Steps For Families With Addicted Loved Ones

This is how to help an alcoholic loved one. Tips from an addiction specialist. If you're new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor, and I've been helping people with addictions for 20 years now. And in this video, I'm going to share with you what I've learned about how to bring them all the way from denial into taking steps, all the way into recovery. And of course, there's a lot of strategies and material here. So to simplify it, I've broken it down for you into four, five steps. Now, based on your situation, you may be past step one, but I always think it's most helpful to start in the beginning. And of course, when you're dealing with someone who has an alcohol use disorder, they usually start out in denial. Now, with alcohol, denial can actually be a little bit even trickier than with other substances, because with alcohol, people actually don't quite remember how bad they are or how bad things got when they were intoxicated. So almost every time I see someone who has an alcohol alcohol problem, they feel like their family is overreacting or making too big of a deal about it. They really and truly don't understand just how much the alcohol is impacting them, just how different they become when they're intoxicated. Not only do they not realize how much the alcohol is impacting them when they're under the influence, and they definitely don't understand how much the rebound from the alcohol is affecting them after the fact, as in like the next day and the days after. So. So getting someone out of denial is a big, huge first step. But there is a formula that you can use that actually works pretty well for getting someone out of denial. That formula is allowing the natural consequences to happen. Combined with this is really important empathy. Now, what most families want to do is they want to yell, scream, nag, preach, remind, lecture, threaten, ultimate, all the stuff, which is the opposite of the empathy thing. But then they want to fix all the natural consequence. Like. Like they want to make sure the person gets fired. They want to wake you up, make sure that you made it to work or class on time. They want to get you an extension so you can get that extra credit in so you don't fail. Most families want to fix the external or natural consequences, but be mad at the person. That is the worst combination. If you want to keep someone in denial, and that's the combination you want to use. But I know that's not you. You want to get your loved one out of denial. And taking steps towards change. So to do that, you have to allow those crappy things to happen. Otherwise, when you're telling that they're making a mistake, that they're messing up their life, they're looking at you like you're freaking crazy. Because they're like, my life is fine. Because they're not realizing that the only reason that they still have their job or school or the relationship is because you're pretty much, like, holding it together for them. So as painful as it is, you've got to let some of those balls drop. And just as importantly, when those balls drop, I know it's hard, but I want you to try to be empathetic and kind and understanding. When those balls drop, everything inside of you is going to want to say, I told you so, and why are you doing this? And why are you still drinking? And don't you. You love the drinking more than me or whatever it is you want to say. Do not say those things because what's happening is finally the consequences are happening. And if you say all those things, you're going to distract the person and then they're going to be focused on being mad at you and how you're so mean and you're so angry and you're not fair and critical and you're never happy and all that kind of things that they think, which is going to distract them from seeing that they made a really big mess and that it's going to be negated because you're going to distract. When you are kind and empathetic, it actually activates the learning center of someone's brain, which allows them to actually think through the situation. It allows the critical thinking part of their brain to kick in. And the chances that they're going to see it and wake up are a lot higher. Please use this formula. Trust me, I've done this for 20 years. I've tried a lot of different things. And this is the formula that works best. Now, if your loved one is in this stage and you're really serious about getting them out of denial and into recovery, then you might want to check out our invisible intervention program. Because in that program, I literally walk you through, step by step, exactly what to say, exactly what to do week by week by week. Setting goals is to get your loved one to move through these stages. Now, I will definitely put the link for that in the description, but let's move on to step number two. Step number two is all about building trust and credibility. I like to think of it like building up your credit Score because you know, you want to buy a house or something, you want to build up your credit score with your addicted loved one because your opinion doesn't matter at all if they don't care what you have to say. There are several reasons why they may not care what you have to say. Yes, they know you love them. That doesn't mean they want to listen to what you have to say. Because sometimes you love them is kind of annoying. It doesn't make them want to listen to you. It doesn't make you have credibility. What will make you have credibility is if they feel like you get them, you understand their situation. Now that doesn't mean you have to agree with all their choices. As a counselor, I don't agree with all their choices, but as long as I can make them feel like I understand them, I get them. I understand where they're coming from, the challenges that they