How To Get Ahead Of Your Loved One's Addiction

Hey guys. Today I am going to do another metaphor. And today we're going to be talking about baseball and the strategies used in baseball. And weirdly, I didn't even know the World Series was going on until I was talking about this with a client yesterday who informed me that in fact the World Series was going on. So it's perfectly apropos. So we're going to talk about baseball, the strategies of baseball, and how we use those same strategies when dealing with our loved person who is struggling with addiction. So the first thing I want to say is I want to see if anyone in this group knows what this formula means. And let me hang on. I don't know doodly squat about baseball much, except there's really good rubbers at the stadium. But my daughter-in-law's father, Tom, is like Brilliant at it. So I called him and he gave me a lot of this information. He had told me he has a t-shirt, and on the t-shirt is this formula, and the formula is pertaining to baseball. But he said very rarely does he get anybody who asks him what it is. So I'm going to put this out. Anyone knows it? The formula is six plus four plus three equals two. If you know this. Let Bree's running those behind the scenes. Let her know, and she's going to let me know at the end. So bear that in mind: six plus four plus three equals two. Okay, so there are five strategies I want to talk about today in baseball, and I'm going to read them, go over them, and then we're going to sort of tie them into how we use these or need to use these when dealing with corralling addiction. Okay, so the first one is who. Whoever has the ball has the power to stop the runner. 2, never throw behind the runner, always throw in front. 3, do not chase the runner, man the bags. That I do know, that, that I did know. And number 4, you can throw the ball faster than they can run. And 5, don't be afraid of a rundown. Okay. Number 1, whoever has the ball has the power to stop the runner. That's us, guys. If you're the spouse or the parents, we have the ball. Okay? So what we gotta do to have the ball in our hands ready to roll is we gotta stop denying. We gotta deal with this fact. We gotta look at the situation. We have to understand it. We have to tolerate it, and we have to live with it. That means we have to stop being embarrassed, stop being afraid of it, stop thinking about the stigma, stop catastrophizing, and just know what it is and figure out what we need to do next. Obviously that leads into, we got to learn and we got to plan. And those of you who are in our membership know what I'm talking about, because that's part of the, one of the strategies I talk about in how to get from reeling to thriving as a, as the family members of addiction is you got to You got to learn and you got to plan. Speaking of the membership, that, that we're relaunching that next week. So next Friday the 10th is going to be the last day to get for free the inclusion of Recover U, the advanced recovery skills, which are a series of videos that Amber, Kim, and I did all last year. And these are really sort of skills for us as the family members to work on. And Recovery to Go Mini, which is a deep dive into the psychology and biology of addiction. So those are the 3 things that are going to be extra things for you if you join the membership between now and, well, I guess Monday and next Friday. Okay. So whoever has the power, go back to that. So learn and plan. And that means you've got to sort of understand addiction. You got to understand how it works. You got to understand how it's playing out in your child or your spouse. And then you have to decide, what are we going to do about this when we get to the point To do something about it. Okay? Never throw the ball behind the runner. Always throw in front. This is a biggie, guys, because and I just had a session with some new clients and they're doing this. So this means you don't fix the problems. You don't fix the school problems. You don't call the teachers and beg for more time. You don't fix a problem if he gets into trouble with the law. If he gets caught with drugs or alcohol. You don't fix that. Okay? You allow these consequences to start to happen. You don't keep giving them money. You don't fix their job problems. You don't wake them up. You don't nag, beg, corral, remind, lecture, lie for them, or bargain. These are the things that we do when we're trying to chase the runner and get out in front or get out behind. Okay. So let these consequences start to happen. This is when we know we have the power because it's going to unravel and then we're going to be able to play our ball. All right. Number 3, don't chase the runner, man the bases. Know your boundaries. And by that, it means just know what you will and will not tolerate, what you will and will not do. These are not rules you're going to create for your spouse or your child. These are things that you're going to know about yourself. You can— these can evolve, you guys. You don't have to like wake up one day and know my boundaries are blank. Let them evolve. Let you— let these little tick marks of irritation, frustration, being sick and tired of being sick and tired— let these tick marks mount up and you will know, all right, I, I'm no longer willing to live like this. I'm no longer