Motivating Yourself (or a loved one) To Get Sober

These are three fundamental human laws that you should never ignore if you're trying to motivate yourself or a loved one to get sober. Now, these laws. I'm actually, these are three of the laws that are talked about in this book. It's called the Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. And this is 48 laws. But I'm going to talk to you about three, three of them, because they really relate to motivation and behavior, and we're going to apply that to addiction recovery and sobriety. Now, I know you're looking at this book and you're thinking, amber, I know you didn't read that big old book. That's a big book. And you're right, this is a bit of a big book for me to read. I did not read it. I listened to it because a lot of, you know, I love Audible. And so even for such a giant book, it's so easy to take it in chunks, and it just feels a lot less intimidating to me. And in fact, when I got it on Audible, I had no idea that it was this giant of a book, because I might have been scared to start with. But it is full of fantastic psychological stuff, if you're into that. And you just love to understand how human mind works. It's definitely a book for you. I will put the link in the comments here just in case anyone wants to check it out. That's the Amazon affiliate link. So if you want to get the book or check it out, you can. But. But let's get back to our laws. Now. We're going to talk about these three laws. The first one is attitude determines reality. Yes, that's right. Now, if you hear that and you start thinking, oh, what does she mean? Does she mean karma? Does she mean manifesting? Maybe a little bit of those things. But you don't even have to believe in those things to understand this psychological principle. You see, our attitude determines our filter. And so what we already believe that's true about us and true about the world. That kind of makes up our attitude towards things, which creates our filter. So it's kind of like an Instagram filter, right? You can totally change the look of something by changing the filter. It's like you can put the same image in and put one filter on and see one thing, change the filter, same image, and see something completely different. Kind of like that. You find what you're looking for. Philosophy. Not only that. Sorry, I got a sneeze coming. Excuse me. Not only that, does it. Is it sort of this. You find what you're looking for thing, but also it, your attitude, what you put out into the world determines how people react to you. So if you believe that people are untrustworthy or people are out to do you wrong, then, then not only are you going to be filtering and looking for that to happen to you, you're going to find it because that's what you're looking for. But you're also going to be putting out distrustful, slightly aggressive or defensive vibes, which is going to make people act aggressively and defensively back towards you and thereby reinforcing your already belief that you had in your head. So it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy thing. Let me give you a little story. A few months back I was going into the office just for a regular day of seeing clients. And the first client on my calendar or schedule was a guy that never talked to him before. I recognize his name. So I woke up, I talked to Bri, I said, hey Bri, I've got this person on my calendar and I haven't talked to them before. And she's like, yeah, his mom made the appointment, but it's an adult. But she really didn't tell me much other than, you know, she wants you to talk to her son. It's an addiction issue. So, all right, so I go back to my office and when it was time, I give this gentleman a call. Now, we're not talking about a teenager or even a college kid. I can't remember for sure how old the guy was, but my guess is a little bit older than I am this guy and immediately he's like hostile towards me, which just so you know, most people that come in to see me in my office come in because someone sort of drugged them in or talked them into it, but they didn't really want to. So it doesn't hurt my feelings, feelings at all. When people, especially when I first meet them, that they didn't really want to talk to me and they kind of reluctant or resistant in the beginning. I expect that. In fact, one of the things I think I'm pretty good at is overcoming that resistance. Because every client ever gets kind of like that. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't react to it negatively. And I'm usually able to build a connection and move past it quickly. However, not so much in this circumstance. Let me tell you about what happened. So I get on the phone with this guy and I tell him my name and say, hey, I'm Amber, I had you on my calendar. What can I help you with or no? I said, I'm Amber. I'm supposed to call you. And he said. He's like, yeah, I know. And I think he said, well, how can you help me? And I said, well, most people talk to me about things related to addiction. So I guess. I guess I'm assuming that's kind of what's going on with you. Why don't you tell me a little about what your situation is, and we'll figure it out together. And he's like, well, you didn't answer my question. How can you help me? And I said, well, I told him about my credentials. And I said, this is what I normally do and how I normally help people. And then I asked him again, why don't you tell me a little about yourself? And then. So you still didn't want to tell me anything? He's really, like, not just reluctant, but argumentative, defensive, and