The Right Way To Motivate Someone to Recovery

This is how you convince someone to get help for an addiction. If you'll follow these guidelines, you will get the result that you want. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor, and I've been helping people and their families overcome addiction for, like, 22 years now. It's a long time, right? Over those years, I've learned a lot about motivating people. Because honestly, the hard part of my job isn't telling people how to get sober. It's getting people to want to get sober. That's where my skills and expertise lies. And I'm going to teach you all my tips and tricks. You might want to go get a pen or pencil and a piece of paper and write some of this stuff down. Welcome to our channel. Put the shovel down. We're here to help make sure you are always five steps ahead of addiction. If that's something you're interested in, hit that subscribe button. All right? This is like, literally the most important thing of all the things I'm about to tell you. The golden, golden rule of how to convince someone to get help for their addiction is be very, very mindful of your tone of voice. You have to be calm, cool, collected. I like to use the word casual. For me, I like to use a lot of humor. If that's not your style, I probably wouldn't insert it at the last minute to negotiate this deal because it's going to sound weird coming from you. But if you do typically use a lot of humor, then go ahead and throw it in. What you don't want to come across is any kind of fear or animosity or. Or anger or frustration or impatience. Any of those signals. It's not just what you say. It's really more than tone. Like, think about tone. More than just your voice. That's definitely included, but like your whole body tone, your whole body language, like your. All your energy you're putting out there. You gotta get that right? Chris Voss, the hostage negotiator, you know, the guy that wrote that really cool book, he calls the voice, the late night radio show host voice. That calm, cool, collected voice that is the one that. That you want to have. If you bring any other kind of energy than that, you are immediately, even subconsciously, going to be hitting their fear reflex, which means you're going to slam into the brick wall of. No, back off of me. Get out of my space. Quit trying to control me. That's the kind of response you're going to Get. But if you watch your tone, you're going to get them to open that door for you. Now, I probably should have said this first, but for those of you who watch me all the time, I'm going to just assume that you already know this. You don't try to have this conversation right out the gate. You have to, like, make sure they're out of denial, that they know they have a problem and all that stuff. If you don't know how to do that. If you're new to this channel, check out my playlist called Getting someone out of Denial or Motivating Someone. There's really great playlists. You got to do all those things first. I call that setting the stage. This is like closing the deal right here. This is the moment, this is the conversation where you're going to try to get the commitment. Your goal here is not to push someone into treatment. No one likes to be forced into anything. And the moment we sense events that we're being forced, we tend to put our guard up. For example, let's say you're going to the car dealership because you want to buy a car. You literally are going there. You're like, I'm coming home with a car today. Your whole intention is to buy a car. But the car salesman comes up to you, and you feel like they're going to start pushing you. What do you do? Immediately, you get your guard up. You start being like, no, no, thank you. I don't need your help. I don't want to talk to you. Because there's this, like, fear that, oh, my gosh, they're going to say something, and then they're going to push me into something that I don't want. Even though when you think about it, it's kind of ridiculous, you know, like, still in charge of us. But it's that automatic kind of reflex about not wanting to be pushed. In fact, you can even go so far as to say, listen, I'm never going to make you do anything you don't want to do, so you don't have to worry. You can literally say it out loud, or you can say, hey, I'm not here to put pressure on you. You can even say that, right? So any of those things that you can do, it's in your tone. It's in the way you're saying it. It's in the way you're handling yourself. You are not going to push. Your job is to get them to open that door. Now let's move on to some of these other rules. Of convincing someone to go to treatment. Once you hear all these, you're going to put it together and you're going to see that this really does work. Now, this next rule should have been like a pre step, if you will, but somewhere in the process, not during the conversation, but before the conversation, I want you to have made a list of all of their motivators, things that are motivating them to make a change, and all of their roadblocks. You do not have to agree with the motivators. You do not have to agree with the roadblocks. This ain't about you. This is about them. I want you to be listening closely for what are the reasons they want to change and what might be standing in their way. For example, maybe a reason they want to change is they're tired of feeling hungover. Maybe a reason they want to change is they're going to be in big legal trouble if they don't. Maybe they want to change because they can see that their kids are noticing what's wrong. Whatever their reasons are, those are important. You need to sort of capture them. In fact, I think it's even smart to even like, write them down somewhere. But you got to keep them hidden because if they come across, that's going to be kind of weird. So if you're going to write them somewhere, which I do think is helpful, you just keep them somewhere away. Also make a list of things that are going to roadblock them. This is going to come out later in your negotiation skills, so you want to know what these are. So, for example, if it's, I hate meetings because I don't like all that religious crap, if it's, I don't want to talk to counselors because I don't want to talk about no bunch of feelings and stuff, who's that going to help? If it's, I don't want to go to treatment because I can't be taking all that time off of work. These are the things that I mean when I say roadblocks. If it's, I can't go do that because there's no one here to take care of my dog. You need to identify these roadblocks because eventually going to talk about it in a second, you're going to have to figure out how to address these roadblocks so that you can kind of smooth the path for them a little bit. Now, one of the best, easiest, and most effective ways to really understand where someone's coming from, to be able to identify those motivators and roadblocks is to use a