If Your Son or Daughter Has An Addiction, This Video Will Change Everything!

Hey, guys. All right, today you have me because Amber is on vacation. And I don't know, for some of you probably know, I hate to do these kind of things. So today I'm actually excited because today I want to talk about something that I get asked all the time if there's a video about it, and I'm always like, no, there's not. So today we'll have a video on it. And the topic is how to parent addiction and generally all children differently. And today, like, we're going to talk about it from a standpoint of how to neutralize addiction. And we have to, as you guys know, like, we are not going to cure addiction. We're not going to be able to stop in its tracks by anything that we say. And what we tend to do is feed it by yelling, trying to control, blaming, sort of doing the things that parents do when they're faced with addiction and they're terrified. So what I want to talk about today is changing our parenting style. Traditionally, how we parent is intuitive, and that is to control, protect, manage, make our children's lives easier. And that works for about 70, 75% of the children. It doesn't work at all with addiction. It doesn't work at all with addiction. So instead we have to learn how to parent non intuitively, which is to do the opposite of that. One of the ways that we, how we parent. So at the beginning, when our children are born, we're here, they're here, right? So this is called hierarchical parenting. We're above. And at the beginning we have to do that because they can't get out of their crib, they can't feed themselves, they can't go to the bathroom, they can't do anything. So we have to be like that. What we want to do is starting at about 2, is to slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly change the way we parent. So that by 16 to 18 or certainly by the time they get out of college, if they go to college, it's relational, okay? Relational parenting is completely different than hierarchical. Most of us, it's intuitively continue to parent hierarchically because that feels good. It works for most of these kids, but not for addiction. With addiction, it's super easy to play the victim card. So they're constantly. We're at fault. I wasn't going to use, but mom's being bitchy, Dad's yelling at me. So they play this victim card and intuitive parenting feeds the victim card so that it's easy for them to keep using. Non intuitive parenting is what's the ticket to sort of eradicate that, it's not going to cure addiction like at all, but it can eradicate the victim card. So they don't get to play that as much. So let's talk a little bit about this parenting style. The way that we parent non intuitively is to be curious, to ask questions, to lead by modeling, lead by example, or to sort of just engage in conversation that is not advice driven. It's pretty hard for parents, right, to not give advice because we're wise, we're older, we know we've learned. But kids therefore, when they hear that, they sort of play the yeah, whatever, or you don't have a clue. And so there's this automatic defensive thinking that goes on when we, when we parent like that. So non intuitive parenting is to engage in a different way. So let me give you an example of, of how that works. So years ago, like four years ago, my daughter was in med school. First year of med school. We're about a month in, so I know she's got a test. Like the next week, her first test of med school, she calls me, she says, mom, I need you to talk me in or out of something. I'm like, okay, what? She said, I really want to go to Emily's surprise birthday party back in Charlottesville, eight hour drive from where she's in med school. Immediately I'm like thinking, oh my God, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Oh. Meanwhile, there's a hurricane coming the following week. So I'm like, first of all, you have a test. Second of all, there's a hurricane. Like you don't have the money. Like, this is the dumbest idea ever. But I don't say that. I said, okay, well, talk me through your thinking. So curious, asking a question. She says, well, it would be super fun. And I haven't seen anybody since we graduated, so I think it'll be the best. And I said, okay, I think, I think you're right. It would be really fun. Charlottesville is a really fun town and I know you'd have a great time. Charlotte. She's like, I know, right? Like, yeah. I said, so what are some cons? And she said, well, I do have a test. I have a test next Friday. I'm thinking, no duh. But I say, well, you're pretty smart. You've got a handle on this. I'm sure you can. You can, you'll do fine on the test. She said, well, no, I'll probably need to study. I'm like, okay, well, are you. Are you going with anyone? She's like, yeah, Haley's gonna drive. Her roommate, Haley is gonna go with me, and Haley can drive and I can study in the car. I'm like, oh, yeah, great idea. Thank you. Thinking you could study in the car. But I don't say that. I say, well, what time are you guys planning on leaving? She says, oh, we have to leave after Haley gets out of class. It'll be like five again. I'm thinking you're gonna leave at five at night and drive eight hours. Dumb. But I said, well, that's a really good idea. So you. By the time you get to Columbia, it'll be past rush hour. That's. That's good thinking. I said, but how much studying do you think you'll get done? She's like, oh, I can stay the whole eight hours. I'm like, oh, yeah, you could probably just bring a flashlight for the car. She's