Amber Hollingsworth shows how to help someone struggling with addiction by listening for what they actually want, like a promotion or moving out, then asking questions that help them connect those goals to their own reasons for change. The approach uses motivational interviewing techniques applied casually in everyday conversations, not formal therapy.
Chapters
You have to help them build a new vision for their future. That is step three of helping your addicted loved one make the decision to get sober. Because if you can get your addicted loved one to start to maybe envision a different kind of future or something that's more hopeful or something that they'd rather have instead, their journey towards sobriety is going to really speed up and you can help reinforce this. Now, I'm sure you're wondering, okay, Amber, how do we do that? Don't worry, I am going to explain. The first thing you have to do is you have to help them connect with their own motivations for change. But if you listen closely enough, I think that you're going to hear some kind of complaints or frustrations from the person. We mentioned this briefly in step number one, but in this step we're going to go much more in depth. Now, their motivations may not seem to be tied directly to their addictive behavior, at least not in the way that they communicate it to you. But if they're wanting something in their life to improve, if they're wanting something about themselves to improve, those are actually really great motivations motivators. Because when it comes down to it, we all know the things about yourself aren't really going to get better as long as you're engaging in an addictive behavior. And trust me, they will eventually figure that out as well. I want you to really tune your ears in and listen differently and try to find what it is that they want that's different than what they have right now. Let me give you some examples. Maybe it's a young adult and what they really, really want is to move out of the parents house. That's a great goal, isn't it? Maybe what they want is a promotion at work. Maybe what they want is to be a really good mother or father. Maybe what they want is to make a ton of money or to graduate college. Everyone in life has things that they want. We all do. And I want you to listen carefully for your addicted loved ones wants and desires and goals. Now when they say these things, I want you to avoid falling in the trap of, well, that's never going to happen to you because, well, if you stop drinking, maybe that could happen. We don't need any I told you sos. We don't need any instructions even on how to do that. I just want you to first recognize what those things are. And then once you begin to pick up on those things and recognize them, I want you to validate them. I want you to sort of take those little tiny seeds of desire for change and pour some water on them and grow them into bigger seeds and ultimately bigger plants that are going to grow into a, like a recovery plan. Now, one way you can grow that little tiny seed of motivation for change, as you can say, when they make those kinds of statements to you, you can investigate into that a little further by saying, oh yeah, what would that look like? Or why is that important to you? Or how long have you been thinking about that? So what you're doing is you're going into this little motivation seed and you're exploring around in there and you're finding more good motivations. For example, maybe if their motivation is they really want to graduate college and you want to find out why so important to them, why do you think they might think that? Maybe it's really important to them because no one in their family graduated college before just to prove to themselves that they can do it. Or maybe it's really important to them to be able to provide for their family. Once you get connected to the why that's so important, I want you to go in another layer. Are you ready? This is a big time. I want you to find out the why is so important. Like why is it so important for you to provide for your family? Why is it so important for you to graduate college even though other people haven't? Because now you're going to get even closer to their true heart's desires. And having them talk about these things out loud is one of the fastest ways you can grow this desire for change. Now we're getting into some actual, like counseling techniques here. These are actual strategies that counselors use and that you learn in real counselor school. But I don't expect you to sit down and have like hour long sessions where you're digging these things out of people. You have to do it much more casually and naturally and in little smaller doses. However, the good thing is when you do it is that actually much more powerful than when I do it as the counselor, because you're around them all the time and you can explore these avenues in a much more natural way and you can reinforce these things in a much more natural way than I can once a week or once every two weeks, or however often it is that they Come sit in my office. Now, if you really want to get good at helping people connect to their motivations, then I'm going to put the link in the description so you can actually watch a real life session where I use the skills that I'm teaching you. Only it goes much more in depth into the actual communication skills that counselors use in these situations. Now, another way for you to grow these little season motivations is for you to ask about their next steps. You can do this super easily. Be like, well, what would you have to do to make that happen? What would be the next step you can ask about if they've done things like that in the past before, you can ask about, are there any roadblocks that might be standing in their way. You're just exploring with them and having them talk about these things out loud. They're going to start to find their own solutions. Have you ever been talking to someone about a problem or a situation you had, and then all of a sudden the light bulb went off in your head and then you total had it and you understood exactly what you needed to do? And it was like this wonderful, like, epiphany moment. Aren't those awesome? I love it when that happens. That's one of the great things about being a counselor. It's like the person's talking to you and then they figure it out and they just associate it with you and they feel like you did the helping, but actually it's the talking about it that helps people figure things out like that. You can even explore with them what kind of resources or connections that they have that might help them along their step or journey to getting whatever it is that they want to get. What you're doing here is you're focusing them on something that they want. They will make the connection that what they have is incompatible with what they want, especially if you're doing steps number one and step number two from this series. Now, step four in this series of getting your loved ones over is actually a really exciting one because it's all about knowing how to identify when the window is open, when they're actually ready to start making some big changes.