willing to let him drive my car. I am no longer willing to let him steal money from my purse. Whatever those boundaries are, as you know them You won't just know them. And this is going to help you stop chasing the runner because you are really focusing on what am I going to do? Know your treatment options. And this goes back to the learning and planning phase. Understand what addiction treatment looks like. Understand there's a difference between detox and long-term residential. Understand that long-term residential is 28 days, usually maybe a little bit longer, but traditionally that, and that, that in and of itself is not going to be enough. Everyone wants this to be one and done. Everyone wants this to be like easily fixed, and I've been there, and I wanted it, and I thought it too. But it's not, and you need to know that. You need to understand it. Don't overthrow in desperation. So you know we do that as family members all the time. I've got five or six new families on my caseload, and all of them are overthrowing the ball. They're all like. Begging them to get up to go to school. They're all you know driving them to school. You know, even when they're sick, they're calling the teachers or sending emails or just trying desperately for their their child's life to not fall apart. When in fact, we actually kind of want their life to fall apart so that they recognize their life is unmanageable. Number four: Remember, you can throw the ball faster than they can run. Be strah. Understand what you're doing. It's a it's um it's pretty simple to get your privileges back. You need to be sober. You need to be contributing financially. You need to be going to school and doing well, and you need to be pleasant. Like these are these are the basic boundaries so that this sort of way if you know if you think your child has an addiction but they actually don't because they can. Understand the consequences are starting to happen and they only have these 4 very, very simple things to do to get their privileges back, they'll do it. And number 5, don't be afraid of the rundown. Okay? And what I mean by rundown, well, in baseball, I think what it means— don't quote me on this, but I think it means that you run at the runner. Like the second baseman would run toward the first base if the runner's in the middle. And you maybe throw the ball in front of the runner, like to someone, but that forces the runner back. Okay. The reason you wanted to do that, I think, is to force them to get off the base or go back to the dugout because you got them out. In addiction, what I mean by that is what we do a lot of times is we help you guys funnel, sort of squeeze your child or loved one. We funnel them into treatment, right? We sort of start to let their life become unmanageable. They can't drive the car. They can't whatever. And then They get funneled in. Lots of times with adults, they get in trouble at work and they get funneled in pretty quickly because their boss is like, hey, you need to get it under control. So it's a slow forcing into either treatment or sobriety by allowing unmanageability. And I think this is the key for us, is that it's very difficult to tolerate that allowing unmanageability. The way it's helpful to do, easier to do, is to really empathize with your loved person when the unmanageability happens. Instead of saying, well, yeah, it's because you're doing a bunch of drugs or drinking a bunch. It's your tough toenails. You say, yeah, this must feel terrible. Like it must be really hard to fail that class. It must be really hard to fail the bar. Like I get that and I'm really sorry that's happening to you. And that sort of allows you to keep them in the funnel, but it takes you out of being the bad guy and also really decreases the confrontation in your home. Which is really important, especially if you have other children. Okay. So did anybody know what that formula meant, Bree? I don't think so. Okay. All right. What it means is it means 6 plus— 6 is the shortstop. That's the number assigned to the shortstop in baseball. 4 is the second baseman, and 3 is the first baseman. Okay, so if those 3 players are working together, if they're coordinating and working together, they're going to get a double play. And that's what the 2 is. It's a double play. So for addiction, you guys, this is really important for us because the The double play is sobriety, treatment, recovery. That's what we're trying to get to is treatment and recovery. So if you're the spouse or the partner of someone that's struggling with addiction, you are the shortstop. Their extended family could be the second baseman. External influences could be the third baseman. Okay? So these things would all work together to Funnel them into treatment. If you're the family, it's the mom, the dad or stepdad or stepmom, and the extended family. Okay, so those are the three components that could be. There could be others. You guys, like these are just examples. Could be a good counselor. It could be lots of things. What you want to do is you want to use your entire team. You want to definitely have a strategy. You want other other people. Like if it's like the mom and the dad and the extended family, you want everyone to know where we're going. You want everyone to agree to be on. Same page. This is our strategy. This