How to confront someone who has a substance abuse problem about their addiction that's
what we're going to cover in this video and this is a very delicate subject you do not
want to go about this the wrong way which is why I'm going to tell you how a professional
would do it for those of you who are new here welcome
to put the shovel down I'm amber Hollingsworth master addiction counselor and this youtube
channel is to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you're
always five steps ahead of it and you can get your life and your family back on track
so some of you that follow me you know that I really don't think that confrontation is
the best most effective way to go about things so in this video I'm going to give you the
three key factors that are really essential to remember when it comes to confronting someone
about their addiction now the first one is that confrontation is not the most effective
method to get someone with a substance use problem to change those of you who have been
watching my videos probably already know this I prefer a combination of good healthy boundaries
and positive reinforcement that truly is the most effective way to get someone to change
but I do realize that sometimes confrontation just needs to happen sometimes it's just not
avoidable but if you're going to go into this sticky territory you really need to have your
head on straight about it so the second key factor that I really need you to understand
about confrontation this maybe one of the most important factors is that confrontation
should not be designed to make someone feel defensive shameful or guilty now most of the
time when people confront other people about pretty much anything but especially about
a substance abuse problem they're going at them to try to make them see how they're hurting
themselves how they're hurting everyone around them how they're causing all these problems
and financial distress and you know they're not being a good parent and they're flunking
out of school and it's like you're constantly trying to shove the consequences in their
face thinking that this is going to make them sort of have this wake up call and decide
that oh maybe this isn't good for me and I'm going to stop well guess what in all of my
years of treating people with substance use disorders I've never found that to be effective
trust me I've tried and some days when I get frustrated and hit the wall I go back just
like you do and I do this very same thing and guess what I get the same result it doesn't
work because you see when you come at someone and you hit that shame button that guilt button
what happens is their defensive walls immediately come up it's like you hit the emergency alarm
button and all these protective walls immediately emerge to try to protect the person from feeling
that shame and guilt and everything I teach you guys about how to motivate someone into
recovery it's all about how do I deal with someone in a way that I don't accidentally
hit those trip wires because once those walls come up and you got those barriers between
you and them nothing good is going to happen at best you're going to get that charlie brown
effect you know charlie brown when he listens to the adults talk and he hears womp womp
womp that's the best thing that's going to happen usually what's going to happen is they're
going to become defensive they're going to throw it back on you they're going to try
to blame you they're going to try to remind you of something that you did that's not right
and so it's going to start a fight then you're going to hurt your relationship with that
person you're going to end up with a hurt feeling and you're going to walk away from
it feeling not so great and trust me they are no more motivated to get better than before
in fact probably less okay now I did tell you I was going to tell you how to do this
but I really need you to know all of those things first because I usually say what not
to do is a lot of times more important than what you should do but here we go number three
key factor that I want you to understand about confronting someone who has a substance abuse
problem about their addiction is this I want to give you the therapist definition of confrontation
now the therapist definition of confrontation means when you point out to someone that their
behavior is not in alignment with their goals sounds fancy right but basically you're pointing
out to someone that what they're doing isn't getting them what they want now the important
part here is you've got to have a really good understanding about what want it doesn't matter
if their behavior doesn't meet your goals so like for example if this is your child
and your goal is for them to have straight a's but they don't care about that it's not
going to work to tell them that all that drinking and partying at college is keeping them up
at night and they're not making good grades that's not really going to help them if that's
not the thing that they care about so you've got to understand what they care about and
then you've got to figure out how to help them see that what they're doing probably
isn't the most productive way to get what they want and you've got to do it without
hitting those defensive walls so first let me give you a few examples of what I mean
when I say the behavior is not meeting the goal here's the thing about substance abuse
problems whatever the substance feels like it's doing for you in the short term in the
long term it does the absolutely opposite so for example if you abuse stimulants because
you want to focus and work a lot of hours and make good grades yes that will work for
you short term for awhile but in the long run your brain is producing the opposite chemicals
to try to counteract that stimulant so what it does in the long run is it makes you exhausted
tired you can't focus on anything you can't get up out of bed for several days you really
end up getting the opposite effect and that is essentially one of the biggest reasons
why people get trapped into addiction here's another one a lot of people say that they're
drinking or smoking marijuana because it helps them with their anxiety again that's another
short term it may feel like it's helping but as you're doing that substance the brain is
counteracting that by producing the opposite which is a whole bunch of anxiety chemical
in that particular circumstance pointing that out to them can be a little bit tricky so
I want you to use some of the methods that I taught you in some previous videos about
how to go about doing this without hitting that tripwire let's just review a couple of
those I like to use what I call the drive by method or sometimes I call it the leave
it on the coffee table and just keep walking method which is to say something super casual
super non in your face and then just walk off and leave it it's just like dropping a
little seed down walk off and leave it if you spend too much time trying to press a
point at someone you're going to hit those walls so it's got to be casual and it's got
to be quick you may want to go about this by using a curious tone so you may want to
ask a question instead of making an observation and that might look like hey do you think
your anxiety is better now than it was last year or do you think it's worse because probably
they've been smoking a whole lot of marijuana every day all day and their anxiety if actually
worse than it was last year but you don't want to throw that in their face you want
to come at it from a curious perspective and then just walk off and leave it it doesn't
even matter if they answer that question out loud because if you ask someone a question
immediately it's like a reflex they can't even help it their brain starts to think about
the answer and it's not about what they say to you it's about them thinking of that answer
for themselves see you can just sort of nonchalantly say something like that I've personally use
a lot of humor and sarcasm and that works for me but in order for that to work you've
really got to have a strong relationship with someone because you know how it's like when
you're with your friends you can tease them about their weak spots and it's funny it's
almost like a love language and you harrass each other and give each other a hard time
you can do that when it's your really close friends you cannot harrass someone about their
weak spots if they're not your really close friend or family member so in order to use
that kind of tone you better make sure you've got the relationship entirely in check another
way you can go about doing this is you can acknowledge that what they're doing is helpful
to some degree but sort of leave it open and you want to open this question in their mind
but is it really helpful enough or is it really helpful in the long run so a good way to start
is I call it address the resistance say what that person is thinking you can say something
like you know I know having a few drinks after work really helps you wind down and distress
and helps you to fall asleep but I've noticed that you like get up super early in the morning
and you don't really get good rest you seem tired a lot now like I said you've got to
do this in the right tone don't make someone defensive when you're saying this you're saying
it out of empathy care and concern not finger pointing and judgement maybe you're dealing
with a kid and they may not say this to you out loud but deep down inside they're using
substances a lot of times it makes them feel included and connected maybe it makes them
feel popular and ultimately they just want to have more friends and that in itself is
not a bad thing who doesn't especially when you're a young person or college student so
acknowledging that is totally fine but there may be a way that you can point out that actually
since they've been using substances they've lost a lot of friends now that's a really
sticky territory so I want you to think hard about how you present that kind of feedback
before you do it the other way to go about that particular situation is to somehow get
them to see like are these people that you think are your friends like really your friends
another very sticky situation but if you have the right kind of relationship with someone
you can absolutely pull this off up next I want you to watch this next video about motivating
someone to take the next steps toward recovery I'm going to put it right up here and as always
I have listed you tons of additional resources in the description