How To Make Someone Want To Get Sober

Now, some of you are going to be reading the title, how to Make Someone Want to Get Sober. And before you even listen to this video, you're going to want to argue with me. But I probably already know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you can't make someone get sober. They have to want to get sober for themselves. And to a large degree, you're right. You definitely can't make someone get sober. And you're also right by thinking that they have to want it. But you might be missing a key ingredient in this little formula. And that key ingredient is that there are things you can do to influence them, to get them to want to get sober. Now, yes, they are going to have to do the work, but you are an influential factor who can definitely help the process along the way. Now, some of you may still be arguing with me in your head, and I get it. Trust me, I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I've been on that side of the fence as well. Ask yourself this question. Are there some things that you could do today to make someone in your life want to spend more time with you? I bet you can think of some things, right? You're not saying that you're forcing them to spend more or less time with you, but there are definitely ways that you can influence whether or not they want to spend more or less time with you. And you can probably definitely think of some people in your life that make you feel a certain way. Now, I know I'm a counselor person and I'm supposed to say no one can make you angry, no one can make you this or that. But let's be real. We all have buttons. And the people that are closest to us, we know exactly what the buttons are, and they know exactly what our buttons are. Are there some things that you could say to me that's to end up in me getting mad? I'm just going to go ahead and admit it, probably. So now, do I have some control over how I externally react to you? Sure, I do have some control over how I behave in the situation. But when the button is pushed, the button is pushed. And I'm probably going to at least emotionally have a reaction to any given situation. Trying to tell ourselves that we're in complete control, that we're completely rational human beings and that our environment, other people, don't have effects on us is just plain crazy and doesn't fit with the research or, or just good old common sense in our experience here on planet Earth. So if you're still watching this video, then maybe you're at least considering being open minded about this concept of being able to influence someone, to motivate someone, to want to get sober or want to change some kind of behavior or addiction in some way. Now, I know deep down inside that people really do believe this. Because if not, why do you spend so much time trying to get your addicted loved one to go talk to a counselor? It's because you think that the counselor has some kind of magic way of making this person to see things differently, of motivating this person, of getting your loved one on the right track. And in some ways, you're kind of right. Counselors do have some magic tricks. But the good news is, is right here on this YouTube channel, I teach you all the magic tricks. And I promise you there is nothing special about me. Anyone can do these magic tricks. Mostly, though, what you have in your head is going to happen isn't what really happens. And if it did, it would make things worse. Because you might be thinking that I'm going to send my loved one, my husband, my kid, who. And they're going to go talk to Amber, the counselor or whoever, the counselor, and they're going to tell that person with their magic words how they're really screwing up their life and how they're treating me badly and how they need to get on the right path. Guess what? You've already told them that. And it sure isn't going to go over well. If a stranger tells your loved one that for sure, I promise that will not work. Your loved one is not going to show up week after week after week to be told that they're screwing things up, that they're a bad person, that they're treating you badly. No matter how many emails you send the counselor telling the counselor how all the bad things that your addicted loved one did, if the counselor talked to your loved one about all of those things, it would have the opposite effect of what you want. My guess is you kind of really know this because you've already tried all that and it's having the opposite effect. So let's take a look at what does work. You know, things like punishment, making things harder, being difficult with the person will get you the opposite result pretty much all the time. But especially with addiction. Because when a person has an addiction, they have like a magic formula that can pretty much anesthetize anything that you can throw at them. So if you're over here busy making this reality much harder and difficult to navigate and the picture looks bad and everyone's mad at me and I'm being honest with myself and I'm losing my job and my kids are upset with me and all this negative stuff over here. And I've got this option, or I can run over here and take my drugs, behavior, whatever it is, and be anesthetized from it. Guess what? That's the easy choice, right? I'm going to run over here. So despite popular belief, and popular belief says, oh, you got to make things really hard over here. And that's how you make someone get sober. I'm just not of that mindset. What you got to do is you got to let them see the truth of the matter, that life over here on that side of the fence, it's not so great. And guess what? The grass is actually greener over here. And the worst way to show that is by constantly being angry, negative, upset, telling them what they're doing wrong, doling out punishing punishments that you're calling boundaries. All these things that you're doing over here, it's making this picture look less and less and less desirable. And that doesn't make someone motivated to want to change. Another piece of good news here is you don't have to do anything to make addiction feel hard. Because if it's addiction, it's hard, bad things are going to happen. Unmanageability is going to come, and you don't have to do anything to help it out. It may not come as fast as you want, but it will definitely come. In fact, it's probably already there. Even if the person won't admit it to you, they're already feeling guilty, they're already mad at themselves. They already know that they need to do different. Your job, if you want to help encourage this person to come along, is to listen for those little statements that are in there that indicate their desire and ability to want to change. There's kind of a counseling method, a series of statements that we list for the fancy term for them is change talk. And I actually have a free download, I'll put the link in the description if you want it, giving you sort of a list of some change talk statements. But essentially what you're going to listen for, you can remember this by the word darn. And actually they've added some more to it and they call it darn