Navigating Difficult Conversations: 5 Game-Changing Tips!

Now, I know that because I'm a counselor and a coach that I'm supposed to tell you to use your I feel statements when you want to have a difficult conversation with someone. You've all heard this, right? It's the standard advice that you hear pretty much anywhere is to say, I feel blank when blank happens. And I think it feels a little cheesy to me. What about to you? I definitely think if you have a history of arguing with someone or you, or you can't seem to come to some resolution about a topic with someone, the I feel statements are definitely a large step in the right direction. But to be honest, most people mess them up. I'm going to tell you how they mess them up and A lot of times it can still feel, make the other person feel defensive because that's the point of using the I feel statements is to try to kind of keep it into your lane and not criticize someone else, not to make someone else feel judged or like they're in trouble or something like that. So that's the purpose of the I feel statements and they do an okay job, much better than arguing, yelling, screaming, nagging, preaching, much better than all that. But I think we could do even a little bit better. But let me tell you first, before I tell you how to do better, let me tell you how most people mess up the I feel statements. They use them a little bit as a weapon. They'll say, I feel pissed when you act like a jerk. That's not the way to use the I feel statements. And a lot of times, I feel angry when you don't come home on time. I feel neglected when you don't pick up after yourself. You can see how it's definitely more disarming than a straight out criticism or judgment, but you can also see if you listen to that statement, like it's just sort of a nicer version of criticism or judgment. I think a better way of doing the I feel statements is, um, and this is from, not from me, this is from Brené Brown, who some of you, if you guys, do you know Kim, our therapist Kim? She is the biggest Brené Brown fan. We say she's like a stalker. She loves her. So this is from her, but she uses the statement that says, the story I'm telling myself. And the reason why this works so much better is because it's— there's an acknowledgement in there that whatever I'm feeling or whatever's happening inside of me may not be accurate. And so it leaves some, um, openness for the other person to have a thought or feeling to come into play. So take a listen to this. The difference in, I feel angry. When you're not home from work on time. Better than you're never here on time. The I feel statement is definitely better than that. But if you go with the whole, the story I'm telling myself, if you say the story I'm telling myself is the story I'm telling myself when you don't come home on time is that you don't have any consideration for the other people in the house, that I've made dinner and dinner's getting cold. And that may not be accurate. That's the story I'm telling myself. And so when you approach it that way, you're kind of saying the same thing, right? But you're saying it in a way that's a lot less critical and judgmental. And it acknowledged that it could be that you feel the way you feel because you're making up a story in your head, but it also allows the other person to explain what really is going on when they're late from work. And the other person might say something like, I feel constantly worried about being able to provide for the family. And I know sometimes I overwork and I overextend myself, but I have this fear, maybe it's irrational fear that we're not going to be okay and that I'm not going to be a good provider. Right? So the other gives the other person a chance to say what's going on with them, the story that they're telling themselves. Because usually when we find ourselves upset about something, It's a lot more about why we think it's happening than what is happening. Because normally when someone's doing something, we, we like to put a judgment on it. And usually it's a negative judgment towards the other person or the other situation. And we assume we know why it's happening. And that's actually the thing that's making us upset. Like if we go back to the whole, Your late to dinner analogy. The late to dinner, yeah, that's annoying, right? That you cook dinner and it's getting cold or whatever. But the thing that's making you mad is telling yourself that the other person doesn't care how you feel. They don't care how much effort you put into it. You've had this conversation with them 10 times. They keep doing it anyway. And it's because they're selfish or they're self-absorbed or they're inconsiderate. That's the thought that's actually making you feel upset. And so when you can put your finger on it and you can verbalize the story I'm telling myself, the other reason why I like that story I'm telling myself is it forces you to have to think about why you're feeling the way you're feeling. So already it's getting you into your frontal lobe. It's getting you into your thinking mind, which is deescalating your emotions. Which is another reason why it works so much better. Because when you're trying to have a tough conversation with someone and your emotions are high, they're going to emotionally react to your emotions because they're going to feel what you feel. And so if you're angry and you're feeling very angry inside and you're having a conversation with someone about something you're angry about, they're going to feel that. And in their biology, in their brain and in their body, they're going to move into fight or flight response. And so they're going to immediately move into being defensive, even if They're trying not to be. Their physiology is going to start to react to your physiology. So just by being able to bring yourself into the story I'm telling myself statements, it will bring your fight or flight response down, which will help to not trigger their fight or flight response. Because there's a lot that goes into why these conversations go so badly in the first place. And let me give you some other tips. Some of these are things to do and some of these are things not to do. And I've got a story I'm going to tell you. It's actually something that one of our viewers wrote in where communication went really well. And so I think you might like that.