is what we're gonna do, and here's why. Here's our goal. So use that entire team to get your own double play. Remember, it takes 9 innings to win a baseball game. You are not going to get this done quickly. It's going to take time. If you get it done too quickly, lots and lots of times people tell me they force their loved one into treatment way too early and it just doesn't take, it doesn't work. And then they're shocked that they have to do it again. You want to wait until there's enough unmanageability that they understand it's from the substances, not that you were just a crazy parent or overbearing spouse. You want them to get that connection. Okay. You probably have to leverage them into treatment. They're not going to like come downstairs and say, oh, by the way, I recognize that I have a substance problem and I need treatment. I've seen that happen once in 12 years, but you nonetheless want them to be able to realize, yeah, my life was pretty crappy with Those substances, so keep playing the game. Use your nine innings. Okay, it ain't over till it's over. So that's that's sort of our analogy. Sort of where we're gonna let that sit for today, and then I can just take some questions because I think there's a ton of them up there. All right, Callie. My adult son is in rehab after two months of being homeless and burning many bridges. I will not allow him to stay in our home. How can I still support him and stay strong with my boundaries? You can just love him, Callie. You can stay connected with him. You can empathize, validate. You can talk about totally innocuous subjects. You can go visit him, write him letters. I don't know where he is relative to you, but you love him. It doesn't mean you have to let him walk all over you. It doesn't mean you have to let him into your home, but it just means you love him. He has a disease, and so you're— you don't not love him because he's sick. You And he's in treatment, so high five. Like, I'm glad he's not homeless anymore. Just love him. Love him for the person he is, for where he is right now, and build that connection. And hopefully he'll do beautifully and this can all be behind you, but don't fix his problems. Okay? Man your base. Your base right here is you don't want him living in your home. It's a great boundary to have, great boundary to know. You don't have to announce it. You just have to know it. So that's where I'd focus on it. But just meanwhile, enjoy him if you can. All right. My husband has planned to give up drinking and smoking for 2 months, but after we got into a fight, he went right back to drinking and smoking. How, one, how do I not engage and stay neutral or positive? And 2, how do I get him back to his plan of no drinking for a few months to see how, so he can see how sobriety feels? He is stuck and stagnant. It's hard for me to deal with, especially because we have 2 sons. Yeah. Okay. So you're not going to get him back to his plan of not drinking. Like there's not enough words in the world to talk him back into that. You're going to have to do exactly what I just said, which is man your own bases, which is know what you will and will not tolerate. You have 2 children. You don't want to create a home that's screaming and yelling and nagging and begging and all that kind of stuff that happens when we love someone with addiction. He has. Bree, can you put the first question back up? Because my tiny head is. How do I engage and stay neutral or positive? Okay. So first of all, my bet would be that he used that fight as sort of the fish hook to give himself permission to go back to drinking and smoking. So don't know that, but that would be my guess. If you can just be patient and recognize that he has changed talk. He is just back to his own denial and his own bargaining, and just let it unravel until he says, "Yeah, I need to stop drinking again." Again, empathize and validate. But with two kids in the house, you you're gonna have to know what you can tolerate. And if he's you know driving them around drinking, don't tolerate that. If he's yelling and screaming, like you know those are the things you'll have to just recognize. But as far as staying neutral or positive. Don't talk about his drinking. Don't talk about his smoking. In our experience, it's really hard to give up 2 addictions at the same time because you only have so much willpower and that willpower center is charged by sleep. And so if you're using it on smoking, you're going to go back to drinking. Well, it's possible because you're going to run out of willpower. I don't know about you guys, but I try to eat healthily all day long. And then about 9 o'clock at night, I'm opening that refrigerator and I'm just Praying there's some cold lasagna in there. There's not because I didn't put it in there. No one else would, but I have no willpower. I would eat anything that would be unhealthy for me at nine o'clock at night. So that's that's normal. So don't I would get I would ask him if when he gets to the point of recognizing he needs to stop again, I would get him to to stop the one that's most problematic, which my bet would be drinking, and worry about the smoking later. Martha, my question is that my 38-year-old daughter lives across town, but spends less time with us lately. Is it common for those with substance abuse