Expert Secrets For Getting Someone To Change Their Addictive Behavior

Of course, you can't force someone to change their addictive behavior. But what you can do is help them get in touch with the parts of themselves that want to change that addictive behavior and then help them connect the dots to the steps they need to take. It is a whole different ball game than trying to force someone. I like to call it. It's influencing someone. Now, you may, when you hear me say that, you may be thinking, oh, that's manipulation. But it's really not. It's helping them to come into connection with that part of themselves that wants things to be different. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I am a master addiction counselor. I have been working with people and their families that have substance abuse problems for almost 20 years now. And I've had to learn a lot of things, trial and error. And it's my goal on this YouTube channel to help you learn all the lessons that I've learned without having to go through as much trial and error as I have now. Early in my career, one of the first jobs I had as a counselor was running an intensive outpatient program for teenagers for adolescents the that had drug and alcohol problems. Now stop just a second and think about it. Could there be a much more difficult population to work with as a brand new counselor? It's definitely pretty up there, right? You've got teenagers who by nature don't have a lot of insight or willingness or desire to change. And I know that's a generalization, but I think you guys can hang with it. Who have substance abuse problems, which in turn is causing mental health problems, which in turn is causing a lot of problems in their family. And then there's me. Now, I was in this program literally by myself. It was just me and the teenagers, and it was my job to help them stop using drugs. Now, this is a pretty big task. And I know you're thinking, oh, well, you have your training because you went to counselor school. I did go to counselor school and I did take the one course on addiction that they give you in counseling school, which pretty much consists of learning about Jelinek's disease model and making you go to some 12 step meetings. So you know what those are like. But they sure in the heck don't teach you how to get teenagers to decide to stop using drugs. So I kind of had to figure that out on my own. And I have not always done it perfectly. But the good news is, is I'm here to share with you what I've learned that Works and what doesn't work after doing that, after doing that job of dealing with teenagers with substance abuse problems, the whole rest of my career feels easy. So in a lot of ways I am super grateful for that. Now, in order to get someone to change their addictive behaviors, you have to help them get in touch with really two big things. One of those big things is their desire to change, and one of those big things is their ability to change. Because a lot of times once someone decides that they want to change, they may try to change and then they don't, and then they kind of come up with the idea that maybe they can't change. So there's a couple of obstacles there. Now I'm going to talk you through some techniques on how to address those two obstacles in this video. But if you want to see a more in depth lesson on that, I've put a link in the description to my persuasion masterclass that you can watch for free. And after you watch that, I think you can even watch me do some session or do a session using what's called motivational interviewing techniques, which will go a lot more in depth into what I'm talking about. So if you want the master ninja training, definitely check that out. But in this one I am going to give you the basics and the, the underlying philosophy and ideas behind how and why these techniques work and when to use them, how to use them, all that kind of good stuff. Alright, so let's start with helping them to find the desire inside themselves that they want to change. One of the first obstacles you're going to run into here is that very often a person with an addiction doesn't recognize the amount of problems that are being caused by their addiction. And you may be looking at it from the outside thinking, duh, this is so freaking obvious. How could you not see this? But denial is very, incredibly powerful. And there's a lot of mechanisms at play in someone with denial. Some of that is pure, like what the drugs actually do to the, the mechanical functioning of your brain. Part of that is that like biology and a lot of that is psychology. Not only do people not recognize that the addiction is causing the problems, they usually see it the actual opposite of what is really going on. Like they literally see that the, the addiction, whether that's a substance, drug, alcohol, behavior, whatever, is the solution to the problems, rather than recognizing that it's usually the addiction that's causing the problems. So not only do not see it, but they feel the opposite. They see the opposite of what you're seeing. For example, I deal a lot with people who drink too much. And they usually tell me that having some drinks before bed helps them sleep better. What they don't usually realize is that the having the drinks is what's causing the sleep problem to begin with. And the reason they need the drinks to go to sleep is because they have developed such a pattern and a tolerance that their body doesn't go to sleep without the alcohol or the drug or whatever it is. And so again, in this situation, they think that the substance or the addiction is the thing fixing the problem. And they completely do not recognize that it is the substance or the addiction causing the problem. Here's another example. A lot of people that come see me, if they're married, they feel like their marriage is a disaster. They usually are very resentful against their spouse. They feel like their spouse is too critical, their spouse is controlling, their spouse is nagging, their spouse has expectations that are ridiculous. And there's a lot of