like, oh, crap, it will be dark. I even think about that. I'm like, yeah, but you can study on Saturday. She's like, no, I'll be drinking beer on Saturday. Like, I can't do that. I'm like, well, you can study on Sunday. She's like, maybe I'm starting to get her to realize her. Her own thinking, right, by just going along with this, not giving advice, not saying what I think. Then I said, well, have you checked the route? Are you sure that the. There's nothing, no construction, nothing that would, you know, make this longer than an hour drive? She go, that's a great idea. So she checks the route and she says, oh, there's a hurricane coming. I'm like, what? Oh, those things peter out, you know, it's not going to happen. It'll be fine. She said, no, there's a hurricane, and it's going to be in North Carolina on the way up and on the way down, like, well, can you go a different route? She's like, you know, the more I think about this, as sad as this is, I just can't go to that party. I'm just going to have to say I can't come. I'm going to stay here and I'm going to study, and I'm not going to do that. I said, well, if that's what you think is a good idea, then I think that you've made some good thinking, but it's up to you. She said, thanks for. Thanks for your help, Mom. I really appreciate that, and hung up. And I'm like, holy moly. But because I didn't control, manage, advise, lecture, talk about it overly, she was able to come to her own conclusion. And this is what non intuitive parenting does. This is what's helpful. Because what happens with non intuitive parenting. And here's where Amber's going to make fun of me if she's watching this. But the chemicals that we need to help neutralize addiction come from this kind of parenting and this kind of thought process that they engage in them by themselves. And that is in that conversation I had with Margaret. When she hung up, she had a bunch of serotonin because she was proud of herself for making a good decision. But she felt super connected to me because I didn't lecture, advise, control, manage, do anything but go along with her. So if we look at these chemicals above the line, okay, line in there. Dopamine and endorphins. Dopamine is a pleasure chemical that comes from desire, endorphins or comes from pain. We get these things naturally by, for me, a new dress, someone says, let's order pizza, watching a good movie with a friend, get a lot of dopamine. We get endorphins naturally by laughing. Our brain secretes endorphins, which are pleasure chemical for pain because otherwise our kidneys and our hearts and all that would bump up each other when we laugh. And we get things from exercise. This is what we also call the runner's high. These are short term pleasure chemicals. They can be, you can go get them, but you got to go get them often and over and over and over. Therefore, these are addictive chemicals. Okay? And let me, let me stop for 10 seconds and say, we are all hardwired to get pleasure chemicals. That's just how God made us. So back to the air. The line in the air below the line are serotonin and oxytocin. Serotonin comes from pride and oxytocin comes from connection. These are with time, the cure for addiction. Because if you have enough pride and you have enough connection, they're like the anchor, the ballast, and they keep us down here. We don't need to go get these addictive short term ones because we have enough of these. What happens with addiction is, is that it naturally erodes pride and connection. And you know this because you've, you're watching this. You either in recovery or have kids who are struggling or in recovery. And the very nature of addiction deprives them of pride and deprives them of connection so that it becomes, I'm using alone. I'm changing my friends. I'M no longer playing lacrosse. I'm not interested in having dinner with my parents anymore. I don't even want to care what my grandparents are coming to visit. I'm skipping functions. So pride and connection get severed. Severed, severed, severed. Therefore, the addiction gets power. Because now I need to go get these endorphins if I'm a. If I'm self harming or have an eating disorder or dopamine, if I have a process like shopping, gambling, drugs or alcohol. So what happens with that is by neutralizing it by this type of parenting, we can often merely neutralize it. We're not going to cure it. But when we parent intuitively and we don't feed these chemicals, it's very hard for the addict for our child to look in the mirror and see themselves. Because they look in the mirror and they see us and they blame us. Well, I wasn't going to use, but mom's nagging. Well, I wasn't going to use, but mom's driving me crazy by flipping our parenting style and helping with this chemical thing I've talked about. Then ultimately, at some point in time they will be able to look in the mirror and see themselves. And when they can see themselves, then we're more likely to say, hey, my life is becoming unmanageable with what I'm doing. And so therefore I'm going to figure out how to stop this or try to stop it. So we're not going to cure it, but we can neutralize it. And yes, I just see a question there, Holly. Yes, this is going to be available. It'll be on YouTube. I don't know how that happens, but Amber does. So she'll make it happen, but it will be available. I think that this is a topic that is talked about all the time. I talk about it with clients people don't understand. Like when we parent addiction, we fuel it because we are so frankly terrified that this