do I believe that people living with addicts and alcoholics get
post-traumatic stress disorder and immediately I said absolutely yes I do
and and here's what that looks like and here's why and I thought I would sort of
elaborate on that just a little bit more in this video so we're gonna talk
all about that trauma why your emotions are so out of control why you're so
angry and sad and hostile and why you just feel like your emotions are like a
tornado inside that you cannot even control sometimes for those of you who
are new here I'm amber Hollingsworth master addiction counselor and you're
watching put the shovel down the YouTube channel dedicated especially to help you
understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can heal yourself help
a loved one and get your life back on track if that sounds like something you
might need to do consider subscribing and I'll make sure you have all the
tools and resources to make that happen so living with an addict really is
what's considered a betrayal trauma what does that mean it's being traumatized by
a huge giant betrayal in your life and not just like a little one like a big
one to the point that it's almost like you question yourself and the best
way to think of it think about what it might feel like if you don't know
hopefully you don't know what it might feel like if you had a spouse and you
found out they had been having an affair on you and the whole thing it just turns
your world upside down because it's like not only is that going on just the whole
act of it is horrible but a lot of the trauma comes from how is that going on
the whole time and I didn't know all the months or years or weeks that they've
been making me feel like I was crazy and I knew something was up and I would ask
about these things and they would just be like you're crazy and what are you talking about
they make you feel crazy all that gaslighting you know that my videos on
gaslighting you've seen those if you haven't checked them out because that's
definitely pertinent here and it's just the lies the deceit the making you feel
like you're crazy that is as problematic as the act itself
because it really just keeps you constantly dysregulated and what really
happens is it activates the fight-or-flight part of your brain and
because it's gone it's been going on for so long you might even be to the point
where it's like you're always in that active fight-or-flight response because
your brain interprets that just like any other threat like a physical threat like
you're being attacked by a bear like a car was fixing to smash into you and so
it's got that back sort of primitive survival part of your brain activated trying
to keep you hyper-vigilant hyper alert watching everything trying to sort of
look out for danger because you're in that protection mode that survival mode
and because of that that's all ran by emotions and when that part of your
brain is activated I mean really activated then those emotions really
override this front part your brain which is the thinking part of the brain and
that's why you feel like you can't control your emotions sometimes that's
why you feel so angry I mean you're angry you're threatened your whole life
is threatened if this is your husband and you found out that all this has been
going on this long or maybe you've known it but you can't stop it and you've got
kids and you may have to leave and the finances are all amiss clearly you can
see how traumatizing and scary and angry you are for them putting you in this
place because now you're being backed into a corner where you either have to
let go of your loved one which is not what you want to do because it's going
to destroy your family break your heart in a way that you may not ever get put
that together that's what it feels like or stay living with someone who's
clearly deceitful who's manipulating you who makes you feel like you're crazy who
you can't trust you turn you back on for one second and they're sneaking around
they're doing something so you're angry because they put you in this really bad
position they put you in a position they ask you for money
if you give it to them you feel horrible and shameful and guilty and you've
watched all of Amber's videos and you're like that's bad you know you've been going to alanon and I
shouldn't have done that so you feel guilty for doing it if you don't do it then you
feel scared you feel scared well what are they gonna do to go out there and
get that money instead you know they may do something awful or horrible and they
may put themselves in more danger or if you don't give it to him they're
threatening you and they're belligerent and you're just exhausted you don't want to deal with
it you're angry you're upset you are being threatened and it may be hard to
identify that you may not see it exactly the same as you might see another kind
of physical threat but it really is because it's something that threatens
your entire life that you have built so it's really important to understand that
and to take it very seriously now here's the thing and you guys know I talk about
this all the time I talk about how we always see family systems and how if as
a counselor I only ever saw the addicted person which I usually do see
the addicted person our office we have these two counselors who typically see
the family members more often we switch up sometimes but we have Kim who sees
the spouses a lot and then we have Campbell who sees the parents a lot and
they're fantastic and the thing of it is is if I just saw
the addict or alcoholic of course they're minimizing everything they do
even if they're like acknowledging okay I did some drugs you know like I spent
some money or something they're definitely downplaying it they're
definitely minimizing it but I'll tell you what they are telling us they're
telling us how crazy you're acting and then if we see you or we interact with
you we're probably gonna notice some of those
things that they're saying about you that your emotions are out of control
that you're compulsively checking that your nagging that you're screaming that
you're yelling that you're threatening and so if you go to like a regular
marriage counselor and you've got this problem going on or you go to another
kind of therapist or your kid or your spouse or whoever is going to another therapist
and telling all this and then when they interact with you it's almost like being
validated and they don't really understand this issue they're not going
to understand why you're acting that way and I hate to tell you this like this
sounds really terrible but if they don't really understand what's going on