dynamics going on there. And most of the time people tell me, like, dude, I just need to have a drink, or I just smoke weed or I just go hang out with my friends because I need some break from that, right? What most of the time, the person is failing to see not this isn't the whole reason, but this is a big giant piece of the reason. Okay, Is it the reason why their spouse is so crazy and nagging and controlling and critical and all that is because of the addictive behavior. So again, you can see it's. They have it backwards. You know, another example of that might be they feel like they need to do X, y or Z addictive behavior because their job is so stressful. Now, I'm not saying that a person doesn't have a stressful job or that the person's spouse is perfect, but in almost all situations, it is the addiction that's causing whatever that problem is that maybe was there to begin with to be exponentially worse. Like, for example, if you have a stressful job, but you are using substances to deal with it, it is going to make that job stress infinitely bigger. Let me help you understand why. Number one, because when you're not using substances, the rebound from that is your anxiety is going to be through the roof. So your ability to solve problems at work, to be resilient to all the stressors and overcome things, it's not going to be good because your anxiety's through the roof. Never mind the fact that you don't really feel motivated for your job the way that you used to, because as you develop an addiction, you lose the ability to experience joy, happiness, satisfaction, all that kind of good stuff from anything other than the substance. So eventually, you're just doing this job because you have to do it. You're not motivated to do it. It doesn't make you feel good. Your ability to deal with the stress goes way down. And eventually all of that is going to impact your job performance, whether you want to admit it or not. Now, you may not want to admit it, the person may not want to admit it because they're like, I show up to work every day. I haven't missed a day of work in 20 years, or what. But there's no way that you are actively engaging a big old addiction. And you're being your 100 at work can't happen because addiction is like a 247 thing, and it's consuming you, and that becomes the first thing. So, yeah, you might be kind of like doing your job over here on the back burner, and you might be kind of interacting with your family, like, the amount that you have to. But addiction, just the whole nature of it means it's taken such a priority in your thinking and in your life. That doesn't mean you're using all the time, but when you're not, you're thinking about it, you're planning it, you're scheming it, you're wanting to. You're fantasizing about it. So even when you're not engaged in the behavior, your mind is still there, which makes it impossible to have those priorities at work and family and that kind of thing. Home. And then what you find is work, family, friends. Then they start getting aggravated at you because they feel like you're different, and they're disappointed in you because you didn't come through the way they wanted you to come through, or you're not acting the way they want you to act. And then you become more and more mad at them. And then you feel like the substance is the only thing that helps you deal with that stress. Can you see this is kind of like a feedback loop? Unfortunately, when you're in it, when you're in the active addiction, you. You usually feel like the substance or the addictive behavior, whatever it is, is the only thing that makes the other thing better. Without realizing that it is the addiction that is causing about 90% problems. So helping people to see the truth of that can be a little complicated. If you're watching this video, I think I see Anthony on here. I see a couple other people on here who have Struggled with addiction. I would love it if you guys would put in the comments or in the chat your experience with this. If I'm crazy, you can totally tell me I'm crazy. What do you remember thinking about the. The pros and the cons of the substances when you are in it? Because when you're in it, you really just can't. You don't see it clearly. Most people don't see it clearly until they're out of it. Like. Like out of it. Like, for a while, they still don't see it clearly. Even. Even when they saw it clear enough to decide they wanted to change, they still didn't see how bad it was until they're, like, way out of it for, like, weeks or months. And usually they look back and they're like, oh, my gosh, like, I don't even know how I functioned like that. Like, what in the world? It's like, you can't see it when you're in the middle of the storm. So there's a couple of things that you can do as a friend, a family member, counselor, whoever, because I know we have a lot of counselors that watch this that you can do to help someone see the truth about that. One thing is, if you're the family member, you can stop trying to force them to see it. So when you're trying to force them to see that they're going to lose their job because of their addiction, when you're trying to force them to see that their sleep is the problem because their addiction, that their anxiety is the result of their drinking or whatever it is, the more you try to force them to see it in a direct way, the more time and energy that they're going to spend trying to defend the opposite point of view. And you never want to make the person think and definitely not say the opposite of what you're wanting them to think and say. And the best way to get them to say the opposite is for you to say this. It's going to make them naturally say the opposite. That's just the way humans are wired. So you got to figure out how to get them to say, think. Feel what you're saying, thinking and feeling. And a better way to do that is to ask questions. Now, you got to be good at this asking questions thing, and not only just the questions, but if you can be really good at empathy and really good at reflective listening, which