How To Help Someone Decide To Get Sober

The very first step to helping someone decide to get sober is to stop trying to change them and start trying to actually understand them. Yes, that is the essential ingredient. This is the foundation that you must put down. Otherwise, you're not going to get anywhere else. And in this video, I am not only going to explain to you why that's helpful and what you're trying to accomplish, but I'm going to give you a really good hint to make this a lot easier and faster for you. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track and get back out there and live the life that you actually want to be living instead of being held hostage stitch by addiction. Now, this is the only channel out there that helps you understand addiction from every single angle, from the biological to the psychological, from the individual to the family. I really want you to get it from every direction, because beating addiction requires strategy. And today we're talking about the biggest, most effective piece of strategy that a family member can have. This is where every family should start from. And if you get stuck in the process along the way, this is where you need to go back to. I want you to think about this, like, home base. When you get stuck and something's not going right and don't know what to do, go back to this home base, which is trying to understand the person and their situation. Now, you know, this idea actually came to me when I was doing an interview, a video interview, which you can watch. I'll try to link it up here for you at the end with a buddy of mine named Kyle from Sober Dogs. And we had. We were having conversations about a lot of stuff, and we moved into this conversation about how I used to treat teenagers, or actually, I still do treat teenagers, but early in my career, that's all that I. I did. And Kyle was telling me about how he used to go to counseling when he was a teenager, but he would just go and make it an excuse to leave early so he could go get high in the parking lot before he went home. And he was asking me, you know, how do you work with teens? Do you ever run into this? You know, how do you change some teenager who doesn't want to be changed? And I said, that's exactly it. As I don't focus on changing them, I focus on trying to understand them. You see, when there's a Resistance is because people don't want to be changed and they definitely don't want to be judged. But inherently, most of us, pretty much all of us, want to be really heard and understood. And so if you focus on hearing and understanding someone, you're going to lay down the right groundwork for effective change to actually happen. But you're not trying to change them, you're just trying to understand where they're coming from. And you have to understand it in a non judgmental way. When it comes down to it, human behavior pretty much always makes sense. If you understand the context of that behavior, all the contributing factors, you'll be like, yeah, I guess I could see why they're doing that, or I guess I could see why they think that, or I guess I could see why they feel that. It kind of makes sense when you start to put together all the puzzle pieces. Now, one of the reasons why you want to do this is because it starts to change you. Once you change your perspective, you start to feel differently about that other person, which causes you to start to react to them differently. Not just what you say and what you do, but it changes your heart and your whole vibe about how you come at them, which in and of itself just that thing alone will take their walls down because they don't feel under attack. The second reason why you want to do this is because people do inherently want to be understood. And if they feel like you are a safe place and you're really trying to understand them from a non judgmental level, they're going to come to you more. I mean, this is essentially what happens in the counseling process, right? People that resist coming to counseling, they don't want to come because they don't either want to be judged by the counselor or they don't want to be judged by other people for the fact that they're going to counseling. But what they do want is to be understood. Because you see the process of trying to understand another person is actually really healing for you and really healing for them. It makes everybody let all their defenses down and it creates a much safer dynamic for both people. And when the defenses are down, both people can be heard more effectively. The more someone feels like you understand them, the more sort of like credit you have with them. Basically what I mean is like when you have an opinion or thought about something, if someone feels like you really, really understand them, then your opinion and your thoughts matter so much more to them. Not only do they care what you think more, because they care more about you, but they put More validity in your thoughts and ideas because they feel like you get it. You get them from every angle and you understand where they come from. And you're not doing it in a judgmental type way. And that credit that you're building with the person ultimately allows you to have more influence over them. You see what I'm saying? This is the first step to helping someone change. Because, let's face it, if someone's in active addiction and they're taking steps towards sobriety, those are big, scary steps. And they're not sure if it's going to work out. And it takes a lot to get yourself to take some of these big steps. Sometimes it means going to rehab, sometimes it means letting go of a lot of relationships. It means letting go of this thing that feels like it's the only thing that makes you feel better. And they're really, really, really going to have to trust you for you to have any influence over that. Now, there are a lot of ways to try and understand someone, but the most obvious, quickest and easiest way is to just ask them questions and listen to their responses, and then ask them questions about their responses. If you sort of show that interest and dig in a curious, concerned and interested way, they're probably going to tell you more. Now, if you're dealing with someone who's really closed off or who has a lot of defenses, this may not work the first time you do this. But if you're very consistent in the way that you