It ALWAYS Goes Back to the Same Old Thing

Anyone who's ever dealt with an addiction themselves or cared about someone who has an addiction knows that before things get better, there's a ton— I mean a ton, hundreds usually— of ups and downs. It's not— it's never simple. It's never somebody develops a problem, they realize they have a problem, and they fix it. There's a lot of lapsing, relapsing, It's kind of like an emotional roller coaster for, for both sides, for the person that's struggling with addiction and for the people who love them. And that struggle gets absolutely exhausting. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's video. We're going to be looking at those cycles that are happening on both sides, what happens when you hit that breaking point, that exhaustion point, if there's things you can do to sort of cushion you from that or help that, help you to get not to the breaking point, that kind of thing. We'll look at that too. So I thought we would start out though by looking at a Reddit post because I think sometimes the best way to illustrate these things is just to take it and tell it to you exactly from the mouth of someone who's been there. I have not— I'm not going to read you the whole post. I'm gonna condense it down so that it's not overwhelming for you, but we're gonna start with the spouse's point of view, and then we're also going to take a look at a post that is from the person struggling's point of view, because I do think it's important to look at both sides of this. So this one starts out, My husband was sober for 3 years and was the most amazing husband I could ask for. He relapsed so many times I can't even count. He was in and out of detoxes. In September, he moved back to— he moved back and was sober for over 3 months. Things felt like they used to be. Then in January, he relapsed again. 3 weeks ago, he moved out while I was at work. No discussion. He claimed he just needed to be alone. 2 weeks later, he was relapsed. Drank for 3 days straight around the clock, and then— Wednesday, he shows up at my apartment saying all the right things. How he wants to be with me forever. How he's gonna move back in the next day. And then last night when I got home, he was a different person. Stumbling around. He'd taken a bunch of nerve pills. And when I started asking him about his naltrexone and his next ketamine treatment— those are both medications that can be used in addiction— He basically picked a fight and said it stresses him out when I ask him questions about his sobriety. He got his stuff and left, saying he needs the night to himself. He disappeared today and is probably blacked out if I had to guess. I wish there was something I could do to get my amazing husband back. I miss that guy so much. Now, that is story 1. Told from the partner's point of view, looking at what is it like to watch all these ups and downs, to have someone show up one day, say, I love you, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna make it better, have all these ideas about things that are gonna help, like the medications, this, that, the other treatments, whatever. And then the very next day you show up and there they are, they're intoxicated again, and they're acting like nothing that was said the day before ever happened. Right, and it's off and on, off and on. And I don't care who you are, that is going to wear you out. And eventually you do get compassion fatigue. So we're going to come back to that in a minute and talk about that. So hang on to that side. But before we get into that side too much, let's take a look at the other side. This is a different story from Reddit. Now, this isn't the partner of this person's story we just read. This is a different story altogether, but it is from the point of view of the person who has the problem. Alright, here we go. We had, we had a date night dinner, then a soccer game, and on the way home I started feeling down and wanted to get drinks. I know it's not an option, but we got into bed and my husband turned the TV off and then went to lay on the couch. I asked him why he left and he said he realized he's doing so much for me emotionally Emotionally, that he's just drained and exhausted. He said he hasn't done anything for himself in a long time. I feel absolutely terrible. I feel like I failed him as a wife. I know this sounds terrible, but I want so badly to sneak out and drive to the bar. I feel like I've pushed him away. I feel like a shit wife, and I should have tried harder sooner. As you can see, that is the same cycle from a different perspective. And what I think is interesting about this perspective is this wife can see how much it's hurting her husband, feels terrible about it, but at the same time has a very strong urge to literally get up from that scene and go to the bar and have a drink. And that's the craziness of addiction, right? It's like, I know that because of this addiction, it's causing all this pain to myself, to the people I love, and that pain Makes me want to do it even more. And that is the insanity of the addiction cycle. And it's the same cycle on both sides. The husband, he isn't a bad guy. He's just hollowed out, like he's just exhausted. He's just done. And this is pretty much where everyone in the dynamic eventually gets. They get to exhaustion and done. No one beats it on the first— Or second or even third try. Even when you hear about people who had an addiction, they went to treatment once, and then they were sober and they never used it again, that can feel like a story of somebody who conquered it on the first try. But in those stories, if you were to talk more deeply with that person, you'd find out they probably tried 100 other things before they ever even tried going to treatment. So treatment for them was the last try. It just looks like the first one because that's the external one. But