Exactly What to Do If Your Loved One Relapses

Finding out that your loved one has relapsed after things have been going good for a while can be devastating. In fact, it's probably going to send you emotionally spiraling. But how you handle the situation is critically important. Of course you're not responsible for controlling what's going on with them, but you can have influence, which is why I want you to follow these steps. They're the most likely to give you the best outcome. Now, if you're not pretty sure they relapse, I probably wouldn't do anything just yet. If you're questioning it and you're not sure, I do have a video called how to tell if your loved ones relapse. And you may want to go back and watch that one to get some more clarity. But once you have that clarity and you're pretty, maybe you're not 100%, but you're like 80, 90% sure, then the first thing I want you to do is I want you to let them know that you know. Now this can be the scariest part because you're going to be worried, is it going to start argument? And to be honest with you, it might start an argument. So you're going to do the best that you can to be as kind and empathetic and non confrontational as possible. But you need to put it on the table. So I would just suggest that you let them know that, you know, I didn't do anything. You know, it's almost like a kid getting caught. Just say, hey, I could totally be wrong here, but I have a pretty strong gut feeling that you've had a backslide. But I want you to know I'm not freaking out, I'm not panicking. I just wanted to bring it above board. Otherwise I feel like I'm walking around and I'm lying to you or I'm at least not being authentic or genuine. So you want to say it calm, casual and don't expect them to necessarily admit it. They may initially deny it, they may admit it, but minimize it, or, or they may just full out, throw it all on the table and dump it all out there. Either which way your goal is to try to bring the relapse to the surface. Now the next thing you want to do is you want to try to damage control the situation. And here's what I mean by damage control. Don't act like it is the end of the world. Don't put a bunch of threats and say that's it, I told you, if you relapse, we're done. I'M out, we're divorcing, I'm leaving. I'm cutting you off, whatever. Don't go down that road. What you want to do first is if it's a relapse and it hasn't happened that long, the best thing you can do is say, hey, mistakes happen. You're not going all the way back to square one. We're just going to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. This is what I mean by damage control. If you freak out and then you're telling them that they're all the way back at square one or that they have all these giant punishments, they are literally going to think to themselves, well, I've already screwed it up. Now who cares? Might as well go all the way. And they might even be thinking that, even though you haven't said it, because they may feel that way. So your goal is to say, hey, you haven't ruined it all. This is just a small step. It's a learning opportunity. Let's just figure out how to keep moving forward. And in my experience, a lot of times you can cut it off right where it is, and damage control, especially if you can make this person feel hopeful about it. I know your instinct is to want to freak out because in your mind, you don't want to go back to the way things were, which is why I'm telling you to do it this way so that things don't go back to the way things work. And the most influence you can have on that is by not letting yourself go back to the way you used to be. If you don't relapse back into your old negative behaviors, chances are that their old behaviors won't last nearly as long. So your job is to keep it cool, call it out, but damage control it. The next thing, I want you to kind of quietly be trying to assess their stage of change. Sometimes when people relapse, they have this thought of like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I did that. That was so stupid. And they really do want to get back on track. So I would say even though that person's relapsed, they're staying in the active stage of change. But sometimes when people relapse, they kind of slide back into denial a little bit. And you'll know this by the way they respond, react to you, or the way they even talk about the subst. Like, for example, they may move back into the bargaining stage. And so whereas before they were telling you things like, I know I can't Drink, just one drink. If I have just a little bit, it's going to be out of control. They're saying all that stuff now. All of a sudden they're saying, well, I think it's fine if I just have a couple of drinks, are only on special occasions. It's like they're going to want to introduce the substance back in, in some small, in their mind, manageable way. And it is a slide back into denial. Or they may have slid off all the way back into denial. And they may be telling you things like, this is stupid. I never even thought I had a problem. I just did that for you. And it's really just you and you're my problem. So you can kind of gauge how they react to you, how they talk about their recovery or the substance is sort of where they're at in their stages of change. And you have to match your response to their stage of change. This is the trickiest, most difficult part of this whole situation because if they are still in the active stage of change, you're going to be freaked out, but you're going to be less freaked out. But when they start backsliding into some of those denial statements, you're really gonna feel inside like, oh my gosh, you're gonna feel this panic. You might be catastrophizing it in your head, but I want you to try to get a hold of yourself, bring it in, center yourself. Because remember, we've got to damage control this. So I'm gonna encourage you to use that moment. If they do slide back into the Nile, where they're just saying, well, I think I'm fine, it's not a problem, or, well, it's okay if I do it just a little bit or something like that. This is actually a really good moment. Just say something like, okay, I understand, you know, we need to give this a try. But if this doesn't work, would you agree to and then kind of accountability measure like soberlink? You guys know how much I love soberlink. If you haven't heard me talk about it. Soberlink is a really high tech alcohol monitoring system. And the best thing about soberlink is you pretty much just can't cheat it. It's got facial recognition in it. Like you're gonna know for sure whether or not your loved one has relapsed or not relapsed. There's really not any getting around soberlink and using this relapse moment, this sort of backtracking thinking is the best opportunity to bring up something like Soberlink as an accountability measure, because they're probably going to expect you to freak out and throw down the hammer. So if you don't throw down the hammer and you're like, okay, you know you best, I'm willing to give this a try. But will you agree to. A lot of times you can get them to agree to right up front. If this doesn't work, can we do this? And let me just go ahead and tell you it's not going to work if it was so bad before that they quit completely. They've already tried to do the managing thing several times. I know you know this. I'm just reinforcing for you here. And then they're going to try it for a while and when it doesn't go the way they said it's going to go, then you can say, okay, now it's time to and it insert your ask here, whether that's your accountability measure, like SoberLink or Recovery Coaching or counseling or whatever this step is that you've asked for them to do if their plan doesn't work out. This is a great way to match your response to their stage of change and already be sort of planning, like we say on this channel, five steps ahead. You're ahead of it. You're calm, cool and collected. You know exactly what you're going to do if they relapse. You know exactly what you're going to ask for. And you're even going to go ahead and get them to sort of agree to that now, because I want you to go ahead and check out those resources plus any other resource that you think may be what your loved one needs to get over that hurdle. I suggest having, you know, two or three so that when you do get to that point, you've got some options to pick from. But in order to do that, you got to educate yourself. You got to know what those options are. So you're sort of sitting on ready for when you get that moment. Now, if you're hearing me talk about these stages of change and you're like, I don't really even know what she's talking about. What does that bargaining even mean? Then I want you to watch this video next. It's all about the stages of change because it goes a lot more in depth into what to look for, what the signs and symptoms are for each of those stages.