Amber Hollingsworth advises how to approach a loved one who may need drug or alcohol treatment using a "side door method": avoid direct confrontation, build a trusting relationship, listen and empathize, and reframe substance use as stress/anxiety or other problems to make the person more receptive. She recommends letting the person self-identify via diagnostic criteria rather than labeling them directly.
Chapters
What to do if you have a loved one who needs to go to drug or alcohol treatment and you're not sure how to approach them. Basically the way that you approach them is through what I call the side door method. So you're not going to come at someone straight on. You don't say, sit down, let's talk. Because as soon as you say those words, people's defenses go up. You feel like you're in the principal's office. You're like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm in trouble. And you really can't listen very good when you're in that defensive, scared state. Don't start off by saying we need to have a talk. In fact, don't go at the situation directly at all. You want to come at it through the side door. So the first step is you have to build a very trusting, safe relationship with this person. If the relationship is such that it's pretty rocky lately or that you've been on their case or you've been arguing a lot, you're really not going to have any influence with this person because they've already tuned you out. They don't feel safe with you, they're not going to trust what you have to say and they don't care about your opinion. So you, you might be starting from negative ground. If you're starting from negative ground with this person, then you're going to have to build a better, more positive relationship with them. You do this by listening to them, not arguing with them, empathizing with them, and find out what their motivations are. They're not likely to think that they have a drug or alcohol problem. They don't think that they need to go to rehab, but they may think that they're having an anxiety problem or a self esteem problem, or a stress problem, or a school problem, or a work problem. And you can join with them on that issue. And it's also a great avenue that you can use to say, hey, I think it'd be good if you went to talk to someone about that. You know, you're super stressed and you know, since your mom passed away, you don't go out as much or you're grieving or you know, maybe they're drinking to handle the work trip. People are much more receptive to having conversations about their stress, their anxiety, the way that they're managing that than they are if you're telling them that they have a substance abuse problem. Pretty much if you go straight at someone with that, they're going to shut the door down on you. In fact, I don't even do that. Like, even if my clients ask me, do you think I'm an addict or narcotic, I do not say what I think. I say, I don't know. Let me get out the big dsm. That's our, like, diagnostic manual. I'll say, I'll read you the criteria. You tell me. And I read them the criteria, and I say, count them up on your fingers. I have a whole other video about that you can watch if you want, of me doing that. And I let them decide it. Because if I tell someone they have substance abuse problem, immediately, they're going to shut down. They're going to see me as not safe, and I have damaged the relationship, which is the only real thing that I'm going to be able to leverage.
