The Stages Of Change People With Addictions Go Through

I get the question all the time. How do I know if my loved one is really ready to change? I mean, parents ask me this, spouses ask me this, especially when they're about to make a big decision about whether or not to stay or go or kick them out or let them stay or pay for expensive treatment. There's a lot of reasons why you might want to know. Do they really mean it? Is this the time? Are they ready to change? And that's what we're going to cover in today's video. I'm actually going to teach you a real counselor technique that we use that counselors get taught and some counselor classes and stuff like that so that you can use this at home. And the part of I'm going to teach you today specifically is how to know exactly what to listen for is what we call change talk, how to identify change talk. And in some other video and in some other videos, I actually go into this in much more detail, especially in our family recovery academy, about what to do with the change talk. But today depends on how much time we have. We will for sure, you will definitely understand how to identify it, how to know it when you hear it, and maybe a little bit about what not to do when you hear it, which is probably as important, if not more, as what to do when you hear it. All right, now, before I teach you this skill, I just want to say this about it. It is very simple. I mean, you're gonna be like, wow, Amber, you had to get a master's degree for that. And here's the thing. It's not that what I'm gonna teach you is complicated by any means. It's really simple, but it's very difficult to pull off. Not because the technique is hard, but because you have to. Hey, cj. But because you have to override your emotions to do this. And so in most cases, it probably is better to have your loved one seeing a trained kid counselor, professional recovery coach or something. But sometimes you just can't get them there, or sometimes you need a little help getting them there. And sometimes maybe you just want to augment what they are doing with their counselor. So the technique I'm going to teach you today is actually something from a model that sometimes substance abuse counselors learn called motivational interviewing. And it's this idea of, how do you take someone who might be reluctant, or most people say resistant, or you might even call it in denial? How do you take someone like that and move them to change? Because the family's already told them they need to change. They've already had a lot of consequences. Like there's been a lot of regular life stuff and the person still hasn't changed. And so in the idea of motivational interviewing, the thought is the motivation is inside of that person. There is some motivation. And if you can just reach in there and grab it and pull it forward. And most people make the mistake of trying to sort of shove motivation at someone, tell someone why they should do something, tell someone why they're destroying the family. You know, they give you all these reasons, positive reasons, negative reasons, why you need to change. But the more you push on someone to change, the less likely they're going to be to change. Because even if they want to change, when you feel pushed to do something, your wall comes up and you immediately. People don't want to be controlled. They want to have the time to think about things so they can make a decision about what's best for them. So even if they really do want it, if you start pushing it, they're going to wall up and you're going to be actually slowing down the process. Okay, so the first thing to understand about this concept is the two ideas about something called change talk. Those are things that people say that indicate that they're thinking something is going on in there, the wheels are turning, and there is a little seed of motivation, willingness and desire to change. We're going to come back to that. But there is also on the flip side of that, something in sort of the clinical word for is called sustain talk. And what that means is these are thoughts, ideas and things people say that actually indicate that they want to stay exactly where they are. Most people call this resistance treatment, resistant, denial, stuff like that. But what's actually going on here is a person has ambivalence where they sort of feel double sided about change. They kind of know they need it on one hand, but are resisting it or reluctant to do it on the other hand. And instead of seeing people as bad, in denial, unwilling some of those things that especially we say in addiction and recovery, if you can start to see it differently, if you can start to see that they do have two sides of themselves sort of at war, what you can do is you can learn what buttons to press and what not to press. Most of the time when people hear sustained talk, that's what the other person comments on. Like for example, not too awful long ago, I had a young adult guy in my office and he was telling me that part of him really wanted to stop smoking weed, but the other part of him, felt like he would never have any friends. He had nothing to do, and his whole life would be so boring. And my instinct is to start to conquer and sort of address that your life will be boring, you won't have any friends thing. And I actually made this mistake. In fact, I make this mistake all the time in counseling