This YouTube video (part two of a series) is hosted by Amber Hollingsworth, a master addiction counselor with ~15 years' experience, who explains how addicts and alcoholics use gaslighting and other manipulative tactics to make family members feel "crazy." The episode labels this dynamic "crazy-making" and uses multiple first-person anecdotes (Speakers B, C, and Joe) to show behaviors such as staged phone calls, lying about amounts stolen, planning deceptive actions, stealing from loved ones, and acting as if concerned to provoke guilt. The video closes by pointing viewers to a related video in the series.
Chapters
Welcome to part two of our series on how addicts and alcoholics manipulate their families and everyone else around them. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction counselor, and I've been treating addicts and alcoholics for the past 15 years. So, yeah, I've seen and heard it all. And I'm gonna give you the inside scoop on exactly how addicts and alcoholics f. So if you have a loved one with a drug or alcohol problem, you definitely want to be subscribed to this channel and hit the bell, because I'll make sure you stay five steps ahead of addiction at all times. Okay, so like I said before, this is part two in a series on how addicts and alcoholics manipulate their families. If you haven't seen part one, that's okay. You can go back and watch that one after this one. You don't have to watch them in order, but you do need to watch them all. And this one is definitely gonna make you want to pull your hair out. Let's call this one crazy making. Because you see people in active addiction on purpose, make you think you're crazy and question your sanity. If you've got a loved one with a drug or alcohol problem, I bet you know what I'm talking about. And they have several techniques to help pull this off. You see, here's how this works. You know that they are lying and sneaking and abusing some sort of substance. But it is really hard to catch them because they're super good at being sneaky. And so you start driving yourself crazy trying to prove it, trying to find the substances, trying to catch them in a lie, checking the receipts, digging through the drawers, and anything else you can think of to find the actual evidence. And when you can't find it, your insides are still screaming at you that something is really bad wrong, and you can't ignore it. And so I guess in some ways, you kind of are getting crazy. But they'll use that against you. They know why you're doing that. They know that you know. But as much as possible, they're gonna let you think that you are a lunatic because you're gonna actually feel guilty when they catch you sneaking around searching for their stuff. They're gonna look at you like, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing that? I'm not doing anything. Is that all you ever gonna do? And that's gonna put you on the defensive, because now you're sneaking around to catch them. Sneaking. And as you can see, the whole Dynamic here is getting a little bit crazy. They're gonna tell you that you're obsessed. They're gonna tell you that you're constantly nagging. They're gonna tell you that you worry too much. They're gon anxious. They're gonna tell you all kinds of stuff that is wrong with you. And to some degree, they're probably right. You probably are obsessed and anxious and worry too much. You're probably all those things. But the key factor is that addiction is making you crazy. So, yeah, if they call you out on the crazy, just acknowledge it. Say, you know what? You're probably right, because this situation is making me crazy. Now let's see if we can't get a real life example to help you understand what we're talking about.
The instance with maybe the cigarettes or being on the phone outside, I would know that my dad was up and that he might hear me go outside. And I'd do it kind of sneaky, like, not be real loud about it. So we'd hear just a loud enough noise that he would think I might be sneaking out. And then make sure that I'm visibly just on the phone and could say, God, you're crazy. Like, I'm just on the phone with my girlfriend. Why are you guys so crazy? You know? But that would be like a. I might plan that all day, Then when I get home tonight, I'm gonna do that, you know? And that's where it becomes really manipulative. When you're planning that much into it to deceive someone and make them feel crazy, like, that's an awful thing to do to somebody.
Right?
But it is effective. Well, and he stole $20 out of my pocketbook last night. And it's like, it wasn't 20, it was five. Why do you never get anything right? You're literally lying about me to the therapist right now. And it's just like, you know, obviously anybody from an objective standpoint could say, well, stealing $5 or $20 is wrong. The amount really doesn't matter. But in my mind, that would divert the attention just enough off of me to then. Then it could be A, that this person's fallible and they can't be trusted because they're giving wrong facts, and B, that the attention just isn't on me for a second, that it's like, well, was it 20 or was it 5?
But when it comes down to not having your fix, not having your drug, it's like I said, survival mode. It's like a life or death situation to Me in that moment where.
I.
Was willing to do anything. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would steal from my friends. I was the guy that would steal your drugs and then help you look for them and make you think you dropped them under the couch or something. And I already smoked it.
Because I was constantly trying to steal her stuff. And it's so crazy to think about, you know, how I live my life. I live my life that when I heard my mom get up, I knew that that meant that she was about to go walk our dogs around our apartment complex. And I knew that that meant that as soon as that door closed, I was up across the apartment, into their room, into her purse, looking for something that I could find. Whether that was money, whether that was, you know, medicine that she was taking that I was going to take from her. Whatever it was, it meant that. And I remember, you know, I mean, it probably wasn't too long after I ripped her off a couple times that she realized what I was doing. So it was funny because she went about it a bunch of different ways. She would, you know, hide her purse in her car, but then I would just find it in her trunk. But the worst was when she would close the door to the apartment. And this was really bad, because this is when I know that I've got problems. She would close the door to the apartment. I would immediately spring up across the room, and then she would open the door again, and she'd be like, hey, Joe, what are you doing? I'd be like, uh, nothing. Just go in the bathroom. She's like, well, you got a bathroom in your room? Like, you know, what are you doing? Weren't you just sleeping? And so, like, it's, like, humiliating kind of to look at that and, like, look at those behaviors also. She would.
Well, that was enlightening. Okay, so now that you've been enlightened on how that actually works, make sure that you check out the video that Campbell and I made. And I'm gon to put it right up here so you can click on it and watch that next.
