now if you've got a loved one with a drug or alcohol problem I bet I know
what your number one frustration is your number one frustration is the constant
never-ending lies and I bet you even wondered in the past if you're dealing
with a pathological liar and a lot of times the lies don't even
seem to make sense it doesn't even seem like the lie is even connected to the
addiction so why for the love of God is it so difficult to get the truth out of
them well that's what we're going to cover in today's video
so hey for those of you don't know me I'm amber Hollingsworth and you are
watching put the shovel down the YouTube channel dedicated specifically to help
you understand the psychology of addiction so you can outsmart it you can
beat it and you can get back to living the life that you want to live because I
know that you are sick and tired of this addiction running the show so make sure
you subscribe and I'll make sure you have all the information you need to
stay five steps ahead of addiction in this video I'm going to tell you the
three main types of lies that people with substance use disorders usually
tell and I'm gonna start with the most obvious and move into the deeper bigger
more important types of lies so make sure you watch the whole video to have a
really thorough understanding about what's happening here you know people
ask me all the time like what do you do how do you respond to the constant lies
and how do you get them to start telling you the truth and my answer to that
is always well the first thing you got to do is you got to figure out why
they're lying to you because the answer lies in the why so the first and most
obvious reason why your loved one is lying to you is to avoid being in
trouble naturally you want to avoid the consequences you don't want people mad
at you so when you're low going comes home and you say have you been drinking
are you high have you been using their natural instinctive protective reflex is
going to be to say no I mean most the time they're gonna be denying this
before they can even sort through and process what you
asked them it's a reflex almost as fast as when the doctor hits
your knee with that little hammer and sometimes it can be really frustrating
to be standing on the other side of that I mean it can be like a little kid whose
got their hand behind their back and then you say what's that behind your
back and they say nothing when it's so obvious but it's an instinctual
protection mechanism and those types of lies are usually the most obvious now
the second type of lie that you might encounter with an addicted loved one is
when they lie because they're embarrassed or ashamed or humiliated
about their behavior or choices or the things they've done
related to their addiction now this type of lie is a little easier to understand
and at least have a tad bit of empathy for and sometimes you might even find
yourself lying for your loved one to protect your own self from the
embarrassment or humiliation of the problem or to protect them from the
embarrassment or humiliation of the problem this is often the reason why
people lie in therapy or in group therapy unless you're talking to your
like court-ordered probation officer therapist there's not a lot of
consequences it's not like you're going to be in trouble or you're gonna get
your car taken away or your kids taking or something if you talk to your
therapist it's more that it's really embarrassing and shameful and a lot of
those things you just don't want to say out loud and so to be honest a lot of
times when I perceive that someone is maybe omitting or not telling me the
whole story for this particular reason I let them
off the hook on it just a little bit I sometimes even let them off the hook a
little by not making them give every single horrible detail about it because
most of the time I don't need every single little horrible detail about the
issue I just need to know the big picture of what's happening and there's
no sense of making them suffer anymore than they already are especially in the
counseling process so for example when they come in they tell me yeah drink I
drank four beers but I already know because I heard from their wife
yesterday that they drank eight it's really not necessary for me to get into
it and and go back and forth and say no I heard it was eight
especially if I know the reason they don't want to say it is
because it's humiliating but there might actually be another reason that they're
telling me for and not eight that's not because they're embarrassed or
humiliated necessarily and that is the number three type of lie so let's move
on to that one the third category of lies has to do
with self-denial or lies to themselves and to be honest this is the more
important question way more important than why they always lie to me because
that's a little bit obvious right the bigger more complex issue at hand is why
can't they see it for themselves why are they lying to themselves because that's
the domino that really needs to fall and if you can get someone to get out of
self-denial and just stop lying to themselves and to take some action to
fix the behavior the other kind of Lies tend to get better on their own and so
instead of focusing all your energy and attention on those other types of Lies
and trying to force the truth and trying to force compliance spend your time and
energy trying to understand the psychology of addiction why is it that
they cannot see the problem are there things that you can be doing to help
them see the problem faster because guess what there are and that's what
this channel is all about so these types of lies are normally like subconscious
types of lies so they're not typically purposeful it's honestly like their
brains way of protecting them against this piece of information that might
very well crumble them it's really hard for a person's ego to see that whole
mess all at once so when you're dealing with denial my
advice to you is not to try to rip the whole sheet off all at once my advice to
you and this is the way that I do it is to sort of peel that denial back layer
by layer by layer by layer not all at once and not with a like super direct
like blast to the face type of rip off the denial in fact when you come at
