okay fair warning today's topic is going to cause you to have to take a really
hard deep look inside yourself you're gonna have to do a lot of
self-reflection because today we're going to talk about the role that each
of us play in creating the problems and conflict around us we're actually going
to be digging deeper into our exploration of some of the concepts
presented in the book the anatomy of piece by the our batur Institute I'll
put a link in the description below and we're going to be applying those
specific concepts to addiction and we're gonna look at that from the family point
of view and from the point of view of the person struggling with addiction for
those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down the YouTube channel
dedicated exclusively to helping you understand the science and psychology of
addiction so you can stay five steps ahead of it and get your life back on
track as you watch this video you're probably gonna be reflecting on some of
the relationships that you have in your life right now that aren't going exactly
the way that you want to and it's going to require that you get really really
honest with yourself because if we're having ongoing conflict with other
people hard feelings resentment self-pity
guilt all those negative things then we're probably doing something to
contribute to the issue now give yourself a little grace because usually
you're not doing this consciously the things we're going to talk about today
are really more on a deep subconscious level we're gonna look at four really
common things that cause us to justify our own bad behavior have you ever heard
that saying that the only reason people put other people down is to feel better
about themselves well that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today but
usually when you hear that saying you probably think about someone calling
someone else a name or someone you know being judgmental of someone else
in that sort of outward gossipy kind of way and of course yes it applies there
but we're gonna delve a little deeper into that concept because we all have a
tendency to do this psychologically in our own mind and
we're especially prone to doing this when we have treated someone else in a
way that violates our own sense of right and wrong basically what I'm saying is
when your behavior acts in a way that is not consistent with your value system
you create this need inside of yourself that wasn't there before and that need
is to self justify because now you've done something that you feel guilty
about or shameful about and like I said a lot of times this happens on such a
deep level and so reflexively that you're probably not conscious of it but
after today you're gonna be pretty aware of what's going on inside of you and
why you're reacting to people and situations the way that you are and how
your behavior and feelings towards the people around you
might be triggering them to react to you in a way that you say outwardly that you
don't really want but on some level you are inviting from that person these
concepts really apply to anyone and everyone so anyone can watch this video
and get something out of it but if you are struggling with addiction yourself
or you have a loved one struggling with addiction these concepts are probably
really really really going to resonate with you because addiction causes some
major conflict within the family system and when that happens we all start
taking a defensive posture whether we're the family member whether we're the
person struggling with addiction and that defensiveness triggers all the
other people around us to be defensive as well and then you get sort of a
domino effect of toxic behavior and relationships and as many of you know
that is a lot of what we talk about on this YouTube channel it's about how to
undo those toxic defensive relationships that you have because that really is the
only way you can't get ahead of addiction because addiction thrives in
that kind of environment in fact it is absolutely necessary for addiction to
continue and if you take that ingredient out it kind of like
starves the addiction out which is exactly why we spend so much time
talking about how to have healthy boundaries how to get your own emotions
back into alignment how to stay out of those bad guy rolls and rescuer rolls
when it comes to addiction in your family you may have heard me say this
before but one of the major major major things that I look for and evaluate when
I'm trying to assess a new person for a substance abuse disorder as I look
specifically at how much resentment and self-pity they have going on of course
we all have some resentment and self-pity and where do we talk about
that in counseling of course so it's not so much that I think oh if you have any
of that going on then you have an addiction but when you have an excessive
super ton a lot of it going on and it seems sort of and reasonable to me
that's a sign of just how addicted someone is because really it's a symptom
of how much a person's addiction has caused them to behave in a way that's
not consistent with what they know is right and when that happens that need to
feel justified gets bigger and bigger and bigger and so almost any time I see
someone struggling with an addiction they're very very preoccupied on some
sort of unjust situation that they're dealing with in fact they're almost
obsessively preoccupied with it because they have an almost constant need to
deal with that shame and guilt because we're medicating that shame and guilt
not just with the drugs but with the justifying the rationalizations that
we're telling ourselves in our head that make us feel better because it makes us
feel like well we had to treat them that way or we had to do this or we didn't
have any other choice or you know they made us do it or something like that so
let's take a look at how we get in those justified States and what that looks
like in the book the anatomy of peace they actually call this being in the box