cat, D, A, R, N. So the D stands for desire, the A stands for ability, the R stands for reason, and the N stands for need. And if you want to add the C from cat in there, it stands for The C stands for commitment. So you're listening for any statement that they're expressing a desire to change. And that can sound really simple, like something like, I really need to cut back my drinking. I'm putting on a beer belly, right? Desire, that's desire, that's reason, that's need, all in that one simple little statement. You want to listen for statements like that, and when you hear them, you just want to positively reinforce them. You don't have to do any giant tap dance on top of it. You don't have to force these statements out. Usually if you just create a sort of a trusting, safe environment, they come out on their own. And then once you see them or hear them, then you just reinforce them along the way. But, you know, one of the big ones that you should listen for is ability. We want to find evidence, reason, or listen for their statements that indicate that they feel like they have the ability to make the change because there's the desire to change and then the ability to change, right? And too often what we do when someone expresses is a desire to change. Oh, my gosh, people, we do the opposite. We say things like, you've already said that a hundred times. We say things like, you can't do it on your own. We say things like, you always think you can beat this and you can't. When they're saying, I can do this. And we like, literally take a sledgehammer and we smash it down. And I know you're not doing that for any kind of bad reason. I know you're doing that because you're thinking, if I say all these things, then they're going to know that they need to try harder and that they need to get bigger help. But it's really actually not very helpful. It's pretty discouraging. And you don't have to be a psychology expert to see why that would be. If you want to be really good at this, pay attention to finding any kind of evidence that is true that you know about this person that proves that they have the ability. When they say things like, well, I stayed sober 30 days instead of saying, oh, yeah, well, anyone can stay sober 30 days. But you went back to drinking as soon as dry January was up. Don't say that. Say, did you stay sober for 30 days? Like, obviously you do know how to do this. Obviously you can do it on your own. You want to reinforce those things. Or you can think of other things that they've done in the past that were really hard, how they've overcome big problems in the past. How they've changed habits or circumstances, or built a career. Look for real things. And when you have that right moment, just remind them. Just throw it in there like a little seed. A little drive by is what I call it. To remind them that they are strong, that they do have the ability. Because when you get that ability combined with that desire. Desire, need, motivation. Now we have the right combo that's going to put someone in the mindset to not only just want to change, but to be willing to take a chance to try things, to put in some effort. Telling someone that they're a constant screw up, that they're never going to get it right. That statistics show only 1 in 10 people beat addiction, all that stuff, it's just not helpful. And I know that you know that deep down your heart, you don't have to read it in a book anywhere. You don't have to believe me because you kind of naturally know that. Because it's common sense, right? What's happening is you're so worried about your loved one, you're. You're freaking out. Rightfully so, may I add. Good reason why you're freaking out because they're basically like destroying their life and yours too, probably. That's a good reason to freak out. Okay? But it's not helping you to freak out. You're getting in their fight or flight panicky kind of response. And you're getting real reactive with them because you're scared, because you're in survival mode, because you're trying so hard to get this to stop. But I need you to over override your own fight or flight responses here and think logically. Good old common sense. How do we get someone to want to change? You know, if you have a young kid, how do you motivate them to do their chores right? You can throw the punishments out there if you want. Not so effective. Or you can just throw out the positive reinforcements. Or you can tell them, oh my gosh, you're so organized, you're so clean. Or I love it when I come home and you've already auditioned. Oh my gosh, makes me so happy. Those are the things, you know, that works best. And guess what? It works on us. Even as adult. In fact, as an adult, we probably get a lot less positive reinforcement than we do when we're kids. So it works even better on us because, hey, we all need it. Now, some people are so far in addiction that maybe they want to be sober, but they don't think they can get sober. That's that ability thing and you may hit a bigger roadblock when it comes to ability. But there are so many things you can do to help make someone want to get sober. Are there some things I could do to make you want to eat a piece of pizza if you know you kind of like pizza? Of course there probably are some things, right? I know in some ways it makes us feel better to hear those statements. You know, you have no control over it. You can't help it. They're going to do what they're going to do and it makes us feel better because everything we've tried hasn't worked. And that is just a better thought to say, well, no one can do this, no one can influence someone. But we keep trying all those other things anyway and they're not working. So we might as well try some of these things over here that have a better chance of motivating someone towards a positive change. Now, if you want to know even more of my secret tips and tricks on how to motivate someone and get someone to change, then there are some things you can do. One, if you haven't subscribed to this channel, you should definitely subscribe because there's a ton of information on here and I go live each week. You'll get notifications on that and you'll be getting all this free help that doesn't cost you a thing. So subscribe. The other thing you can do is you can watch this video. Next, I'm going to pop it right up here and it's more information on how to get someone out of denial and into recovery. Now if you're already subscribed and you've already watched a lot of videos and you're really ready to dive in and like super fast track your learning and really get into the nitty gritty of it, then consider signing up for our invisible intervention. That is the step by step I'll laid out for you in a very strategic, linear process on how to get this job done, how to get your loved one out of denial and working towards sobriety without yelling, nagging, threatening, being the bad guy. None of that stuff. Because it's not fun to be the bad guy, right? You've already been in that role. Let's step out of that and try something different. I'll put the link to that in the description below. Up next, more on this topic.