🛑STOP letting your LOVED ONE'S ADDICTION, hold you HOSTAGE! ! 🛑

If you've got an addicted loved one and you feel like their addiction just runs the show, controls your life or controls the whole family's life, then you're in luck, because this video is for you. Because we're going to talk about how to not let addiction run all over you anymore. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you're watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated to helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you're always five steps ahead of it. Okay, here's the deal. If you feel like addiction is running the show or that your addicted loved one is running all over you constantly and they have no respect for your boundaries, then probably one of two things is happening. The first thing that could be happening is that you're not trusting your instincts, is that you're not allowing yourself to. To see the truth about what's going on. You know, like when they ask you for money, or when they constantly have this crisis or that crisis, or when they have all these excuses for why they were late or didn't show up to the family event, you know what's going on. It's not that you don't have the instinct. It's that you're not allowing yourself to trust your instinct. And probably the reason for that is you have some kind of subconscious fear about what that might mean, about some hard decisions and choices that you might be forced into if you were to acknowledge what' really happening. So step number one is trust your instincts. And if you really feel like you just don't have a radar for that, then make sure you watch my entire series on manipulation, lies, hiding, because after watching those videos, you're gonna see it coming before it even happens. Now, reason number two, why your addicted loved one is running all over you and not respecting your boundaries isn't because you need to put your foot down harder. It's not because you need to tell them what they can and can't do, or definitely not, because you need to make kind of contract. If you feel like that's what's happening. If you feel like you're being constantly ran over and taken advantage of, the real root of the issue is your fear. Some sort of fear is holding you hostage, and that fear is causing you not to respect your own boundaries. It's not really a matter of, you know, them being disrespectful, them crossing your boundaries. It's a matter of you respecting yourself enough to uphold your boundaries. Let's talk about what Some of those fears might be because if you can identify what, what fear's holding you hostage, then you might can confront it and get on the other side of it. Common fear number one that holds families hostage is the fear of conflict. Because many of us have been thoroughly trained by our addicted loved one not to cause problems or make waves. Because one of the manipulation tactics is to blow up, cause a scene, have a meltdown, either start a big argument, or fall to tears and fall to pieces. Basically, they cause some sort of crisis. And your fear of that crisis can absolute you from holding your boundary, from bringing things up, from dealing with the situation, because it becomes easier to just let it go. And eventually you spend your whole life walking on eggshells, just trying not to upset the person. Fear number two, maybe you're being held hostage because of your fear of embarrassment. You don't want to make waves because you don't want other people to know about it. Because you don't want your parents or your in laws or your neighbors or your friends from church to know about this problem. And so you just keep letting the addiction hide in the dark. Let's face it, you're worried about what people are gonna think when the whole mess comes out. The problem with this is, is that addiction lives in darkness and lies. And once you turn the light on it, it goes away so much faster because you got to think of it like bacteria. There has to be certain conditions present for it to thrive and grow. And for addiction, that living in lies and darkness is the conditions for addiction to continue. And a third fear that you may be really struggling with, in fact, this one absolutely paralyzes some families. It's the fear that your loved one is going to get hurt or die or hurt someone else. And unfortunately, I can't tell you that that's not going to happen. Those are some of the realities of addiction. But allowing that fear to hold you hostage and to be the basis of which you're making important decisions, it's just not a good idea. Because you may feel like, well, if I let them live in my house, then I know that they're safe. You may feel like, well, if I give them this 20 bucks, then I know they won't go out and sell drugs for it. You may think, well, if I stop at the liquor store and buy their alcohol on the way home, then at least I know that they won't go out driving for more and be drunk driving. The problem here is that that's giving you a really false sense of safety because the Truth of the matter is, is bad things can happen to your loved one right in your house, right in your living room, in their bedroom upstairs. So if you feel like you have to leave them in your house because it's keeping them safe, that's not necessarily true. If you're giving them money to get substances with, and you think, well, if I give them the money, they won't have to do these other bad things, chances are they're taking your money for drugs and alcohol, and they're doing those other bad things too. Now, sometimes your loved one will actually just outright use this as a manipulation or a threat. They'll say something like, well, if you don't, then it's going to force me to have to do this. And that's what I call emotional blackmail. Essentially, at this point, I want you to think of it like you're negotiating with terrorists. That's what's happening here. Because that's exactly what's happening when you're making decisions based out of fear. Now, an ultimate fear that you're probably struggling with is a fear of living life without your loved one. Now, that could be this fear of what life would be like for you if your loved one passed away. That could be what life would be like for you if you had to divorce them or if you had to ask your child to leave your home and that they couldn't come back. And essentially, you're scared to death of what life's gonna look like without that person. Well, I'm gonna have to give you a really hard truth. This one's gonna be a little bit difficult. Ready? The truth of it is, you haven't had your loved one there in a long time. Now, yes, your loved one is still in there, but what you're dealing with is addiction on a daily basis. So the truth of it is, is having to live without your loved one in your life, it just feels like they're there. Now, that doesn't mean I'm telling you to give up, kick them out, divorce them, you know, kick them to the curb. That's not what I'm telling you at all. I just don't want you held hostage by these fears. Because the truth of the matter is all those things that you're fearing and that you think you're keeping from preventing, you're really just not. Because unfortunately, you're already in the middle of all those storms that you felt feel like you're keeping at bay. Anytime you're making decisions out of a fearful place, it's probably going to be a bad decision. The key to your recovery, as in family recovery, is to make strategic decisions and to make those decisions from a place of genuine love, care and concern, which is what we're going to talk about in the next video.