All right.

So you guys have heard me talk about the accusations audit before. That's a skill that we teach inside of our Invisible Intervention. And basically when you do accusations audit, you say what you think the other person is going to negatively think against you. Like, for example, I know I can be, um, helicoptery. I know I can be overly controlling. I know I can get overanxious sometimes. I know I worry too much sometimes. If you start with that, because if you start with that, because you know that they're already going to be thinking it, then it removes that from their mind. And then they don't have to get stuck on the thought about why they're so Upset with you, or why they can't hear you. Excuse me, why they can't hear what you're trying to say. Because usually when you're talking to someone about something, they can't hear you because they're thinking to themselves, "Oh my gosh! He always does this. Always says that. He just has to be in control. Everything has to be his way." And they're having this whole conversation. That's the story that's happening in their head about you, and they can't even hear what you're trying to say because that's all they're thinking. They might be pleasant. Some people are more pleasant about it than others, but it's definitely a story that's happening in their head. And so when you start with that and you acknowledge that, it takes that roadblock out of the way. But I want to add another layer to the accusations audit today. Another thing you can do with the accusations audit is not just sort of the accusation against yourself, like identify maybe your character defect or your flaw, but maybe just even acknowledge the difficulty of the conversation. Just say it right up front. Hey, I know you hate talking about this, or I know that this is a difficult subject for you. I know that we usually get stuck when this happens. I know that this conversation has went bad in the past. If you can just acknowledge upfront the difficulty of the topic, that will help. If you can just acknowledge upfront the difficulty that the other person is going to be feeling or having, and that's called an empathetic statement. So it's about acknowledging the emotions upfront before you get into having the logical conversation, because acknowledging the emotions somehow deescalates the emotions. It brings the intensity down a bunch of notches and allows you to have a more productive conversation. So you can accusations audit for your character defects. You can audit for, um, That you're about to say something that's going to stress someone out. You're about to say something that they're not going to like, that there's a difficulty coming. Just say it upfront because it allows a person to sort of get ready for it. Or you can do it with the empathy statement. The other thing that I think people mess up so often when they're trying to have difficult conversations is that they ignore the other person's Body language and tone and words, but definitely body language and tone. So it's like if you have something that's on your mind and it's just so pressing and it's so important to you, you think you've got to express it right now, but you're looking at the other person you're talking to and their body language is closed, you know, their body language is like, or angry, or you can literally see steam coming out of their ears, or they're rolling their eyes. Or their face is turning red, you need to stop because no matter how important you think whatever you're communicating is, you're not having a productive conversation. And I know you want to have the conversation right now, but when someone else isn't in the emotional state to hear you, you're just going to get more frustrated because probably half the reason you're frustrated is because you feel unheard or not listened to. And I can promise you, when someone is in a really emotionally charged state, They're not going to hear you better. If they hear you at all, they're going to be hearing you through a filter. This is going to be what they're going to be hearing isn't going to be what you're saying. And so if someone is giving you the body language and the tone and the words that is telling you that they're too emotionally charged, you have to walk away from the conversation. Even if it's your kid and you're the parent, even if it's your spouse, if it's your brother, your sister, your best friend, your coworker. You have to be considerate of the emotional state of the other person. That's pretty much what all these are about. If you boil it down, it's about having consideration for the emotional state of the other person. And when you feel that happening, what you can do, if you sense that they're getting really escalated about something, then you can say, hey, it looks like this is getting stressful for you. Should we put this conversation off till later? Or is there something happening that's stressing you out? Just allow the person some room to either take a walk, take some distance, come back to the conversation, or say what they're feeling. Because they, what they may be saying is, I just feel like you're being critical of me. And then that might make you defensive, but you're not going to do that because You're going to be more emotionally in control of yourself, and then you're going to have another chance to explain yourself. And so be considerate of the emotional state of the other person. If you feel this urgency, a lot of people feel an urgency to talk about a feeling or a problem right in the moment because there's, you know, there's some relief after you get something off your chest. And so it's like some people feel this, like, I have to get it off my chest right now. That's a bad plan. It's usually better to wait. And give yourself time to do your whole, like, the story you're telling yourself