How To Get Your Loved One Sober | Expert Intervention Technique #1

I'm not a freaking alcoholic. It's you. You're so freaking controlling. I am so sick of you telling me I drink too much, I work hard, I provide for this house, I take care of the kids. If I want to have a drink at the end of the day, who cares? I deserve it. You just need to stop being so uptight. Believe it or not, it is definitely possible to take someone from that state of change, which is probably what I would call being in denial, to take in the steps that are necessary to get sober. No, you cannot make someone get sober, but yes, you can absolutely influence them to do so. Now, I know I talk about this a lot on this channel, but I've created this mini series for you about how to get someone sober that is the most in depth I have ever been. I am literally going to tell you the six steps that you absolutely must take to get this done. And this video is going to go in depth about step number one, which is building credibility. You have to build credibility with your loved one, otherwise your opinion doesn't matter. Not only does your opinion not matter, but when you don't have credibility with your loved one, sometimes they do the opposite of what you want, just despite you. Give me a thumbs up emoji in the comments if you can relate to what I'm saying so far. But these five ways are proven to work. In fact, this is exactly what I do when I meet new clients and I'm trying to build trust and rapport and relationships, relationship with them. I'm literally telling you my five secret ingredients here. Now, the last one is a tiny bit controversial, but I want you to hang in there and listen to it anyways because it's very strategic. So let's get into it. Now, building credibility with your addicted loved one is all about helping them feel like you understand them, know their situation. Your opinion, your advice isn't going to matter. When they think you don't get it, you don't get it. You just don't get it. I do get it, but. So I want you to do these five things which is going to help your loved one feel like you get them. You understand their situation. Now, if you feel like someone gets you and they understand you and they're in your corner, you are so much more likely to care what they have to think, listen to their advice, or even ask them for advice. You have to get in the right frame of mind to do this. And by right frame of mind, what I really mean is you have to get past being stuck in the idea that it's not fair. I shouldn't have to do this. Why am I doing all the work? They're the jerk, they're the butthole. They're the one not pulling their weight. That's totally fair thinking. I get it. You're right. But it isn't going to get the job done. You got to get your head screwed on straight in order to get this job done. Otherwise, your own emotions are going to block you from being able to effectively intervene with your loved one. You know, you seem like a man in his right frame of mind. Now, if your goal is to get out of the relationship, this isn't the video for you. This video is for people who are trying to get a loved one out of denial and into recovery. Okay, strategy number one. Now, this is the place to start. This one I'm going to call Learn to see the good in the other person. Now, there are a few ways you can do this, but basically what you're doing here is you're seeing their strengths, their good intentions, their gifts, the parts in life where they try really hard. When you can acknowledge that you see the good part of someone else, that is going to go a long, long way for helping them feel like you get them. Now, the first thing I want you to do to really pull this off effectively is I want you to ask yourself this question. How does this person, your addicted loved one, want to be seen? And once you have the answer to that question, how they want to be seen, then you can think of some positive reinforcement type statements that lets them know that you see that quality in them. Now, you can use any of the examples I'm about to give you here, but just know you have to really adapt this to fit your loved one and how they want to be seen. Here's some examples of things I've used before. You might say something like, I just love that you're so creative, or, you are such a hard worker. I literally don't know anyone who works as hard as you do. Or, you always make me laugh, you are so funny. Or you can say something like, you truly care about other people. I mean, really on a deep level. And that's one of the things I've always admired about you. The key here is find their strength and comment on it. Now, a word to the wise about this technique. It must be genuine, because if it's not, it's not gonna work. You can feel it when someone's kind of pumping you full of bull. So ask yourself, how do they want to be seen and find examples of it that you can comment on. Now, with any of these techniques, you don't have to pour it on really thick. You don't have to say it all the time. But when you get those moments and it's just the right timing, throw this in there. It's just like a little noticing comment. When you can notice these strengths about people, their intentions, their motivations, when they're do good, they are really going to feel seen, heard and understood on a much deeper level. Now, I know I gotta hand it to you, Ned. You're a hard worker. It is probably hard for you to see the good in them right now because they're not showing you the good very much. But I want you to do the very best you can and I want you to find something good that your loved one has done that you can genuinely comment on. All right, Strategy number two is empathize with your addicted loved one's frustrations. This is all seeing things from their point of view. Now, this doesn't mean that you agree with everything that they say. It doesn't even mean that you totally agree with their perspective. But you at least have to let them know that you understand their side of things. Now, to make this work for your situation, I want you to start out by asking yourself, what is your loved one's top two or three frustrations that they're constantly sort of. Maybe they feel like their family takes advantage of them. Maybe they feel like their boss is too critical of them. Maybe they feel like their mama has always loved their sister more. Whatever is their frustration, notice it and have empathy for it. Listen, of course I know where you're coming from. Now, you can wait until they bring it up and you can kind of agree with the parts you agree with. There's probably some parts you don't really agree with. Like maybe you agree that their mom does favor their sister, but you think there's like some more to the story that your loved one doesn't know. This is not the place to put that in. This is just you commenting on the parts that you can understand, agree, and have a little empathy for. Here are just a couple of examples. You could say something like, I can't believe your sister asked you to come take care of that. Again, it really does feel kind of unfair that she always expects you to solve her problems. And not only that, she expects you to drop everything you're doing and go do it right. Then. Here's some more examples of empathy statements. I can't believe you got overlooked for that promotion, you have worked your butt off. And for the big boss to just come in and hire his nephew just because it's his nephew, totally not fair. Now, the key here is you have to empathize with what frustrates them. So in that last example I gave you, maybe you feel