You have to help them build a new vision for their future
that is step three of helping your addicted loved one make the decision to get sober
because if you can get your addicted loved one to start to maybe envision a different
kind of future or something that's more hopeful or something that they'd rather have
instead their journey towards sobriety is going to really speed up and you can help
reinforce this now I'm sure you're wondering okay Amber how do we do that don't worry I am
going to explain the first thing you have to do is you have to help them
connect with their own motivations for change but if you listen closely enough
I think that you're gonna hear some kind of complaints or frustrations from the person
we mentioned this briefly in step number one but in this step we're going to go much more in
now their motivations may not seem to be tied directly to their addictive behavior at least not
in the way that they communicate it to you but if they're wanting something in their life to improve
if they're wanting something about themselves to improve those are actually really great motivators
because when it comes down to it we all know the things about yourself
aren't really gonna get better as long as you're engaging in an addictive behavior
and trust me they will eventually figure that out as well I want you to really
tune your ears in and listen differently and try to find what it is that they want
that's different than what they have right now let me give you some examples maybe it's a young adult
and what they really really want is to move out of the parents' that's a great goal isn't it maybe
what they want is a promotion at work maybe what they want is to be a really good mother or father
maybe what they want is to make a ton of money or to graduate college everyone in life has things
that they want we all do and I want you to listen carefully for your addicted loved ones wants
and desires and goals now when they say these things I want you avoid falling in the trap of
well that's never going to happen to you because well if you stop drinking maybe that could happen
we don't need any I told you so's we don't need any instructions even on how to do that I just
want you to first recognize what those things are and then once you begin to pick up on those things
and recognize them I want you to validate them I want you to sort of take those little tiny seeds
of desire for change and pour some water on them and grow them into bigger seeds and ultimately
bigger plants that are going to grow into
like a recovery plan now one way you can grow that little tiny seed of motivation
for change is you can say when they make those kinds of statements to you you can
investigate into that a little further by saying oh yeah what would that look like
or why is that important to you or how long have you been thinking about that
so what you're doing is you're going into this little motivation seat and you're exploring
around in there and you're finding more good motivations for example maybe if their motivation
is they really want to graduate college and you want to find out why that's so important to them
why do you think they might think that maybe it's really important to them because no one
in their family graduated college before just to prove to themselves that they can do it
or maybe it's really important to them to be able to provide for their family
once you get connected to the why that's so important
I want you to go in another layer are you ready this is a big time I want you to find
out the why is it so important like why is it so important for you to provide for your family
why is it so important for you to graduate college even though other people haven't
because now you're going to get even closer to their true
hearts desires and having them talk about these things out loud is one of the fastest ways you
can grow this desire for change now we're getting into some actual like counseling techniques here
these are actual strategies that counselors use and that you learn in real counselors school but
I don't expect you to sit down and have like hour long sessions where you're digging these
things out of people you have to do it much more casually and naturally and in little
smaller doses however the good thing is when you do it it's actually much more powerful than when
I do it as the counselor because you're around them all the time
and you can explore these avenues in a much more natural way and you can reinforce these
things in a much more natural way than I can once a week or once every two weeks or however
often it is that they come sit in my office now if you really wanna get good at helping
people connect to their motivations then I'm going to put the link in the description
so you can actually watch a real life session
where I use the skills that I'm teaching you only it goes much more in depth into
the actual communication skills that counselors use in these situations now another way for you
to grow these little seeds of motivations is for you to ask about their next steps
you can do this super easily be like well what would you have to
do to make that happen what would be the next step you can ask about
if they've done things like that in the past before you can ask about are there
any roadblocks that might be standing in their way you're just exploring with them and having
them talk about these things out loud they're going to start to find their own solutions
have you ever been talking to someone about a problem or situation you
had and then all of a sudden the light bulb went off in your head
and then you totally had it and you understood exactly what you needed to do and it was like this
wonderful like epiphany moment aren't those awesome I love it
when that happens that's one of the great things about being a counselor it's like the
person's talking to you and then they figure it out and they just associate
it with you and they feel like you did the helping but actually it's the talking about
it that helps people figure things out like that you can even explore with them
what kind of resources or connections that they have that might help them along their
step or journey to getting whatever it is that they want to get what you're doing here
focusing them on something that they want they will make the connection that
what they have is incompatible with what they want especially if you're doing steps
number one and step number two from this series now step four in this series of getting your
loved one sober is actually a really exciting one because it's all about knowing how to identify
when the window is open when they're actually ready to start making some big changes