routine. Write it down, journal it, talk with someone else about it, process your feelings before you have the conversation. And if it starts to escalate, you're going to have to move away from the conversation no matter how urgent or badly you feel like the conversation needs to happen right now. And then another thing is, is The whole idea of expressing your feelings. Everyone says, and this is a counselor thing, you've got to express your feelings. If you hold them inside, it's going to be bad. And that's true. If you're constantly cramming down and shoving down your emotions, they're going to come out in some way that's not going to be good. So there's a lot of truth in that. But being able to express your feelings effectively or productively is a whole nother story. Especially if the feeling that you're expressing is a negative emotion like anger, resentment, disappointment. If you're expressing something like that and you're feeling it very intensely while you're expressing it, the other person is going to feel that same thing that you're feeling. And that's not going to help you to de-escalate because it's just that biology, that physiology trying to Regulate. There's a word, it's called co-regulation, and it's how human beings co-regulate with each other in good ways and in bad ways. And the good ways is that when we can communicate productively and we're upset, sometimes just having someone near us who can be calm, who can just listen to us, helps us to regulate our own emotions. Their physiology, the nearness of them, the calmness of them. Brings us back down to co-regulate in a good way. But co-regulation happens in a bad way too. And so if you're expressing an emotion that you know is going to be difficult for the other person to hear, try to have processed that emotion a little bit before you get into the conversation, because if you're feeling it and you're expressing the fact that you're angry in a very angry way, it's not going to go well. And even if the other person wants to be a good listener, even if the other person's trying super hard not to be defensive, it's really hard to regulate yourself once your own buttons have been pushed. Now your physiology is all messed up and you're feeling angry, you're feeling disappointed, you're feeling resentful, you're feeling not heard. And when you've had this conversation with someone over and over and over, probably what's happening is Each of you are feeling not heard. And I know I've talked about this at least once before, but another really important thing to do is to differentiate feeling like someone's not hearing you and understanding that someone doesn't agree with you, because it's 2 different things. We kind of have this subconscious thought, like, if they would just listen to me and understand me, they would agree with me because it's the only logical conclusion. And we don't, sometimes we may not be caught, you know, conscious of that thought, but there's like this subconscious thought. I'm just not saying it the right way. I'm just not getting it out. But sometimes someone just doesn't agree with our perspective on something. And that doesn't mean that we need to say it 5,000 more times. And it definitely doesn't mean that we need to say it louder or more aggressively or even passive-aggressively. So Ask yourself, is the person not hearing me? If it's that they're not hearing me, then use some of these communication strategies we just talked about. They'll be able to hear you better. But if they just disagree with you, that's a whole nother situation. And so at that point, you're going to have to decide, should we just leave this conversation alone? Should we agree to disagree? Should we go to our family counselor and get some mediation on this? But you also have to accept that sometimes someone just doesn't agree with you. And that's okay. You're not going to be on the same page about everything all the time. And I feel like it's, we can get in our head and think, if they don't agree with me, we feel totally invalidated. We feel totally unheard. We feel resentful, but it's okay if someone disagrees with you on a topic and you're being able to be okay with that is going to help you regulate yourself a lot, lot better. All right, I'm looking over here. If you see me looking, it's because I'm looking at my notes over here. The next little tip I want to tell you is instead of expressing your feelings, sometimes it's better to just ask for what you want. I see this happen in romantic relationships all the time where someone Wants to feel reassured about a situation. Someone wants to feel connected to, someone wants to feel like a closeness, but the way they go about communicating that to the other person is to criticize that other person, to say things like, you never listen to me. You're never emotionally available to me. You're always distant. You never care how I think or how I feel. What they want, what you want when you're saying something like that is you want a closeness, right? But what you're doing is pushing someone further away. So sometimes it's just as easy as just asking for what you want. Hey, could we spend some time together? Hey, could I have a hug? Hey, could you tell me a joke and cheer me up? I had a really rough day. You know, people usually, most people. respond to that a lot better than jumping into the criticism. And not only do we criticize the other person, we telling them how they're doing it wrong. That's not going to make them do it right. Is we, we, a lot of times on top of that, we'll throw in these big all or nothing words. You always, you never. And, and, and not only are we being critical, but we're being inaccurate because rarely are things always or never, right? So, and so we're throwing these things at people and we want them to be more connected If you stop and you step