before someone sort of throws in the towel and says, I'm going to get help for this, naturally we want to fix it ourselves, right? We don't want to go to treatment. We don't want to have to do those things. So everybody pretty much tries on their own before they give into that option. And so even when it looks like it was a one-hit wonder, it's not a one-hit wonder. So I don't want you to think— the reason I say that is because I don't want you to think if you're struggling or if your loved one is struggling, it means You're never gonna get it right. It's part of the process. Everyone goes through it. It doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it fair or fun, but it is part of the process. And you guys, if you've been around this channel for a long time, then you know I talk about bargaining a lot. Oh, and by the way, hey, if you're new here, welcome to our little community. We're glad you're here. My name is Amber Hollingsworth. I have been helping people and families with addiction for More than 2 decades now, a very, very long time. And this channel is all about helping you understand addiction from both sides and understand what's going on psychologically so you can get and stay 5 steps ahead of it. Because the only way to beat addiction is to outsmart it. And today's topic has a lot to do with that. If you're going to outsmart it and you're going to know what its next move is, you're going to have to understand this bargaining process. So hey, if you are new here, say hello down in the comments. Tell us you're new here so we can welcome you properly to our little community. All right, so back to the bargaining topic. When addicts bargain— that's just the word that I use for it— in a bargain, it's this attempt to solve the problem without completely giving it up, right? And so that Looks like cutting back or stopping for periods of time and then going back. That looks like using a different substance or using the same substance but ingesting it in a different way that maybe you feel like is less problematic. There's all these hundreds of little ways that people try to bargain. You know, sometimes it's like they tell themselves they're only going to do it so many times a week or so many times a month. Sometimes they tell themselves, I'm only going to do so much of it. Sometimes they tell themselves, well, it's okay if I use this one substance as long as I don't get over there and do this one addictive behavior, this other addictive behavior. That's all part of the bargaining process. And what they're figuring out in this whole bargaining process is there's several things that you gotta come to terms with. The first thing you gotta come to terms with is, do I actually have a problem? And Internally, there's this process that goes on when you have an addiction where you're trying to actually prove to yourself that you don't have a problem. And part of that way that you do that is you'll have these little stop or break periods, because in your mind it's like, well, if I can stop for a week, if I can stop for a month, like a Dry January or something like that, then that definitely means I don't have a problem, right? Because addicts, alcoholics, like, they have to do But just that process of testing yourself, that in and of itself, it's a symptom. It's actually listed in the big clinical book about how do you diagnose addiction. It's in there as one of the symptoms. Because if you don't, if you don't have a problem with it, it doesn't really occur to you much to do this testing process. And so it's one of the things that, that they'll do once they figure out, okay, Like maybe this is a problem. Then they got to go through this whole process of figuring out, well, how bad is this problem, right? It's like, okay, maybe I do this too much, or maybe when I do it in these circumstances it's a problem, but it's not like I'm a full-blown addict or alcoholic. It's not like, you know, fill in the blank. Then the other thing they're trying to figure out in the process is, okay, if I have a problem and, you know, it's a decent-sized problem, The next question is, is there a way to solve this problem without completely stopping? Is there a way to keep this in my life somehow on some level? Like, the most common thing you hear is people say, I just want to be able to have a couple of glasses of wine like regular people do with their dinner, or I just want to be able to drink a little bit socially. And It's part of the bargaining process of figuring out, do I have to give it up completely? Where am I at in this continuum? And then even when you get to the point where you figure out, okay, like, I don't do good on this, like, I can't mess with it at all, then you go through the, well, do I have to stay stopped forever? Or if I'm like stopped and then I reset my system for so many months or so many years, then if I went back and I dealt with all my trauma and I fixed my marriage and I was in a happy workplace, could I do it then? And would it be a problem, right? You can see that this whole bargaining process can go on for years, right? And the process is actually just the person that's looking for a loophole, right? They're looking for a way to solve this problem that doesn't require giving up a lot, because the truth of it is recovery is— means changing not just the substance use or the addictive behavior, it means like Changing your people, places, and things. It means working on yourself as a person. It means fixing your relationships. The depth of it is huge, and it takes a lot of trial and error to really understand what needs to happen and then to be able to do it. This process actually, it seems chaotic when you look at it from the outside. When you're looking at it from the outside, a friend, a family member, or just an outside observer or whatever, it looks like This person's in denial. They don't