slightly, like, aggressive, almost verbally. And then he says, well, why should I talk to you? How does confidentiality work? So I start explaining to him about confidentiality. And most of you know that when you talk to a counselor, confidentiality is not quite all the way yes or no question. I start telling him there's like, three little limits to confidentiality. Has to do with major safety issues. I start explaining all that to him, the regular spill. And he's like, you didn't answer my question. Do I have confidentiality or not? I said, well, yeah, you do, except in these three situations or whatever. And he's like, well, why are you skirting the question? I mean, he just kept coming at me and going around and around. This is my first client of the morning. And it's just like, what the heck did I walk into? And about five or seven minutes into the conversation, I start thinking, you know what? This just isn't going to work. Well, actually, my first thought is before I thought that, I thought I could probably get this guy to come around, but it would take me at least all session just to get the walls down this much. And during that whole session, I knew it was just going to be sort of an attack on me. So I started thinking to myself, you know what? This isn't going to work. Or maybe the more of truth it is, I don't want to do this now. I'm lucky because I'm in my own private practice and I get to make those decisions, which I am super grateful for. I only talk to people I want to talk to these days. I have worked like most counselors, if you work for an agency, you kind of have to work with whoever walks in the door. But this day, I was just like, you know what? I'm not gonna deal with this guy today. And I said. I said, you know what? Like, I don't think we're a good fit. Maybe we should just cancel the session. And he was like, oh, so you just want to take my money and then not talk to me or whatever? And I said. I said, no, I will absolutely make sure you are not charged for this session. And so we ended the call. I go up, I tell Brie, and Ray's like, well, his mom was the one paying for it. I was like, well, make sure you give her her money back, because we're not going to do this. And do you see how that is an example of your attitude determines your reality? That guy just kept coming so defensively and aggressively at me that I was like, I'm out. Not gonna help you. Which I'm sure reinforces his view of, you can't trust people. People aren't really. They don't have good motives. They're not out there to help you. But to a large degree, we react to what people put out towards us. Now, that absolutely applies to addiction and recovery. If you are walking around with these beliefs in your head that no one ever better from addiction and recovery, or that all people that have addictions are just terrible, selfish people who don't care about anything but themselves, if you're walking around with attitude like that, guess what? That is going to be the reality of your situation. So you. Whether that's for yourself or for your loved one, because when you have those attitudes, it's going to. Whether you want it to or not, it's going to impact how you feel, which is going to impact how you react to the world, which is then going to impact what the world gives you back. Do you see what I mean? So this whole idea of your attitude determines your reality. If you are trying to motivate someone towards recovery or towards yourself, the first thing you have to do is you have to have the attitude and belief that you can get better. And once you have that, it sort of opens up all these other possibilities for yourself. If you're trying to help a loved one get better, you have to believe that they can get better. I feel like I talk to a lot of people who are asking me to help their loved one, or they say they're trying to help their loved one. But it's like you can tell that in the back of their head they think this is never Going to get better. And so because of it, they're probably not consciously doing it, but. But subconsciously, they're keeping the whole situation stuck because of their attitude or their belief about it. All right, number two is that for the most part, all people have a belief inside that they are a good person. Now, I know you may be thinking, well, no, you know, I know people who think that they're a terrible person. And sometimes people have a lot of shame and guilt, and we can have the idea that we did something bad, but normally, even when we have that shame and guilt, we have these rationalization processes where we kind of tell ourselves, well, I only did that because I had to for this situation or because this happened or that happened or whatever. But we have the idea that we are good people. And when you. Let's say if you're trying to motivate a loved one to get sober, if you're trying to motivate them by telling them, you know, like, you're a piece of crap, you're hurting everyone around you, you're a terrible father, like, you're the worst husband ever. I can't believe I did this. That's just not gonna work, because, number one, they don't believe that about themselves deep down inside. And so what happens is a reaction to that is they just start focusing on you being the evil villain, which we talk about a lot on this channel. However, you're going to have to come at someone or yourself under the idea that they are a good person, and maybe they've done some bad things or maybe they've made some mistakes, maybe you've done bad things or made mistakes. But essentially, most people, 99.99% of people are good people. You know, I've