This Is Why They Won’t Open Up #addictionrecovery #awareness #addictionhelp #addictionawareness

The most important thing for you to understand here is safety, because this person is like close to the edge of awareness. They're sitting with something uncomfortable, and if every conversation feels like an interrogation or an ambush, they're never going to let that awareness surface. They're never going to acknowledge it out loud to you. And in fact, even though they're kind of aware of it on some level inside, if you directly try to push on it, they'll still fall into those Minimizing, rationalizing, gaslighting, manipulation, all the things. And you never want to put someone in a position to defend their addiction in that way because when they're saying it out loud and when they're thinking those defensive thoughts, they're convincing themselves. So you go backwards into denial instead of helping them come out of it. What you really want to do, your job is to become someone that they feel safe enough with to be honest with, not someone that they need to defend themselves against.