get it. They don't care. They're not willing. They're not humble. It's all these things we put up, like a moral judgment on it. We put a personal judgment on it because from the outside, what we're doing is we're watching this person make a bunch of promises to themselves, which you don't even see, but even outwardly to other people eventually. And then they break those promises, just like in the first story, right? It's like, I love you, I want to come home, I'm gonna do better. And then the next day Right back at it, right? Like, that's what I mean when I say all these promises. And it may feel like, and sometimes it is the case, that when a person says that, they're just flat-out lying. But a lot of times when that's happening, they mean it in the moment, and then something else happens and they fall right back in it. There's a logic and sort of like a predictable pattern that people go through as they conquer their addiction. So it looks like chaos, but it's really not random. This is like a predictable pattern. I've been doing this for 20-something years, and this is always the case. And so when I see this happening with my clients, it doesn't upset me. It makes me happy because it makes me know we're on the stages of change. We're figuring it out, right? We're figuring— we're answering those questions for ourselves. Just recently, I was meeting with someone about their addiction. It was a brand new client. It was like the first session I was meeting with this person, and they were immediately telling me like, I They had to stop completely. And when someone tells me that, because I usually will ask, I'll say, well, is it your goal to cut back? Is it your goal to stop completely? You know, what are we trying to do here? And this person was telling me, no, I gotta stop completely. And I said, well, why is that? And how do you know that? And he starts telling me about all of the bargaining processes he's been through. And I really like to actually hear that because I know that that's necessary. And even when I'm dealing with a client who hasn't done all that, maybe they say, well, I just wanna cut it back, or I wanna See if I can, you know, do it occasionally on holidays or whatever. That's okay, and I still go with that because it is a process that people have to go through to figure out where are they on that continuum and what's going to work for them. Now, it's easy for me to do that, right? Because I'm like the counselor. I'm talking to them once a week. My lifestyle, like, they're not in my home, they're not wrecking my life, right? In fact, they're usually Honestly, they're usually pretty nice to me. They're almost always nice, and if they're not nice, they're at least polite to me. So, so it's like easy for you to say, Amber, and I'm agreeing. It is easy for me to say. When you're in that same process with them in the trenches, as in living with them or walking side by side with them, that process that they go through brings so much chaos into your life. You will develop an anxiety problem. You will go through bouts of depression and grief and anger and sadness, all the things, because as they're doing all their bargaining and their ups and downs and they're figuring it out, it's easy to get on that roller coaster with them. And a lot of times family members— and this is, this is like important, I want you to hear if you're watching this as a family member. If you're watching this as a family member, put your— raise your hand, put a little hand emoji, or write the word hand in the In the chat or the comments so we know that you're watching as a family member. You may not know this, but you do a lot of bargaining too. Yes, that's right, you are bargaining too. Let's take a look at what family member bargaining looks like. It looks like this process of, if they just understood how I feel, they would stop. If they just understood how much damage this is causing to them in their life and how much they're ruining their life, they would stop. If I could just get them to go talk to a counselor, they would stop. If I could get them to talk to my cousin Jake, who's been in recovery for 20 years, I know he could talk them into stopping, right? It's if, and then there's always this like bargain of maybe this will help it and maybe that'll help it, and we get in that desperation cycle. And then we see a positive few steps in the right direction. Maybe they do manage whatever that addiction is pretty well for a week. And then we're like, okay, like maybe they do got it. And then they, you know, fall off course. Or maybe they do go to treatment and they're good for 2 months, and then you can see it. You can see them start to slide back. And so that's what drags you into the chaos with them. And as you go through those cycles, you get more and more and more exhausted. Now, As the person with the addiction goes through the cycles, guess what happens to them? They get more and more and more exhausted. And honestly, when it comes to the person with the addiction, that's where we're trying to get. We're trying to get to exhaustion because nobody comes to terms with the idea that they're gonna have to like change all these things, give it up completely, like do the whole like complete overhaul without getting to that exhaustion point. That's usually the point of change is Just like flat-out exhaustion. I've tried everything I know how to try. Fine, I'll do it the way these 12-step people say to do it. I'll do it the way my counselor says to do it. I'll do it like the way treatment tells me to do it, or whatever. I'll do it the way the podcaster I've been listening to is telling me. Because in the early cycles, when you're in the bargaining, you listen to people and you take some of what they say, some of what you learn in treatment, some of what you're hearing from the podcaster or whatever. But again, you're looking for loopholes. You're like, well, that one thing doesn't apply to me, and this thing, that thing But once you've fallen down, scraped up your knees, bumped your head so many times, you get exhausted and you're just like, okay, this is it, I'm throwing in the towel. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do the whole thing. I'm gonna do it the right way. So that's a good thing when it comes to the person with the addiction, like getting too exhausted. That's good. When it comes to the family member, it can be good and bad, right? As a family member, sometimes you, you let exhaustion leads you to the point where you're like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm done, I'm out, I'm sick of being on this roller coaster. Like, I have a freaking full-blown anxiety disorder. I don't have any money left. Like, my life is a disaster, probably just as chaotic and much as a disaster as the other person's. And you decide, I'm exhausted, I'm done, I'm out, I can't do this anymore, right? That's one form of exhaustion. Another form of exhaustion which can be helpful, at least to the person in addiction, is like, okay, I'm gonna stop trying to control this thing. And so they just let go of it and they just stop trying to control it, which actually can be a good breaking point that leads people in the right direction. So what I'm getting at here is breaking points can be good and not so good, right? And even in the case where someone decides, I'm done, like I'm done with my family member, sometimes that's the right choice. Sometimes That's a good thing. Sometimes they absolutely 100% need to walk away. And if you're that family member, if you talk to people who are in recovery, they're the first ones that'll tell you, pack your stuff, you know, set your boundaries, get out of there. I'm usually the one that's encouraging you to stick with it the longest, to be honest. But addiction counselors, your friends, your family, other people that you may know in recovery, they're all going to be telling you, get the heck out. They're not going to change. You're just ruining your life, but you have to go through your own bargaining phase too. You're not going to give up on this person that you love. Maybe this is your son or your daughter or your brother, you know, maybe it's your mom, your dad, your husband. You're not just going to give up after trying one or two things. You're going to go through your full bargaining process too. And maybe that bargaining process ends in exhaustion and the fact that, okay, I'm gonna do it the way the counselor tells me to do it, even for the family member. I'm gonna do it the way they— my family keeps telling me to do. I'm gonna give in and do it their way, right? Because family members are looking for their loophole too. So sometimes it's good in that way, and sometimes it just can lead to hopelessness and depression, because sometimes someone's in a situation where they feel like their loved one is never gonna get better, that it's not fixable, and And that they don't have the option to leave for whatever reason. Maybe it's your kid and you're just like, um, you can't leave your kid. I mean, technically you can, but emotionally, um, that is very difficult. In fact, I was thinking about this yesterday because some of y'all know I watch a lot of true crime, right? And I was watching, I think it's like on HBO Max or whatever it's called, like My Child the Killer or something like that. And it's these parents, it's like super gut-wrenching. And they're talking about their children who grow up to be murderers, right? And there's a couple of those episodes that I've seen recently where, where the child actually murders their other child. So like the sibling, right? So it's like now you're the victim, you're the parent of the person who's the perpetrator, all this stuff. And on almost every one of those parent episodes, no matter who was the victim, the parent still loves them. And it's like, it's even hard for them to explain. They're like, I can't explain it. Like, I still love them. I still— I'm mad at them. I'm furious with them. You know, they're usually in prison if they're on that show or whatever. And they're like, yeah, they need to be in prison. I'm not trying to get them out, but I still go see them. Maybe they still put money on their books. They still love them. And it's really hard to understand that from the outside. It's like, wow, like, that's such a horrible thing. The reason why that got my attention is like, if it's your child who's done like the worst thing, right, maybe even the worst thing to someone else that you care about and love, and you cannot cut that love off, it just tells you how powerful, how biological that bond is, that even if you wish you could turn it off, you can't when it comes to your When it comes to your kids, sometimes that can feel impossible. When it comes to other relationships, it still feels really, really hard, right? Because you care about them, you have this empathy for them, but you're also angry at them and resentful at them. You got your guilt resentment going on. You guys know I talk a lot about guilt resentment, and it keeps you stuck, right? So it's like How do you withstand that? If you're watching these videos, then you're like, okay, Amber, I know my loved one has to go through this. They have to do the bargaining, and it's a good thing. You keep telling me it's a good thing. How do you live with that? Like, how do you ride that storm out to get on the other side of it? Well, the answer to that is sometimes you don't, and that's okay, right? But one thing you can do that'll help you— it's not gonna be easy ever, but will help you sort of ride the storm out is To realize exactly what's going on, that this is bargaining, and that the thing that they're telling you or that they're promising you probably