issues to distance themselves from family, especially at holidays? Yes, it's super common. Addiction is a shame-based problem, and so they they feel really shameful, and they don't want to be around the people they feel the most shameful around—probably the family. Also, the disease loves to isolate them so they can feel victimized. So that's probably a combination of what's going on is she's embarrassed, shameful, and she wants to stay home because she can drink more if she comes over or use. If she comes over to see you or talk to you more often on the phone, she has to limit or try to manage her use probably more than her disease wants her to. So yeah, it's super common. And that's just something you're You're just going to tolerate, and hopefully she will realize that she's lonely and that becomes unmanageable herself. Don't force the holidays, you guys. I know holidays are coming up. We could be billionaires if we were open the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas, because the holidays are a huge problem. Even if they do want to be around you, they're nervous or anxious and/or don't feel well because they're not using as much, and so they use a little bit. Quote unquote, to take the edge off, but they're not good at using a little bit, so they overuse and end up with their face in the mashed potatoes. So don't force holidays. If they if they isolate, just go on without them. Emily, my 18-year-old son uses marijuana and has done so in our house. This is crossing a boundary. Been there. How or what do we say if he continues to do this? Um, first of all, don't smoke weed in the house is a rule. So you can say it till you're blue in the face, he's clearly going to break it, as evidenced by what you're saying. So you're just going to have to decide how much longer you want to live with weed in your house. And that could be forever, it could be you're done with it. But that's the problem with having boundaries, which is we don't allow weed in our house, but when someone does it They're actually breaking a rule, and that's forcing you to have to to identify again your boundary and then decide whether you're going to hold it. I'm not a huge fan of announcing boundaries because they move; we move them, and so you kind of we look wishy-washy and really not reliable as far as holding our word when we don't hold a boundary. So, in my opinion, if he's pleasant. And kind and going to school or doing whatever he's doing at 18, working and being contributing to the house in any form and being pleasant. I don't. I wouldn't focus on the weed if he's not doing any of those things. Then you sort of go back to what we talked about, which is you know, you know you have the ball and you can throw it faster than he can. You just have to know when when to do that. Like if you're like, hey dude, you can't live here anymore because the weed. consistently a problem. We've told you we don't want weed in our house. So unfortunately you're gonna have to find somewhere else to live. That could be your boundary. Or it could be, we're not going to send you to college because you continue to have weed in the house. I don't know what it is, but if he's crossing it, it's because it's a rule and it's not a boundary that you're holding because boundaries that are held are not crossed. Okay. How do I help my husband stop the sneak drinking? He drinks just enough to take the edge off. I haven't reacted to it in months. Isn't it better to just have the alcohol at least out in the open? Oh my gosh. If I had a nickel for every time I've had this conversation with a spouse, I'd buy yachts for everyone on this call and myself and you, Bree. Yes, I think it's better to have the alcohol out in the open so that they don't sneak drink purely from the stance of there's a lot of shame to sneak drinking. And so you're really sort of feeding this The drinking, the shame. However, I sounds to me don't know. But if if he's sneak drinking, then he doesn't want you to know he's drinking. So I don't think he's going to put it out in the open. He might be putting some out in the open and then continue to sneak drink if he's drinking more than he should. Don't really know the situation, but I I would ignore it. I would literally ignore it until because it's going to creep back up and become super unmanageable for him. And that's when you can sort of say, "Hey, I've noticed that you're drinking a whole lot again." I'm wondering what your, you know, what your plan is about that. I wouldn't point out, I wouldn't find it, I wouldn't look for it, I wouldn't pour it out, I wouldn't silence treatment him, I wouldn't do any of those things. I just let him think he's getting away with it, and because he won't for long, okay? It's going to blow up one way or the other. Nancy, my son is 34 and he's been using fentanyl for a long time, and we have open communication. But are at a loss as he's not expressed interest in stopping. How do I approach this? Well, I think you can express your concern out of love and fear, but if he has no interest in stopping, you're just going to be sort of pouring water into a colander. So I think you definitely don't want to do like, you know, The things we talked about earlier, which is yelling, nagging, bargaining, lecturing, teaching, scaring. This is a tough one because fentanyl, as