back and you think about it, it doesn't make any sense, right? It's like, think about what would bring this person closer to me. And a lot of times it's literally just as simple as asking them and being okay with sometimes if they are, they're not going to be able to give you what you want. And there may be a million reasons for that. Like they're not capable or they're not in the right emotional space. Or they don't have the money to do it or whatever. There's a lot of things. So asking for what you want is a lot more likely to get you what you want. But you also have to be able to accept that you may not always get what you want when you want it. Being able to accept no, being able to accept disappointment, being able to accept waiting. It's a maturity thing. It's an emotional maturity situation. But try that. If what you, especially if what you want is more Closeness, more consideration. Don't say, I want more consideration. Say specifically what you want, right? Like, it would be great if we could have dinner together twice a week. It would be great if we could spend 5 minutes a week talking about what's really going on with us, whatever that is. Just ask for it concretely instead of Saying it in such a way that's going to make the other person feel criticized. All right, I told you I was going to share with you this story that got shared with me the other day. And I thought this person that was sharing it with me was talking to me and they were sharing it with me verbally. And I was like, man, that is so good. Will you write it down? Because I thought it was just the most excellent Example of staying out of the bad guy role in a really tough situation. You know, sometimes it's easier than others to stay out of the bad guy role. And you'll see when we go through this, the situation definitely would be high risk for getting yourself in the bad guy role. So let me look at that. And I was afraid I was going to tell it wrong. So I'm just going to— the person wrote it out for me. So I'm just going to read to you so you can hear the story. My ride home with my 25-year-old son. Our son was arrested for his second DUI. He asked if he could spend 4 days with us because he couldn't eat or sleep. And we said, of course. We used all of the Amber tools that we could think of during those 4 days. We got into our hearts. We talked about fun, silly things that Amber said and even did small talk. We did not bring up the accident or the arrest. Let's see. Oh, I lost my place. His phone or his, or bring up the fact that he was looking at his phone when we ate together. This was a different approach and this was different and appreciated and we told him so. We did not criticize or put peer pressure on him or eat or wake up to eat or wake up at a certain time or to talk to us about anything specific. We stayed in our lane. We were as genuine with him, complimenting him and telling him what was on our minds about our lives and our vacation and our plans. Now there's more to this story, but I want to stop right here and just talk about this first part. So you could just stop and think about, put yourself in this situation. Your young adult son just got arrested for the second DUI. How are you thinking and you're feeling? What are your feelings? Right? You could go with the whole, let me express my feelings thing right here, but it's probably not going to go well. And so this person who wrote the story purposely chose, and this was really actually 2 people, it was a set of parents. They purposely chose how they were going to respond. All right, here we go. Here's the bring the hard conversation part. On the ride home, it was just the 2 of us. Because his other parent was spending time away. She has a really— she's in the medical field and she has a really hard job. So I used another one of Amber's tools, which is to plant a seed. One of the conversations on the ride home was, hey Brett, which isn't the real name. Hey Brett, tell me what made you want to run that half marathon when you were back in high school. He got a sweet little smile on his face and said, He just wanted to. So I said, well, tell me what made you think you could do that and tell me how you trained for it. And so he tells me that he timed himself. Uh, oh, lost my place again. He tells me that he timed himself and pushed through. Every time he told me something about seeing someone else ahead of him and then catching them, I said, See, you dug deep and you made your goals. You're passing the next person and wants and wants to keep going. Oh, hold on. I should have made this bigger. I need more glasses, Bree. The next person, and he agreed and then kept talking. I wholeheartedly love the conversation, finding out something new about him that I was completely inspired by. In fact, I told him I know that I'm not a runner, but it made me want to train or at least walk a 10K when everyone else was running. And he thought that was a great idea. I asked him what he thought it would take to run another half marathon. And of course he said that he knows that he's not in great shape. He hasn't worked out in a long time and the drinking and drugs has made his body weak. He cheerfully answered that he would take a couple of months to get into shape again. He didn't say that he would, but he did think about what it would take. So he said he didn't agree to retrain, but he was thinking about it. Well, here's what I would have to do. And then I said, I could see you doing that again. You are an athlete at heart. Brett was on the rowing team and a rowing team that they call crew in high school. He was good at it. He loved it. When we dropped him off, he gave me a big hug and thanked me for his support. My parting words were, Were that I believed that something really good was going to come out of all of this and that I loved him and that he could