Amber Hollingsworth (addiction counselor with 20 years' experience) explains why yelling, nagging, or threatening loved ones with addiction is ineffective. She uses a plant analogy to illustrate that positive reinforcement (providing 'light') is more helpful and introduces a motivational technique centered on recognizing and reinforcing "change talk." She teaches the DARN-CAT framework: D (Desire), A (Ability), R (Reasons), N (Needs) — and C (Commitment), A (Action), T (Taking steps) — as verbal markers that someone may be moving toward recovery. She directs viewers to a linked demonstration session and downloadable handout.
Chapters
Yelling, nagging, threatening, pleading isn't going to do anything except slow down the process. If you have an addicted loved one and you really want them to change, you've got to stop trying those tactics. And so I know you know it doesn't work. But don't worry. In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly what does and will work. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and I've been treating people who have addictions for 20 years now. I know it's a long time, right? And I've learned a lot over those 20 years, a lot about how to get someone out of denial, how people are thinking and feeling, how to remove roadblocks. Basically help people make the decision to turn their life around. And I'm here to help teach you all of those things that I've learned. Now, I know it's hard to not yell, threaten, nag, plead, all that stuff. It's an emotional reaction, and I feel the same way. In fact, even after doing this for so long, I still have the urge to do that. I have to really fight it off. And every now and then, it still sneaks through. But the next time you're doing it, here's the image I want you to have in your head. I want you to remember this moment. You see this plant right here? This is my plant. Had this plant for a long time. If you've been in my office before, you might have seen this plant. Well, if you notice this plant leans a good bit to the right, and forever I'm like, how do I get this plant to straighten up? Now let's try this technique. Let's see what happens. Plant. You know you look dumb leaning over like that. Everyone thinks you're an idiot for that. If you just stand up straight and tall, you'd look a lot nicer. If you don't straighten up, I'm not going to let you be in my office anymore. If you keep leaning over like that, you're going to break your branches. What's wrong with you? Stand up straight. Now, as you can imagine, that's not very effective. Not only is it not effective to try to yell, nag, threaten, and plead for this plant to straighten up, it's also not going to help for you to get your loved one to straighten up. Only when it comes to a human being, it's going to be a lot worse. Because they're not just going to ignore you like the plant will. They're going to actually run and get as Far away from you as possible. And if they can't physically get far away from you, they are going to emotionally get far away from you. Now, you want to know what might be a better strategy? A better strategy might be this. A better strategy strategy might be for me to come over here and open the window shade on the left side of this plant, because this is where the light and the nutrients are coming from. And if I just let the light in, guess what's gonna happen to this plant? That's right. It's gonna start leaning a little bit more to the left, because that's where the good stuff is coming from. Okay. Obviously, with humans, It's a little bit more complicated than opening the shade, but it's a very similar concept. Addiction counselors actually use a specialized motivational type technique. It's actually not that hard to learn. In fact, anybody can do it. But you have to learn how to for the right things. You see people that have addiction problems, they naturally feel two ways about the issue. They naturally have part of them that doesn't want to change, and they have another part of them that does want to change. We call that ambivalence, Feelings on both sides, and it is completely normal. It's just that when you hear your loved one make statements about wanting to stay the same, which is what we call sustain talk, Meaning sustain the same way that I am already. I don't want to change. It freaks you out, and you panic, and that might trigger you into yelling, nagging, threatening, pleading, you know, all that stuff. But remember, when you do that, picture me yelling at this plant. It's not going to work. And just remember, having a part of you that doesn't want to change Is normal and natural. What you want to focus on is listening for that part that does want to change. Because there's almost always a part of someone that does want to change, and they'll actually make statements out loud about it. We call that change talk. It's just that you got to learn how to recognize change talk when you hear it. Now, there's a good acronym to help you remember what change talk sounds like. It's called darn D, A, R, n. And most recently, they've added a few little things. The end. And now they call it darn cat. And don't worry, I'll tell you what the C A T stands for as well. Now, the D stands for desire. Like, I wish I could just put all this behind me, Or I'd like to be able to cut back my drinking. Or I wish I could just stop smoking. All of those are statements about desire. Now the other thing that you want to listen for is ability. Because when you get the desire to change matched up with the ability to change, now we're getting somewhere. Ability statements sound something like, I could, I can, or I might be able to. These are statements that suggest that the person is thinking about, can they actually make these changes? And what changes should they make? Do they have the ability to do that? It's all about, do they have the ability to make the changes? For example, I could call up my cousin, he got sober like two years ago. He might have some good advice for me. Or I might be able to stop smoking on my own. Or I can just stop buying the alcohol at the grocery store and then it won't be in the house. Those are all statements about ability. Now, the R stands for reasons. So we've got the desire to change, the ability to change, and we throw on some reasons. Reasons. Now we're cooking with gas. Reasons why they want to change. And those statements sound something like, I would feel better if or I really should. I think things might really improve if. Those are all reasons. And most of the time reasons are internal reasons about why you might want to make a change. You might physically feel better. Relationships might be better. You might be more productive at work. You might feel less crappy. All of those things would be reason statements. But the N stands for needs. Now, needs is very similar to reason means I need to change. But the difference is needs tend to be external reasons. Now, some people say external reasons aren't good reasons to change, only internal reasons. But that's not true. Both are very, very important. In fact, most desire to change starts from external reasons and then eventually moves to internal reasons. So don't let the external part bother you. Need statements often sound like I ought to, I have to, or I really should. So the main things you're listening for are desire, ability, reasons, and need. The more of those kind of statements that you hear, the more person is motivated to make a change. Those are the seeds that you want to grow. Helping someone find recovery is like nurturing little seeds. You want to find what's already there, pour some water on it, maybe even some miracle gro. But there's got to be something there that you're nurturing. Now, I'm going to tell you what the cat stands for, but before I do that, I will tell you that I know I'm giving you a lot of information here, and it's probably hard to remember. So to help you remember. I've got it all written down for you. In fact, I'm going to put a link in the description where you can actually watch me have one of these types of sessions with somebody and then you'll get an email later that has a handout that has all this stuff written down for you so you don't have to remember it all. Now, the C A T, all of those have to do with willingness statements. This is more about the action is starting to happen. So the D A, R, N is the sort of just is what happens right before the action happens. And then the cat is when we actually get in some movement here. The C stands for commitment, the A stands for action, and the T stands for taking steps. Commitment sounds like I'm going to or I promise or I intend tend to action statements sound like I'm going to start on Monday or tomorrow or I'm ready to fill in the blank. And the T, the taking steps sounds like I've already done it. Like as in I went to a meeting, I called that counselor, or I met with my cousin, he's going to take me to a meeting. That's when someone's verbalizing to you that they've actually taken some steps in the right direction. Now, change doesn't happen all at once. It happens in stages. And there are certain stages where this change talk is really going to start to happen. If you want to know more about those stages, then I want you to watch this video next because it's all about the stages. And don't forget, you can watch that session and download all these notes by clicking the link in the description or the one right here.