kid is going to go off the rails, that they're going to die, that they're. Their life will never be what it was, that they're never going to fail. They're going to fail out of school, they're never going to get a job. You know, all these horrific catastrophic fears that we have, which are fair and reasonable and definitely sometimes happen, are terrifying. So we hang on and we clinch and we yell and we punish and we set rules and we try to limit and we manage and we go through their rooms and we go to the school. We do all the things we that are in fact doing the very thing we don't want to do, which is stealing their serotonin and stealing their connection, their oxytocin. So what we're talking about today is doing the opposite of that. Now let me see what else we want to talk about. So more questions, more storytelling, more modeling, more conversations, less lecturing, less advice giving, less solving their problems. When we fix our kids problems in the short run, it feels good to us and it feels good to them. But what we do when we solve their problems is we, first of all, there's no unmanageability because it's not really a problem. So we're going to keep doing, we're going to keep using in this case because it didn't really, there was no problem last time because mom fixed it. But what we're also doing when we fix these problems is we are starving the, the ability for the serotonin to build and to grow because the message that they get is well, that felt good. But I'm really only capable of functioning because my mom is solving or my dad is solving my problems. I'm really only capable of doing well in school because my parents are helping me with my homework. I'm really only capable of managing my substances because my parents are paying for my, my MIPS or my DUIs or whatever we're paying for. So this is not going to feel good, you guys. Non intuitive parenting does not feel good. It also doesn't look very good because everyone else out there in the big mess world is parenting intuitively. So your friends are going to say things like what do you mean you're not on the parent portal? Like you're not being a very good mom if you're not logging in and checking your children's grades. I'm probably the worst mother in the world if that's the case. Because I, I went to high school in the 70s. I did not manage my children's high school careers. It wasn't my high school career. The consequence of not doing well in high school is you don't go to a very good college or you don't go to college at all. That's the consequence. But parents tend to want to hold on to, to snowplow everything about their children's lives and that's erosive of serotonin. So be aware of when you're doing this that that's what you're doing long term. Hang on a second. Can I talk about the part of the brain at the very top that is fed by sleep and the benefits of that part of the brain. Okay, sure. So I think what you're talking about is our willpower center that is right in here, about the size of a 50 cent piece. I don't know what's called. It's got like 12 syllables. Latin, scientific. It's willpower center. This part of the brain is charged by deep good sleep, by REM sleep. Every night when we wake up in the morning, it's as full as it's going to get. Okay? We, and it's amazing how often we use willpower. I use it to not eat a bagel for breakfast. I use it to not speed on the way to work, maybe not flip off the driver that just cut me off, maybe not say what I think I want to say because it would hurt someone's feelings. So we're using willpower constantly. When it's depleted at the end of the day, is empty until we go to sleep. Again with addiction, I get this conversation all the time with parents whose kids are in treatment. They're like, well, he's smoking. Like, I don't like that. I'm going to tell him he's going to have to stop smoking. And I say, well, he's using every bit of his willpower right now to not use drugs, to not drink, to not do those things. Let's let that be. Because if we use it to not smoke cigarettes, then we're going to go back and be using drugs because we're going to run out. Think about it. I don't know about you guys, but if I'm ever on a, a diet or a healthy eating plan or something like that, I use my willpower all day. Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. And then by 8 o' clock at night, it's gone. It's just I'm empty. I'm opening the fridge. I'm like, please, dear God, let a cold lasagna be in here. It's not because I didn't make one, so I know it's not there, but I'm still checking. I, I have no willpower. If I open the freezer and there's ice cream, I'm having one because I'm out of willpower. So be aware of that as well when you're talking with your children, whether you're it's addiction or not. Kids are using their willpower center all day long. Say no to drugs, say no to gossip, not cheat, not smoke cigarettes, not vape, not be unkind. I mean, they're using it all day long. And so what we don't want is for everybody to get to the end of the night and we're out of it. And we go and do all the things we're not supposed to be doing. So I hope that answered your question about the part of the brain that's fed by sleep and benefits from that part of the brain. The other thing you could be talking about maybe would be how the survival part of the brain, which is where our addiction lives, overrides the frontal lobe and it screams use. This is a good example of this part of the brain is, or how that works is if you fell into a pool of water and you couldn't swim, your