find us anytime for whatever he needs. I also said that I wouldn't be texting or calling him for non-important things because I knew he had a lot to take care of and I wasn't going to distract him from doing them. And he thanked me. So let's analyze this a little bit. You know that this parent was thinking, I can't believe he got another DUI. What the heck? And the parent's probably thinking, I'm not paying for that DUI. I hope he's going to buy his own lawyer. You're going to have all these upset thoughts, right? Because you've been dealing with some struggles with your kid and this is the second big legal issue. But instead, these parents chose to focus on connection and relationship and they didn't directly deal with the DUI situation, but they actually, they dealt with it indirectly, but in a much more productive, effective way. Because by asking their son these questions about, remember that time you did that marathon? You're helping him to connect to his strengths, his ability to push himself, his ability to get over and do difficult things. And that is what he's going to need to push through and figure out this whole legal situation problem. Can you see where that's a whole different way of supporting someone, a whole different way of talking about something? It's a lot more strategic and productive. This was super high risk for landing in the bad guy role. Like, I think 99% of us would land in the bad guy role. I think I would probably land in the bad guy role if I were in the situation. So I was quite impressed with the story, I got to admit. Have you ever successfully navigated a really high-risk situation? Have you ever used any of these techniques? I want to hear more success stories because we hear a lot of stories where it goes wrong and it does us a lot of good to hear when it goes right. Have you used these techniques? What's worked for you? What hasn't worked? Let us know. We are about to get to the point where we're going to take some questions and some comments. If you're here with us watching live, Bree's back there. She's going to moderate for us. We probably won't get to all the questions, but Bree does her best to keep up with them, and it helps if you put either the word QUESTION in all caps or some question marks in front of your question because she'll know that you're trying to ask a question to me and you're not just talking to someone else in the chat, which is totally fine to do. We want you to do that. It just helps us to kind of scan through and figure out what's happening. This is usually the point when I remind you that there are resources in the description, and there are good resources in the description, and I put you a couple of free downloadable resources that kind of fit with today's topic. One of them is the 36 questions that you can use to create connection with someone else. And they actually come from an old study that's called How Do You Make Someone Fall in Love with You? But even if you're not trying to make someone fall in love with you, even if it's just a friend situation or a family situation, these are questions that create connections. So you can download those totally free. And then I also put in there where you can download my cheat sheet list of ways of how to positively affirm someone else, just different ways other than good job. We can kind of run into the wall with that and we can't think of what to say. So both of those and a lot more stuff's down there. And then also I want to tell you about something that's coming out soon that I am super duper excited about. I don't know that I've been this excited about any of the other things that we've done. So Welcome to the future, people. I have figured out how to clone myself and make an AI version of myself. You guys probably know what ChatGPT is, right? You can have conversation with ChatGPT, but the problem— you can ask anything. In fact, I use ChatGPT all the time, all the time. And the problem with it is though, is it gives you kind of a watered-down answer sometimes because it's literally scanning everything that's on the internet from anywhere since the history of time or whatever. And so a lot of times you get a very watered-down answer. But I figured out a way to create a system like that, an AI system like that, that only pulls from the techniques and strategies that I teach. So basically you create this AI version and you, I've downloaded into it every video I've ever made, every blog I've ever written, every online course I've ever created. If I know it, I've talked about it. If I've written it down, if it is somewhere, it is now loaded into the Amber AI version and it's not available yet. I'm going to show you a sneak peek of it, but it's going to be available soon, which is going to allow you to ask questions and have entire conversations with Amber AI. 24/7, anytime, from anywhere, as much as you want to. And from what I'm told, I haven't tried this out yet, in any language that you want to. Can you tell I'm excited? It's pretty exciting. Wait till I show you how it works and then you're going to be excited too. The reason why this is so exciting to me, number one, is because it's like super futuristic. It's like, dang, like you feel like you like are in a time machine and you flash forward to the future. But also because it solves a big problem that we in the office have struggled with for a long time. And I know I definitely have struggled with, which is how to be more helpful to more people in a more affordable way, right? Because yes, we offer coaching and counseling, but that can be expensive. I'm not going to lie about it. And you have to wait for your appointment, right? So maybe something's going on, you need to talk to one of us, you need to get a piece of advice, but You call Bree and she says, I can get you in, but it's going to be several days or