lot of active listening skills. And I do have some videos on that. But I'm going to give you the basics right here. This is going to be real easy. Here's your three sentences. You say something like, it sounds like fill in the blank. It seems like fill in the blank. It looks like fill in the blank. And you're just literally repeating back to them, rephrasing back to them what they're saying to you. And you're either going to be correct and they're going to say, yeah, that's right. Or you're going to be like, no, that's not it. It's really more like this. And either way, it's a win because all you're really trying to do here is you're trying to help them feel understood. And in the background you're collecting some information. You're going to use it later. And if there's one you're going to blow up. This is probably the one. In fact, this is the one that most people blow up. Even people that have been watching this channel for a long time, they've been working the plan. This is the one you might mess up. I'm going to call it. Don't mislabel their intentions. Let me be more specific. Don't assign a negative intention to the things that they're doing or have done. Do assign a positive intention to the things that they're doing or have done. For example, let's say you're dealing with someone and they've been in this I'm going to do it on my own phase. They've been refusing to get help. You can say, you know, you're just avoiding this. You don't really want to do the work. That's a negative intention. Or you could say, dude, you've been working really hard at this. Like, wow, you've tried all these things. I can tell that you're really committed to it. Let's say, for example, they're sneak drinking and they're snake using. Right? I know you don't like that. We got other videos on that. But in this negotiation, what I want you to do is I just want you to say, and I know that's because you're really just trying to protect us. Because in their mind, that's what they're trying to do. Maybe their intention is they just want to be able to relax after work. You can say, I know you're just really trying to relax after work. I mean, you have a stressful job. It's hard. I get it like that's, that's reasonable to want to relax. You're going to stop attacking their intentions because probably not you, but you know, some of the other listeners, they do things like, all you care about is where you don't care about us. You just come home, you just drink, or you're putting your drugs and alcohol in front of your family, you're putting a negative intention on it and it doesn't go over well. Guess what happens when you do that? They get fighting, man, they fight back. If they're a confrontational kind of person, they're going to verbalize that to you. But even if they're not a confrontational type of person, they might say it to you, but I guarantee you they are fighting you in their head. So one way or the other, it's not going to work. Now, you might be thinking, well, what if their intention isn't good? So what? What if their intention isn't good? Who's going to argue with you when you label it as a good intention? Well, I know you really meant this. I know you really trying to protect your son, or no, you really didn't want this bad thing to happen or whatever. I don't think they're going to say, oh, no, I wasn't trying to intend to do that good thing. They're actually, even if it's not totally true, you actually spark a little serotonin, a little good brain chemicals in there, and we're setting the stage neurochemically, psychologically, for them to open that door. Remember what your goal is here. Now this next one is another one that you might not have been doing just exactly right because you might think, oh, I don't want to say that. That's going to take us in the opposite direction. This one I'm going to call Verbalize the drawbacks. Yes. I want you to actually say what the drawback to any one kind of piece of help, don't ignore it. Because what happens is they're thinking it, right? And if you don't acknowledge it or say it, that's all they're going to think. They can't get past it. For example, if you're trying to get someone to go to like Big Daddy inpatient treatment, then they're thinking in their mind, I can't take that amount of time off work. So what do most people do? They say things like, look, this is more important. You don't need to put work in front of this, like your whole life's going to fall apart. You're going to Lose your job anyway, if you don't do this, don't do that. I want you to do the opposite of that. Say, yeah, I don't know. It's kind of hard because you got to work, right? I know you need to go to work. And taking off that much time from work, that's. That's a problem. I get it. It's a big thing. I want you to think about those roadblocks, those resistance. You know, you got them on the list, right? You got them on the list in your head. And I want you to say that out loud. I want you to acknowledge them. Like, yeah, I know you're going to be worried about what's going to go on with your dog, or, I know you're afraid to miss your kid's birthday or whatever it is. I want you to just say it. If you don't say it, they're going to be think it, and it's going to be such a giant thought in their head. They're not going to be able to think past that thought. If you'll just say it, they'll feel heard, they'll feel understood, and they can quit screaming it at you mentally. Now, the next rule when it comes to convincing someone to get help for their addiction is whatever their efforts have been, you always positively reinforce it. This is another one a lot of people mess up. Not you, but some people, right, they want to say, well, you only did this or you won't do that. It's. They're always looking at what the person hasn't done instead of what the person has done. Always validate and acknowledge any steps they've taken. Even if that step is just their willingness to have a conversation with you about it. Right? Even if it's just a willingness to be honest with you about it. Even if it's, they went to one counseling session, even if it's they tried to go three days without it. Whatever the small amount of step that they have taken in the right direction, you need to nurture that. That is a seed that you want more of and want to pour some water on it, right? You want to grow that seed. The last thing you want to do is tell someone they're not doing enough. Once you start putting together these things, you're not pushing them. You're using your kind voice. You're verbalizing that. There are some roadblocks here, right? You're understanding what's motivating them and what's holding them back. Once you've got all these things in place, the whole Scenario starts to open up an entirely different kind of conversation. Now this next one is when we come down to the wire. We're literally asking the question here. Most family members, they kind of mess this up because