isn't going to work. And that's okay, because that's how we get to the next bargain, and that's how we eventually run through the whole list of bargains and get them to exhaustion. And so, if you want, if you'll just kind of keep your own emotional steady— this doesn't mean like I'm not going to get my hopes up, as in I'm really negative and I'm never going to believe you and I'm just not going to connect to you. It just means that you're Objective and you're stable and you realize that even when a person absolutely means their promise to you or whatever, they may have backslides and that's okay and it doesn't mean the end of the world. And if you expect them, you'll be a lot less dysregulated by it because you, you'll be looking at them as actual— even the setbacks you'll see as progress, right? Because those setbacks mean, okay, I figured out like I can't do this just on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, right? It's a learning moment that actually my goal is always just to speed up because I know you can't skip it. You can speed it up sometimes, and the way you speed it up is to let the person do them and to not interfere with it. Because it's so tempting when someone says, I promise I'm not gonna hang out with that person anymore. I promise I'm not gonna do this, that, or whatever. And then you start seeing them slide back into those old patterns. Everything inside of you is gonna want to call that out. Boy, you And I'm telling you not to do that because if what we're wanting is for them to move through denial, like really wrap their head around this problem, get to their own point of exhaustion and sort of wave their white flag and say, okay, I'm going to do this whole recovery thing, then that's what needs to happen. The worst possible thing is that you can like watch them close enough and stay on their case enough to help them make that bargain work. Now you're just drawing the whole thing out. So don't say— don't stop them from doing it, right? Like, in fact, and when they do it and when it backfires, even more difficult than watching it happen, if you really want it to go well, you'll have empathy for the situation. Uh-oh, I think I lost my screen. Hold on one second. Let's see. All right, I'm back. Bree, am I back? Give me a thumbs up. My screen went out, or was it just out on my side and y'all could, y'all could still see me? I don't know. You're back. So what I was saying is you don't want to interfere in that bargaining process if you can tolerate it. And that's going to help keep you more emotionally stabilized if you can, if you can do that. Now thinking back to these stories that we just looked at, if you were the— if looking back at the story from the partner's point of view, what do you think this partner should do, right? What do you think is the right next step for them? And then you can also think of it and look at it as, what would you do if you, if you relate more to the other story, the person with addiction story? Tell me about that. I'd love to hear about that. Like, what is that like? What are you thinking inside? What are some of the bargains that you've been through as a family member or as a person who struggled, right? Because reading those things and understanding is going to help another person really understand that this really is part of the cycle. I mean, I know it's part of the cycle because I've seen it thousands of times, right? But when it's just you or it's just your loved one, you feel like that your specific situation is totally hopeless and that it's never going to get better. When I'm telling you, actually, it's all part of the whole thing, right? And it doesn't mean that it's never going to get better. Now, in just a minute, I'm going to want to hear from you. So Bree is back there moderating, and she's going to put up your comments and your questions So go ahead and get those in chat. And while she's getting all that ready, I'll tell you this. If you have a loved one who's struggled with addiction, any, any kind of addiction, or you've just— you've got a loved one who's just stuck in a really bad pattern, maybe they're in a toxic relationship they keep going back to, they're just stuck in some kind of self-defeating pattern, and you're trying to get them out of denial, then our next Denial Breakthrough Intensive. We were calling it Challenge. I've changed it to Intensive this time. Our Denial Breakthrough Intensive is happening again on June 1st, and this is the first time we've opened it up. Previously, we've done it 3 other times, 4 other times. We've done it several times in the past, and it's only been for partners of alcoholics. But this time, because we've had so many people ask, and to be honest, so many of the people that went through, and initially they signed up because they're trying to help their partner, With an alcohol problem. They started applying these to all different kinds of situations, and the techniques they learned were working because these techniques just have to do with human psychology and motivation. It's not really specific to alcohol. It's not really specific to addiction even, right? It's how do you help someone get out of a really bad self-defeating pattern, right? So we've opened that up to a wider group. If you're interested in that, the link to that is in the description. You can check it out. If you go to that page, it'll tell you like more specifically about if it's the right fit for your situation. It's not the right fit for every single situation, obviously. So take a look at that page, grab your seat in there, because we're going to be doing that June 1st. And that's what I'm going to walk you through. It's like a live 4-day coaching with me event where we're going to walk through the step-by-step process of getting someone out of denial. If you're watching this and you feel like Okay, Amber, I'm one