maybe even a week or maybe even 2 weeks, right? A lot of times by the time you get to your appointment, that crisis has passed and then you don't even remember why you made the appointment. We usually find some other things to talk about, make it useful, but there's some inherent difficulties in even scheduling those. And then we, of course, we do the live calls. We do, Kim and Campbell do live calls with their family membership where they do live calls every week with just the people in their membership and they take questions and you can submit them and they answer them. And I take questions and comments on this live call every Thursday. But if you've ever watched the live calls or you've asked questions, it can be helpful. But look at the little chat box over there. It's like literally this big. You can write like 3 sentences max and then I have to try to interpret everything you're trying to tell me and I have to give you the best response I can. And obviously I do the best that I can on that, But I feel certain that a lot of you leave feeling like, I don't think she got the whole story. I think she missed the mark here because I know it because I feel it when I'm trying to answer it. The thing about Amber AI is it's going to be a much, much more affordable and accessible way to have an entire conversation with me. And you might be like, I don't know, can't you just ChatGPT it? Can't you just Google it? But Amber AI actually tells you exactly what I would tell you. We've been testing it, we've been running it, we've been giving it questions and Training this thing to answer the question with the philosophies that we teach here is kind of exciting. I'm going to see if I can show you a little version of how it works, and then we're going to get to the questions. But if you— it's not available yet. It will be soon. I don't have the voice just right. I can't seem to get it that Southern drawl like it needs to get, but we're going to get there. I'm working on it. But if you want to be on the waiting list to try out the AI coaching, there's a link in the description and you can just sign up to be on the waiting list. I'm going to pick some of the people from the waiting list to be beta testers to help us train this thing. So you can kind of interact with it. You can ask it all kinds of questions and see how it responds to you. So I've cloned myself. I feel like a tech genius, but we'll see if I can get this thing up on the screen for you. So we'll find out in just a second. Just a second. Let's see if we can add. All right, let's do it this way. Okay, so this is what Amber AI would look like if you logged into it from your desktop, but you will actually be able to log into it right from your phone and just text me back and forth and just talk to me back and forth. So this is what it looks like. You can see that there's some buttons up there that says text or call. So we'll do, we'll do a voice call. We'll ask Amber AI question, and we'll see what she says. Bree, is there a good question in chat that we could ask Amber AI? Bree's looking. We'll give her, we'll give her a second. Find us a good one. We'll ask Amber AI, and that way, you know, the question is totally random, and we'll just see. We'll see what she says. All right, here it is. All right, we're gonna do this one. Voice— I'm telling you, the voice isn't right. I'm still working on it. If we have any like audio engineer people out there, like send me a message, help me out. Here we go, here's the voice call.

Hey, thanks for calling Amber's AI coaching line. How can I help you?

Yeah, I have a question for you. Is it worth communicating at all when someone is in a relapse and begins to be verbally abusive? It feels like he's using any communication tools just triggering their verbal abuse for some reason.

It's a tough spot to be in for sure when someone is in a relapse and becomes verbally abusive. It's important to protect yourself emotionally while still holding space for their recovery. Here's the thing. Communication is always worth it, but how you communicate matters a lot. If they're being nasty or disrespectful, you don't have to sit there and take it. In fact, engaging with them in that moment can actually reinforce the bad behavior. Instead, you can set a boundary in a calm but firm way. For example, you might say something like, It seems like you're having a rough time right now. Let's try this conversation again later, and then step away or hang up if you're on the phone. The key is to disengage without escalating the situation or getting drawn into an argument. Now I know it can feel like every attempt to communicate just triggers more abuse, but that's often because they're in a heightened emotional state during a relapse. Their brain is in survival mode and they're lashing out at the person who's closest to them—you. It's not fair. But it's also not personal, even though it feels that way. When they're calmer, you can try to reestablish communication by keeping it short and neutral. Sometimes even a simple text like, I'm here if you need me, can be enough to remind them that you're in their corner without opening the door to more conflict. That said, if the verbal abuse becomes a pattern, it's okay to take a step back. You can still support their recovery without being their emotional punching bag. Remember, You're modeling healthy boundaries, which is something they desperately need to see. And if they're not in a place to communicate respectfully, it's okay to hit pause and revisit the conversation when they're more stable. You're not abandoning them. You're just protecting your own well-being so you can continue to be a source of support in the long run. How are you feeling about setting those boundaries? Does it feel doable, or do you think you might need some more strategies to handle those moments?