frontal lobe says, hold your breath. You're a human. We're in water. We breathe air. Don't do it. But the survival part of the brain where addiction lives only knows we need to breathe to live. Right? So it overrides the frontal lobe and we breathe and we drowned. And that's how addiction lives. That's how it functions, is it overrides our limbic brain, which is, look what you're doing to poor mom and dad. Like this is just stop. And it overrides our frontal lobe, which is you're going to fail out of school, you're going to get arrested, you're going to be homeless. And it overrides it. And we use. And that's how addiction thrives. Let me see if I see some more comments. Oh, good. I did answer your question. Thank you. Okay, so any more questions about intuitive parenting versus non intuitive parenting or about the chemicals and the below the line and above the line? Okay. No. All right. So the advantages to switching this kind of parenting are huge. It is increasing the positive chemicals like we've talked about, and it's going to starve or neutralize the addiction. I think that's about it, to be honest. I think that this is something that you're going to have to practice. Non intuitive parenting, like I said, doesn't feel good or. Or look good to other people. I see parents for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks sometimes to sort of get a feel for this, to practice it, to get comfortable with it because. And your kids are not going to like it at first because they're used to you snow plowing their lives fixing it. But this kind of parenting works for every single kid. All kids benefit from non intuitive parenting. 75% that function well with intuitive parenting will still benefit from non intuitive parenting. Okay. It does feel unnatural. You're right. Someone just said that it Feels very unnatural because it's not what we're used to doing and it's not how we were probably reared, which is normally we parent how we were reared. I see a question. My husband just got a rehab, but his behavior hasn't changed. That's a big topic. It depends. Like I don't know how long he was in rehab. I don't know what kind of behavior you're talking about. But behavior is not going to change with the 30 day treatment. So that probably needs to be like maybe call and make book a session so we can figure out how to help you figure out what's going on with that or what to do differently. Can I speak about early parenting? How to be supportive and avoid addiction altogether. Wow. That if I could do that, man, there'd be. I'd be rich. I do think though, what one of the ways to do this in early parenting is to not fix things. I think about like when my boys particularly were little and I would say like, hey guys, before you go to school, would you make your bed? And they're short and they have really short arms. So it's hard for them to get their duvet cover up just the way I would like it and get the pillows. So they would do a six year old's job and then my ego would get in the way of that because maybe I was having friends over for lunch or people were coming over for dinner that night and I would go in and I would fix it to look like I wanted it to look. And what happens with that is when they come home from school, they look at their beds and they're like, that's not how we made them. We must not have done it. Well, mom has to do it. So right there I'm starving serotonin because they don't get the pride right. If I left the beds how they were and maybe put their teddy bear on it or something, they'd be like, oh yeah, I must have done a darn good job on that bed. And over time they would have naturally gotten better and better as they got taller and their arms grew longer. But what we do as parents is we get in the way of that. Think about it. Teach your child how to tie their shoe and you're in a hurry and they're trying to do the bunny ears and they're looping and they're. It's not working at all. So you're like, I'll do it. There's a starving of serotonin because they don't get the pride of learning how to do it and doing it, even if it's poor, even if it's a bad job, if it's done in their mind, it's serotonin. So I think this is sort of what we have to look for, is there's all kinds of ways that we do this as parents, inadvertently, out of love, out of being in a hurry, out of our own agenda. And we don't do it on purpose. Right? Nobody says, hey, if you make your kid's bed, you're going to screw them up. But ultimately, I think when we don't let serotonin. Serotonin come in naturally, we do kind of screw them up. So. So this is one of the reasons we're talking about this style of parenting. My son was in treatment for four months and came home and immediately relapsed. Unfortunately, that's what happens a lot of times is we come back into the same environment and we do relapse. I've very rarely seen anyone, especially a kid, come home and do well because their support system, their therapist, whatever they've had in the four months while they were at treatment is all gone. And everybody comes home with great intentions. I'm going to go to meetings, I'm going to find a therapist, and then they don't and they lose their support system and then they relapse. Plus, I don't know how old your son is, but, you know, 90% of all high school college kids are smoking some weed and drinking, probably taking an Adderall every now and then, maybe even a Xanax every now and then. So you come back into an environment where that's what normal kids are doing and you're going to unravel and do what normal kids