Amber Hollingsworth (Put the Shovel Down YouTube) explains how a loved ones addiction can hijack your emotions and behaviors and gives practical steps to regain control. Key points: acknowledge how your behavior has changed (obsessing, spying, checking), prioritize safety in abusive situations, create emotional distance by stopping spying and attempts to control the addicted person, set limits (e.g., designated worry time), reintroduce hobbies and social life, and seek support (counselor, support groups). The speaker emphasizes that regaining self-control benefits both you and increases chances your loved one will recover.
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Do you feel like your loved one's addiction has turned you into a person you don't even recognize anymore? If so, that's actually pretty common. It's so easy to get on the emotional roller coaster with them, and then before you know it, you don't even recognize yourself. Your emotions are all over the place. It's like you're behaving and doing things that you cannot believe that you're doing. So in this video, we're going to talk about how to get control of yourself and get back to being yourself so you can live the life that you want to live. 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 designed to help you understand all sides of addiction, because we want you to stay five steps ahead of it. All right, back to our topic. The first thing I want you to really think about here is how has your behavior changed? How has your emotional life changed? Are you constantly worrying? Are you constantly obsessing and checking? Those are actually pretty common things that happen to people who have a loved one, especially if it's like a loved one living in your house who has an addiction. You get obsessed with figuring out what's going on, how bad is it, what they're really doing. You get fixated on trying to figure out the from the truth and gather evidence. And the more you do all those things, the more you lose yourself in their addiction. So it's kind of like the person is chasing the substance or the drug or the addiction, whatever it is, and you are chasing the person. And so around and around you go, and then everybody is being controlled by the addiction, and it's time to get back in control of yourself. So. So what are those behaviors that you're doing that you really want to stop? What are those emotions that you're having that you really want to get control of or at least minimize? This is definitely possible. Whether or not your loved one gets better from addiction, you can choose to get back in control of yourself. And in fact, doing so really greatly increases the chances that your loved one will get better. But regardless, you're doing this for yourself. Now, if the situation you're in is an abusive situation or an unsafe situation, you absolutely have to deal with those safety issues first. You're not going to be able to get control of your own emotions and your own behavior if you're allowing yourself to stay in an abusive or unsafe situation. And I do have some videos about that about completely out of bound behaviors, things you should definitely not tolerate. And I will link them up at the end of this video in case you want to look back on those. But that's one of those situations you really have to deal with. You have to get out of an abusive situation to get control of it. If it's not an abusive situation or an unsafe situation and you're trying to hang in there with your addicted loved one, then you're gonna have to figure out how to get control of yourself. And the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to decide which of those behaviors that you're doing that you don't want to do anymore. Can I give you a few suggestions? I think you should stop spying. Yeah. Turn the tracker off. I think you should stop trying to find evidence and sneak in and snooping. I think you should stop trying to control your loved one's mood, because you think if you do certain things or you don't do certain things, that they're going to either use or not use. I. I need you to sort of, like, back up and disconnect a little bit. Now, initially, that may feel like you're putting your head in the sand, but you're really, really not. You already know what's going on. You're not being dishonest with yourself about what's going on. And if you're watching my videos or if you're in our invisible intervention program, then you're already taking the strategic steps that you need to take in order to help them get out of denial or into recovery or at least on the pathway to change. So outside of those things, you need to back up from it and let it go. Stop trying to prove that you know that they're lying. You already know that they're lying. In fact, they know that you know that they're lying. You're just trying to get them to admit it out loud, which is just going to make you crazy. You see, the key to this whole thing is to get some emotional distance. Now, there are some situations where you really can't live with the addicted person and have any kind of whatsoever. There are other situations. You can live with it. What I mean by that is they live in the house with you. But you're going to have to really be mindful and make choices about how much time and energy you're going to devote to this problem. Are you going to let it consume every thought that you have? Are you going to let it mess up your friendships because it's all you can Think about and talk about. Are you going to let it ruin your relationships with your other family members because they're splitting between you and them? The more all of that stuff goes on, the more emotionally out of control you're going to feel. I know it seems silly because it's this obsessive thought that we have and this problem and this constant screaming alarm bells and red blinking lights that are going off in your head like non stop. But if you will stop fueling that, and what I mean by fueling it is going in your head and obsessing about it and doing some of those behaviors that we just talked about, it will actually quiet down a little bit. And I know it feels scary to kind of let go of that, but maybe it'll help you to know that what I'm asking you to do is the exact same thing that you're asking your loved one to do. You're asking them to stop feeding an obsession. You're asking them to ignore the screaming, raging alarm bells going off in their head. If you don't feed it, it will quiet down. And you've got to make a choice to decide that you are not going to let their addiction ruin your life. Now, you guys that follow me on this channel, you know, I talk to family members about there are a lot of things you can do to support love, encourage an addicted loved one. This is not the channel where I'm like, just kick them to the curb and forget about them and they're just never going to get better. That's not what I'm saying here at all. What I am saying is you have got to to put your own oxygen mask on. And I think you can make that decision, like right now, today, while you're watching this video, I think you can decide that you're going to stop doing all of those things that are fueling the obsession. Of course the thoughts are going to pop in there and you may even find yourself relapsing back into some kind of hysterical emotions or snooping or spying or controlling or all those things. And if you find yourself doing that, I want you to grab back a hold of it and get yourself back in alignment. Yes, this definitely feels like it is some kind of Jedi Master trick or something that you've got to learn, but it can be done. I'm not saying you should never talk about it or you should never think about it. It may seem silly, but you can tell yourself, okay, I'm only going to let myself think about that between seven and eight at night or whatever. The time is. And when the thoughts rush into your head and during any other time, you say, you know what, we'll think about that later. Or you decide when is the designated time to talk about it. Because one of the things that can be happening is you can either be trying to talk to loved one about it constantly, which is for sure only hurting the situation. It is not making you feel better, and it is definitely not making them feel better. Or you could be talking about it to other people in your life, like other family members and friends. And you could be doing that so much that you're wearing them out. And they want to be there for you and they want to support you. But we can definitely find ourselves so lost in this obsession that it's all we think about and talk about. And then our friends and our family don't even recognize us anymore. So have your place that you talk about it, whether that's in your support group or with your counselor or with your sponsor or with your friend who's been there before. But don't make it the center of your universe. You see, that's the key. You don't have to make someone else's addiction the center of your universe. When you do that, you're feeding their addiction and you're losing yourself. So make the choice today that that is no longer going to happen to you, and start putting things back in your life that you used to enjoy and like and love. Hobbies, friends, conversations, activities, movies, something, anything. Put good things back into your life and push out all the space that you're giving to that addiction. And that problem. You're worrying about it and obsessing about it isn't making it. Sometimes you have to start by doing differently. Get out there and do those things you used to do, even if you don't feel like it. And if you keep doing them, eventually you'll start feeling like it. I'm telling you, this is definitely possible. In fact, I want you to watch this video next. I'm going to put it right up here where I talked to a friend of mine named Pam who's going to tell you how she got control of her own emotional journey as she went through this with her son.
