Essential Steps for Rebuilding TRUST In Families | Addiction Recovery.

Today we're going to be keeping it real. I mean real real. We're going to be talking about how do you rebuild trust after addiction has come in and pretty much destroyed your family? And that's definitely no easy task. But I'm going to give you the like really, really, really essential, crucial steps. These are like the foundational things that have to be there if you want to be able to build trust. I'm actually going to give some advice, feedback and tips for both sides. So I'm going to give some advice, feedback and tips for the person who either has an addiction or is in early recovery. And I'm going to give some feedback, advice for the family members because believe it or not, it's not just the family doesn't trust the person issue. It's a two way distrustful mess of a situation because the person has substance abuse problem also feels bad, betrayed and hurt. And they feel like they've been lied to as well. And they feel like their trust has been broken too. Because you see, that's what happens in families. It causes so much chaos and heartbreak and no one gets out of it unscathed. Like everybody has had hurt feelings, everybody's been lied to, everybody's done things that they're not proud of. And this video is all about setting it right. Now first we're going to start out with what the addicted or, or the person that has the addiction or to drugs or alcohol, we're going to talk about what they need to do first. This is the keeping it real part. Now I'm going to tell you what you have to do. And you may not like some of this, but if you can't do these things, you're probably not going to really get that trust back that you want. And I know you want it because having your family up your butt all the time and in your business and constantly, you know, asking you and not believe in you and spying on you, it's not fun, right? You're tired of it, so let's be done with it. These are the things that you need to do to set it right. The first, maybe even like the biggest, most important thing you need to do is you need to own up to the damage that you have caused. All of it. Like the severity of the damage. Like you. Not in a general, like, I know I did things I'm not proud of kind of way. But when you've caused serious hurt or distress to the people that you love and that you care about, you have to own it. And not just like, okay, I did that. I lied to you, or I stole that, or I did this or that. But, like, what your family needs to hear, what your loved one is here, is they need to hear that you get the depth of it, the magnitude of it. Like, the way that what they did affected them, what kind of position it put them in. They need to know that. You know, now, as I was making this list for myself, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna say this. And then people are gonna be thinking, well, addiction is a disease and they can't help it. And why are we beating up on the addict? Here's what I gotta say about that. This is the keeping it real part. You make choices, right? You may not have made the choice to be an addict, but. But you made a bunch of choices along the way that got you in this situation. Now, some of you may disagree with this, and that is totally cool. I just asked that you be, like, appropriate about how you go about disagreeing with me, and I'll be appropriate back. Deal. Okay. So you make choices. To me, it's like. It's like a situation. If you. If you get burned by the fire, you can come to me. Well, I didn't mean to get burned by the fire. I didn't choose to get burned by the fire. Like. No, but you chose to kept playing with fire even though your mama told you not to. And there was, like, police tape around it, and a policeman came up, intervened, told you not to play with fire. And 450, like exit ramps is what I call them you had before you got burned. Sometimes when people talk about addiction, they'll say, you know, it's this whole is it a choice or not a choice debate. And I have videos on that that you can watch to see where I stand. But people say, well, you know, the person makes the first choice, but after that, they're addicted and they can't help it. I disagree. I think you probably make that choice about 550 times before you lose the ability to make the choice. And I already know what you're thinking. Don't be. Yeah, butting me. I know you're thinking right now, what if you got. Did you pain pills because the doctor put you on pain pills? Well, number one, any person in today's day and age is older than 12 years old knows that pain pills can be addictive. And just because you took them as prescribed, you might get dependent on them, but you don't really get addicted to them. You know, when you're taking more, you know, when you're obsessing about it, you know, when you don't really need them for pain anymore, but you keep asking for them from the doctor. You had some responsibility in the situation. Can we just own it? Because if you can't, you're not gonna get the dress back. Because that's what your family needs. Your family needs to know that you get it. This isn't me beating you up. This is me explaining to you exactly how to get yourself out of the doghouse, to get yourself back on track with your family and to get yourself back to a point where you like yourself. Because when you don't own these things, what you do is you build up all these resentments and all this self pity because you're trying to make excuses or why it happened. But if you just own it, you actually feel much better. If you just like a weight lifted up. Man, I did that. So stupid. I wish I wouldn't have, I know, it like caused this problem. This problem, this problem. You'll feel so much better. Your family will feel better. What you got to do, you got to own the damage that you've caused. Somebody give me some thumbs ups or some hearts or give me thumb down. If you don't agree, let me know how you feeling about it. Number two thing that you gotta do to earn trust back from your family is. This is tough, is you have