we all know, is super, super dangerous. But I think if you have this open communication, Nancy, what I would do is just say, hey, I'm super concerned. It makes me super nervous. And sort of see if you can get him to empathize with you. But I think unfortunately you're gonna have to let this one play out until he recognizes his life is unmanageable because of the fentanyl. So maybe, I don't know you, but, or I don't know the situation, but look at, are you doing any of these things we talked about? Are you fixing problems? Are you enabling with money? Are you taking care of his kids? Like, are you doing anything that is keeping him from seeing that his life is unmanageable because of that? So that's what that's sort of where I would go with that is just sort of recognize that you're you're not there's no magic bullet here. You're not going to say the thing that he's going to go oh thanks mom that makes so much sense I'll stop today. It's not going to work like that. Can you take husband's credit card? He spends more than we make. You can, but he can get another one because he's an adult. The other thing I would do would be sort of just see if you can. I don't know again the situation, but if it's a joint account, squirrel enough away initially as soon as that money goes in there from a paycheck to pay the bills and let him recognize that he doesn't have enough money to pay the credit card. So no, you you know you can. It's hard to get an adult to stop doing something you don't want them to do because. They can just recreate it. He'll just go get more. Eventually, I think you're just gonna have to make the decision: Is this a safe place for you to be as an adult financially with your credit rating, losing your home, all those things that can happen if if you guys run out of money because he's spending it? Spending addiction is is just like any other addiction. You get that hit of dopamine, that desire from from the thought of spending money, and it just becomes just as addictive as drugs or alcohol or. Gambling or porn or any of those things that are process addictions. Biggest question. All right, CB, how do you get through to someone on their addiction who knows it but will never talk about it? Always upset, defense to scream and push you away. Can't ever talk about it. Oh, been patient for how long? 20 years, 3 years, when we draw that line, can't tolerate any of it. However, where do you go? Where do you go with kids in school? Stopping too is like asking AA to stop having coffee. Yeah. Gosh, you just, again, this is a boundary question is you have to understand how much of this do you want to tolerate? How much of this are you willing to To go through, there's not a there's not a conversation that you have with an addict. Believe me, if there were, we would see every addict one time and cure them, and we we'd be out of business. There's not a conversation you're going to have with someone who's struggling with addiction for them to go, oh yeah, you're right, because that addiction lives in their thoughts. Remember, it lives in their brain, so it validates their thinking. It rationalizes their thinking so that that's a good idea. And and what you get is that. That defensiveness, that attack, those arguments because they're desperately defending the disease. So that a manageability allowing that to happen is really the only really the only answer to this. It's just really hard to do when there are kids in the house, when you have other children or you are the spouse and you have kids, and that's where you safety trumps everything in my opinion. And you have to decide you know how much damage is being done to the children by what's going on, and and you get to. Pull that cord when you're ready to pull that cord. But there isn't a conversation. I promise you guys, if there were, I would—I'd give it to you. I wouldn't even sell it to you. I'd give it to you. Okay? But there's not. This is from married a long time. That's great. All right. Halloween was horrible. He drank and I didn't engage. I reacted on my side and the self-destruction started. I'm upset with me. How do I recognize and stop myself from doing this? That's super hard to do, married a long time, but I'm glad you recognized that. I think you have to understand that you are dealing with the disease, and yelling at it, talking to it, shouting at it is not going to help. It's going to fuel it because then they turn that around and they become the victim, and then they rationalize what they just did. Or justify what they're getting ready to do, and they use or drink more. Okay, so you can exit stage left like you did a good job; you didn't engage, but then you got upset with yourself. So if you're going to do that, I call it kind of the game on phase. You've heard me talk about this before, I'm sure. But the game on is I'm not going to get in the way of it. I'm not going to chastise. I'm not going to redirect, but I'm also not going to fix the. Dingum thing that happens from it. So maybe he feels terrible today and he couldn't go to work on time, or maybe he's gonna do a crappy job at work today because he's hungover and something will happen. You're just gonna have to let that happen while still knowing how much you want to tolerate. Like, that's the key is boundaries, tolerance, and plan. That