I do have some videos on, I'll link up here at the end about how to do that effectively, the person will take down their own walls, and they'll be able to see this a lot more clearly for themselves. Like, for example, one question you can ask that, that I use a lot that gets to the heart of it and bypasses it is, you know, like, let's say there's someone in my office in there telling me, you know, all these terrible things that are going on in their life, and, you know, they're grown men and why shouldn't they be able to just, you know, have some time to their self or whatever it is. Right. You know, that. That's kind of the. The storyline that they come in with. And they're telling me why this and that and the other is not a problem. One really easy question I say is, so I'll say, is there anything about X, Y or Z addictive behavior that you don't like? So I don't try to argue with them about what they're telling me about how it helps for this or how it's really not that big a deal because other people do it more than them. All that kind of stuff. I don't argue with any of that. I just say, is there anything about it that you don't like or that's counterproductive or whatever? And usually they'll have something. They'll say, well, I don't like all that drink because, you know, it's a lot of calories. I think I'm getting weight or whatever. Or they'll say, well, it makes me feel crappy because I go out to these business events. And then the next day when I have to be at the conference, I'm not feeling great or whatever, they'll have something. And if you've been a good listener and you've had a lot of empathy, if you just ask that question, they'll tell you something. And then when they tell you something, if you just sit there and listen and just reflect back whatever they say to you, they'll tell you something else. And if you deal with that good, they'll tell you something else. What you're doing is you're. You're literally unblocking them. So most of the time, it's our instinct. And I still have this instinct all the time. And let me tell you something. I still mess it up from time to time. I definitely do. But it's okay, because it's pretty easy to tell when you mess it up because you see the wall shut down, you see the face language, body language, you just see the shutdown. You know, you don't mess it up. So you can fix it right then and there in the conversation. You want to. You just want to get them to see it faster. And what happens to us is we get impatient. And that impatience causes us to want to like, just tell them the answer. It's like, I do this with my son and he ties his shoes and he takes forever. And I'm like, let me do it. You know, we get impatient and that's not the thing to do. Which I still do that too. Still made that mistake anyways. You got to like, get your patience in check, ask the questions and just listen. Like, literally. You do not have to have no fancy master's degree in counseling. Just learn to be a good listener. And if you do nothing else, they'll figure it out faster just because of that. Because if they have this sort of non judgmental listener, they don't have to have all the defense mechanisms up. And as they start talking about it, they start thinking about it. And then one thing leads them to the next thing, leads them to the next thing. And before you know it, they have figured that out. They have figured out that, you know, this thing isn't as great as I think it is. Or it's great because it helps me in these ways, but it's not so great because it causes me problems in these ways. And the key to this is not freaking out when they try to tell you how the thing is good or how the thing is not that bad. There's a technique counselors use called motivational interview interviewing. And that technique, it would refer to that them saying like the good things about it. They call that sustained talk means things that they're saying that are going to help them sustain the addiction. And then the things that they say that helps kind of go in the corner of changing. They call that change talk. So your job is to pick up on the change talk and pull it out more and to, yes, you hear that sustained talk. And your job is to not argue with it. Because when you argue with it, it makes it more ingrained. And then what you do when you start arguing with it is you start getting them to say all the reasons why this is a good thing or why this thing isn't that bad, or why it's really all these other problems causing this issue and all that kind of stuff. And that is the opposite of what you want. Because every time someone thinks a thought, it becomes more true in their head. And every time someone says something out loud, it really becomes true. So the last thing you want to do is call someone to say the opposite of trying to get them to say so. You got to be smart here. You got to resist the urge to not pounce. When they give you some of this other talk that you don't like to hear, basically you can just sort of neutralize that. You can hear that. You don't have to argue with that. And then they'll move back into the change talk usually. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea of how to sort of get someone to shift from thinking this is my answer to maybe this isn't as great as I thought it was. Because the truth of it is, is probably in the beginning, when the person started doing xyz, it did make things better. It was the answer. It did like make their social anxiety less and they had more friends. It did help them perform better at work. It did make them feel more connected to other people. It did help them sleep better, probably did work for a while. But the person starts relying on that thing to fix that problem so much, and it becomes less and less and less effective at fixing that problem while at the same time making those problems more and more and more. And then it becomes the only thing that can give them any relief at all from these growing problems. And so it's really hard to get people to see that because in their mind it's, this is the thing