This is a short instructional YouTube video by Amber Hollingsworth about how loved ones can help someone with addiction. The core message: allow natural consequences to occur (don’t fix their messes) because consequences — not punishments — promote learning; pair those consequences with empathy ("consequences + empathy") so the person can lower emotional reactivity and think clearly. Practical guidance covers separating your finances/obligations when possible, not rescuing someone who leaves treatment early, and not micromanaging legal/probation requirements; additional resources are linked in the video description.
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I do not believe that someone has to hit bottom in order to get better. But I do believe that it has to get uncomfortable. Because it's pretty much a law of human behavior that people do what works. They seek pleasure and avoid pain. And if their addictive behavior is more pleasurable than painful, they're probably not going to change. So, as their loved one, it's important for you to not interfere with the uncomfortableness and the difficulties as it happens. Don't fix their messes. Because even more than in regular life, consequences really matter when it comes to addiction. Because the addictive behavior or substance or whatever it is acts almost like an anesthesia. So they don't even feel the consequences and the problems nearly to the magnitude that they would in normal situations. Now, let's go a little bit more in depth about what I mean when I say consequences. Because a lot of people confuse consequences with punishment. Now, I have a whole video on this, so I won't go too in depth. But what I want you to understand here is punishment is something that you dole out. And consequences is something that naturally the world doles out. Like, for example, if your kid is failing their classes, the consequence is that they fail the class. The punishment is something that you do at home. Like, maybe they lost their privilege. They can't play their video games, or they can't have their phone, or they can't drive their car. That's a punishment. I'm not talking about punishments in this video. We're talking about consequences. Because punishments actually hinder learning and development. Consequences can be very, very helpful. And trust me, when someone's addicted, there will be consequences. Sometimes when it comes to addiction, those consequences don't come as fast. And they're not nearly as big as we, the family member, actually would like for them to be. Believe it or not, the world will give your loved one more chances than they probably should get. And the biggest frustration with this is waiting for those consequences to come. The teacher will pass your kid, even when they don't deserve it. The police officer will let your loved one out of the ticket. They'll get probation or a slap on the wrist multiple times through the legal system. Their friends and family and loved ones and boyfriends and girlfriends will forgive them over and over again. But don't worry. It is inevitable. It's the nature of addiction. It will cause problems. Now, when it comes to consequences, there is a special formula that you must follow in order to make it work. Here's the formula that I don't want you to use. When you have consequences, some kind of mess they've made in their life, and you pair it with nagging, threatening, I told you so's, eye rolls, huffing, puffing, being angry at them, layering another punishment on top of the consequence. When you add those things together, what you get is defensiveness and rationalization and self pity and justification for more bad choice making. That is not the good combination. What is the good formula or combination is consequences plus empathy. Now that is a formula that works when your loved one runs into those inevitable difficulties that they're going to encounter. If you can meet that with empathy, but not fix it, but empathize with it, now you have the right combination that promotes learning. It's strange, but when someone empathizes with our difficult situation, it's like it makes us feel safe enough to be able to contemplate what actually, actually happened and learned from the situation. The empathy literally turns down the volume on the emotional part of their brain, which is extremely important because when the emotional volume is too high, guess what, the thinking volume is very low. So you want to turn down the emotional part of the brain so the thinking part of the brain can activate. It is literally biology. Now I'm not saying that one consequence plus one empathetic statement is going to get you the result, but if you can do this fairly consistently, they're going to start to see that the addictive behavior doesn't really work for them anymore. And in fact it is causing them more problems than it's helping them. And knowing that is an absolute requirement necessity for someone to get and stay in long term recovery. Now where this can get a little dicey and really difficult for you is when their consequence becomes your consequence. Because when their consequence becomes your consequence, it's going to be really hard for you to just let it sit there and not fix it. So there are some things that you need to do in order to make sure that their consequences don't become your consequences is at least as much buffer as you can. Oftentimes if this is your spouse, it's a little bit difficult to pull them apart. For example, if your finances are tied up with your spouse's finances and their consequence is financial, it's going to be really hard for you to separate those pieces. So as much as possible, I want you to focus on creating some financial security for yourself and having a backup plan for yourself should you need to get some distance from the situation that's going to empower you to let their consequences fall. Now other times we just arbitrarily make their consequences our consequences. But now they don't have a way to get to school. Guess what? It is not your problem to figure out for them how to get to school because they lost their license. Shock. I know, right? Because most parents think, well, now I gotta get them to school. No, you don't. If they're big enough to drive and they're big enough to lose their ability to drive, they're big enough to figure it out. They can either figure out how to get on a bus and go, how to have someone else pick them up and go, or they just miss. Do not rearrange your schedule, inconvenience everyone in the household, turn everyone upside down to make sure that they get to their job, school, or wherever it is they got to go because they can't drive. Now, another really common example of where we see this happening a lot is like, if someone decides to leave treatment against medical advice or leave early. So your loved one makes a decision that they want to leave treatment, guess what? They can make that decision because that is their side of the street. That does not, however, mean that you have to go pick them up, bring them home, and fix it all for them. You've got to let their choice be their choice. Another type of consequence that's kind of really hard to ignore and just let it fall has to do with legal problems. Let's say your loved one is on probation or parole, or they have to meet these certain requirements or get these volunteer hours. It's not your job to micromanage that. It's not your job to make sure they're compliant or to call into their probation officer when they're not making a meeting. I know it's very difficult because the consequence for those things seem really huge. But again, these are the things that you must let happen. You don't have to cause them to happen. You don't have to call up their probation officer and get them in trouble. I just don't want you to rescue them if they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Now, as always in the description, I have more resources for you on how to help your addicted loved one or yourself if you're the addicted one. And up next is step three for how to get your loved one sober.
