Amber Hollingsworth presents a short coaching video about the most effective single thing to say to someone with an addiction: ask them, "What do you think?" She explains that this question reveals the person’s starting point and stage of change, which is essential for tailoring interventions rather than imposing one-size-fits-all solutions. Amber illustrates the point with a family-session anecdote where a lack of checking the addicted person’s perspective risked mistimed intervention, and she directs viewers to a playlist that walks through next steps for moving someone from denial toward recovery.
Chapters
This is the most perfect thing to say to someone who has an addiction. I am seriously telling you, if you say this one statement that I'm about to tell you, you will get their attention. So you need to get ready for it. Actually, you might want to stop and get a pen and paper and write this down, because that is how good it is. Alright, here we go. The one most powerful thing that you can say to someone who has an addiction is actually a question. And the question is, what do you think? Yes, you heard me right. The best thing to say to someone who has an addiction is to ask them what they think. Now, I think I might know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, but Amber, I already know what they think. And they are all wrong. They just don't get it. And if you are thinking that there's possibly a little truth in that statement, that maybe they don't get it, or maybe they're wrong about some things, but that actually doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they're wrong or they're right. What matters is what they think. And the reason that is so critically important is because when you know you have the starting point to help guide them in the right direction. I think we're onto something. You cannot start where you want to start because Most likely you're 10 miles down the road from where they are and you are not going to get their attention. When you, when you're 10 miles down the road, get our communications back up, whatever you have to do, you gotta back up and you gotta find out where they're starting from. And you gotta use that information to help walk them through the process. If you really, really want to help someone who's struggling with addiction to drugs or alcohol. This actually became really, really clear to me in a recent family session. Campbell and I were actually doing this family session. And so it was me, her, the person with the substance abuse problem, and their parent. And just so you kind of get the context, this person, the person with the addiction, like all of the secrets and lies and stuff had just very recently come unraveled and the whole thing had kind of shown itself. How it showed itself was because other people, family and friends of this person with the addiction, they told the mom about what was really going on. Now, as you can imagine, this young person was pretty dang upset about the situation. Not happy at all. They kept saying, but you didn't even come to me. You didn't ask me what was going on. You just listened to them. Now, secret confession Here, when that person said that, I was actually thinking about, I was thinking, well, to be honest, the last person you want to ask to find out the truth about what's going on is probably the person with the addiction. I mean, let's face it, the credibility's not always that great. I know that's not a nice thing to say, but it's kind of true, right? But the thing of it is that this young person actually kind of had a really good point. You got a good point there, Ronnie. Now, it's not so much that the mom should have took everything this person said to her and just believed everything. Gotta say, I was involved in helping do that when I probably should have backed up a little bit. Everybody was scurrying around, making all these plans, planned to have this big old intervention thing and boy this person into treatment. But there was one problem. What? Well, it's something kind of small, but it might be a big problem. No one stopped to check to find out what that person think. You want to know why that's really, really important? Because what it tells you is what stage of change that the person is actually in. And let me tell you something, if you put someone in big cat daddy treatment when they're not in the right stage of change for that, then you're probably going to end up wasting a lot of time, money, energy, and heartach. Because timing is really important when it comes to making a decision like that. Don't waste your time, sis. Now, of course, there are more steps involved in getting someone, like, out of denial and into recovery or into treatment, if that's what needs to happen. But asking them what they think is going on and how they feel about it is the absolute perfect place to start. Now, naturally, you'll want to know what the next steps are. Don't worry, I've got a whole playlist that is going to walk you through this process step by step. How to get someone out of denial, get the help they need, and into recovery. I'm going to put it right up here. All you have to do is click it.
