Helping People Overcome Addiction: What I Discovered After YEARS of Struggle...

After a bunch of years of running that program, this is my top three takeaways on how to actually be effective at influencing someone to get sober. Now, this first thing is probably the most important thing, and that is that you're going to be able to get someone sober much faster if you focus on building them up versus tearing them down. Of course, it's our natural instinct when we're working with someone who's like, destroying their life and their family's life, to tell them and to show them, hey, you're messing things up, you're making bad decisions, you're ruining your life, you're ruining your family's life. You want to show that to them because you naturally think if they can just see what a disaster this is, they're going to make a different decision. But the reason that doesn't work is because the addiction impacts the motivation centers of someone's brain. So using those regular old motivation techniques are not going to work with someone who has a substance use disorder. And not only are they not going to work, but it's probably going to backfire on you. It won't work for you, silly. In my experience, you've got to build someone up enough to have the strength to address the problem. Because addiction feeds on shame, insecurity, doubt, depression, anxiety. And so tearing someone down and making them feel worse is like the opposite of what you need to do in order to help someone get better. And now, the second really important thing that I learned in my first several years as an addiction counselor is that it's important to help someone build a recovery plan based on their own personality and strengths. Like I said before, most programs, they have a real one sided view on how to get recovery. And as you can imagine, that one side of you doesn't work for everyone might be one side is all I'm saying. Maybe when you can take a deeper look at who someone is, what their strengths are, what their core motivators are, what their roadblocks and maybe even their weaknesses are, then you can build a program that works for them, a program that they're going to be a lot more likely to engage with. And it helps a person feel seen and heard and understood. And allowing them to have some input into what they think is going to be helpful goes a long way toward getting them to actually engage and follow through with the program. Now, I know I said the first one was the most important thing, but this last one is pretty darn close. The last most important thing that I've learned after those first years of Treating people with addictions Is that you have to get their family involved. And I'll admit that this is a lesson I learned Because I finally figured out that I had all the answers and I couldn't fix it. And I was going to need a team if I had a chance of getting anywhere. You have learned much, young one. I could literally make, I don't know, like, 10 videos for you on this one topic. Let me just give you the brief overview. About why having the family involved is so important. First, as you can imagine, the family is a little more likely to tell you all the stuff. About what's really going on behind the scenes. Secondly, even though families don't mean to do this, A lot of times, what they're doing Is actually sabotaging what I'm doing as the counselor. And so I need to help them understand what's going on on this side of the fence. So we can all get in alignment and be pushing in the same direction. Man, does that help. And a third really important reason to have the family involved Is because the answer to addiction is connection. And there's usually so much turmoil and chaos and resentment and bad feelings Between a person struggling with a substance use disorder and their family. All of that chaos is, again, fueling the addiction. It's so important to build trust back and to recreate the connection, because that is a huge part of the healing process. So many people and families spend tons of time and money on all the wrong resources. And if you would just take the time to get a really good assessment, A really good picture about what's going on, not only just with the addiction, but who this person is, what their strengths are, what their motivators are, maybe what's standing in their way, Then you can create a much more strategic plan for moving forward, which is why we started doing much more in depth assessments with our clients, including strengths testing, personality testing, along with substance use disorder assessments. You need the full picture to really get someone on the right track. If you'd like for me to do one of these assessments with you or with a loved one to really get to the bottom of is this addiction? How bad is this addiction? How motivated is the person to beat this addiction? What their strengths are, what personality factors are? What does the family think? If you want to know all this information and get, like, a really detailed report and strategic plan, you can click the link below to learn more about how to schedule one of those really thorough assessments. Now, up next, I want you to watch this video. Because it talks about some addiction research. Studies that most people don't know about. Which is going to help you see exactly why the strengths based model is the most effective model. I want you to know you are not powerless. You do not have to hit rock bottom. And there are many things you can do to help an addicted loved one. If you want to be back in control of your life, subscribe to this channel and I'll make sure you are always five steps ahead of addiction.