Amber Hollingsworth, a master addiction counselor, explains how loving an addict can destabilize your own mind. Your nervous system syncs with theirs through emotional contagion, triggering obsessive thoughts, boundary confusion, and guilt. Gaslighting from the addicted person compounds the damage, but understanding this pattern is the first step to regaining control.
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Loving an addict or an alcoholic will absolutely make you crazy. Now, I know that is not a clinical term, but we all know what I mean when I say crazy. You will start to lose yourself and eventually you won't even be able to recognize yourself. The kind of crazy that happens to you when you love or care about an addict has a specific flavor to you. If you've ever been in that situation, you are definitely going to relate to this video because we're going to describe the mental process that you go through, the toll that loving an addict or an alcoholic has on you, and how. How do you end up being that specific flavor of crazy, and how do you reverse it? For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth and I am a master addiction counselor. Despite the fact that I'm not using very clinical or professional terms, I have been doing this for 20 years. And I don't really think there's a better word than just crazy. Because for those of us who've been there, myself included, you know how crazy making this can be. You're just caught on this emotional roller coaster. Now, for those of you who are new here, if this sounds familiar, then welcome to our Little community. This YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction and how that impacts families. It's our goal to make sure that you stay five steps ahead of it so you can get your life and your family back on track. Alright, let's talk about what kind of crazy. I mean, there are multiple different aspects at play here. First thing that's important to recognize, especially if you are around this person a lot, as in, like they live in your house, or even if you just talk to them very regularly, is that your emotional brain, which is actually called your limbic system, aligns with and kind of syncs up with their emotional brain or their limbic system. You can't help it. It's almost like a magnetic force. It happens automatically. It's not something that you're conscious of. Just like when you're around people who are anxious, how do you feel? You feel anxious? If you're around people that are angry, can you feel their anger? Does it make you nervous? Yeah, of course it does. We feel the emotions of the people around us. And the issue when you're dealing with an addict or an alcoholic is their emotions are all over the place. They're high, they're low, they're irritable, they're anxious, they're in withdraw, they're angry, they're desperate, they're just all over the place, an entire roller coaster of emotions. And if you're around them a lot, your brain is constantly being bombarded with the signals of their emotions from their brain. And that absolutely has an impact on you. A big impact. Alright, so keep that layer in your head. Well, let's layer in something else. When you love someone who has an addiction, you'll probably start to develop these sort of obsessive thoughts. What I mean by that is it starts to take up way too much room in your brain. You start to feel desperate to get this problem fixed, or at least get rid of the problem because it's having such a negative impact on you. Not only do you have that limbic system impact, but you're probably also having difficulty figuring out where your boundaries should be. And unfortunately, when you're in a relationship like this, it is always between a rock and a hard place. Like there are no good easy answers. No matter which choices you make, no matter which boundaries you hold or don't hold, you're going to leave with a crummy feeling. For example, if you hold boundaries and you're doing the healthy thing and you're not being pulled into things and you're protecting yourself, then you might feel guilty. If you don't hold boundaries and you're doing more than you want to be doing, or you're putting up with stuff that you don't think you should be putting up with, you're going to be feeling resentment eventually. You're feeling a mixture of these all the time. At any given point. It's kind of a you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. And that's what's the frustrating thing is that you get trapped in a situation that makes you feel crummy. No matter what you do, even if you're really nice to that person, you help that person out. Then you feel like, well, am I enabling? Am I just putting my head in the sand? Am I just ignoring it? I'm doing the wrong thing. And then you feel guilty or maybe you feel ashamed because you're putting up with this person and you feel like if other people knew that, they would judge you. Or maybe other people do know that and they are judging you and you feel that and they're trying to make you set all these limits that you're not ready to set for any number of reasons. Now, as you can imagine, as all this stuff is going on over a period of time, you will eventually start to have erratic, reactionary type of behaviors. Now, those reactions are a little bit different depending on our personality and our own defense mechanisms. But it could be that you shut down, that you build up a brick wall of hardcore boundaries. Maybe that's your emotional coping mechanism. Or maybe you get into a desperate state of mind. You start begging and pleading or threatening or giving ultimatums or freaking out when someone has one beer, you start losing it because the whole situation makes you feel out of control and hopeless about the future. Because this person's behavior has such a large impact on you. Now, I know there's a lot of people out there who will tell you, like, you just have to take care of you. You can't let somebody else's behaviors impact you. Well, that sounds all nice and great, but it's a little naive, to be honest, right? If you love someone or care about someone, even if you shut that person out of your life completely, like you cut them off, you pluck them from everything, you're still going to feel that anxiety, uncomfortableness inside. You're still going to be questioned, did I do the right thing? Was I too harsh? Heck, I should have done it earlier. You're going to have that uneasiness ins, which only makes everything 10 times worse. Now, as we have these layers in here, we're on an emotional rollercoaster. We're feeling guilt, we're feeling resentment, we're being reactive. And once all this goes on for a while, then the people around us start to get frustrated with us. Everybody starts to judge you. Everybody starts to call you crazy, make you feel like that you're not handling this appropriate or that you're overreacting. And so any level of support that you could have gotten now starts to pull further and further away, leaving you feeling totally isolated and alone. And if that's not bad enough, layer in on top of that, that probably if you have an addict or an alcoholic in your life, you are being gas lit. Meaning they are purposefully trying to make you feel like you're crazy. Because when they do that, it's like throwing you off their scent, right? Making you feel like what you're seeing isn't really happening. Making you feel like that whatever's happening is your fault. Now, do you see what I mean when I say crazy? This is a mess, right? If you can relate to this, put a hands up emoji in the comments below. That way I'll know I'm talking to the right people. Now, like I said, there's no easy answers when you're in this situation. But there are ways to start to get your life back on track. And it's all about getting back in control of your own emotions so you can make rational, strategic decisions. If you'd like to learn more about that, I want you to watch these videos next. I'm going to put a playlist up here for you to help you get back in the driver's seat so you can get your sanity back.