been doing this kind of work for years. I have dealt with all kinds of mental health stuff, all kinds of addiction stuff. And I can count on my hand, like, probably, like, probably even less than three people that I've encountered that I thought, this is really like a bad human being. I've seen people do all kind of bad things, but truly, underneath, good people can do bad things. In fact, all of us are capable of doing bad things. Some of us don't like to admit that to ourselves, but we are even really, really bad things under certain circumstances. And if you will appeal to your own good intentions or to the good intentions and good heart of your loved one, you're going to get so much further. You know, where I see this, the most effective work most effectively? This works, or a good example of it Some of you guys know that I like true crime. I just love the psychology of it. And so it's kind of like a guilty pleasure. And so I'm always like, listening to, I especially love to like, listen and watch real life interrogation video footage, which you can see a lot of on YouTube. And so literally almost every time the way that the, the officers or detectives or whoever, the way that they come at the person is to come at them. Like, I know you want to get this off your chest. I know you just got put in a bad situation and you know you got forced into making this bad choice. They come at the person from, I know you're a good guy and you want to do the, the right thing and let the family know where this body is kind of thing. They always appeal to that good side of someone. And it works. You know, like on the movies, it's always like, I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna beat you up, I'm gonna get, you know, the information out of you. Well, number one, that doesn't work. And number two, cops lose their job over it. So they have to find something more effective. And the way they do that is they appeal to this good natured sense in someone. And so if it works good enough to get somebody to confess the most horrible thing they ever did, that's literally gonna land them in prison for the rest of their life, then I'm telling you it's going to work. When you're talking to your loved one, it's going to work much more effectively when you appeal to the good part, the heart of who someone is. Because like I said, for the most part, even when people have done bad things, they're not bad people. And additionally, when you appeal to that part of yourself, that good piece that's still in there, that good part of someone else again, that kind of goes back to your attitude, determines your reality, right? So if it's, I believe in the goodness of people and I come at people that way, I'm not trying to say be naive, but if I believe people have that goodness in them, guess what? They're going to show me that goodness. If I believe people are bad and I come at them that way, they're going to show me the bad. Personally, I believe everybody's got good and bad in them. But if you're trying to motivate yourself for someone else, appeal to the good, not to the bad. Telling someone they're a lowly piece of crap, horrible person does not motivate them and want them to do better. Even if it's you telling yourself that. Sometimes we think, well, I beat myself up. It's like we do this internal dialogue where we beat the heck up out of ourselves, thinking that that's going to make do better. It doesn't. It doesn't ever make us want to do better, whether it's coming from ourselves or someone else. So don't do that. If you are connecting to anything I'm saying here, give this video a like or a thumbs up. I'll know I'm on track. Number three. Fundamental human law that you really must be aware of is that people, humans, all humans, have the belief that we are and can act autonomously. Basically, it means we're in control of ourselves. Now, is that a hundred percent true in reality? Not exactly. There are some things that are just beyond our control. Like our brain chemicals can make you feel and think a certain way. Other people, the way you react to them. There are a lot of things that are affecting at any given moment, our mood, our thinking, our decision making. But we all have this thought on the inside that we are the boss of ourselves and our decision making. And so when you are trying to motivate someone else to get sober, then you need to appeal to that side of them instead of coming at them like, I know what's best for you, you need to listen to me. Like, this is what you need to do. You need to reach inside of them and find out what motivates them. Because we all want to be in control of our own destiny. We all want to be in control of our own selves. And people will resist you if you try to come against that. No matter what. You know, even if you're trying to tell somebody something that they want or that they need, if you come at them trying to force, they're going to resist. And it works the same way. When you're motivating yourself, when you try to force yourself into things, it doesn't work very well. We rebel against being forced, even if it's us forcing us. And so a better, more effective tech technique is to understand that you do have a lot of influence and control of your own self, of your own future, all of that stuff. And when you can grab a hold of that and you combine that with the idea that your attitude determines your reality, and you combine that with the idea that you are a good person. Even if you've made some bad choices or made some mistakes, now you have the kind of mindset that's actually going to be open to change. And Open