If you're living with someone who has an addiction, watch this video!

Do you feel like you're walking on eggshells around your addicted loved one? Well, if so, you are definitely not alone. Anyone who's lived with addiction in their household knows what this feeling is like. And so today I want to shed a little light on that topic to help you get basically untrapped from this situation. Now, for those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you're watching Put the shovel down. 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 to living the life that you want to live. And guess what? Step one, stop walking on eggshells. Now, you may have seen a lot of my videos in the past, and you may think, well, Amber, you're the one that's always telling us to be supportive and be positively reinforcing and be kind and stop yelling and nagging and preaching. What I'm to say now doesn't change any of that. But being kind and supportive and not losing your cool and being a crazy person doesn't mean that you have to walk on eggshells. Now, one of the first steps to being able to sort of get out of this eggshells mode is to really take a deep down look about why you're doing that. What is it exactly that's triggering you? Now, one of the reasons you might be walking on eggshells is because you're afraid your addicted loved one can't handle any bad news. So you kind of go around and smooth things over and run interference for them in their life. You don't want get upset with them. You don't want them to experience any of these negative consequences because you're afraid it's either going to destabilize them and make them relapse or make their active using even worse because you get this sense that they're not emotionally capable of dealing with life. Now, in some respects, that's true, because when you're using substances or you're engaging in some kind of addictive behavior as your primary coping skill, you kind of do lose the ability to cope with life stressors. However you're running interference for the person isn't helpful. Now, as you probably already know, I encourage you not to play the bad guy, but you also don't have to go smooth things over for the other issues and people going on in your addicted loved one's life. Another trigger you might be experiencing is you're afraid of what kind of influences they're going to come in contact with. You're afraid they're going to see certain things on TV that's going to trigger them. They're going to see billboards that are going to trigger them. They're going to have these people, places, things, whatever, these triggers. You're so scared that they're going to send your loved one over the edge that you start running, running interference for those types of things. Now, trust me, if you're doing this, your loved one can definitely feel this. And it's no doubt doing nothing but annoying them. It's not necessary. Now, do you need to throw a giant raging rave party where everyone, family and friends, comes over and gets totally wasted while your loved one's there? Probably not. You know, that's probably not helpful. But do you need to literally turn the child lock sensors on your tv? No, you don't need to do that either. You can't be held that hostage. If your loved one's recovery is that unstable, then it's probably going to come anyway. And remember, recovery is about learning to live life on life's terms. Maybe you're afraid if you give your loved one money, they're going to go out and use, and maybe you're afraid if you don't give your loved one money, they're going to go out and use or do something stupid in order to get that money. And so you're being held hostage by this whole money thing. This is probably one of the most common struggles that people with an addictive family member have. It's this whole issue of how much do I help versus not help. Well, here's what I'm going to tell you. Giving someone five bucks or even ten bucks is not going to make or break an addiction. And I know that you've heard other people say, well, what if that $10 that overdoses them? And then that's on your shoulders. If something bad happens because of that, that's because of addiction, not because of you. Now, that's not me telling you give them all the money, whatever here and there that you want, like recklessly. I'm just saying don't overly stress and freak yourself up, but you don't overly have to stress and freak yourself out about it either way. But many of you actually get held hostage on the other end of that extreme with the idea that if I don't give them money, they're going to go out and do something worse or they're going to go out and steal, or they're going to go out and do some other kind of really bad behavior or choice in order to make that money. And if your loved one knows this about you, they will definitely exploit that weakness in you because they know you're so scared of this. They're going to be pushing that button all the time. Well, if you don't give it to me, I'm going to get it somewhere else else, you know, they're going to hit that fear button inside of you. So you have to get control of that fear button, otherwise going to be used against you. Another reason why you might be walking on eggshells is because you're just scared it's going to start a fight. Especially if your loved one tends to get angry or very emotional. You start to fear their emotional response to things because you got to realize that starting a fight is one of the manipulation tactics commonly used by people struggling with an addiction. It deflects energy, it gets people to back off of you. Basically, it start serves as a great distraction from the real problem. Now, that being said, you don't have to try to pick a fight either. And learning how to disengage from someone who's trying to get you angry is probably a really good skill to have. But you don't need to take that to such an extreme that you're acting unnatural in your own home and with your family. Like I said before, they can feel that. And if there are other people in the house, they can feel that too. And it's just uncomfortable for everyone. Now one of the things that I've really seen hold people hostage and make them walk on eggshells is the thought that they're last person that the addictive person has. Now this usually happens when the addictive person is basically like burnt every bridge out there. And the other people are really just fed up with them. No one will help them anymore. No one answers their calls. And when you find you are that last lifeline, you really feel like the whole burden is on your shoulders. And it makes you feel so trapped. You feel like you can't let go. Because if you let go, you're the last person they have. But another way to think about it is you are the last resource that the addiction has. And if you let go, that addiction will have no more resources. And that might just be enough to cause the person to shift and make some changes. Plus, I just really need you to understand if they've run off everyone else in their life, there's probably a reason for that. And that doesn't mean that you have to hang in there. It also doesn't mean that you have to reject them either. Essentially, if there's one lesson, there's one big idea that you could take away from this video. It's the idea that you have to stop making decisions out of fear and other negative emotions. Because, you see, that's the key to family recovery. And that works in both directions. It means you have to stop being reactive and crazy and yelling and screaming and nagging and spying. But it also means you have to stop being scared and fearful and tiptoeing around the issue as well. You gotta kind of come back to your center. It's okay to be supportive and loving, but also be assertive and strong at the same time. When you can do this, you're going to respect yourself so much better. You're going to feel so much better, your life is going to get better, and your loved one is going to respect you more as well. Getting out of that emotional mind and into your thinking mind is definitely the key to your recovery now. Up next, here are some more videos on enabling. You're going to learn what gets you trapped in that cycle and how to get out of it.