Amber Hollingsworth (Put the Shovel Down) explains why people with substance use disorders often hurt loved ones using a three-layer framework: (1) self-deception and minimization (they tell themselves they aren’t hurting others or will fix things), (2) shame-driven justification, projection and resentment that can progress to delusion, and (3) neurobiology — addiction shifts dominance toward primitive survival systems and an overactive limbic/emotional brain, reducing capacity for stable emotional connection. The video aims to reframe family responses and points viewers to further guidance on boundary options.
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This is the ugly truth behind why addicts and alcoholics hurt the ones they love. In this video, we are going to dig three layers deep into the psychology and biology of addictive thinking. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel down. This is a YouTube channel dedicated especially to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction. Because if you're going to beat this thing, you need to exactly what you're dealing with. And this channel is going to help you stay five steps ahead of addiction at all times. So if you ever heard this, or maybe you've thought this before, if you loved me, you wouldn't drink. Or if you loved me, you wouldn't use. Or if you loved this family, you wouldn't drink or use. I'm guessing that you probably have had that sneaky little thought before. And I know you think that I'm probably going to tell you, well, that's not true. They do love you. It's their addiction maybe a little bit, but I'm gonna actually explain to you that they don't really love you the same way that you love them. Now, this may upset some people, but sometimes the truth is upsetting. And I don't mean this in any kind of mean way or anything, but this is the psychology of the issue. You see, every single day in my office, I talk to people struggling with substance use disorders, and the thing they most often want to talk to me about is their family. Mostly all their frustrations, resentments, they have built up against their family. The truth of the matter is they really don't care for you the same way that you care for them. At least not when they're in their active addiction state. Now, that's not to say that they don't care about you or love you the same when they're not in an addicted state or deep down inside way somewhere in there. But when addiction's running the show, this is the psychology of the matter. We're gonna go to it from a superficial level and we're gonna sort of dig a little deeper and a little deeper into this issue. So make sure you watch this whole video. Okay? So the first layer of the issue around why do addicts and alcoholics basically do their family wrong? Is the fact that they lie to themselves about whether or not they are hurting you. You see people struggling with addiction almost always tell themselves, I'm not hurting anyone but myself. Now, yes, that's a flat out lie. Definitely not the truth, but it's one that addicts and alcoholics tell themselves to feel less bad about what it is that they're doing. Now, that's not the only lie that they're telling themselves to shield themselves and justify why they treat you the way they treat you. Not only do they lie to themselves to say that it's not hurting you, but they sometimes will lie to themselves and say they're going to fix it before you find out. Let's say, for example, they steal some money from you. They're probably telling themselves that they're going to put the money back before you ever know and it's never going to hurt you, or that they're just going to take a couple of those pills and you'll never know the difference. Which is just one of the ways that an addict and an alcoholic can make things that are not okay seem okay to themselves. Now, this second layer of psychology goes even a little deeper than the first. Essentially, when you're struggling with an addiction, you are having a psychological war with yourself because deep down inside you know you've done some things and are doing some things on a regular basis that are just plain wrong, that don't fit with your value system. And when we behave in a way that doesn't fit with our value system, that creates a little gap filled with shame. And shame is so uncomfortable that we'll do almost anything to make that go away. And naturally, one of the first things that happens when we're dealing with shame or guilt is we tend to justify what why we had to do whatever it was that we did. It's the way that we psychologically make ourselves feel okay about making a really bad choice. Now we all do this on some level. It's just that addicts and alcoholics find themselves making bad choices an awful lot. So it gets to the point where they're doing this justification so often that it can literally end up in full out delusion. And when you're dealing with end stage addiction, you are not dealing with someone who is looking at the world the same way you are. And you'll know it if you've been there, if you've had that feeling like you literally just wanted to take them by the shoulders and shake the life out of them. That's when you know you're dealing with someone that's in that delusional state. They have literally lied to themselves, justified, minimized, rationalized to the point that they can't even see the truth anymore. Because you see, when we feel guilty or shameful about something, we