frustrated that they got overlooked for the promotion, but they don't feel frustrated. This is not empathizing with what you think. This is empathizing with what they think. The key is, what are they frustrated about? And try really hard to see their point of view. My old man barely talks to me. It's like he can't wait for me to graduate and move out. So did I hear you, man? In strategy number three, I want you to be able to show your vulnerabilities. I want you to show them your weaknesses and your imperfections. Now, you might be thinking, well, why is that important? I don't want them to think it's all me because they try to blame me already. I know you thinking that, but there is strategy here. When you're struggling with an addiction, you feel like everyone's judging you. You feel like the world is against you. You feel like your family, they just think they're so much better than you. You feel like they blame you for everything. They don't take your responsibility for their problems or weaknesses or imperfections. And because of that, you feel really defensive. One of the ways you can help your loved one feel less defensive is that you can show them your not so great sides. Not only are you helping them feel not defensive, but you're also like role modeling vulnerability. You're role modeling being able to admit when you did something wrong or you made a mistake or admit that you've got character defects. This is an important strategy. It makes the relationship a safe place to talk about things that you don't feel so great about. Now, one really effective thing you can do right off the bat to sort of show your own vulnerabilities is you can admit that you haven't always responded in the best way in the past. You can even give some examples of some things you've set or done that you feel kind of bad about and that you regret and you wish you had handled differently. So that's all about bringing up things from your past. You can also do this real time when you feel like you've said something wrong, overstepped a boundary, overreacted, underreacted, something like that. Then just acknowledge it. As soon as it comes into your awareness, say it to the person you know What? Yesterday, I really flipped out because of this and probably was an overreaction, and I apologize for that. Look, I'm sorry. I really screwed up back there. You're admitting your own flaws, your own mistakes, your own weaknesses. I can't tell you how many clients I have that come in and tell me that their spouse or their parent just like, literally never admits when they're wrong. And they always think they're right. They just never admit it. It goes a long, long, long, long way to show some humility, vulnerability, and honesty. Now, as you can tell, these strategies, they make sense, right? Like, you can kind of follow along with why these strategies work. Doesn't mean they're easy emotionally, they're. Because it's kind of counterintuitive. As our family counselor Campbell would say, it's against your instincts. But these are strategies that work. Now, we go into this even more in depth in our Invisible Intervention online program. I'll put the link to that in the description below. But to really sort of quick start your journey here, I've got a free download. It's called say this, not that. And it literally goes through situations and says what you probably want to say, what you should say. I'll link that in the description. You can download it for free. Now, strategy number four is build your loved one up. Now, the other things that you've been doing are inherently helping to build the person up. But this is more sort of strategically and directly build the person up. The reason why this is important is because not only do you want them to sort of be able to admit they have a problem, but you want them to know that they have the strength and ability to overcome the problem when they get to the point where they're admitting it. Now, this whole build credibility thing we're talking about, this isn't about getting them to admit the problem. This is about getting them to trust you, to believe in you, to feel like you get them. But eventually we're going to get to that part. Make sure you watch all the videos in this series, but this one, number four, is about laying the foundation for that Build them up. Now, of course, you can say things like, I know you can do it. We're in your corner, we're here to support you, blah, blah, blah. But that just sounds like vague, whatever stuff that family says. And honestly, it's almost like some kind of like pity pep talk or something. That's what it comes across. So I want you to do this better and more effectively. I want you to literally think about something that your loved one has done in the past. That's really difficult. Something that helps them see that they have strength, resilience, courage. Any of those qualities that they're going to need ultimately to help them overcome this addiction. You want to start bringing attention to, to the fact that they have all those ingredients. You don't have to have long discussions. You're just planting little seeds. You can remind them about how they put themselves through college and paid for it themselves. You can remind them about that time they stood up to that bully. You can remind them about the time that they made a right decision even though it was really difficult, or about the time they won the championship and how hard they worked in order to make that happen. The key here is you're trying to let them know that they have strength, ability, willingness, resiliency, courage, any of those kind of things. Alright, now we're on to strategy number five, which like I told you before, is slightly controversial. I just want you to hang in there and listen to me. You're gonna have some self talk as I go through this and you're gonna say, but Amber, that's enabling. I can't believe you would tell someone to do this. Aren't you an addiction counselor? What the heck are you thinking? Just hear me out. Strategy number five is about having their back. This is where you want to strategically help them with something. Maybe you want to take up for them when someone else is bad talking them. You might want to strategically help them solve a problem. You want to do something nice for the person every now and then. Now I'm not talking about major enabling things like you're paying all their bills month after month after month. I mean, you step in and help out when appropriate. Because this really, really sends the message that, hey, I'm on your side. I might say something like, hey, would it help if I wrote a letter for you to your lawyer? Would it help if I made that phone call with you? You're not trying to fix everything for them. You're just trying to be their helper. You're trying to be their teammate. You're trying to be on their side. I got you. I got you. Now just think about it. If you can do all those five things I've just told you, the person that you're trying to help is really going to feel like you get them. You see their strengths, you see their struggles. You understand that you have weaknesses too. You're on their side. Now. Once you do all these things, your loved one is going to care. You think they're going to listen to your opinion. They're going to seek your advice. Now, the next big step in this process is all about consequences, natural consequences. That's going to make them want to seek your advice and listen to what you have to say. So I want you to watch the next video in this series, which is all about how to make that happen.