of these people that's come to the point where I, I don't, I don't think I, I don't think my person can change, but I got to figure out how to get myself back on track. Whether that's I'm gonna leave and do that, or disconnect, or, you know, I think what's the buzzword now, go no contact, low contact. Those are the buzzwords I hear all the time now. Or you're gonna stay in the situation, but you want to stop being on that emotional roller coaster, then I would recommend you look at our Um, online program called Beyond Boundaries, and that program was made by Kim and Campbell. A lot of you know Kim and Campbell, who are the experts at helping you, as in the family member, get your own life, get your own emotions stabilized. And there's no right or wrong answer to that. Alright, Bree, do we have any questions, comments, concerns back there? Okay. Bree says, yes, you are back. Is there a way to remove that frame around your face? It's a bit distracting. It is distracting, isn't it? Let me see if I can do that. I'll have to get up and go to the camera though. Give me one sec. Did that do it? Oh, I think it did it. I didn't think that was gonna work. Okay, thank you, Bree. I didn't realize that came back on there. All right, here is our comment question here. What do you do when the loved one is starting to miss a lot of work due to addiction and they keep minimizing it? Also, is the insomnia common with alcoholism as the addiction worsens? worsens, so does their sleep. Scary. Okay, so there's a couple questions in here. The easier one to answer is the insomnia one, so let's start with that one and then we'll get to the other one. Sleep disturbance is present in any kind of addiction and in any kind of early recovery process. Like, doesn't really matter what it's from, you're gonna have sleep problems. The way it usually looks when someone has an alcohol problem is most of the time someone has an alcohol problem, they can go to sleep But they don't stay asleep, and usually they can go to sleep because they're drinking or taking sleep medicine or something like that. So, so they're going to sleep. Sometimes I don't know if I call it sleep, might be passing out. But what happens is once that alcohol like flushes out of their system, their liver filters it out, then they wake up. And when they wake up, their head is going 100 miles an hour. It's this super anxiety type feeling. It's not good. And a lot of times that's, you know, it can be 3 o'clock in the morning, 4 or 5 o'clock, so they don't stay asleep. And even when they are supposedly sleeping, if they're sleeping after drinking, they're not getting that good restorative sleep. So yes, there is a sleep problem. Now to your other question, which is a more complex question about what do you do when they stop— start missing a lot of work due to the addiction. And they keep minimizing it. I can tell you what not to do, and that's not to directly confront them and say and get through their— try to get through their head what it is that you're trying to get them to know, which is something like, well, you know, you were wasted last night and you can't just keep missing work because you're hungover. Like, don't say something like that. Don't say it directly. Um, the person has some realization that they're missing a lot of work related to their addiction. Depends on their personality whether they're going to admit to that to you, right? But deep down inside, they have some kind of realization. Now, they— if you bring it up, they probably do minimize it to you because they don't want you on their case. They don't want you watching over them or controlling them or nagging them or making them stop because maybe they're not ready to do that. do that yet, but there is a connection deep inside of them that knows that it's a problem. So most of all, your goal is just not to block that natural feeling that they're gonna have from coming up. These are the kind of things that we do talk about in the Denial Breakthrough Intensive, so you might be a really good candidate for that because there's a lot of steps to it. But as crazy as it sounds, An empathy statement would be more effective for you than a confrontation statement. Okay, so like, I know that's counterintuitive, and there, you know, there are other things you can do, but for the purposes of this, so that you walk away with one little piece of advice or help, which is make an empathy statement. You're not enabling because you're empathizing. You're not encouraging them to continue to do a bad behavior, but you could empathize by saying, Yeah, you're not sleeping good. It probably is like super hard to function at work, or almost impossible. Now, you know, but you don't have to go back and link it to the addiction. When you try to connect that dot for them, that's when they're gonna start the minimizing and the deflection and the blaming you and all the things. You know what they look like. Alright, our next question says, how do I set a boundary with my husband's Nicotine pouch use. It triggers me because he lied to me about doing it for 6 months, and I don't want to see it, but he's not ready to quit. I'm gonna have a really hard answer for you here. Take a pop, gotta manage his nicotine use. I know that sounds harsh and mean, but when you're saying set a boundary around my husband's nicotine use, that's not a boundary, that's a rule. I have a ton of videos on this channel. I know it can be super complex and confusing. What's a boundary? What's a rule? What's— I call it in your lane and in their lane, or I say on your side of the street and their side of the street. The nicotine use is on their side of the street, and probably the fact that they know that you hate it and that you're on their case about it, or that you're counting, or that you're watching, or that you're doing all this, that is in part— I'm not blaming