they say something like, well, you agree to go to treatment. They ask a really big hard question that maybe has a big open ended or it's too hard of a decision to make. You are dealing with someone who is in extreme decision fatigue because they're trying to live their regular life like the one you know about. Plus simultaneously they are juggling about 400 knives in the background that you don't even know about. They're doing this tap dance of constant, constantly feeding this addiction and getting more and sneaking it and hiding it and coming down from it and planning and scheming and being resentful for you and all these other things that you don't even know is going on. Like the internal life is off the hook. Like I'm telling you, there's so much going on. So if you throw these big giant hard questions at them, it's not going to go well. So ask a yes or a no question, preferably even a no question, believe it or not. Or you can give multiple choice, right? Would this be better or would that be better? When you ask questions in that way, it actually forces the person's brain immediately into problems solving and they start thinking through the answer. Whereas if you throw a big giant monster kind of question on them that requires a lot of thought and thinking through, their brain just gets overwhelmed. And you might get the automatic like, no, I just don't hear it. The overwhelmed, the shutdown because of the decision fatigue. I'm kind of like that when I go to restaurants, right? Like when I go to a restaurant and they hand me these giant menus, I just get totally overwhelmed. I either look around and see what everybody else is getting and just order that because it looks good. Or I'm like, if there's pictures on the menu, I'll pick something in one of the pictures because that's easier to decide. Or I'll just go with like a classic thing that I always eat because my brain just cannot process all of it. It starts to get decision fatigue overload. And you are dealing with someone who is always in decision fatigue overload. Chris Voss, the hostage negotiator, he says to get a no from them. And the way you might do that would be something like would it be ridiculous if. Or would it be terrible if. Or would you really hate it if. And throw something out there? Because they're either going to be like, no, it wouldn't be that bad, or they're going to be like, yeah, I would really not like that, but this over here would be better. It's a way of sort of reflexively tricking their brain into giving you an answer of some sort. Now, when it comes to giving them options, we're going to go back to remembering their roadblocks, their likes, their dislikes. For example, if you know, they hate 12 step meetings because they don't like the religious stuff, or they hate support groups because they don't want to talk about their business in front of people, or they don't like counselors that want to talk about feelings or drama or childhood. They hate all that. Whatever their preferences are, their reluctance is whatever that is, I want you to plan around it and I want you to do something like say, listen, I know you can't just take off a month of work. So actually I found this like treatment place that, I don't know, maybe you hate it, maybe not, but they let you take your laptop and keep your phone there. I want you to give some options that take into consideration some of their big major roadblocks. And all the while you're sort of weaving in their positive motivations, because I know you're trying and like you're 90% there. You're almost there. Like we're just like 10% away. And you're putting that positive intention there. You're putting their positive motivations in there. You're planning around their roadblocks. You are trying your best to make this absolutely easy. You're not overwhelming them with 400 decisions. Make it as easy for them as possible. Because trust me, they already have a lot of resistance and they're already kind of scared to death to do it. You don't want to put a lot more obstacles in their way. You want to clear as many obstacles as absolutely possible and you want to be positively validating all along the way. All right, here's a little bonus for you. If you're doing all these things and that you find that someone is still reluctant, then you can ask for a short term commitment. So, for example, if you're, let's say you're asking someone to go to counseling, what you can say is, hey, how about just go three times and if you still don't like it, then we'll figure something else out, right? So you're asking for that short term commitment. The only time where you have to be a little careful about this is when you're asking someone to go to like 30, 60 or 90 day treatment because there is a point usually in the first couple of weeks actually where they're going to hit the wall and they're going to have this scramble reflex and they're going to want to back up and leave. And it's not the worst thing ever. If you just deal with that then. But you don't want to like do something like promise to give someone a car or something like that if they'll just go to two sessions or they just go to two weeks. Don't do that. But what you do is you can ask for a short term commitment because in the person's mind it's like, okay, well that's not that bad. And again, they don't feel pushed, they feel like they have that door on the way out. Like for example, when I ask people to try out different like support groups and stuff, I say listen, you're probably not going to like a lot of these. You know, this one's like this and this one's like this and you may like this about this one, but you may not like that. So I'm going to say all the good and all the bad. That way they know I'm being totally straight up and real with them. And then I'm going to say, hey, why don't you try them on three times you come back and tell me which ones you hate, which ones you like. We're going to not, we're not going to do any of the things that don't work for you because that's was wasting our time. We're only going to do the things you like and the things that work. And when you say something like that to people, they don't feel like they have to have their guards up all the time. They don't have to protect themselves, which allows them to be a lot more open to options. I bet some of you been guilty of doing the opposite of some of these suggestions. Guess what? I've been guilty of doing the opposite of all of these suggestions and I still mess it up every now and then. You don't have to be perfect. But what I'd like you to do is first of all in the comments below, if you're guilty, put the word guilty in the comments below. It's just like a little confession. Be like, yes, me, just sort of raise your hand or put the word guilty down there and that way I'll know I'm not alone. As always, there's more links in the description and up Next, more information on how to get someone out of denial.