come at them and that you show, no matter what response they give you, that you're safe and that you're not going to judge them, and that you're not going to snap or tell them or push your opinions on them, then eventually they're going to start opening up. Some people do take a little longer than others. Counselors actually get a little extra training on this. Obviously, we need it, right? And if you're interested in learning more of those actual techniques that counselors use, then there's a link in the description that will take you to my persuasion masterclass, which will tell you even more of the step by step process on how to accomplish exactly what we're talking about today. But here's that little hint I told you I was going to give you. Let's say you're dealing with someone who's defensive or who doesn't want to talk, or who's closed off. Or maybe they have trauma and they're just really hard to get to. Here's a little trick that might help. You see people subconsciously make you feel the way that they're feeling. And so if you just stop and check in with how that person's making you feel, that's probably a good indicator of what's going on inside. Let me tell you about a little experience I had with that recently. So last week, my son, he was like, studying his spelling words, or we're working on some kind of school stuff, studying for a test or something. And he got himself frustrated, which of course happens sometimes when you're working on homework. And he just got himself all worked up. And it became clear to me that he really just needed a break. And if we kept trying to study it or work on it, he was just going to get more and more upset. So I started being like, you know what? I'm going to go on my walk. Do you want to go with me? Because he usually likes to go with me on my walk. I say, let's just quit for a minute. Let's come back to it. Let's clear your head. Of course, once he's to that point, he's upset, and he's like, no, I have to learn this. I'm going to have to do a much more bad gravel. And he's just all frustrated and upset, and I'm trying to get him to calm down. Let's just go walk. Let's clear our head. You know, let's take some space. So I get him out there, and I'm walking, and first he's not talking to me. He's just being mad. I can tell he's mad. And I'm like, what's going on? What's wrong? You want to talk about it? At first he's like, no, but of course everybody wants to talk about it. So then he starts talking about. And he's like, my teacher, she just gives us all these tests, and they're just these pop tests, and she just expects us to know this. And it's just too much. And I have terrible grades and I'm never going to get it. And he just starts going into this meltdown. So I'm trying to listen to him, but no matter what I try to say, that's just nice or comforting or even listening, it's just not working. And he's just being really irritable with me, which tends to be what happens when he's upset. He takes out me. I'm pretty sure that's the way most kids are with their moms. So we keep walking, and I keep thinking, well, this will pass. I'm just going to Give him some time. Just going to let him be upset. We're going to get on the side of it. We walked down one street, walked down the next, walk down the next street, and the next cul de sac, we come back up. I don't know how it got on it, but he started going. He started this whole conversation about how I have the freedom of choice and people can't tell me what to do. Now my son is 10, in case you don't know that. He's in the fourth grade. And something about teachers can't tell you what to do, parents can't tell you what to do. And I was like. At first, I was just like, yeah, parents can tell you what to do. That's kind of what parents do. And I said it kind of funny and sarcastic. Like they were like, no, they can't. Like, I have rights. Rights. And I was like, yeah, you have some rights, but when you're a kid, you pretty much have to do what your parents tell you to do. Anyways, this whole thing, it just kept going. And I was finally like, dude, why are you trying to pick a fight with me? Like, I'm just trying to walk with you, make you feel calmer or whatever, so you. So you're less stressed out about your test tomorrow because you're great. I don't care what it. I mean, I care, but it's like, I'm not gonna be mad if it makes it back, right? Anyways, he just keeps. We can fight. And finally I'm like, dude, I think I'm just gonna need a break. Cause it feels like you're just picking a fight with me. And I don't know why you're doing that, but it's like nothing I say is right. And you just bound and turned to be upset. And to me, that was a really good sort of example of how the other person is trying to make you feel the way that they feel. So if I analyze that situation, I feel like he was being unreasonable. I feel like he was in that moment, if I had to stop and sort of reflect on how is he making me feel, I would say he's making me feel like this situation is somewhat unreasonable and that he's being irrational and that it is somewhat unfair because I'm just trying to help. And now he's being mean to me. And if I think about that's the way he's making me feel, that's probably a reflection on what's going on with him. Now. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're blaming you for the way they feel. It's just that because that's the way they feel, that's the energy they're putting out. And so you're receiving that energy. So if you don't know exactly what's going on or the person won't tell you, or you think they're not telling you the whole situation, just start to think about how is that person making you feel in the moment. And you might be pretty close to figuring out what the heck is going on with them. Now the hard thing about this is you might feel like their feeling is unreasonable or irrational or not fair, or that their perception is wrong. But remember, we're not here to judge that. We're just here like a scientist trying to figure out at first what's going on before you even try to figure out the strategy of what to do about it. Which leads me to up next, here are some more videos on what to actually do about it. Once you've built that credit, how do you actually get someone to take steps towards sobriety? I'm going to put my playlist up here for you. Next on motivating someone to change.