A spoken YouTube presentation by Amber Hollingsworth describing how loving someone with an addiction (specifically alcoholism) changes the partner over time. The video explains a biological mechanism—co-regulation—where the partner's limbic system syncs with the addicted person's fluctuating emotions, then maps the downstream psychological effects: self-doubt, gaslighting, chronic anxiety and fear, anger and resentment, desperation leading to impulsive decisions, guilt, and isolation. The speaker frames these patterns as common, damaging, and often misunderstood by outsiders, and points viewers to further videos with deeper coverage and solutions.
Chapters
Eventually the day comes when you look in the mirror and you can't even recognize yourself anymore. It doesn't happen all at once. But over the weeks and months and years of living with someone who has an addiction, you slowly begin to lose yourself. It's like a descent into desperation. And in this video I want to outline for you exactly how that happens. And unfortunately leads to the loss of yourself, your personality. And eventually your whole sense of self feels completely broken, mentally messed up and destroyed. And it's hard to even find remnants of who you used to be. Now this first thing that happens is kind of hidden. You don't even realize that this CO regulation is happening. Now, for some of you, CO regulation might be a new word, but don't worry, it's not fancy. Basically what it means is that when you're physically around other people in your environment, the ones you're around on a regular basis, your emotional limbic brain actually syncs up to their emotional limbic brain. For example, if you're around someone that's depressed, depressed all the time, what happens to you? You become depressed. If you're around someone who's anxious all the time, what happens to you? You become anxious. Well, when you're around someone who has an addiction, their emotions are kind of all over the place. It's like a roller coaster. There are highs and lows and moments when they feel good, and then there's irritability and anxiety and anger and resentment. And because their emotions are all over the chart, that affects your emotions. Yes, that's right. Your limbic brain is so in sync with their limbic brain, it's magnetic force. The mood and the thought processes of the people around you absolutely impact your mood and your thought processes. And a lot of that is beyond your control. It's happening on a biological level. Now these next steps move from the biological into the psychological. The next thing that happens is you start to experience a lot, I mean, a ton of self doubt. And this is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it's like sometimes they're good and then other times they're not. And in the good times, you think, well, maybe I'm just making too big of a deal about it. Maybe it's not that bad. Maybe they're not an addict, maybe they're not an alcoholic. Now you combine that with the fact that they're probably telling you that exact thing, and it really does make you doubt yourself. And it can be hard to figure out, is it me, Is it them? What's reality? Oh, and don't forget, all the gaslighting contributes to that even more. Now layer in, on top of that, a constant feeling of anxiety and worry and fear. When it comes to addiction, it really does feel like life and death. And in a lot of situations it is life and death. When someone has an addiction, not only are they putting their life in jeopardy, but they're also putting the lives of everyone around them in jeopardy. And that leaves you with a sense of fear that's sort of hovering in the background all the time and occasionally moves right up front and takes over seriously. Their addiction doesn't just affect them, it affects everyone around them. It seeps into every aspect of your life, making it challenging to trust, communicate and feel safe. Now, layering in on top of all that self doubt and all that fear, there's also a layer of anger and resentment. Yeah, you're kind of mad that this addiction has thrown their life and your life off track. Because you're so closely tied to this person. It feels like all of their choices, not only do their choices impact them, them, it impacts you. Your future, your dreams, your hopes, even your finances are oftentimes tied up with this person. So yeah, there's some anger and frustration and resentment because your life has derailed from the track. All of that, all those mix of emotions and thoughts and feelings bring on this sense of desperation. And when you're in this desperate state, you start to make very emotional, sometimes irrational and impulsive decisions. You get caught up in fighting the day to day fights, you lose your objectivity, you lose the ability to sort of look past what's going on now and getting that strategy for how do we get out of this mess. That's what this YouTube channel is all about. If you're new here and you haven't already, consider subscribing. Because we're not just here to tell you what the problems are like in this video, we're also here to tell you what the solutions are. Now, because you're so desperate and you're making these impulsive decisions, sometimes you're just desperately begging them and being overly nice and walking on eggshells and other times you're desperately, you know, making impulsive, angry decisions and threatening and ultimatum and it's this back and forth thing. Oh, did I forget to mention? Yeah, you're kind of going crazy. Let's just admit it, you're going a little crazy. But there's good reason and they're going to hold that against you, which makes you about ten times more crazy, doesn't it? And to top it all off, they're going to hold that against you. Yes. They're going to constantly be telling you that you're controlling and you're critical and you're negative and you're never happy and that you're ruining their life, which only adds to all of these other emotions that we've just been taught talking about. And then there's this sense of guilt when you get mad at yourself because you know you lost your cool, you know you made a bad decision. Maybe you feel guilty because you were angry. Maybe you feel guilty because you feel like you keep enabling and you can't stop. Maybe you feel guilty because you somehow think that something you did or didn't do is what's causing this addiction. Yeah, it's a whole big, giant mess in there. And all of that leads you to a looming feeling of isolation and loneliness, because it's hard to even describe these things to other people. And even when you try, they don't get the complexity of the issue. Most of the time, they have some simple response for you, like just leave them or just forget about them or just let them hit their bottom. And as you and I know, it's a lot more complicated than that. And up next, I want you to watch this video because it goes even deeper into the trauma that you experience from loving someone who has an addiction.