you, but that's in part of why the lying cycle continues. So if you try to set a boundary with it and you're telling me that the lying is the thing that's bothering you about it, that's a sure way to keep the lying going. A better way is, it's not a boundary, it's how do I support or encourage my person to make a good change, right? And that is more about saying, hey, I get it, it's really hard, you know. And when they do good, positively reinforce. And when they don't do good, have empathy for them. That will make the lying way better, which for most people who have addicted loved ones, it is the lying. Like, it's the lying that's— it's all a problem, but it's the lying that's the biggest problem, and I totally get that. But if you set a boundary on it, you're really just asking for more sneaking and lying. So, I know that's probably not what you wanted to hear, but that's my advice. Plus, if there's other addictions, which I'm guessing there probably is, I don't, I personally as a counselor do not mess with nicotine addiction or caffeine or sugar because I'm usually trying to get people off some pretty seriously hard stuff, not stuff that's just bad for their health, but stuff that's like destroying their, not even just them, but their whole family. And I'm not saying nicotine use is fine or good, I'm not advocating it, but I don't fight against it. And so I'm going to double down with my recommendation to you if your person has another addiction, like maybe maybe they have alcohol or something else, I for sure wouldn't double down on the nicotine because you only have so much willpower. That's a whole nother video, but I would back off of it. After 3 months rehab and getting a job, how do I know if it's relapse? He will not take a test and does not want to come back home. I mean, I I think that if someone doesn't want to take a test and they've previously taken tests, I think that's your answer. If someone's out of rehab and they had a job and they've never agreed to take tests and that's always been their stance, that might be a little bit more gray area. But I don't want to come back home, I'm not going to take a test, I think that is an answer. Like a lot of times when I would have people in my office and they'll tell me things like They'll tell me things like, my family doesn't believe me and it's a bunch of bull or whatever, and they always accuse me and they don't trust me. Then I would say something like, I got you. I got a whole drawer full of tests. Here's what we'll do. We'll like pee screen you right here in the office. We'll have your results instantly, and then you can take them home and you can tell them to like go whatever because here's your results and you can prove it. And then when that person, if they're like, yeah, let's do it, that right there is the test. I mean, I do have the test actually, and I would actually test them, but the question is the test. If they're like, no, you know, we don't really need to do that, and they start sort of backtracking out of it, then I know the answer. That is the test result in my mind. Next one, 27-year-old son stopped drinking for 3 weeks after approximately 8 years of drinking daily. Want to encourage and show support, but don't want to go over the top and make him feel shame. Best ways? Great question, and I'm really glad that you're asking this because this is a high-level question. Because you guys hear me say, you know, positively reinforce, but you don't want to go over the top because then it feels ingenuine and it feels uncomfortable. And so what you want to do, and we talk about this in the, in the intensive a lot, is Even when you're going to positively reinforce, I think it's best to do it and not connect it directly to the addiction, because when you bring that word up, it brings their shame up. So if you see them having more energy, if you see them being more optimistic, comment on those behavioral changes that you're seeing, the positive way that they're feeling better, the more energy they have, the more productive they are, the more creative they are. Like, like, comment and positively reinforce those external symptoms because number one, it's reinforcing to them how much better they feel and are when they're sober, right? And it's— don't say the, now that you're not drinking, or now that you're not smoking, or now that you're not blah blah blah, you're so much more. Don't do that because even though you're trying to positively reinforce, you're really just reminding them of the bad. I know you're not meaning to, but that's what happens in their minds, they immediately think that. And so, really great question. Mine is surrounded by people more severely addicted than her. She lives away from home. Is there anything I can do to get her to see this? She gets frustrated by their behavior and addiction but doesn't see her own behavior. And how it impacts us. Yes, this is just, this is a form of denial, right? This is denial in action, and it's, it's a common one. A minimization, it's like comparing yourself. And so like, and this happens even to, like, let's say you had a family member who was a bad alcoholic or addict or something like that. You start comparing yourself to the people around you, to the people in those meetings, to your uncle who was a Terrible drug addict or whatever. And you, when you line your stuff up next to theirs, it feels like I'm in the good, right? And so it can be easy, it can be an easy way to trick yourself. But the key here is not to directly confront it, because I promise you, the more you directly confront it, the more she's gonna resist it. And then she's either gonna say or think Like, you have no idea, like, I'm not nearly like these people. And that's when she says and thinks that stuff, it keeps her stuck in denial. So you don't want to directly do that. What you want to do is build influence