that's really all you can do on your end, no matter. No matter if it's a kid or a spouse, those are the 3 components to sort of focus on is, do I ultimately have a goal or plan that I can get to? What can I tolerate? And will I know when I'm done tolerating it? And then how can I not engage with the actual disease? Because I'm not going to win. You remember this, you guys, addiction is illogical, right? Doesn't come from the frontal lobe, doesn't come from the limbic brain. It comes from a survival part of the brain. Which I don't know if you guys know snakes, but they're not very kind and they're not very smart. So when you engage from your logical brain with illogic, you know darn well who wins. Illogic. Illogic trumps logic 100% of the time. And we all— I've been there and you guys are all there, it sounds like. Like you end up the evening like, how do we get here? What are we even talking about? Why are we even talking about this? Like, how did this devolve to this point? And it's because you're dealing with illogic. Don't do it. Go away. Leave the room. Drive away. All right. Is it okay to bond my son out to go to treatment? Hell yeah. Treatment program is trying to get him furloughed, but not sure if I can get it done by tomorrow. Intake is Monday. Yeah, it is perfectly fine to get him to go to treatment. What I would recommend, however, so that You know, you don't get him out and then he changes his mind. Is I would see if you can get him mandated to treatment. Like the judge in the jail can say, "Yeah, your your family members are willing to take you to treatment. You're gonna go." If you get that done, you're gonna have a better chance of locking in the plan. The other thing, if you can't get it done by tomorrow, is. Call the treatment place back and see if they could, if this could happen on Tuesday, like see if you can buy a day, if you need a day for the bed. Because you know the wheels of justice turn slowly, so you may not get it done in time. So sort of build a secondary plan, so in case you don't, all is not lost. Or if they can't, then find someone else who can. Okay, so that you don't lose this opportunity. But it is completely fine to get someone out of jail to go to treatment. You just want to make sure. They're actually going to go because everybody remember this, you guys. Everybody agrees to do anything when backed into the corner. Being in jail would be a pretty damn big corner to be backed into. So he's going to be like, yeah, I'll do that. That sounds great. But the minute we all get out of the corner just a tiny little bit, we're not all willing to do everything again. So remember that he may be manipulating you to get out of jail. So if you can get him mandated. I think you have a higher victory chance. AJ, I am concerned with the upcoming holidays as well. You should be, as it has been a trigger for my son who's 27 now. He's been sober and attending meetings. Anything we should look out for? Anything we should look out for? It's such a good question. Um, I think I would just be prepared that the holidays could be Tricky for him, but I think the bigger thing is don't get in the way of his recovery because of holiday traditions or because of familial expectations. If he says on Christmas Eve, "Man, I gotta get to a meeting," have a great night. Don't get in the way of it. I don't know if I've told you guys this story, but years ago when my son came home to visit, he'd probably been sober. I don't know, close to a year or so. And he came home for a night and he ended up meeting some friends from high school for a movie. It was a late movie. I think it was like a 10 o'clock movie. And he got home around midnight and he said, I gotta go. And he was like 18. And I was like, go? What do you mean? Because I gotta go back to Atlanta. I'm like, why? He said, well, on the way home from movies, um, I Drove by a street, and I realized I just needed to make two left turns, and I could be at my dealer's house. I didn't, Mom. I called my sponsor, and he was like, "Dude, just come on home. Just get out of Greenville. Come on back to Atlanta." And I said, "Well, it's it's dark. It's really late, and eighty-five is really dangerous. So can you just wait and go early in the morning?" And he was like, "I don't know, Mom. I don't know. I'll call my sponsor, and I'll ask." Let's mortifying moment of my life because I could hear him say this to the sponsor and I could hear through the phone across the room, the sponsor says, well, if you want to stay sober, listen to me. If you want to be in danger, listen to your mommy. And I was like, okay, handed him the suitcase. So don't get in the way of what they need to do on the holidays. Don't get in the way. Like there's nothing you can do to prevent it if he's going to use. So I wouldn't look for it. I wouldn't be scanning for it. You'll know, you will absolutely know. But I think, and that's just a whole separate subject that I'm not going to go into today because we're running out of time, but know what your person, if they're in early recovery, know what they, if they don't want alcohol to be around, if it's a problem for them, don't have alcohol, even if it's the holidays. Okay. We went several years without wine on Christmas Eve, which is beef fondue night. And I don't know about you guys, but beef fondue