to tolerate the fact that your family distrusts you and you have to tolerate it with humility, right? Because what's gonna happen is after your clean is over, you're gonna get some false accusations. It's just a given, right? Your family's gonna think you're high when you're not. Your family's gonna think you stole something when you didn't and it wasn't you. Your family's gonna accuse you of something and don't go get all crazy and self righteous. Say, I can't believe they just think I did that. And they just think I did everything. Dude, you cannot, like lie to someone every day for the last five years and then get mad at them because they think you're lying. Like, come on, dude. That goes with owning the magnitude. I know it sucks to be accused of something that you didn't do. And I'm not saying you have to like say, yeah, I did that. You say, no, I didn't do that. But I could understand why you think that. That's what I mean when I'm saying it. The third thing that you must do in order to win trust back with your family, get yourself back On a good even field, playing field here is you got to live your life with integrity because you're dealing with all this distrust. Everyone's going to be watching you with like the super sketch. They're going to watch everything you do, every movie make, and they're going be like dissecting it, right? And I know you think that's not fair, but what did I just say? You got to own what got you here. You won't be here forever. If you'll do these three things. This will, this will go by a lot quicker and less painful. If you do these three things. You got to live with integrity. You gotta, I mean, you gotta really, like, walk the line. You gotta do what you say you're gonna do. You got to be where you say you're gonna be. You got to communicate more than you would normally have to communicate. You have to do that, number one for your recovery. Because in your recovery program, you know, you learn that that sort of line crossing thing is kind of a slippery slope for you as far as the addiction is concerned. But you got to do that in order to win trust with your family. Like, they need you to be extra communicative. They need you to be extra, extra transparent. Now those are your three big things. For those of you who are trying to recover from an addiction. Hopefully that wasn't too harsh on you, I know you can take it. If you can't take it, you're probably not ready for the family trust to come back. Now, y' all know I like to be fair. So let's talk about the three things that families have to do. And your stuff isn't going to be easier either. You've got, you got to make some changes. And you got to do some things too. If you want to allow the trust to come back, Allow the person in early recovery to be able to trust you back. Because guess what? You've done some sneaky, sketchy things too, right? Don't say you haven't. You know you have, right? You. You've probably told some lies. You've acted in ways you didn't want to act. You've lost your cool. You've done some things you're not proud of. This is not me beating you up. This is just say you got to own it. Everybody's got to own their stuff so we can move forward. The first thing and the hardest thing for families to do is you have to decide, and you may have to do this 50 times. You have to decide that you're going to give grace and you're going to give the person some fresh ground to walk on. Now, that is not me saying you forget everything that happened in the past immediately and wipe it away like it never happened. But what I am saying is you've got to give someone a fresh slate to start from, even if they don't mean it. You cannot just keep bringing up the past over and over and over and over again because it causes your loved one to not trust you, to not want to tell you anything, to not want to be around you. And the thing you need most from your loved one right now is honesty. You've got to create a situation where honesty has a chance of developing. Right. In order to do that, I'm not saying it's fair. Y' all know family members will tell you all the time, it's not fair, but it's effective. You've got to be willing to give the person a clean slate. You can say, I gave them clean slate last time. You're probably gonna have to do it several times. I'm not. I'm not even gonna lie to you. But if you want it to have a chance of being better, you gotta go into it and allow it to be better. Number two thing that families have to do in order to get the trust back in the right places, you have to manage your own triggers. Yes, family has triggers, too. Families have just as many and just as big triggers as the addictive person, right? We want them to manage their triggers, right? We want them to manage the cravings. We want them to keep their self away from situations they shouldn't be in. You know, you have triggers, too. They're emotional triggers. And you've got to get a handle on those. Because if you allow yourself to get triggered up, then you're gonna get yourself back into that emotionally reactive place where you do things that you know are kind of out of bounds, right? Like you say or do mean things. You tell lies, you sneak, you snoop, you do all that kind of stuff, which is not good integrity on your side either. Number three thing that families have to do, want to build some trust, is this is a hard one. You have to learn how to stay in your lane. And a lot of you already know what I'm talking about. But if you don't, in recovery, there's this concept of your side of the street and their side of the street, right? Whether or not they go to meetings, that is their side of the street. Who they talk to, the clothes they wear, that is their side of the street. It is not your side of the street, even though you may have a million good ideas about what they need to do, even though you may have talked to 55 treatment professionals who told you this is what they need to do, is still not your side of the street. It's not in your lane to manage that. And that is so hard, right? It's hard for me to do. I'm the