in fact they outline four specific really common boxes that we tend to get
ourselves into that allow us to continue to justify bad decisions bad behavior
and unfortunately continues to instigate conflict and problems and difficulty in
our lives that we don't really want if you want to get rid of that conflict if
you want your life to be better your relationships to be better then you're
going to have to gain a deeper self awareness about these tendencies to
justify and how our behavior is whether we like it or not contributing somehow
someway to the problem because you say when we've wronged someone else we have
a tendency to almost reflexively immediately horriblize that person
what I mean by that is we make them out to be way worse than maybe what they
really are so we take their their character defects and their flaws and we
sort of magnify them it's not so much that we totally make them up there's
usually like a grain of truth in there but we fixate on that we obsess about
that and we exaggerate that in our brain as a way to make us feel better about
some behavior we're doing that we kind of know isn't right we tend to dwell on
our hardships when we have a need to justify bad decisions okay let's take a
look at those boxes box number one is what the book calls the better than box
and the better than box is kind of what it sounds like it's sort of a state of
thinking and being in a way that we justify ourselves by feeling better than
other people it's a little bit of a narcissistic
point of view and I don't mean like you have a narcissistic personality disorder
I just mean this might be your primary defense mechanism is to make yourself
feel better than smarter than faster they're more capable than whatever the
people around you when you're in the better than box you see others as
inferior and irrelevant and when you're in the better than box you feel
impatient you have disdain for the other person and you probably are
sort of oozing out this indifferent attitude towards the situation this
comes from a worldview that the world is competitive and that other people need
you alright let's move on to box number two which is called the deserve box now
we have a tendency to get in the I deserve box and we feel mistreated
unappreciated taking advantage of or that others are simply ungrateful for
all that we do for them this is the box that I call like the I'm a martyr box if
you hear that term before I'm a martyr that's exactly like the I deserve box
and typically this defense mechanism happens when you feel like you've
extended yourself like you've been so nice and other people don't appreciate
you the I deserve box comes from this really ingrain hardwired view of the
world is unjust and unfair to either one of those two boxes sound familiar now
don't feel guilty because we all get in these boxes sometimes the point isn't to
make you feel bad about what you've done or what's going on the point is to make
you aware of it because when you're aware of how you're
feeling and how you're behaving and how that is domino around you then you can
get control of it you can make some decisions about it and as I like to say
you can get strategic about it and stay five steps ahead of it okay box number
three is called the need to be seen as box we tend to get in the need to be
seen as box when we have this deep-seated need for other people to
think well of us this doesn't mean you're a bad person most of the time
when you're in the need to be seen as box you're probably well mannered and
well behaved and make right decisions and do and outwardly you may look like
you're doing the right thing but a lot of times that's coming from this defense
mechanism is you need to be seen as the good kid the teacher's pet and the need
to be seen box lead you to feeling stressed needy
overwhelmed and anxious if this is a box that you get into regularly you may have
a deep subconscious belief that the world is judgmental and that others are
always watching and judging us okay the number four box
it's a little different it's called the worst than box and when we get in the
worst end box this is when we sort of take this stance that we beat ourselves
up that we have like a lot of negative self-talk and we think negatively of
ourselves if you have a tendency to get in the worst then box then you probably
see yourself as less than deficient and not as good as other people and you
probably see other people around you as having it better than you they're
smarter than you you know they're blessed they're privileged basically
it's sort of a grass is greener type world view when you're in the worse than
box you're gonna be feeling helpless jealous bitter resentful and depressed
and these feelings come from the hardwired worldview that the world is
against you or difficult or that others just plain out ignore you if I wrote the
book I would probably call this the self-pity box or the my life is more
difficult box or I'm a worse human or I'm the most terrible person in the
whole world kind of thinking I tell my clients all the time that you know
beating yourself up is just as problematic as beating someone else up
or someone else beating you up because when you do that when you're mean to
yourself and you judge yourself and you call yourself names and you have all
this negative self-talk eventually you're gonna come in there and rescue
yourself and you're gonna let yourself off the hook for bad behavior and bad
choices now let's see just how honest you can get which of these boxes do you
tend to get into the most here I'll get us started and I'll admit to you
that probably the box that I'm most likely to fall into you would be the
need to be seen as a box see we all tend to get in boxes and if we can
identify that then we can get control of that have you ever heard that saying
admitting you have a problem is the first step well right now's your chance
which of these boxes do you get into now to learn more about these roles take a
look at our video on the drama triangle I'm gonna link it right up here for you
to watch next