Thanks, Amber. Amber, yeah, that was helpful. That was a long answer, Bree. Didn't you think? I thought, Amber, I talked a long time, but I felt like she answered the question the way I would answer the question. What do you guys think? It's pretty cool because you could, you could continue that conversation. You could say, well, what about this? Well, what about that? You can kind of go back and forth, back and forth. You can give more backstory than just the few little sentences we gave it. And the more you give it and the more conversation you have with it, the more on target of an answer you're going to get. And it's pretty cool because if you were to like call it back tomorrow or something, it's going to remember the conversation you already had. So it remembers the backstory and you can pick up right where you left off. So Amber AI pretty much knows everything that I know about addiction recovery, everything I've ever Taught, said, wrote. Amber knows it, and she has a better memory than me. You can do things like you can chat. You can chat like text or call, and you can say, "Hey, I saw this video that you made like a long time ago, and I want to watch it again, or I want to send it to my son, and I can't think of what it's called, and it's about this and this and this," and she'll tell you what it's called. She'll tell you what the title is so you can get right to it. So she remembers better than I remember. And she gives you a long, more thorough answer than I could ever give you on a live call. So anyways, I'm super excited about it. If you want to try it out and you want to be a beta tester for the AI coaching, then click the link in the description and just put yourself on the waitlist. We're going to pick some people. And if we get Amber AI worked out, and once we get that, the kinks worked out, then we will probably have a Campbell and a Kim AI. That'll be cool too, right? Kind of excited. It feels super futuristic. All right, Bree, let's take some real life Amber questions. Are there any limitations on this approach? For my personal situation, I feel like it's inviting the person I'm thinking of to respond with blame or denial. Is there more to that question? I'm confused, Bree. Are there any limitations on this approach? For a personal situation, I feel like it's inviting the person I'm thinking of to respond like— or denial. Are you asking, are there any limitations on these techniques that we talked about earlier? Is that what you mean by approach? I think that's the part where I'm getting stuck. Are there any limitations? Sure, there are limitations. There's always limitations. But these techniques that I'm talking to you about today are the most likely to get you the best results. But even if you're trying all these things, you're using all these skills, and again, you see that it's not going well and things are getting tense, you need to walk away from the conversation. Another limitation would be don't try to have a serious conversation with someone when they're intoxicated. That never goes well, and they may not even remember it even if it did go well. So just don't do it at that time. There, I think there are limitations to any communication technique, but these, if you do it this way, you'll have the best chances of having some kind of productive conversation. Let's see, what is the best response when you're having a discussion with someone and they try to shift the topic so they can blame you for something at some other point in time? This Is a great question because it happens all the time. It's a manipulation technique. It's a redirection. And sometimes people realize they're doing it, like they're purposefully just redirecting you. But sometimes people aren't even quite aware that they're doing it. They're just upset because they feel like you're upset with them and they're just thinking of all the things they're upset with you about and they're just bringing it up. They don't, they don't, they're not purposely trying to manipulate, but they do it and it's a redirection. The best way to respond to that is to say something along the lines of, hey, you're right. That is an issue. Or you can say, you're right, I did do that and that wasn't great and we need to talk about that and I'm willing to listen to you on that. But right now, let's finish this discussion. So you just want to acknowledge that they have a point, but you want to say, we're going to come back to that and you're going to bring it back to the original conversation. Because most of the time it is just a distraction technique to get you off on something else. I have a whole video on this tactic. It's called DARVO, and you can take a look at that, and it talks about this whole process step by step of how this whole thing happens and what's going on there. What I want to say to him is I want to have a nice conversation with you at night before bed. He will get really happy, but he will be drunk when we talk. Then I get sad. Do it anyway. Um, he will get really— so he— so when you say to him, I want to have a conversation with you before bed, he's open to that idea? Is that what you mean when you say he will get really happy? Like, he's like, yeah, that sounds good. But then he drinks too much, and then, um, and then you get sad, and then you're not in the mood to talk anymore. That's what I think you're saying, Christina. I hope I'm interpreting that right. Do I do it anyway? I think I would probably pick a better, a different time. I know you want to have it before bed, but if you know he's going to be intoxicated, and then even if he has a conversation with you and he does fine, but you know he's intoxicated, you're going to be upset about it, I'm guessing, right? So you can say, you know, I love it when we can spend time together in the evening before bed and you're sober, you can say that. But if what you want is to really have some good connection communication time, then I don't want you to set yourself up for failure. If you know he's going to be drinking at night and it's going to upset you, then I would probably try to find another time. Like, is there, can we connect at lunch? Can we connect in the morning? Something like that. My partner is very close to finishing a 28-day program but wants to leave early. He said he didn't think the program has anything more to offer. I'm trying to get him to stay. What do I say? He wants to leave a week early. Good, Jennifer, you read my mind. That was going to be my question. Also, how can I support