someone like what they do is they put up more shields
and walls and you get more denial which leads to more lying which is going to
make you want to pull your hair out so here's the deal family members I know
because you always tell me this is that you just want them to be able to tell
you the truth if that's truly the case if you really really really want them to
be able to tell you the truth then you need to discern why the lying is
happening if they're lying to you because they're afraid of some huge
consequence then the way to get them to tell you the truth is to try to stay out
of the trap of wanting to punish them now you got to understand the difference
in natural consequences and punishment I don't mean that you run interference and
you make their life great I mean whatever messes they make they may let
them clean them up what I'm talking about here is that if you hear a piece
of information that you are then going to impose some sort of punishment on
like for example if you tell your loved one if you relapse one more time you're
out of here like I'm divorcing you I'm taking your kids away or I'm not paying
for your college anymore then guess what they're not gonna be able to tell you
that and you probably wouldn't either and to be honest, I wouldn't neither so be
reasonable about it that's another one of those reasons why I say don't put out
the big home contracts don't do the if-then statements now that doesn't mean
that sometimes there aren't natural consequences to their behaviors like
you're not gonna pay for their college forever or you're not going to endanger
their children I'm just saying if you're constantly coming in with if this
happens then this is the punishment now punishment is different because this is
like you doling it out and say because I found out this piece of information you
know you're grounded from this that and you're restricted and you know all of
those punishment type statements that's going to keep someone lying to you to
avoid being in trouble now if you think your loved one is lying to you mostly to
protect themselves against the shame and humiliation what you have to do is you
have to take a really empathetic approach at talking to them and
you have to have a real sort of like understanding attitude I know you might
be thinking screw that I'm sick of their crap and they're the ones that have been
bad why do I have to do all the work I totally get you and that is a 100%
fair way to be thinking in statement but some of you already know who watch my
videos a lot this isn't about being fair this is about winning and if your goal
is to have your family member telling you the truth and they're lying to you
because they're humiliated then you're gonna have to figure out a way to
decrease that humiliation now the way that counselors do that is we sort of
normalize those feelings for them we say you know what if I was in the situation
I think I'd feel that way too and I might have even handled the situation
the same way that you did now that's not saying you approve of what they did or
that they made the right decision that's saying I understand you which is going
to let that wall come down and more truth come through and here's the good
news the more you can get them to say the truth out loud to you the faster
they're going to see the truth for themselves and the more you come at them
directly the more walls are going to build up the longer and more lies that
they're going to be telling you so remember get strategic here our goal is
to be five steps ahead of this thing now if you know that your loved one is lying
to you mostly because of their own self- denial the best way to deal with that is
to back up out of the way because most often family members it's almost like
they're standing in front of the person screaming yelling waving their arms
saying danger ahead danger ahead danger ahead blinking light like alarm sounds
going off and they do that so much for so often that the person like literally
stops paying attention to them like think of it like when your check engine
light is like always going off in your car and eventually you decide it's just
the sensor they start ignoring you just like that and usually you're just a
distraction from them seeing the problem that is right in front of their face
sometimes all that trying to get them to see the problem is actually blocking
their view of the so if your loved one is lying to you
because they're lying to themselves your job is to backup try to be neutral as
possible now that doesn't mean put yourself or them or your children or
your loved ones in unsafe situations because safety trumps what's
therapeutic so if it's an unsafe situation you deal with that
outside of that your job is to backup neutralize stand over here and so that
they can see that problem more quickly and if you want to put that process on
super overdrive and you're ready for this to be done and you want them to get
out of denial then combine that backing up being neutral with not fixing of the
consequences that we talked about in number one along with the empathy that
we talked about in number two and if you come at it with that three-pronged
approach you will win this war because that is how you get someone to truth
that's what counselors do and it works and I realize it is way much harder for
you to do that as a loved one that is for me to do that as the counselor
because what they're doing isn't really affecting me it's affecting you so I
don't want to minimize that and I don't want to say like why couldn't you do it
like I can do it like I 100% get the fact that it's a totally different
ballgame but what I'm telling you is these are the methods that work if you
want truth from your loved one these are the things that I want you to do now to
make sure you're doing that correctly I want you to watch these videos I've put
them together in a playlist for you called the psychology of addiction and
in that playlist we talked about all the ways that people with substance use
disorders think all those denial mechanisms why they stay stuck in those
behaviors because the more you can understand it the more strategically you
can come at it so I'm going to put it right up here all you have to do is
click on it and start absorbing that information and making decisions
differently