Amber Hollingsworth (YouTube) advises people supporting addicted loved ones to tailor communication and interventions to the loved one’s personality. She outlines recommended approaches for several personality types — direct/blunt (use direct, succinct confrontation), conflict-avoidant/people-pleasing (keep conversations casual, brief, and set concrete actions like appointments), highly suspicious/trust-issue individuals (be transparent and aboveboard), and caring/helpful self-image types (appeal to their values rather than shaming). She also references a mini-course called Recoveryou for identifying personality types and building strategic plans.
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If you're trying to get through to an addicted loved one or even support an addicted loved one, it's super important to take into account their personality, to use what you know about your addicted loved one to make decisions and be strategic. As you know, on this channel, we are all about staying five steps ahead of addiction. And I give you guys all the best practices when it comes to helping an addicted loved one. But every situation is unique and a little different, and we need to take those differences into account. For example, is your loved one very avoidant? Are they super, super confrontational? Do they have a lot of trust issues? This is what I mean when I'm talking about those individual differences. The other day I was talking to someone and our conversation really did remind me of just how important taking these factors into consideration really are. I was talking to this person about their loved one and they were telling me that their loved one was in long term recovery and had been doing really, really great. But something had happened recently that made the person I was talking to think maybe there's some trouble brewing here. They just noticed some things thought were a little odd or a little different that was giving them some concern and they weren't really sure how to approach the situation. So I was talking through it with this person and we were kind of like halfway down the road of developing a plan when all of a sudden this person just told me about their loved one. But then in the conversation, it kind of came out that the loved one that you were trying to help and support was actually a really direct person. Actually, this person was not shy about uncomfortable conversations at all. They were the person in the family that went straight at things. Now, once I had this piece of information, I said, oh, I'm really glad you told me that. Hold on a second. Let's map this plan out. My typical advice is not to come at someone head on. That usually doesn't work. But this is one of those exceptions. People tend to like to be talked to the same way that they talk. So if you're dealing with somebody that's super direct, they usually like to be talked to back super direct. And if you're sort of wishy washy or tiptoe around the subject, it might just irritate them and make them just trust you even more. So if your loved one is sort of very direct, they always say what's on their mind. They don't sugarcoat things. They're just kind of blunt and to the point. Then I want you to be like that. Now, I still don't want you to harp about it on and on and on and going about it forever, but I just want you to say everything you think, but I just want you to deal with it directly. So, for example, in this story where this person was worried about their loved one and this person's really direct, then, then I say, well, you just kind of have to come at it head on and say, hey, you're being sketchy. What's up with that? I saw this the other day. Is everything all right? What's going on? Just directly come at it. When you're dealing with a person who would themselves directly come out of situation. Now, if you have a loved one who's more sort of conflict avoidant, maybe they're a bit distant and the moment anything gets uncomfortable, they start getting super shifty. They just avoid it, maybe even get passive aggressive sometimes, then you're going to want to deal with them a little bit differently. You're not going to want to come at them head on because it's going to get their wall to come up super quick. So if you're dealing with someone who really hates uncomfortable conversations, you want to work really hard to make sure the conversation is not uncomfortable. You want to keep it casual, you want to keep it light. You want to teach them that, hey, we can talk about this and it doesn't have to be weird or awkward, uncomfortable. And you don't want to keep those conversations going on very long. I would say probably in almost all situations, you don't want to keep the conversation going on very long because the longer you talk, the more chance that you're going to hit some kind of trigger or something that's going to make them defensive. They could shut down on you, they could get nasty with you, depending on the personality type, but you want to keep those conversations kind of quick. Now, another little thing to know about someone who's sort of a people pleaser and sort of avoidant. I actually find that they're the most difficult ones to deal with. Not that they're difficult to interact with because they're not. They're pleasant, they're easy to talk to. You know, they get along with everyone, but they're really hard to get to make a choice, to make a hard choice and to have a hard conversation. So it can be kind of hard to sort of pin them up. It can be difficult for them to decide where they stand on a situation and take big action. So if your loved one is like that, there may come a point where you say, hey, it's time for you to do something about this. I made an appointment for you, here's what time it is now. And then if they don't say hell no, and if they don't say hell no, I'm not going, or you know, forget that, I'm not going, then you just leave the appointment. This is where it comes in. Because you got to know the personality of the person that you're dealing with. If you really want to go deeper into this, we actually teach this in our little mini course called recoveryou, which will help you identify your personality type and your loved one's personality type. In fact, you can kind of do this together. It's actually kind of fun because there's no bad personality type or good personality type. But once you identify your personality types, it will help you understand the core motivators, the triggers, the fears. What's the best way to interact with someone? And what I really like about that mini course is it lets you assess yourself and them. That way you can look at the situation of, you know, is this person very confrontational but I'm super people pleasing or is there a different kind of dynamic going on there and that helps you really see the big picture and get a strategic plan. I'll put a link in the description in case you want to learn more about that. But I want to cover just a couple of more personality issues in this video to help you think through your situation. Let's say you have an addicted loved one who has a lot of trust issues. They're kind of suspicious all the time. They have like a really strong sketch eye. When you're dealing with someone like that, it's of utmost importance to be very above board. You want to be transparent about things. Don't be sneaky, don't be spying, don't be trying to do anything underhanded. And for sure, no matter what you do, don't talk about them behind their back. That's going to make their radars go up and it's going to make all their defenses come into play. Now obviously no one likes that. I don't suggest that you talk about someone behind their back just in general, but you want to be very, very careful about it when it comes to this kind of situation. If something's going on behind the scenes and they're very skeptical and watchful need to bring that to the surface. The more you can be honest about what's happening and what your motives are, the more they'll trust you. And if you're not upfront honest, their little untannies are definitely going to feel that out. Now, another kind of person that you could be dealing with is maybe you're dealing with someone who tends to be a very helpful person, a very caring person, a very loving person, a person that sees themselves as a really good person. If you're dealing with someone like that, then you need to use that information to help you get through to them. What you don't want to do is you don't want to try to convince them that they're actually not a great person, that they're actually hurting the people around them, that they're actually being irresponsible or making bad choices because they're going to really reject that. That does not fit with their self image. Because a lot of times whatever's happening, it's their attempt to do better, it's their attempt to maybe be a caretaker or do more. And even though that can result in hurting other people, they're not going to want to see it that way. For example, let's say you're dealing with maybe a mom or a grandma who, you know, runs the house, takes care of 10 kids, you know, cooks all the meals, does the laundry, but maybe they're drinking way too much. You don't want to come at person and tell them that they're an evil, awful person because they're going to know that's not true because they're not an evil, awful person, you know, or that they're screwing things up. It's just not going to work. This is what I mean when I say you got to really think about the kind of person that you're dealing with. Are there other personality types or traits that you would like to hear about? If so, leave that in the comments below and maybe we can make a follow up video and talk more specifically about how to deal with people with different kinds of traits.