to possibilities. And so often we go at these issues in like exact opposite manner, right. We try to go at people by forcing, by trying to get them to see that they're terrible. And all that does is just create a lot of mistrust, a lot of like locking down, power struggle type behaviors, a lot of rationalization and justifying bad decision making and all that kind of stuff. So if you can keep these three principles in mind, you're going to get a lot further. Now we teach inside of our Invisible Intervention and our motivation masterclass. We teach more specifically how to have conversations with people, how to motivate them, how to word things to get them to move towards sobriety. But these things, I'm telling you today, really are the sort of core beliefs that you need to understand before you even go into any of that. Now I do have the links to those things in the description and I've also put the links to some free resources in the description for people who are working on their own recovery and for people who are trying to help a loved one find recovery. There are some links in the description. So make sure you check those out. Alright, let's see who's here. Let's take your questions and concerns. So if you have something you want to say, a comment, a question, go ahead and put it up there. Because there is a little lag sometimes right when I end, I literally am pressing the end button and I see another question pop. I'm like, oh. But it's like the lag makes it and I miss it. So I see Vicki from South Dakota is in here and Luna from Florida or Luanna from Florida. And I see Saska's in here. Michael says, active alcoholic, tuning in, trying to make the decision to stop or not. You know what, Michael? The fact that you are tuning in and you're watching this, it tells me that you're already leaning towards the decision to stop. Because you know when you come in here and you watch this video, you know I'm gonna talk into the not, Right? Yeah. Or talk you into the stop part, the not using part. So you're already open to that and so you're already in that direction. Good for you. We're glad you're here, Michael. I see Terry's here. Hello, Terry. And is it leggy? Leggy Maggie. Am I saying that right? From California. Hey, Let's see here. Find us some questions. Joanna says yes, I believe they can get better. I keep encouraging him to get to detox. He wants to, but it's the money and the crappy medical insurance. He did try twice by taking a medication, but didn't have the tools. So it sounds like you've got. In your situation, you've got someone who's. Who has the desire to change, but they also are finding some roadblocks. In the clinical world, we call that ambivalence, where you have sort of a foot on this side, a foot towards change, or like Michael was talking about, and a foot on this side in the like, not change category, we call that sustained talk, change talk, and sustain talk. And that is completely normal. It's called ambivalence. And I feel like when a lot of times when families or outside people see that, they think, oh, the person really doesn't care. They really don't want to change. And that's not it. There's a part of them that wants to change, and there's a part of them that either doesn't want to change or is scared to change or is afraid they can't overcome roadblocks. We all have both sides of that, and it's completely normal. And in fact, if you're talking to somebody like Luanna's situation, where she's dealing with someone else, a lot of times when someone throws those roadblocks up, we want to come at them with the yeah, but. And we want to sort of dismiss those. Like, even when I read this comment, my very first thought was, okay, yeah, but whatever it costs for detox, addiction always costs more. That was my first thought. This is when I argue with the roadblock, but it doesn't work. I could say that to the person, and the person may even agree with the statement, but it's not going to help them figure out how to overcome the roadblock. And in fact, if you acknowledge the roadblock and make it okay for them to talk about that clinically, we call it sustained talk or roadblock, or whatever you want to call it. The person will actually begin to naturally figure out how to get past that roadblock on their own. That's that autonomous thing that you have to believe in for people. It is in there. It's just our job to not fight against it, which is sometimes hard. Like, even me, I have those natural, defensive, argumentative thoughts that sometimes I do a better job of containing than others. Elise. Oh, Amber. Hey. You and your videos have become a lifeline. Thank you so much. You're a beautiful person. Well, thank you, Elise. Aren't you sweet? You made my day. Alrighty. Hey, Sandy, here's just a question. Sandra says, how long should a Person who's been using heroin since 15 years old and is now 41 be in rehab? That's actually a really good question. And I was thinking about that just this past week or two. That's been on my mind. I find that when people have been using since. Since they were teenagers, since they were really young, they do tend to need long in rehab. The reason is, is because they're doing more than just figuring out how to not use drugs. They've actually, in most situations like that, they've actually got to learn how to do appropriate adulting skills. Right. Because if you've been using heavily since you were a teenager, you probably didn't develop a lot of adulting skills, emotional skills like coping and just all the emotional stuff, in addition to logistical things like being responsible for things, going