that helped me have less anxiety. And not understanding that this is the thing that is making me have anxiety. You know, this is the thing that makes me feel more confident is what they think. But actually in the end, in the long run, it's the thing that makes you really self conscious because you got embarrassed about what you did and what other people know that you did when you were drinking or what you did to get those drugs or whatever. And your self esteem goes further and further and further into the pit. Now, once you have that change talk going, another key element is to help someone get into contact with their ability to make changes. Because you got to get the desire there, which is what we just talked about. And then you got to get them to see that they have what it takes to get better. There's a few ways that I do that that I'm going to tell you a couple of Amber tricks to do that. And then I'm going to tell you like a couple of like the official counseling techniques that you can learn from some of our workshops and stuff. So one of the ways that I get people to see that they can do it is I normalize the problem. Everybody else is running around trying to Say how it's the end of the world and how no one ever beats their addiction. And how if, if you don't go to 90 meetings in 90 days and do, you don't do all this stuff like you're never going to beat the problem. And you're trying to like tell them how big and huge and giant it is and how no one ever conquers it. Guess what? That's not going to help someone feel like they have the ability to beat this problem. I don't know why that, that's the sort of standard way that we go about this. I was talking to a person just this week. He told me that their loved one went to treatment and the loved one's counselor told them that they were never going to stay sober. And if they do this and that and the other, they were definitely going up. So I'm like, oh my God, why would you tell someone that? Because you just making a self fulfilling prophecy, you make someone not even want to try. Like that's ridiculous. So I, I help to sort of normalize the problem because guess what, this day and age, everybody's got some kind of addiction or another, right? And most people do overcome that addiction. So not only do I help them say okay, like, okay, so you got this problem number one, it doesn't make you the worst person in the world because guess what, everybody gets an addiction at some sort or the other. You're not evil person. So I sort of normalize it in that way. And then I help them to see where they have actually made progress in overcoming this. Because a lot of times they'll say, well, I'm drinking too much, but I ain't drinking like I used to be drinking. I used to be drinking every day and you know, a handle of vodka or whatever it is, right? And so even if they're not doing perfectly, I help them to see how they've made changes, improvements. Another quick question that you can ask is you can ask them, have you ever, has this problem ever been better for you or you. Or if you want to say it like have you ever been sober for any length of time or something like that. Then they'll start telling you, and then you can say, or even if they tell you something like, well, the longest I ever have is like three days. Even if they tell you something, usually it's like, well, I did get three months one time, or I had two years one time, or I had six months, or I had nine months after I got a treatment, something they'll usually tell you a Bigger answer. But even if they tell y', all, where's that best I ever got? Three. Three days, then I'll say, well, dang, the first three days is the hardest. What did you do in those three days to make that happen? And then they'll start telling you what they did to get however length of time it was that they were doing better with it. They'll start telling you that. And what you're doing is you're getting them to tell you how they have the answer, solution, and strength to beat this problem. Can you see how powerful this is? The thing of it is, is you got to realize the person has this inside of them and you can't do it for them. But a thing you can do to help is you can help unblock their desire, and you can help unblock their fear and help them, which will sort of release their desire, motivation, their belief in themselves to do better. And then, of course, you got to do, like, the simple, super basic things like validate their willingness, validate the hard things that they've done, validate their progress. Because then you're just nurturing. You're just sort of putting rewarding a behavior. I don't mean rewarding like you have to give them a candy bar. Although you could, but. But even if you just pay attention to it and you just notice it, that's still reinforc. Maybe that's the better word. Reinforcing, change behavior. And if you will just stick with this process, it is going to give you the absolute best chances possible that someone will start to overcome their addiction. There's no way. There's no 100% proof way of doing this, but this is the way that's going to get you the best results. If you're watching this, have you ever tried any of these techniques? If you're watching this, have you ever had anybody interact with you like this? Does it help? Does it not help? What it. What have people done to try to help you that's been not so helpful? And what are things. What are things people have done to help you that have been the most helpful? All right, I'm getting ready to take some questions. Don't forget, I am putting the link for you in the description to the Persuasion masterclass, which will go into detail of this. Plus, like, more. Because some of the questions you guys ask are really good, and I know other people are going to want to know the answer, too. I will link up those videos here for you about dealing with denial and about the reflective listening. And don't forget the link in the description for the Persuasion Master class. Persuasion Master Class. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.