How and When To Break Away From Someone Who Has An Addiction!

Breaking away from someone who has an addiction is an extremely hard decision to make and there's nothing that I can do to make it easy for you. However, in this video, I'm going to give you some guidelines to go by that will at least help you think the situation through strategically. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your family and your life back on track. Get back out there and live the life life that you want to live. 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. And don't forget, hit the little bell. If you want access to the bonus episode. We're going to talk about when to break away and how to do it. Now let's get into our topic. As I said before, this is a very, very difficult decision for a ton of reasons. Number one, it's not going to be an easy thing to do. It may not be logistically easy. The person may strongly, strongly resist your efforts. And then of course, there's all those mixed up feelings that you have. The guilt that you have about leaving you. Maybe you feel like you're their last sort of bridge out there and if you leave, they'll for fail. Maybe you're scared of what will happen to them when you do walk away from this relationship. Maybe you're still holding out hope that they're gonna turn it around because you do see little glimpses of the real them every now and then and it keeps sucking you back into the relationship. And then there's all the self doubt that you might have because in all likelihood, if you're in a relationship with someone who has an addiction, you've probably been being gas lit a little bit. Meaning they've made you doubt yourself. They've made you doubt your reality. And you may be questioning I the crazy one. Maybe I am being overly uptight about it. Maybe it's not going on. All of these mixed up feelings make the decision very difficult. And that leads us to when to break away from someone who has an addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, any, any addiction. You need to break away after you've given it a lot of thought. This is not a decision that you need to make in the heat of the moment in a big argument after you found some paraphernalia or caught them doing something that they shouldn't have done. It's not a decision that you want to make in the mom quickly. Now, the reason for that is when you make it in that moment quickly, number one, you're not really prepared to pull it off. You don't have the situation ironed out. And number two, you're making that decision emotionally and you're doing it reactively, which means once the emotion dies down, and it will, then you're very likely to go back on your decision. This isn't a decision that you're making out of an emotion. This should be a well planned out decision that you're making now. The next thing that comes under our win category is you do it when you're doing it for yourself. A lot of people feel pressure to break off any kind of relationship with someone who has an addiction, Whether it's a romantic relationship, a family relationship, a friend relationship, because they feel like if they stay in relationship with this person, they could be enabling them. But that's honestly not a good reason to break away from someone who has an addiction. Like, a lot of people have this false thought that if they pull away from that person, that person's going to hit bottom and they're going to get better. That is not likely going to be what happens. Okay. When you make choice, don't make it about what's best for them. Make this choice because it's what is best for you. And like I said earlier, after you've given it a lot of thought. Now, another thing that comes into the win category is when you feel like you've given it your best, you want to kind of walk away feeling like, okay, I tried. I tried all the stuff Amber teaches me on these videos. I've really done what I could. And I can feel good about stepping back without feeling terrible in my heart. Okay. So make sure you feel strong that you've done what you could do. That way you won't blame yourself later if something happens to them. You won't second guess your decision and then end up backtracking on it. Okay. Because that's important now. Also, another big, huge one about when it's time to break away from a relationship is when it is unsafe. Now, we should put a big gold star by this one. I probably should have started with it. If it is unsafe, you need to move away. And in that situation, you may even have to break it away faster or quicker. Without having done some of these other things. I'm saying now, I know on some level any kind of relationship with someone who has an addiction is unsafe. But I'm talking about unsafe. Like you need to urgently get out of there. Like something is imminently bad going to happen to you, your kids, someone else. Like, it's just bad and chaos. You need to get out of there. And if that's the situation, you may need to do whatever you've got to do to get out of there quickly. If that's not the situation, and you know it's unhealthy for you and you need to get out of there, but it's not like imminent, then I'm going to strongly advise that you need to take the time behind the scenes before you've had this conversation. And we're going to talk about the conversation in just a minute. But before you have the conversation, you need to really plan it out logistically. Like, for example, if this is your partner and they're the one that makes the money and brings all the money, and maybe you stay home, then this can be a little bit complicated. You need to think this through. Maybe you need to get a job and save up some money. Maybe you need to do a little research and find out what resources are out there. Maybe you need to have some conversations with some family member or friends that might could help give you a place to stay for a while. Take the time to do this smart, do it strategically, and make sure you think it through. If you really want to distance yourself from this relationship, this is how you need to do it. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, amber, well, how do you know when it's the right thing for you? I actually have a video about it. It's called four Reasons to Walk Away. And I'll link it up at the end of this video because it goes perfectly with what we're talking about today. Before you watch that one, let's move on to how to break away from this relationship. Now, if it's one of those unsafe situations, you just get your honk us out of there, whatever you gotta do, okay? But if it's not eminently dangerous, then you really do need to have a face to face conversation with this person about what's happening. And you need to do it in as calm of a manner as possible. You may want to do this in public. Not somewhere that's so public that you can't have, you know, a private conversation, but also somewhere where it's maybe not nearly as likely to get super Dramatic or go like Jerry Springer on you or something. Now, you've heard me say this a lot in my videos about having conversations with people. Difficult ones. Keep it short. Do not leave a lot of room in this conversation for going back and forth. Do not argue about it. Do not place a lot of blame anywhere. Do not give them 500 examples of how you've given them 500 chances. This is not the time to express your resentment. This is not the time to try to convince them that they are addicted. Because if you're to the point of having this conversation, I'm guessing you already had that other conversation a hundred times. Am I right? Don't do it when there are kids around, whether they're your kids, their kids, someone else's kids. Because this is a very grown up conversation. In fact, I want you to be more than fair about if there's like a splitting up and who gets what. I want you to be more than fair because this will help you to have that good feeling in your heart which will help you not cave in the long run. Because you're gonna feel solid, you're gonna know you did everything good, you're gonna know you were kind about it, and you're gonna know that you are more than fair about it. This is gonna help you stay solid and not second guess yourself. Now don't be so much more than fair that you totally like, screw yourself over. But don't fight and argue about stupid things like pieces of furniture and who did what, because that's going to keep you stuck in this relationship. And the whole purpose of breaking away is, is because it's become toxic for you. And it's what you have to do for yourself. Be empathetic, but don't cave. Now, when I say don't cave, what I mean is this oftentimes when it comes to the point that you're really ready and you're gonna sit down, you're gonna have this conversation with someone, they may say, okay, I know, I promise I'm done. I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna go to rehab. I'll go right now. And they may start to like promise you all these things, but don't let that make you say, well, okay, as long as you promise you're going to go today or tomorrow, you're going to go to meetings or whatever, I'll stay. When you're making this choice, you got to remember you've made it for yourself. You've made it because you're sure and you need to leave. Because if you Stay. You're not going to be okay, and you're not going to trust them, and you're going to be a crazy lunatic. So the way you need to communicate that is something along the lines of, look, I care for you so much, but I think that what you want and I want doesn't really go together anymore. And for that reason, I'm gonna have to break it off. Or if this isn't a romantic type relationship, the word breaking it off may not sound right, but get some distance or something like that. Now, if it is a romantic relationship, I don't want you to use the term get distance because that means that leaves room for a gray area. If it's a romantic relationship, you really need to put sort of like a hard stop to it. Don't leave it in this we can be friends zone. I'm not saying you can't be friends with them, but a lot of times when we're sort of in this breakup zone, we want to be like this let's just be friends category. And the thing of it is, is whatever's going on with that person is making you sick and toxic. And even if it's close to you a little bit, it's going to keep sucking you back in. Now, eventually, you may be able to do that with this person, but probably not until you've allowed yourself some good time and distance from the situation. You don't have to tell them that they're an addict. You don't have to tell them that they're an alcoholic. You don't have to tell them that you're leaving because you know they're never going to change. All that is just sort of like starting a fight or an argument or at least has a higher potential to do that. They're gonna know what you mean when you say something along the lines of, I think you're headed in one direction and I'm headed in another direction. And I've decided that it's best for us to part ways. Right? Don't say I think it's best or I think it might be best, because then again, it's leaving room. You can say, I've decided. Fill in the blank, and here are the reasons. Give them clear reasons that you're backing away from this. But you don't have to go into specifics and arguments and tell them how many times they prom but they didn't follow through with it. This is a situation where you're really gonna need all of your assertiveness skills. Like, seriously, you're gonna have to, like, do some serious meditation and go bring on all that assertiveness stuff. And you may even want to watch some of my boundaries videos to get yourself ready to go. And once you have the conversation, you need to sort of pull the plug. Because after you've had the conversation, it's not going to be