face, then that creates a trusting relationship. And when I have a piece of advice to give or something to say, they're a lot more at apt to listen. So the key here is helping your loved one think that they get me, they understand my side of things. If you're doing step number one really well and you add in step number two and you've got some credibility, you're going to start getting somewhere. Because what's going to happen is the person is going to start to slowly see that, hey, I do have a problem now. At first they're not going to think it's a giant problem, like I'm not an alcoholic or anything, but they are going to think I need to cut it back or I need to take a break or I need to slow down. So the third step is to get them to take some sort of action now. Now probably shouldn't name it get them to, because you really don't have to get them to. If you're doing step one and step two appropriately, they're going to start doing this on their own. They're going to start talking about how they want to cut it back, slow down, ease off some kind of language like that. We call it change talk. If you want to know more about change talk, I'll put a link in the description and I have a quick cheat sheet of like change talk type of statements so you'll be able to recognize it if you hear it or see it or whatever. So they're going to have that change talk. Now you're going to be frustrated because whatever they're going to want to do is going to be not quite enough. They're going to have to take big major steps. So don't let yourself get frustrated by this. Allow it to happen and actually encourage it to happen. So when they say, I'm going to cut back, you say, you know what, I think that's a great idea. You know, what's your plan for that? What can I do to support you? You want to be on their side because you're still doing step one and step two. These steps are like juggling. It's not like you do one and then you're not doing one anymore and you do two and not doing two anymore, pulling them in like balls that you're juggling. So at this point, you're juggling these three balls. Now, the person may go around this step three several times. They may have several different bargains. Usually tell you to let them try it their way a few times because the first time that their way fails, there's going to be like a reason or excuse. And the second time their way fails, there's going to be another reason or excuse. But about the third time their way doesn't work, they're going to kind of know, okay, this just doesn't work. They may be reluctant to admit it to you out loud, but trust me, they're going to be thinking it. Now, as you're in this step three process, about the time you're on the second or third, try it my way. I want you to do this. This is what I'm going to call step four. I want you to go ahead and ask for the bigger step and I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that. What I want you to do is this. I want you to say, yeah, I think that's a great idea. Actually. I think that'd be super helpful. If that doesn't work, would you be agreeable to blank next time? Now you want to be thinking through, what do you want to put in that blank? You want to put in there? Talk to a counselor? Do you want to say stop for 30 days? Whatever it is, it's a next big step in the right direction. So when they're on that sort of third or fourth bargain where they're trying it their way and you're kind of thinking, okay, we know that's not going to work, it's okay. You still want to be kind and supportive, but you want to say, if that doesn't work, what do you think if we, you know, get some advice from someone? What do you think if we do a 30 day abstinence program, what do you think if we talk to the doctor about whatever. Because a lot of times they'll say, yeah, okay, that's fine. Especially when they're just about to start this next round of bargaining, go ahead and implant that. And then if things go sideways again, which I hate to tell you, but they probably will, it's okay. It's part of the process. Don't let it freak you out. Then this is when you can kind of call in your cards, call in that thing that you asked them to do. Now, in order for this to work, you have to have done those other three steps really well. If you have ruined your credibility, if you've got yourself back in the bad guy role, this might not work for you. And if you run into that, it's okay. If that happens, if it blows up on you and you get to this step and it just doesn't work, then I just want you to back up to whatever step you feel like you messed it up on and go back and you want to repeat that process. Remember, it's like juggling balls. This process works in most situations. The only situation it doesn't work in is when someone is so far off the rails, like they're so far gone, they're not functional, they know they're an addict, they're in denial, they don't even care, they're like way far gone. If that's the case, you need to skip all these steps and go straight to some other more intensive type intervention. And if you want to know more about making that decision, I want you to watch the video that I released last week. I will put it up here for you so you can watch that next. As always, there are more resources for you in the description. And if you feel like you need a little more guidance and hand holding in this process, then consider becoming a member. Because members get access to weekly live group coaching calls with our family recovery specialist. We can actually talk about your situation and ask questions and get feedback and get support and get access to a lot of other exclusive private content that only members get access to. The link for that is in the description as well. And I'll see you guys on Thursday for our live video at 1:00 Eastern, just like every Thursday. See you then.