and credibility with her, right? Which is help her to see you as a safe place to come and talk. Because even if everyone else around her is doing it way worse than her, there— I promise there's always pieces of someone that sees the problem or that's unhappy about something with the problem. And if you can become that safe space, there's a lot bigger of a chance that she'll actually start to talk about that with you. And then you— and then that's what's helpful is what I call it is it's like you're pulling the motivation that's already in them out instead of trying to push the motivation in. And the last thing I'll say on this one is the worst thing you can do is talk to her about how it makes you feel. And I know that that's the instinct that we all have is like Okay, she's frustrated with them because their behavior is impacting her, but she can't even see how her behavior is impacting us. It's just when you do that, no matter how true it is, it's going to make the person feel defensive and avoidant or angry, or, you know, you're going to get some kind of defense mechanism which isn't going to help. Alright, our next question from Glock23 says, how do I approach Accountability testing with a third party for a 70H addiction. What is that? It will always be wondering if they have relapsed. Soon to be legal in my state. I don't even know what drug you're talking about, but there are all kinds of things out there that people get addicted to that are legal. You know, alcohol is just one of them. You've got What's the one that starts with the K? Kratom. You got all these ones, so I don't know which one you're talking about. I mean, there's tons of them, but some of them you can test for, some of them you can't test for. But when you use accountability, I can tell you this: if it can be tested for— kratom, okay, I don't— I'm not recognized with what you call it, but You can test for kratom. There are tests for that. And the person has to agree though. For accountability to work, you want it to be something that's preventing them from using, not something that's trying to catch them from using. So the best way to use any kind of regular testing is to say up front, right, well, you're going to be tested, you know, once a week. And when it's drugs, I always say it needs to be at least once a week. Maybe. Twice a week. And so what you can do is you can say, you're going to be tested at least once a week, every now and then, more than once a week, because you're trying to help them to resist when they're having an opportunity or craving or something like that. And so you don't want to like let them go and then 5 weeks down the road they do something sketchy or there's money missing or they look funny or they're around the wrong people or whatever, and then say, I want you to take a test, because that's just going to create an argument. Then you're going to get, well, you don't trust me, and I might as well do it because you always think I'm doing it anyway. So I guess what I'm saying to you is if you're going to do drug testing, you want to set it up to happen at a regular interval to prevent it. Now, if you want to do it through a third party, there are programs. You can look them up. They're called recovery monitoring programs. A lot of times these are what, like, professionals who find themselves in a bad way get. Like if you're like a doctor or a nurse or a teacher or something like that and you have a professional license to keep, and it comes out that you have an addiction, then they'll set you up with these like recovery monitoring services where they like work with these labs and you're pulled for a screen every so often and that kind of thing. That's how you would do that from a third-party perspective. Alcoholic spouse is upset I'm meeting with a friend whose husband has now had 5 years of sobriety. How do I articulate that I met with her To have a listening ear, someone to validate my feelings. Okay, hold on, let me read that again. I think I understand what you're saying. You have an alcoholic spouse and you met with a friend whose husband now has 5 years of sobriety. He's upset that you did that. I'm just thinking here. It's kind of like what I was saying earlier, like even when you're giving someone a positive reinforcement or, you know, an encouraging word, when it's coming up that you're directly relating it back to their behavior, their addiction, it's just immediately going to make them defensive. And so, I mean, my first thought is I don't know that I would even tell them that that was happening, but it sounds like they already know that that's happening or whatever. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I don't know how much you can do to backtrack it out, but one of the things that upsets people the most is if they feel like you're talking about their problem to other outside people. Now I know that you have to have support. I completely understand, but it is something— that's why they get so upset about it, because it's embarrassing, it's humiliating, or maybe you're your partner thinks that this person's gonna try to talk you into leaving or something like that. I'm not saying that's the case because it sounds like her husband's in recovery, and so she's probably super positive, like, support for you. But it's because you're hitting that button, and you have to find ways of sidestepping that button. All right, Bree says that we are to the end of our time for today. I will be here again next Thursday. We are live every Thursday at 1:00. If you are struggling with someone in denial and you're trying to get through to them, check out the Denial Breakthrough Intensive. It's going to be happening June 1st through the 4th. The link's in the description, or Beyond Boundaries if you need help with more of the emotional side of things. And I will see you guys next week. Bye everybody.