good for a bit, right? They're either gonna beg, plead, promise, or threaten or argue or yell, or their addiction is going to get a lot worse because they're upset and they're stressed. Which brings me to another point. If things get worse for them after you leave, I don't want you to blame yourself. That's why I told you I wanted you to do all of those things that you could do. That's why I told you I wanted you to be more than fair. Give them more than their fair share of stuff. Don't worry about what they're gonna do with the stuff or the money. That's on them. That's not on you. What's on you is to walk away with a clear heart. When you have the clear heart and you're ready and you're prepared and you have the conversation, then you need to pull the plug. You need to move quickly. Either you need to have already moved your stuff away if you live with this person, or you need to have already made arrangements. Now, in some certain circumstances, it may be a situation where you're like, this isn't going to go well and this person might, like, blow up my phone or try to stalk me on social media. And so those are some of the things that you may have need to take care of before you have the conversation and then literally have everything ready to go. Maybe they need to be blocked. Maybe you need to go off of social media for a while. Be ready to make the moves. Don't sit around for days and weeks after the fact, and then figure it out, because that's going to be a very high risk. Time for some not great things to happen at this point. It is time to make moves. Now. One other thing we need to talk about in this conversation is what to do when you get backlash from other people. But before we do that, you may be thinking to yourself, how do I know if I'm ready? How do I get ready? I'm not exactly sure what to say. If you're really struggling with this and you need some coaching on how to really pull this off, then consider having a session with one of our family recovery specialists. They can help you think this decision through. Make sure that you're ready. Make sure that you have a good plan on it, because this is a decision I really want you to feel solid about. I don't want you to go back and second guess it. I don't want you to cave under pressure. I don't want you to cave because some negative emotion, you've got to be solid. So if you need a little help with that, I'm going to put a link in the description on how to schedule a consultation session. Now, as if the whole situation with the person isn't difficult enough. I hate to tell you this, but you're probably even going to get some backlash and some hate and some shade from other people. Now why does that happen? Well, it's going to happen because the person with the addiction is going to feel really upset with you. They're going to feel really sorry for themselves and they're going to go and tell everyone that you all know in common how terrible you are to them and how you left them when. When they needed you most and all this stuff. And so you can get backlash because of that. You can get backlash because now that you've sort of dropped the rope and you're not managing the situation anymore, other people are mad because now they have to deal with it, right? Like if this is your spouse, maybe you've been trying to get their parents to be involved, but they wouldn't. And now you're out and now those parents are mad at you because now you've like left them with it. Okay? But there are a lot of reasons why you might get some backlash about it. Maybe other people don't even know how bad the problem has been having. And so they're looking at you like you're selfish and mean and how could you. So that's another thing I want you to be fully prepared for. You can't control those things and I don't want you to try. Now, to be honest, most of that is going to go on behind your back and you're not going to see it or hear it. And that is totally fine. In fact, it's better if you don't see it or hear it. Don't go looking for it. Don't go trying to find out what somebody said about you behind your back. That's just ridiculous. That's just bad advice ever. Don't be snooping around and calling your friends to find out how the person's doing or what they're saying about you. That won't end well. Now, in the event that someone does say something to you directly about the situation that makes you feel like they're being sort of smarty about why you left. Then you can just say, I know it was a really hard decision for me and there's a big part of my heart that's really sad about that. But ultimately it's just what I had to do for both of us. That's what I want you to say. That's pretty clear. That's pretty direct. It's kind, it's empathetic. But don't leave a lot of room for arguing about it. Don't try to convince them that this person is really an addict. Don't try to tell them all the things you did to try and how no one help you. Don't. Once you've decided this, we're moved on past all that, right? And then we're just gonna walk away from the conversation and we're gonna be okay with them thinking whatever they're going to think. Because the truth of it is in most situations when after they've been dealing with it for a while, they're going to be backed into that same corner that you got backed into. They'll figure it out for themselves. You don't have to convince them now. Once again, I've put that link in the description. Plus there are links in there for all kinds of other resources now, as promised. Up next, I want you to watch this video. 4 Reasons to Walk away. I'd like to send a big heartfelt thanks to all of you who help support this channel. Your likes, shares and donations are helping us spread the message of recovery. And without you, this wouldn't be possible. Now this next video has been hand selected to go right along with this one. And don't forget to check the description for additional resources.