them when they get home? He's coming from a structured environment to very, very unstructured. Okay, I think I would probably ask you, Jennifer, is do you think— and I know you don't know, right? But like, what's your gut tell you as far as is he just trying to get the heck out of there because he just wants to come home and relapse and use it up and he's just saying whatever he has to say to get out? Or Do you get the gut feeling that maybe he has plateaued there? Maybe he has sort of gotten what he's going to get out of it, and what he is saying to you is legitimate. I know it's hard to know that, but my guess is— I think you said this was your husband, so my guess is you know him pretty well. So my guess is you probably have a gut feeling on this. If you feel like it's a legitimate, validated thing, then you can explore that with him. I wouldn't say, okay babe, I'll be right up there to get you. I don't know that I would jump in the car and go get you, but I would listen to what he has to say. And then I might say, you want to come home for these reasons? And then you might say, is there any reasons that you might want to stay? Is there any pros to staying or something like that? And get him to also talk about the other side. Another thing you can do in a situation like that is to say, Okay, but what do you— you can talk to him about what are your plans when you get home? Are you going to have some kind of aftercare plan and something like that? If you can get them to stay, talk them into it, I think that's better, but sometimes you just can't. And then the second part of your question is he's coming home from a very structured environment to a very unstructured environment. I have a whole video, actually, I think I probably have multiple videos on this topic, so you can get The whole download on it if you want to check those out. But the short version of it is, as much as you can, try to act normal. You're going to be feeling super uptight, Jennifer. You're going to be like walking on eggshells. You're going to be a nervous wreck, wondering, is he going to relapse? What's he doing? Is he being shady? All that kind of stuff. So what you don't want to do though is make every conversation out of your mouth about that topic. You don't want to, if it's the best that you can, you don't want to be bringing that nervous wreck, anxious energy, because like we talked about before, he's going to feel that. He's going to co-regulate with that and in a not good way. And so, um, I, I don't feel like you have to create a big structure for him. Like, I, like, sometimes families will create this whole thing where it's like, you got to go to so many meetings a week, and I've already arranged for the babysitter, and I've already Put this whole thing together. And a lot of times people don't like that. So unless he's asked you to do that, so it's up to him to bring the structure into his own recovery. How do you support him? You be kind and considerate and maybe you give him an extra, a little extra grace if he's a little bit more moody or if he's a little bit stressed, you can give him a little more grace, a little bit more breathing room or something like that. But it's not up to you to have to create some kind of structured recovery program. Like would be in an inpatient setting. So just take that pressure off of yourself. My addicted husband tries to read me abundantly. He says he feeds off of my emotions, like I can't have anything but joy, or he is asking what's wrong. He avoids mature conversations. I think that word abundantly, I must, must be the wrong word. He can't think or speak on anything, nothing negative that keeps his mind in a happy place and avoids accountability for things that needs to be discussed, even if approached lovingly. How do we get through? Um, he may have like a personality type that, that likes to compartmentalize a lot and tries to avoid any kind of negative emotion. That's what it sounds like. And so if he's the kind of person that tries to avoid negative emotion, coming at him negatively, even if it's lovingly, is probably going to trigger him and he's just going to try to avoid it, like just avoid the conversation or make light of it. One thing that you can try, I don't know the person, Crystal, but one thing I might try is to try to approach a difficult conversation with humor. Sometimes if you come at it lovingly, Like saying something like, I really care about you. I really want to be here to support you. That triggers a, oh my God, here we go, kind of feeling inside. But if you just have the conversation and use a lot of humor and just have it in what I call the drive-by nature, which is don't set this big formal time up and say, we need to talk or anything like that. Just in the car, just bring it up. And be light about it. It's the tone and energy that you bring when you bring it up. You can actually get him to talk about difficult things if you keep the energy a little bit up because he sounds like he freaks out, he panics, he gets anxious with negative energy. That's what I do a lot. And I work a lot with guys. And I think a lot of times that works well with men is to get them to have difficult conversations, but not in a way where they feel like I'm trying to make them cry or something. They're just going to freak out and shut down. You can see it in their eyeballs. Yeah, try using humor. Try using the drive-by approach. My loved one shuts down when I talk to him. I'm trying to get him to tell me how he feels so I can use the invisible intervention techniques and move forward. I'm stuck.

If you—

sometimes people, especially if it's a guy, if you say, how do you feel, it immediately sends up that defense mechanism like we were talking about with the person just before, Julie. Ask them what they think about. Say, what do you think about X, Y, or Z? And a lot of people are just more comfortable, especially guys, telling you what they think about things. It's just easier to explain than how they feel about things. If they're not the kind of person that verbalizes emotions easily, ask them what they And when they tell you what they think, you're going to be able to interpret how they feel by what they're thinking. So try that and see if that helps, Julie. All right, I think we are out of time. You guys ask great questions. I hope you're excited about Amber AI like I am. Don't forget about the other resources in the description, and I will see you guys next Thursday. We're live every Thursday at 1. Bye, everybody.