because. Because it's our natural instinct. So if you do this, don't worry, you can catch yourself doing this, and you can actually backpedal out of it if you realize. Because you'll know that you've sort of taken the wrong stance. Because you watch their body language and you can see them sort of shut off, stop listening, or start arguing with you, or even depends on how far you're pushing, they can. Or how sort of oppositional they are. They may get nasty with you and start a big fight or something like that. And when we do this, whether we're counselors or family members or friends or whoever, there are some things that we do that actually cause more reluctance. It actually causes a person to stop and stay in active addiction longer and resist the change. And so those things are. I got my little list here. Those things are if you move into solving the problem for them, if you move into telling them what they should and shouldn't do, if you move into this sort of space of being, I'm the expert and I know what's best, and you need to listen to me. Or if you. Or especially if you move into any kind of shame, blame, criticize. If you come at somebody in those kind of ways, you're going to get more wall. And the key is always about getting that wall down first and then getting in there and finding those little seeds of motivation, wherever they are, and pulling them forward and putting some water on the top and growing them, making them bigger until the person actually gets ready to change. Okay, so that's sustained talk versus change talk. Now let's talk about the change talk category. In motivational interviewing, they use this acronym called darn. D, A, R, N. The D stands for desire. The A stands for ability. The R stands for. The R stands for reasons, and the N stands for needs. So you're looking for anything the person says in these four categories. Let me give you an example. I really need to stop. I really need to stop drinking all the time so that I can get my driver's license back so I can drive and go to work and work my job. But honestly, I'm gonna have to pay so much for insurance. I just don't even know if it's worth it. Okay, so I want you to hear those two segments. There's a little bit of change talk in there and a little bit of sustained talk in there. There's the I really need to quit drinking and focus on getting my driver's license so I can go to work. That's the change talk. And then there's this other piece. But I might as well not even do it because insurance gonna be so doggone expensive, I can't afford it anyway. When you hear that statement, your brain is immediately gonna want to address this insurance thing because you might be. Here's. Well, I don't know what you're thinking, but I can tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, well, it still worth it. You need to go to work, you need to feel better. And I'm thinking of all these reasons why they need to just not be worried about the insurance thing or that there are these solutions to overcome the insurance thing. Or maybe I know this insurance guy can get them a deal. But I'm gonna go into solution mode. And that's where you gotta be careful because if you do that, you're gonna get wall. So what I want you to do for now is leave that there and in another video I'll talk to you more about what to do with that. But for now I just want you to leave it there and then focus on this other part because they said I really need to quit drinking. See, there's your need statement. And so what you want to do is you want to ask more questions about that. You might want to say something like, well, well, is it really important that you get a job? Or how would life be different if you had a job? Or would anything else be better if you got your driver's license back? So you want to ask more questions because there's that little seed. I need to stop drinking. I know, I know, I know your temptation is to go over here, but don't do it yet. You stay right with this. I need to change another thing. Let's talk about something else that you might hear. Let me think for a second. Somebody might say something like. Somebody might say something like, well, I'm not sure if I. I'm not sure if I really can stop drinking or I'm not really sure if I can stop smoking weed. And so that's. That is about ability. That's that a in darn. And so right there you really have more of a sustain statement. But what you can do to sort of pull out a piece of Change talk, right there is. You can say something like, well, have you ever went for any period of time without drinking? Or have you ever went for any period of time without the substance? And the person's usually going to say something like, well, yeah, once I went for six weeks. And then you might say something like, you went for six weeks? Dang, that's pretty good. How'd you do that? Well, what I had to do was take all the phones, block everything in my phone and change my number. And so I wasn't getting those calls from the dealers or whatever. Or they might have to say something like, well, I just had to sort of get through the first week. And that was pretty rough. But after that it was actually not that bad. So now they're telling you, now you're getting them to tell you they have the ability to change was in a hospital. And so you have this sort of like, oh, that might be a reason they were telling you how they were able to do. You were