Short YouTube clip (Amber Hollingsworth) responding to a viewer worried about a spouse who excuses his drinking. Amber recommends using empathy rather than direct confrontation, offers example phrases that validate stress while expressing concern (e.g., worried about sleep/anxiety/children), and finishes with a CTA to like or comment.
Hey, Amber, my.
Spouse claims his drinking on his work. How can I help him see the problem? I'm also worried about our children seeing this negative behavior pattern.
Now, you're probably naturally going to want to confront him and say something like, stop making excuses. You need to deal with this drinking, but it's not going to get you the result you want. A more effective strategy is to express empathy and say something like, wow, that really is stressful and I appreciate your commitment to being a provider to this family. Now, when you do that, it may feel like you are enabling bad behavior or bad thinking, but actually expressing empathy will allow someone to learn from their mistakes faster. Now, eventually you could slip something in. Like, I could totally see why you might need a drink at the end of a long, stressful day, but I'm worried that it's impacting your sleep or that it's making your anxiety worse or that it's making your life more stressful. Something like that. If you agree that empathy will get you out of denial faster than direct confrontation, give this video a thumbs up. And if not, tell me why in the comments.