counselor, because I know what they need to be doing, too. But when you get out of your lane, you start boundary crossing. Yeah, that's right. Family's boundary cross, too, right? We start getting over. We start trying to control or dictate or make home contracts. You know how I feel about them. Home contracts. And it just doesn't work. And it causes your loved one in early recovery to resent, to feel like they can't trust you, to feel like you're controlling them and that you're boundary crossing. So that's one of the really hard things for family members to do is it's about understanding what's in your territory and what's in their territory so you can manage your own recovery. You can't manage their recovery. Things like that. You know, you may think you want them to get up, eat their vegetables because that's good for recovery. And you heard this addiction, I'll just say it, or whatever. It's still not. Still not in your lane. So hopefully, hopefully you're getting the point that there's a lot of changes that have to be made on both sides. They're really hard changes because they go against all of your instincts, right? Against everything inside of you. Hopefully it makes you feel better to know that the other side has to do their part too. Right? At least we're being even and fair about it. If both sides can do a really good job on these three things, of course there are other things that go into it, but these are like the basics. If both sides can do a really good job of managing their three things, their side of the street, of their things, trust is going to come back 100 million times faster. You're going to feel better. You're going to do a better job of helping to support each other and just allowing the healing process to occur. Like I said, I'm not saying that's it and everything, but that's the foundation that's necessary. Now, I told y' all this last week, some of y' all know that most of the time for my Thursday videos, I just think about my week and I get inspiration from what's going on in my week. And the inspiration this week came from several people. It's not like a one person. This. This was like several sessions I had this week where, y' all know, I mostly deal with the person that has the addiction. And they're feeling frustrated and they're feeling beat up by their family members and they're feeling like, you know, they' just never going to get out of the doghouse kind of situation, which I understand. And it makes them very, very naturally and instinctually defensive. It would anyone, right, because the family's coming at you and they're. And they're mad and they're angry and they don't trust you, and they've like made all these rules for you that you may feel like are unfair. And your natural defense is going to want to be. To defend yourself. You're going to want to say, I wasn't that bad. Like, I don't know why you acting like it. You know, it was like the worst thing anybody ever did or whatever. You know, you're going to want defend your side of the street, but that's the worst thing you can do. Because when you do that, this is what I told my clients. Several people got told that this week. I know it's your instinct, but when you do that, you're making your family member feel like you don't get it, that you don't get the severity of how your behaviors put the family in danger, about how what happened hurt them on a deep level. And sometimes it's really hard to see an early recovery because you spent so much time in your head, like rationalizing and justifying your behavior and making up excuses. It's hard to stop that process. It's hard to start getting really honest with yourself, learning how to face the heat. But the faster you learn to do that, the faster it gets better, the longer it takes for you to own it. And you keep trying to minimize it, and you keep trying to think things are unfair and this and that, the longer it takes. So if you want to speed up the process, just get in there and own it with some humility. And most of the time, if you can do this, your family will let their wall down a little bit because they're like, okay, they get it. They really get it. So it's about communicating that. Not just that you get that you had an addiction, but that you get everything else that went along with that. The fighting, the chaos, the gaslighting, the lying, the stealing, whatever it was that happened, you know, the betrayal, you gotta. You gotta address all that. I know it's Uncomfortable, but when you don't, it's still there anyway. You're just not addressing it. It's still hanging over your head like a gray cloud just constantly bringing you down. All right, let's say hello for a few minutes to our people who are joining us live. I'm so happy you're here. We have Ebony and KK And Jessica, Sandy and Megan and Jenny and Rita. Let's see. Rita has something to say. Rita says, I agree. A friend of mine once said, addiction is a series of choices not in your best interest. Dude, that might be my favorite definition of it right there. I feel like that's perfect. I love it. Rita Dion says, being addicted is not my fault, but we need to take responsibility for our acts. Actions. I like it. Dan, you can. You can understand that you found yourself in the middle of this illness, but you also have to take ownership of your choices. Right? Like, you maybe didn't choose to be addicted, but you did choose to steal that money, or you did choose to tell that lie, or you did choose to, like, pit people against each other so you can own the part that you can own. Let's see. Oh, I got an amen for Megan. Thank you, Megan. Deborah says, my loved one was just taken to the hospital for the third time this year for alcohol. It's so hard, but keep the faith and hope she can change. I'm right there with you, Deborah. I. I think I talked about this a little bit in a recent video, but sometimes situations, they just look so bad, you think they can never get better, and they turn around. I see it all the time. That's why I'm never like. I know the person says, okay, it's time to give up on this, because I've