without a glass of wine is really quite not the same. But we did it because it was the right thing to do. And actually, the beef fondue was delicious without it. So know those things. All right, let's— we can do a couple more because I don't have anything to do right this second. Question: boundaries held are not crossed. Please explain. Oh, okay. Um, so if I have a boundary that, um, I do not want French fries to be— I don't want to see French fries at lunchtime. Okay. I can have a rule. I could say, hey guys, no one can bring French fries to the office for lunch. That would last exactly less than 1 week because this is a big French fry crowd. So that's a rule, right? But my boundary could be, I'm not going to eat around French fries. The only way that boundary is going to be crossed is if I allow it to be crossed. If I sit in that kitchen with those guys while they're eating French fries and I'm pissed, or I'm like, damn it, then I've allowed the boundary to get crossed. They can bring French fries in all day long. I just say, hey, I'm going to be in my office today during lunch. I'm going to be working on a video, or I'm going to eat alone, or whatever I want to say, or just go run an errand. If I— you can't put a boundary down if you're not going to hold it. Because then it's not a boundary. That's why I tell people, don't make lots of boundaries. Like, don't, don't have a boundary around French fries at lunch. That's ridiculous. But don't make a bunch of boundaries. Just know what is paramount to you. Okay? I don't go out on Friday nights. It's a boundary. I'm tired. I'm talked out. I just don't have it in me to go to a party on a Friday night. So it's just a boundary. My husband can go to parties all day long on Friday. The neighbors have parties on Friday nights. I just don't go. If I go, if I went because someone begged me to or yelled at me or whatever, I'd be really less than fun at that party because I know it's a boundary I need to have for myself. I need to stay home and charge that boundary or battery. So you don't set these boundaries if you're willing to let them be crossed, then they're not a boundary. Okay? It's a rule that you would rather the other people respect it. There's a huge difference. I hope that helps, Sarah Ann. All right, Kimberly. My husband is in early sobriety in sober living. He loves me. He hates me. I've told him I love him, but he's blocking for now because I can't. What's happening? Oh, blocking for now because I can't handle any more condemnation. How will I know when he is safe? I don't know that I would block him because I don't know the answer. I don't know when you would know that. I think you can have the boundary that if you if you talk to me ugly in a negative or ugly fashion, I'm going to say I love you dearly and I'm going to hang up now. That way, if he if he calls and engages with you and he's wonderful, then you can enjoy that and you can have that connection and you can both reap the benefit of that. If it goes south, you simply get off the call. If you block him, it's gonna I think it's gonna feel super punitive. And you're right, you're never gonna know. If he's changed, and and I mean it just could be early recovery, and he just doesn't feel well, or he's shameful, and he's like it could just be early recovery. But I I wouldn't block them. I'm not a big fan of blocking. Just know how long or when in what environment you will continue to talk on the phone, right? All right, one more. All right, Kelly, change talk. What does it mean if my husband has been talking change talk for years? More like five years. I think change talk is cheap. That's what I think. I think that a lot of people will talk about change a lot, and they might mean it, but they're not going to do it. I talk all the time about getting off Netflix, you guys. I definitely have a problem with Netflix, and I talk about doing it all the time. I don't do it. I don't really want to. It hasn't caused that much problem in my life, and so I really should just stop talking about it because I'm sure irritating as hell to everybody in my life when I say I need to. I can't watch another show, and then I'm like, did you guys start so? They're like, "I thought you weren't watching it." So I think he's lip servicing it. Actually ready to stop is then that's because nothing's become unmanageable enough for him to realize he needs to stop. That's when they stop when they realize I need to when they realize my life is falling apart. My life is untenable with this thing. If if I stayed up all night long binge watching like some people in the office do, if I did that and then I couldn't function in the morning and I didn't understand what my clients. were saying in the morning because I was tired, then I would realize I really do need to turn off Netflix earlier in the evening or give it up all the way if I can't turn it off. So that's, that's what I think on that topic. All right, you guys, I have got to roll. I've got to redo a live call from yesterday that I forgot to hit record on, so I need to take care of that before my next session. So thank you very much. Um, as always, this has been super fun, and next week Amber will be back, or maybe Amber and me will be back. Don't know, but thanks a bunch and hope you guys have a great afternoon. All right, bye.