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How To Get Through To Someone In Denial #addictionhelp #addictionawareness

20 May 2026 · 1 min

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0:40

In this YouTube monologue, Amber Hollingsworth explains why common tactics—raising urgency, speaking louder, or repeating messages—often fail when trying to reach someone who is in denial about an addiction. She argues that people in denial are in a protective mode and that confronting them aggressively only triggers resistance. Instead, she advises making the truth more palatable, avoiding cornering the person, and using compassionate, non‑threatening language. She illustrates the point with a scenario of a husband attempting to discuss his wife's drinking, highlighting how the approach can either open a dialogue or cause the person to “come out swinging.” The overall purpose is to provide practical, empathy‑based guidance for friends, family, or professionals seeking to help someone in denial about substance use.

Chapters

And when we want someone to understand something important, we think we need to make it sound really urgent or that we need to say it louder or that we need to say it more frequently and finally it'll make it click. But what we actually need to do is go from trying to drill it into them and figure out how to make the truth more palatable. There's a chance that they'll receive the information because people in denial are already in protective mode. You don't want to corner them because— A cornered person doesn't suddenly like see the light. They come out swinging. Let's look at the second story because it's similar, but there's a little different. This is a husband, also a husband, trying to get through to his wife about her drinking.