in a hospital. What I might say to something like that, I might say, well, you must have still wanted to do something because you could have been drug seeking or snuck out there or had a friend bring you something. So you want to help them see that they do have the ability that they did do that once before. And you can even take that little seed and grow it into something else. Well, what was life like during that time? Was it better? Was it worse? Did it work? And so you're taking those little pieces of, I want to change, I need to change, I have some reasons to change, and I have the ability to change. And you're pouring water on them. You're nurturing those pieces, and for now, you're just leaving the other side of the statements. Like, someone might say something like, well, I really need to quit smoking because my doctor is totally on my case. And I know it's definitely not good for me. Like, I can feel it. I get winded just walking through the airport. But it's just so hard. I've got so much stress right now. Okay, now you've got your ambivalence. You've got that I really need to change. You heard the word need. And they actually gave you a few reasons in that statement too. But they said, but I'm really stressed right now. That's the sustained talk. And we're gonna leave it. So don't do anything with that. Go back to that reasons talk. Because they said, I'm like, oh, yeah, your doctors even noticed it. And they might sort of reflect that to them. And they might say something like, yeah, I went last month and they were telling me that my level this or whatever. And so then I'm getting more. I'm pulling those reasons out, I'm growing those reasons that they belong to that person. Not the reasons I'm giving them, but that person's reasons. And so, and I say, and you can, you can tell you. I might say something like, you can actually tell a difference in like, your physical. Your physical fitness, like when you're in the airport or just doing business stuff. And they might say something like, yeah, I know. Like last week I had to fly to Chicago and I was running late for my plane, and I literally thought I was gonna have a panic attack and fold over in the middle of airport, like, gasping for breath. It was super embarrassing. Now I've got another reason. So now I've got three. They've given me the doctor, they've given me their physical fitness, and now they give me embarrassment. So you can see that there usually is these little seeds of change inside someone, and you just want to extract them, pay attention to them, ask them more questions about them. That's how you actually grow those change talk statements. That's how you motivate someone to get sober. It's super easy, right? You're like, well, that doesn't sound complicated. I don't know why you need that much education to do that. Well, it's complicated because you have to resist your instincts and you have to turn off everything your gut and your head and everything else is telling you in order to pull it off. And honestly, in the best case scenario, you would want to take your loved one to someone trained to do this, because it's. Because even though it's hard for me, it's way much easier for me to do this with your loved one than is for you, because I don't have any personal stake in it. So when they give me that sustained talk, it's not necessarily, other than maybe affecting my outcome statistics or something gonna mess me up. And if they sustain those bad choices for you, then it causes a lot of problems in your life. So it's gonna be like, infinitely harder for you to resist and like jumping on top of that sustain talk. But I still want you to understand and know how to do this, because maybe you don't. Maybe you don't have the ability to do this with that one particular loved one, that really close one that you're trying to help right now, but you have a friend that needs something to change, and it doesn't have to be drugs. It can be anything. This is how to get someone motivated to make a change of any sort. This works. It's kind of like, you know, my thinking about teaching you this is. It's kind of like sometimes you're in an emergency situation, and sometimes you cannot get your loved one to help. Think about it like you're on a deserted island, and your loved one gets a big gash in their leg from, I don't know, something in the ocean. And you normally would not be the one to try to stitch up their leg. You would normally want a doctor to do that. But you've called 91 1. A helicopter's come in, but it's gonna take a while, and your loved one is bleeding out, and somebody's got to do something. You're the only one there. Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. Even if it's not perfect, even if you mess it up, it still might hold them until the professional does come. That's kind of the way I want you to think about this motivational interview. I don't want you to think of it like it's your job to make them change, because you can't make someone change. But you know me. I always say you can influence someone to change. And I'm teaching you the very same skills that we use in my office with our clients about how to get people to change, because in an urgent situation, you can do it, and it does not have to be perfect. If you want to learn more about these skills, check out our family recovery academy. The links in the description, and I actually made a video.