitamine specifically, it takes like, I feel like it takes longer for your motivation, your energy and your drive to come back than with some of the other substance addictions. So helping people have sort of an accurate, or at least like a, a realistic idea of when you're going to start to feel better, I think is helpful. So I think mostly the problem in this situation you described, Sofia, is that this person hasn't been sober long enough to get on the other side of the addictive cycle. That's what I think. But past that, let's say they were sober for six months or whatever and they were still having trouble with. Wouldn't be as much of a healthy habit. I would teach them. But what I would say is if what is really happening, why you can't keep a job is because you're add. I'm add. And certain jobs work well for people that are add. And certain jobs don't like jobs that change a lot, require a lot of problem solving or maybe like high stress or adrenaline. Those things work better for people. Add, Boring, monotonous. It's the same thing over and over. Stuff you could do in your sleep, that's just not going to work good. If you're with add, that's not the way your brain works. So if it's not the relapse cycle that's getting in the way, it's just about understanding, hey, here's how your brain is programmed to work. Let's get you in a situation that you're going to thrive in. David says, my son is an adult and he's living with us. He's on Suboxone and doing fairly well, but still not ready to go back to work. I suspect he's vaping pot. What should I do? He is seeing a therapist, but she likely doesn't know. So there's a couple of sort of questions here. I think David. One is, is about getting him to go back to work, and one is about one question it sounds like you're having is about whether or not to confront that you think he's using pot. I don't know how long he's been stabilized with the opiate addiction. Like, I don't know how long he's been doing Suboxone, But I don't think that this is a conversation that you need to have. This is the thing Campbell's really good at. David Campbell. Campbell's, like, one of her things, and that she's one of our family counselors is, is when you have, like, a young adult kid who doesn't want to become responsible, she has, like, good tapers, super plan method for getting this to happen. So instead of trying to confront the marijuana, instead of trying to confront, well, it's time for you go back to work. If this person is not having to be responsible for their own adult self, that's the way you're going to motivate it. So if you're supporting everything and you're paying everything, then that, as much as anything else is keeping this person not ready to go back to work. And if he is using marijuana, that's probably definitely contributing. But I would go at it by backing off of your financial support for an adult to let them sort of slowly take the reins. Instead of saying, you got to get a job, you got a good job. Did you apply for that job I showed you? You just. You need to make that. You need to say what you're going to pay and not pay and slowly taper that back. Delphine says how to Answer someone who thinks they understand what they are doing. My daughter thinks she knows what she's doing and she's ended up in the emergency. This is that one Delphine that we talked about of the magic loophole. And I know how to manage it. I know what I'm doing. And when I read this, because she showed up in the emergency room three times, it makes me think, does she really. Is this a question of she really thinks she's figured out the magic combination or she's just telling you that as a way to get you off her back? Because there's sort of a difference. Like, sometimes people really believe it, and sometimes people are just saying whatever they need to say to get you to shut up. And then so you got to figure out, is it really that she believes that or is it that she's like, I don't care which sounds. It sounds crazy for a family member, but especially when it comes to overdoses. You know, from the outside looking in, it's like, we think like a serious overdose, like you, you were almost dead or you were dead for a bit, would get your attention, but it really doesn't. And I know that seems crazy, but the thing of it is, especially if it comes to an overdose, they don't remember it. You remember it. They don't remember that they were blue. They don't remember that they had a seizure. They don't remember the ambulance. You know, you, if you, especially if you were there and you lived through it or you saw it or you got called in, you have the trauma of it. They don't remember it that traumatically. So they may be aware that it happened, but they're probably out of it when it happened. So it, it's not near as scary to them as it was to you. I know that's crazy, but it's true. Nicole says are there a certain group of videos of yours that you have the addicted person watch if they are in a change phase? Yes. We have a playlist on the YouTube channel called if you're trying to conquer an addiction, start here. So it's a playlist like specifically for people who are trying to overcome their own addiction. Could start there. Or we also have a series of videos called our 30 day jump start video series that you can have. It's like one video that comes to your inbox every day and they're short, like three, two to four minute videos each day. And they're designed to keep you motivated, overcome roadblocks, and I think that's a really good system. And they're designed specifically for people who are early in the change process. So you could also get them set up for that. And that's. That's. That's free. And you can do that. There's a. On our website, you can sign up that. Don't just sign them up, though, without asking them, like, make sure that they want to. Or tell them where to sign up because they might be like, why am I getting these messages? Married a long time says last night he was a complete ass hat. Teasing, being bullying. And I had to threaten him. I had to threaten to leave him before he stopped. He pouted the whole way home. He's convinced it's me. How do I get through to him? He's mad at me. I don't care at this point. Compassion is at a low point. What do I say that will get through to him? Well, this is a situation where you have to completely get out of that bag. I roll. Which we. We talk a lot about. And I know. I know you've been around here for a while, so you know a lot about that. I'm not gonna lecture you about it, but it may be a situation where you need to back out of the situation for a bit and let them see that even though you're not there, the problem's still there. Sometimes that's the only way to get them to see that, no, it's not you, it's them. Because if you're not there, they're going to have all these same problems in their other relationships. And. And these. Whatever consequences are going to. Still going to keep happening. Then they're going to. That's sometimes the only way to get them to realize that. Bri, I think we have time for, like, a couple of more. Do we have a couple more or we're. Yeah, okay. Hope for. Michaela says, I see these beliefs in play. He's pushing me away. He's struggling to survive fatigue, etc. From liver stress. Not able to address higher needs, stay away or continue the invisible intervention. I mean, I definitely think the first line of defense is like, the invisible intervention techniques. I don't know how long you've been doing that, how much credibility you've built if you're in the invisible intervention. We have that sort of. Of system where I teach you how to, like, key points, like a credit score. And so if you know that your credit score is staying in that 700 range. And I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your real credit score for, like, money. I'm talking about your Credit score for trust and credibility with your loved one. And those of you in the Invisible intervention, you'll know what I'm talking about. But if your score is staying up there and it's still not working, that's probably when I would say maybe I need to back up and out of this a little bit so you can't keep blaming on me. But if you've not gotten your score up and kept it up up consistently, then I think maybe I would stay with trying to get out of the bag. I roll for a little while longer. I hope that helps. Matt says, do you have any videos you would recommend sending to a loved one in intense denial? Something that can gently nudge them towards understanding without triggering their defenses? No, I don't think you should use my videos to confront someone that's in denial. I think it's just going to tick them off. I also don't think you should send them videos or articles about how bad it is for their health or anything else for that matter. Think of it like this. If you had a friend who had a weight problem, would you be sending them videos about losing weight if they didn't ask you for that? It's going to be seen, it's going to be taken offensively. So I would not do that. Now, on the other hand, Matt, I have a lot of videos about dealing with someone in denial that are for you as the family member or support person that talks to you about how to interact with them in ways to help them get out denial. So there are a lot of videos on the channel about that, but I would suggest that they're for you other family members. I would not send one of them directly to the person. They're going to see that as an insult. All right, guys, I think we're about out of time. I appreciate all of you that showed up live. You guys are awesome. If you're on the playback and you didn't get to come live, I'd love to see you live next time. We're live every Thursday at 1pm Eastern. You can come join the conversation, ask questions, give feedback, all that kind of great stuff. I will see you next week. And don't forget there are resources in the description. Bye, everybody.