just seen a U turn quickly and get better. And when people get better from this, they get remarkably better. Not just a little better, but, like, they turn into better people than they would have been. So it's definitely possible. KK says mom won't accept because he thinks he will lose power and control. I get that in. Families really struggle with that a lot. Like, but if you can accept it, you actually gain power over it. When you're running from it, it has the power over you. It's a flip of thinking for sure. As we go through the comments, I will tell you that if you are in early recovery or you're working on your addiction and you really want to build trust with your family, we do have a little online course called Rapid Relationship Repair that will help give you the step by Step, like real direct steps to make things better with your family. The reason it's called rapid relationship pair is because you can do it much quicker if you follow those steps. It's not for the faint of heart, but if you just listen to this video and I didn't run you off and scare you off and you. And you can hear what I'm saying, then you'll be fine in that course. You're totally ready to do it. And I'll put the link in the. In the description for you guys in case you're interested. All right, let's see what Nikki has to say. I wish I was at the. I wish I was at this point. I'm at the point where people enable and feed into the lies. I'm up against a lot. I think you're not the only one that's been there, Nikki. You gotta show Nikki some love so she knows she's not by herself. Hey, Christina, we got Karen on here's four year sober sea. Karen is an example that people do change, situations get better. Ebony. Ebony's being humble and honest and willing. She's saying she was a crazy person. She decided to get her peace back. It's a decision that you make. That's right. You have to decide to get off the crazy train. And you. You can decide that. Jenny says so so hard to hold your steady and hold your cool when they first start the process. But I'm realizing my codependent recovery is hard and must be a thousand times harder. Yes, I have huge triggers. Good for you. Good for you, Jenny. She's owning it. I like it. I'm willing to do that. But he doesn't understand that I ever. That never ever did. I said you have a problem with addiction. I'm a little confused on that one. A tiny bit. Not exactly sure what you're saying. See what Sandy has to say. She has. She usually has some really good things to say. Where did it go? I just saw you, Sandy. There it is. Hey. Amber takes a lot of self responsibility, integrity, self boundaries, and a major ton of empathy, compassion, and the biggest one, forgiveness of all. And the addict, wet or dry. Too dry just means they're not using. But they haven't addressed these behaviors that we're talking about. So it's kind of like their substances there, but they still act the same thing. And I. I love what Sandy's saying here because she's bringing up a good point, which is you got to decide to get your side of the street clean, even if the other person so if you're in a family situation and maybe whatever side you're on, maybe the other side isn't doing their three things. You, you got to make the decision. You got to be the bigger person. You got to decide. You going to do your three things anyway. Because a lot of times if you do that, it helps them do their, their three things. So sometimes you got to be the bigger person. You got to decide you're going, you're going to jump first and you're going to do the right thing. Watching this video, my guess is, is you're probably that person because you're already trying to figure out how to make things better and fix it. How do you know when it's safe to let them back home? He's doing outpatient treatment. I found him passed out with drugs in his lap, so I kicked him out. We have an eight year old who doesn't, he doesn't support me. That's a really good question about letting them back in the house. Ebony I think you need a little bit of a track record. Now. That doesn't mean you have to like, silent treatment them or cold shoulder them. You can, you can meet up, you can do things together. You know, you definitely want to test the waters before you, you know, get the bad situation back into your house. So let them get some time, let them prove some things, because a lot of people can do it for a week or two. You got, you got to get a little bit of a track record there. Shelly says, my family and my dad did wrong. My son, Thomas Madreno, he has it in for him. It's hard when other people aren't doing right, Shelly. But you, you gotta, you gotta just deal only with your lane. And I know that's not easy. And when other people aren't dealing with their lane, it makes us want to get in their lane, but we can't. It's, it's a boundary viol. Even if we feel very strongly they're doing wrong, we can only deal with what we bring to the table. Angela says, I agree. Owning it is the biggest step. I think in my experience, when they can be honest with themselves, it gets a lot easier. It really does. It's like you fight it and fight it and fight it, and then finally one day you just quit fighting and you let it go and you're like, man, feel better? Why didn't I do that sooner? I wasn't as hard as I thought. Let's see here. Veronica says, I'm dealing with the behaviors that I created in others and their reactions to me. Like I trained them to react poorly. It sucks, but I can point out that this was my old behavior, trying something new. I think there might have been more to that. I don't agree with all the 12 step stuff, but that simple design to get better gave me results. I love what you're saying here, Veronica. You're saying, okay, these people reacted to me badly, but I did something that triggered their reaction. That's. That is a perfect example of owning your side of the street. And since I feel like that was, like, dead on the track, we're gonna end with that. Up next, more information about how to rebuild trust. I will see you next Thursday. Bye, everyone.