If You've Got An Addicted Loved One, This Is A Must Watch!

This is a list of 10 ways that families ineffectively try to control a loved one's addiction. Pay attention to that part where I said ineffectively try to control. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you're always five steps ahead of it. We want you to be able to live the life that you want to live. Alright, here we go. Ten reasons. Number one, they yell, threaten, nag and preach. You know what, Those are the basic ones. You probably already knew that. That's why I put them all in one category. Now, the reason why people yell, nag, threaten, preach, those are things that we do when we feel like the other person isn't here. Us. It's like we're trying to cram some kind of message in someone's head because it just doesn't seem to go. The problem is, the more you do those things, the less likely it is that they're going to hear you. Number two, an effective thing that family members do to try to control their loved one's addiction is spying. All sorts of spying. This can include driving by to see if they're where they said they were. This can include calling up for friends, co workers, other people that know them, to ask information about them, to find out certain things. This is things like going through their phone or looking through their wallet or sniffing their clothes or going through all their belongings. Now, the reason why families do this is because they know it's happening. They're just trying to find the evidence because the other person is likely denying it or minimizing it or saying it's not happening at all. And the family's like, I know this is happening. And. And in their effort to prove themselves that they're not crazy, they're looking for the evidence. Or the second reason why people do that is because they're so scared that there's going to be a relapse or it's going to happen again and they're not going to know it and they're going to miss it. It's like they're trying to protect themselves by scouting it out and finding it early. Number three thing that families do to try and control a loved one's addiction is that they try to solicit all this help from outside people that could be other family members, that could be friends or co workers or the church. And this one can be a little tricky because, yeah, it's really important for the loved ones to be on the same page. But what's not helpful is when family members go out there and they tell all the person's business to people who wouldn't otherwise know. That is a surefire way to get the person with the addiction really, really angry at you. And when they do that, they are going to build a giant wall between you and them. Number four thing is a little bit different than the other ones. Family members will walk on eggshells. So one of the ways that family members try to control it is they think if I don't upset them or if I don't give them a reason, they're not going to go use. Here's the thing. If someone's addicted and they're an active addiction, they're going to go use. So just like you've heard, like, you can't make them not do it. You can't make them do it either. So walking on eggshells isn't helpful. Number five thing that families do to try to control their loved one's addiction is making them sign. I call it the home contract. Or maybe not officially sign, but agree to these contractual rules about living in the house, or I'll do this if you do that. Campbell and I talk about this a lot. Campbell's our family counselor. She sees a lot of the parents, and it's very common, especially if someone's coming out of treatment or in order to keep staying here or in order for you to keep going to college. If you. Here's your list of rules. I want you to sign it and agree with it. It just doesn't work. And if you want to know why, watch this video that Campbell and I did about why home contracts just don't work. Number six thing that family members do to try to control their loved one's addiction is give them ultimatums, which are usually big ones. If you don't stop, you'll never see your kids again. If you don't stop, I'm going to leave you. If you don't stop, you're kicked out of this house. It's really important to remember that there is a difference between a boundary and an ultimatum. Now, if you're watching this and you are really working on your addiction or in early recovery and you want these behaviors to stop, the important thing to know is that these behaviors all come from a place of fear. They're trying to control their fear. And if you want your loved one to stop doing these things, you're gonna have to repair the trust in the relationship. If you're really interested in doing that. We have a little mini course called Rapid Relationship Repair. And I will put additional information about that in the description below, so you can check it out if you're interested. Alright, back to our list. Number seven. Thing that family members do is they try to bail their addicted loved one out of all kinds of situations. I mean, it could be the obvious ones, like literally bail them out of jail, but it can be other ones like call up teachers and talk the teacher into not failing them. Or if the person doesn't show up for a really important family event, they sort of bail them out of that. They're basically running interference for the person. But you need to remember what you're doing is you're interfering with the person's ability to see that they have a problem. That's what you're interfering with. Number eight thing. Family members will take things away from you. Because somewhere in their mind they think, well, if the consequences are big enough, the person will quit using. Like they'll take the car away, they'll take the Xbox away, they'll stop cooking dinner, they'll start sort of withholding affection and positive reinforcement. Because the thinking here is that if it gets bad enough, the addicted person's gonna stop. But we all know it just doesn't work. Now, number nine is similar to number eight. Number nine is the family member will try to control the money. Now, they do this sometimes in active addiction, but they also do this in early recovery. Now, if you're in early recovery and you know you need some help controlling your money and you ask your family to do this, that's okay, that's different, because that's asking for their help. But the other way is trying to control the money. Because you see, the thing of it is, is that most family members associate allowing the person to have access to all this money is a very enabling thing to do. And I guess in some ways it is. But I see parents particularly use this. It's like the ace card. Especially if the kids is, you know, an adult or they're out of the house or in college, it's like really the only car they have left. It's kind of like, I'll cut you off if you don't do what I want you to do. Number 10, they baby you. It's literally like they protect you from everything. Because somewhere in their mind, consciously or subconsciously, they think that if they keep all these stressors away from you and they don't let you hear bad news, and everybody in the family, they know these things they're not telling you. They're babying you because they think that you can't handle it. And if they sort of shelter you or put you in this bubble of sorts, that you won't continue with addiction. But it just doesn't work. Okay, up next, I want you to watch this video about how your addiction has impacted your loved one, because then you're going to understand why they engage in all these behaviors that we just talked about.