are doing again, because everybody wants to feel normal. So I don't. We don't advise bringing your kids back home. Is why we're big fans of long term, good quality sober living, is that they can stay there and emerge back into their world there where their system of support is fully intact. All right, Somebody saying, I've been having her do things, unload the dishwasher, but she gets so angry. Interesting. She's 11. Okay. So one of the things I learned about having children is you cannot say to them, hey, go empty the dishwasher. It's not on their agenda. You're going to get a lot of. Hold on, not now. In a minute. Good parenting is sort of like, I'm a big fan of parenting teams with love and logic. And that is sort of say, hey, before you go to bed tonight, could you empty the dishwasher before the end of the week? Friday at 5, could you please take out the trash, clean your bathroom and straighten your room. Give them the time space for them to fit it in on their agenda so they feel good about it and they do it on their agenda. Everybody, like, think about it. If my husband says, campbell, will you come here? I'm like, in a minute, I'm reading a book, watching your show, ironing a shirt, whatever. I'm doing like I'm already doing something. So remember that kids are doing that too, so give them the, the wiggle room to get it done on their own age. Yeah, okay, here's another person. My stupid boyfriend, ex boyfriend, did a four month prison, but I knew he's getting out last week, it's been 96 hours. And he came looking for me, brought meth with him. Okay. So, you know, addiction is like, it takes a long time to go away. And unfortunately prison, from what I hear, drugs are pretty rampant. So I don't think that he was in any recovery at all. But don't know that, but that would be my guess. Let's see what else try and tell my husband with this, with our kids. Wiggle room. Yes. Oh, here's a good question. How long should sober living for a young adult supposed to last? As long as humanly possible. I'm a big believer. Six month minimum. But then continue to stay in that area, don't six months and come home. If you can get a year, great. A year, remember, is the marker for when we get about 90, 95% of the brain recovery is at a year. Two years is when we get 100% of all those extra neuroreceptors are asleep or in a coma. So the more longer we get, closer to a year or even two years, the better. It's a full time job to get sober, so the longer it can be a full time job, the better. And that doesn't mean they need to be in treatment or not doing anything but working on their recovery, but they need to be doing something for a year to two years about their recovery. Working, going to meetings, meeting with a counselor, going to church, whatever that program looks like. The longer the better. Sober living. One of mine was there pretty much a year and the other six to seven months, but ended up going back for another four months. So I'm a big proponent of six months or more for sure. All right, you guys, we're running out of time. Remember that this what we're talking about. Today this non intuitive can neutralize addiction. It is a great way to parent all, all kids. But it is going to take practice. It is not going to feel natural, it's not going to look good, it's not going to be what's expected. Other people are going to give you grief about it. So keep working it, keep trying it. If you need the session. I am absolutely great with helping you teach, learn how to do non intuitive parenting. So if you, if you want something, give us a call and we can help you. Also I think there's a link in this video somewhere for our new membership which is starting Saturday October 1st. And that is going to, I think it's 14.97amonth. And what that's going to get you is it's going to get every month we're going to pick one topic like October is a self awareness. Amber's going to drop a video the first Wednesday at 1:30. I'm going to drop a video the second Wednesday on the same topic. And Kim is going to drop a video on the third Wednesday at 1:30, same topic. So you're going to get all of our different perspectives on the same topic then the last Wednesday at 1:30 of the month. So some of these months have five. So the fourth month would be, fourth week would be blank. But the last one's going to be a live call with all of us if we're here. I think Kim is out for the first one on vacation but so all of us will be on this live call. So you guys can call in, we can talk about things, we can sort of process like maybe the topic or even issues that are popping up. But you'll get Amber's perspective which is generally coming from the addict himself, mine which is coming from the family or the parent, and Kim's which is coming mostly from the spouse. So this is going to be a super wonderful good tour tool for you guys. It is going to be available live and afterwards. So if you can't do it live then you can just, you know, pop in and look at it. So follow the link if you want to do the membership. If the link doesn't work or you need help, call us. We can walk you through how to get it and talk to you about how that's going to work. So hopefully we'll see all of you guys on that. And thank you very much for today. I know I'm a fast talker and I'm not very good at this because I get super nervous. So I hope this made sense. And I will look forward to hearing from you guys, talking to you guys in the future. So thanks a lot. Have a great week and hope things go well. Good luck on the non intuitive parenting. Bye guys.