to work every single day, you know, doing your chores, cooking your food, paying your bills, all that kind of stuff. So if someone's been using for a long time and they never really developed those skills, I do think it's important for them to be in longer. And it just depends on how much of those adulting skills that they have if they really truly need all of that. I would say it doesn't have to be treatment for how they say this, don't panic, but I would say six months up to a year. But that usually means, like some of that treatment and some of that sober living and some other things. It can be some even outpatient things. So hope that helps answer a little bit. Catherine says, my husband is doing better with cutting down the amount of alcohol. No more blackout drunk every weekend, but he's still drinking every single day. Do I praise him for cutting down the amount? That's a great, great question. Because sometimes families are like, well, they're still drinking. I don't want to encourage that because I don't think that's a good idea or whatever. What you can do is find out what's motivating him to want to drink less. There's a reason why he wants to drink less. Maybe he's sick of feeling like crap when he wakes up in the morning. Maybe he hates Mondays because in the past he drank so much on weekends that Mondays were just horrible and he was so sick. What you want to do is you want to validate whatever that are their reasons and the benefits that they want to get out of it. You want to acknowledge those. It's not so much about the how much you drink. You know, you don't. You could if you wanted to, but it's not so much. Oh, good job. You drink three beers or not 12 or whatever. That's not so much it. If it's like, man, I notice you feel so much better. Like, wow, you just have a lot more energy. You're so fun to be around. That's what I mean. You. You comment on maybe like the outcome or the other behavior and doesn't have to be specifically on the drinking. Because even if you're trying to valid and encourage, like a positive move or move in the right direction when it comes to substance abuse, you're hitting a sore spot every time you bring up the word. And it's gonna. It can make them automatically defensive. Defensive. And so you kind of want to go around that. I call it the side door. I had to ask my boyfriend with an alcohol addiction to leave my home. He's been thrown out of another place since then. I helped him at that point, but he's lost his job, too, and I wanted to get help. It lasted three weeks and he was off again. So I backed away completely, saying, when you get help, I'll be there for you, but I'm not going to support your drinking. It's hard to watch this train crash happening, and I feel helpless. It's not much I can do until he wants help, Right? Another really great question. That's one of those things it's like people say all the time, like, someone has to want it, which is true. My philosophy on it is it is true to some degree. A lot of times, even if you take someone who doesn't want it and you get the drugs out of them long enough, their brain kicks back in and they decide they want it. So there's that. And then the other thing is, you can also help influence someone in the direction of deciding that they want it. Now, you can't do that by forcing because you have to remember these. These laws of autonomy and stuff like that. But there are ways, which we talk a lot about on this channel. I have a whole playlist on motivating someone to sobriety. So if you haven't already, check out some of those and you'll get a lot more tips and tricks on that. Would you recommend your YouTube to a person who thinks he's not an addict? He is more dependent. That's a really good question. A lot of times people use my videos to send to someone who's in denial, like, see, I told you so. I call it using my videos as a weapon. And I always say, don't do that. Find a video of mine, or not even of mine, of anybody's out there that you think they'll actually resonate to. Don't find something where you're trying to force a piece of information down their throat. Right? Find something that is actually. You're like. When they watch it, they'll be like, yeah, you know, it's actually going to validate a thought that, you know, that they already have. Once someone does that, what happens is it. It shifts their. Their attitude. Like, so, for example, if you send them a video of mine that, you know, I'm saying something that, you know, they already think it's going to be really easy for them to filter that in because it fits with their already attitudes and beliefs. And then guess what happens? Magic already. And then they decide, I like that gal. She knows what she's talking about. And then when they watch the next video, they've already decided, I like that gal. She knows what she's talking about. And they're going to like what I say in the next one. They're going to absorb it faster. So if you're going to do that, whether it's something of mine or something someone else's, pick something that fits with the belief they already have, not something that conflicts with the belief they already have, because it will open the door and help them to see that more openly and flexibly and look at it without all those guards and walls and like, kind of things up. All right, everybody, thank you so very much for hanging out with me. We will be live next Thursday at 1. Look forward to seeing guys. And up next, more on relapse prevention and motivating someone to get sober. Don't forget those links in the description. If you need additional resources.