they're probably thinking well dang no wonder he drinks and no wonder she did
this or whatever it was because they're like oh, that family member is out of
control and so sometimes people will tell me in my office man, my wife's crazy
I'm like yeah she probably is no it's cuz you made her that way you know and so
it's important for you to see somebody who understands that because before you
can start working on all of these strategies like all the strategies that
amber teaches you I'm guilty of this I'm like do this do this do this the
first thing you gotta do is figure out how to sort of soothe this back for your
brain that is screaming at you like non-stop 24/7 that's always under threat
that's constantly checking that can't let the guard down just completely hyper
vigilant not sleeping all that stuff you got a calm that down because when that is
on fire you're thinking brain cannot work like it's using up
all energy all blood flow whatever you wanna call it and the first thing going
to do to do your strategic decision-making all the stuff that I
teach you is you gotta access and activate your front thinking brain and I
know that seems like why are you talking about the brain nerdy stuff but it's
actually that is what's going on so you need to develop some skills or some ways
and techniques to help regulate some of that emotion to help calm you so that
you can think and make decisions and use a lot of what you've learned in order to
decide what your next step is going to be you know because you're gonna be
driving down the road and you're just gonna see this one street or this one
place and it's going to remind you of you know maybe that's where it's such
and such happen or maybe that's where they're going to get their drugs and
you're just going to be activated you're going to be in that fight or flight
response and in those moments it is going to be extremely hard to make good
decisions so there are some things that you can do to try to get your front
brain to activate in your emotional brain to calm down and a lot of those
techniques are kind of like what I might call like grounding techniques and
so one of the simplest easiest thing to do is dowhat we call a box breathing
or a four-count breath where it's like in through your nose like in two
three four out two three four and it's sort of slowing down your breathing and
slowing down your heart rate because when you get in that fight-or-flight
response your breathing speeds up what you don't want to do is do that
really quick hyperventilating kind of breathing because
that's just gonna tell your brain that you really are in a threat and it's
gonna really ramp up so you want to slow your breathing down which will slow your
heart rate down it'll get some oxygen to that front part
of that brain up there and now maybe you can make some good decisions other
things you can do is like maybe have like a fire drill technique in your back pocket
like call someone who you know can just talk you through a situation
who can help you be objective or call someone who can just get you to think
about something else so that that emotional part can simmer down and
you're thinking part can check-in you know I usually say don't make decisions
when you're really emotional you know don't make the decision that you're
done you're throwing the person out in the middle of a big fight because when
you do that you're making it out of emotion and emotion is temporary and
when the emotion goes away you're gonna undo that decision and so what you want
to delay decision-making when you know that you're sort of to that point where
you're not thinking clearly you want to do some kind of grounding techniques to
sort of get that emotion to calm get in the front part of your brain the thinking part of
your brain so you can decide what to do next you can count backwards by threes you
can do anything that makes you have to think it's gonna sort of shift you into
that front thinking part of your brain and lower that intensity in that emotion the other
thing that I would tell you is everything inside your brain is going to
be so hyper vigilant it's gonna be making you be so aware all the time
you're gonna want to obsess I'm gonna want to go into the rabbit hole that's
what I call it like way deep dark rabbit hole and you're me driving down the road
you know start thinking about it and you're gonna start sessom about it and
then it's gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger in your brain and if you
catch yourself doing that you really need to shift out of it and it's not
gonna be easy but you need to get yourself some techniques in order to do
that and anything that makes you think or
distracts you it's helpful I usually say like don't necessarily watch TV unless
it's something you really really know is going to get your attention because
otherwise you'll just be staring at the TV and you'll still be in the rabbit hole or
reading a book you know it's gonna have to be something that's going to pull you
out of your head don't fall for that temptation to let yourself go down the
rabbit hole I'm telling you it's not a good place to be there's nothing good
down there so when you feel like you're going down that road you need to u-turn
it out as fast as you can that's why this whole living with an addict or an
alcoholic thing is so difficult because basically it's overriding your instincts
it is literally like learning not to hit the brakes when you're skidding on ice
and I've heard that some people can do that like you northern people are you
people that live out there in the snow us southern people we have no ability that
like seriously one snowflake and we are slamming the brakes on because we're air
to death but apparently, that can be done if you train yourself so it's that same
concept you're sort of getting into brain and you're deciding what to do
even though you're in the midst of some sort of crisis and that's gonna help you
decide what's the best decision for you it's gonna help you be better able to
keep yourself safe and your family safe now the next thing that you need to do
is you need to make sure you have watched every video in my manipulation
series because if you're still being manipulated
you're gonna constantly be triggered in that part of your brain that we're
trying to get to calm down because you're just gonna be
fighting with yourself you're gonna be not trusting yourself you're going to be
confused you're going to be upset with yourself
because you can't control your emotions and so make sure you watch all of those
manipulation videos I'm going to put them right up here so you can click on
and watch them next