need to make ourselves feel better. And we do that by making the other person, the bad guy. In almost every situation that I see, the person struggling with addiction has so much resentment and frustration built up against their family. Now there are some legitimate reasons behind this resentment, frustration, which is usually the family's tendency to cross into the addict or alcoholics boundaries they try to control. Now they're doing this because they're scared and they're fearful. But nonetheless, most families have trouble staying in their own territory. Or as I like to say it, on your side of the street. I've got a whole playlist of videos about boundaries. When you have an addicted loved one, make sure you are watching that series because there's so much valuable information in there. You see, when they're having this psychological war with themselves, they need to be a victim of something. Now sometimes they'll purposely provoke people, split people. You guys have probably seen my videos about that. So that people actually do act badly around them or about them or towards them. And other times maybe the family isn't even acting badly or doing anything wrong on the outside. But in the mind of the addicted person, they are being treated unfairly. Now this third reason that we're going to talk about is actually a biological reason why addicts and alcoholics hurt the ones they love. So underneath all the lies and the justifying and the rationalizing and the projecting, which is sort of taking their own shame and guilt and putting it on the other person, there is the biology of the situation. Now hang in there because we're going to have to have a little brain nerd talk here for you to understand this. So it breaks down like this. Humans actually have three major sections of brain. You've got this base part of your brain right here at the bottom of your skull. That's really what you might call your like reptilian brain. That's your primitive brain. That's the part of the brain that all animals have and it's all instinct. Next you have your sort of. In the middle of your brain is what's called your limbic system. And that's where all of your emot emotions and feelings and connection, all that stuff is housed. And then lastly, right up here in the front, you have your front part of your brain or your frontal lobe or your cerebral cortex, however scientific you want to get about it. But that's the thinking part of your brain. That's the rational part of your brain that lets you think through a situation, weigh pros and cons and all that stuff. Now you've probably heard that when someone's in active addiction that survival part, that reptilian part of the brain is running the show, which is absolutely true. Basically, that part is the strongest part of your brain. Even though it's small, it overpowers because it's the part keeping you alive, it overpowers the other two parts. But that's not even what this video is about. I've got other videos all about the biology of addiction. In this particular instance, we're talking about the biology of why they hurt you, why they can't choose you. Why does it feel like if you loved me, you wouldn't drink or use you? See, that limbic part, that emotional part of the brain is so on fire when you're struggling with an addiction. It is literally on a roller coaster. It is all over the place. Think about it like the frequency is just so high that that part of their brain doesn't have the biological capacity to connect on that deeper level to other people, to a higher power, to anything. Basically because it's being overrid by that reptile part of the brain. And emotionally, it's just such a mess in there. The best way to think about it, it's kind of like the energy in that emotional part of the brain has to be somewhat, like, stable and balanced out enough for you to feel real connection with another person. And when you're dealing with someone in active addiction that is not stable, I promise, it is on fire in there. And they literally can't feel connection on that deeper biological level. So psychologically, they've made excuses, they've twisted things up, but biologically, they don't even have the capacity for it. Now, many of the people that we see in our office are very successful people. They come from great families. They're clean cut, they're well mannered, and they know how to carry on a relationship. They have great social skills. So it can seem like they can definitely pull it off. You know, I like to say most of the people I see struggling with alcoholism, they usually are kind of charismatic. They're sort of salesman types. And they can build relationships with people because they literally have the skill to do it, the social skill to do it. But they do not feel that on that deeper level. Which is another reason why people in active addiction seem like they're antisocial. They seem like they don't care about anyone but themselves. That's not really true in the big picture, but it is sort of true in the temporary state of addiction. You see, there are just so many layers to the science and psychology of addiction. There are so many things for you to learn, and this is just one piece of it. And if you can understand this, you can start to make strategic decisions about what to do next. And to help you narrow that down, I want you to watch this video next, which is about the only three options that family members have when dealing with an addicted loved one.
