so we all know that dealing with an addict or an alcoholic is frustrating
even the best people when they have addictions live and manipulate and split
people against each other and basically just turn your whole life upside down
but what do you do when that problematic behavior actually becomes aggressive and
sometimes even abusive well that's what we're going to talk about in today's
video but before we do that I want to send a special thanks out there to our
follower who recommended this topic for those of you who don't know me or her
new to the channel I'm amber Hollingsworth and this is put the shovel
down the youtube channel dedicated to helping you understand the science and
psychology of addiction so you can be 5 steps ahead of it so if that sounds like
something that you might need to do consider subscribing and I'll make sure
you have all the information you need and make that happen
now like I said a little earlier I've gotten these emails and these messages
from people who've been longtime followers who've watched a lot of my
videos and they were discovering to me these situations in which they were
really being treated very badly and they're like Amber I tried this I tried
empathy I try to understand their point of view and it was like they tried all
these things that I talked about in my video and that's what made me realize oh
I'm not like communicating very effectively the balance between
protecting yourself looking out for yourself your own boundaries and in the
other things that I teach which is how to motivate someone towards recovery
which involves a lot of empathy and restoring of the relationship there is a
balance point between these two things although I am a strong believer in
doing those things helps motivate people toward recovery I really want you guys
to know that I don't expect for you to be doing that at the expense of your
health your safety or your dignity we all have to find that line between we're
helping someone else is harming us and that's what we're going to look at today
we're going to find that balance so in this video we're going to cover
specifically when people become psychologically aggressive and in part
two we're going to cover specifically how people become physically aggressive
we're going to look at each of those types go through we'll identify some
examples of what that looks like and how to respond to it okay I'm about to tell
you three forms of psychologically aggressive behavior but by no means is
this like the full list there are a lot of things but I want to focus in on
three specific things and I'm going to give them to you and the order of
severity meaning I'm going to start with the least worst and go to earth I'm not
saying that like they're not bad I'm just saying that we're gonna start with
level number one and go all the way down to level number three alright the first
psychologically aggressive behavior we're gonna cover is turning everything
back on you making everything your fault to the point that
being mean to you that they're name-calling that they're seriously
seriously hurting you deflating yourself esteem and basically tearing you down so
that they can control the situation now almost anyone with an addiction and when
they get called or they're in trouble if they feel like they're backed into a
corner they'll spin that around and make that your fault somehow that's not
atypical and if you've watched my videos on manipulation then you probably
already know what I'm talking about and you have a little bit of skill on how to
deal with that but sometimes that really escalates into where it's like they're
trying to intimidate you they're trying to get you to second-guess yourself to
back off to sort of crawl into a little hole and give them whatever they want or
let them do whatever they want to do now the hard thing about understanding all
this is being able to see someone is unhealthy who has a disorder or an
illness and the really good person even though they have this it's hard to be
able to imagine all that but at the same time understand that it is perfectly
okay to set that boundary for yourself I don't care what someone has it is not
okay to treat you abusive even when my son is sick and he's like eight years
old I feel so bad for him I will bring him anything he wants I'll tuck him in
the covers I'll bring him drinks with straws I'll baby him to the nth degree
because I love him and he's sick he's my baby but if he gets really nasty with me which
happens from time to time when he's sick I'm like hold up I know you're sick and
I know you don't feel good but that's not on me I'm here trying to help you
you need to rein it in because even though he's sick and he feels terrible and he's
eight years old it is still not okay to let people treat you badly
especially being mean to you and the thing of it is is addicts and alcoholics
they know exactly what your buttons are they know right where your sore spots
are and when they get back into a corner they will hit it with a sledgehammer
when this happens to you what I want you to do is call it out not in a
loud in your face like this fight way but in a
rational kinda like I do my son and say hey what's up with this like how did
this conversation become about that a lot of times what I'll see happen is the
person with the addiction will bring up some fault or flaw or something that the
family member did a long time ago that maybe was something that they shouldn't
have done or mistake or bad and that's perfectly appropriate but they'll bring it
up at a time as a way to deflect the conversation off of what's really being
discussed right now and so if that happens I just want you to bring that
right up to the surface and say hey I can understand you have some hurt
feelings about that and I'm perfectly willing to discuss it but right now
we're talking about this now is not really the time so you can do that if
it's on a minor level if it's verbally threatening and just really really
intimidating then I want you to leave the situation I don't want you to stand
there and fight with them I don't want you to stand there and try to talk
sense into them I want you to physically leave the situation because anything
else is probably going to validate that it's okay to treat you that way and it's
gonna be really hard not to get sucked into a full-blown argument fight with
them because you're human and you can only take being attacked so much before
you're gonna say a bunch of mean nasty stuff and so you can even say that you
can say listen I feel myself getting heated and I know nothing good is going
to come of all this so I'm just gonna take a little break
we'll come back to it excuse yourself moving on to
psychologically aggressive tactic number two gaslighting now we covered gaslighting
in one of my previous videos on manipulation but like with anything else
there are levels of gaslighting and problematic behavior sometimes an addict
or an alcoholic will sort of make you think that you forgot or you don't
remember it right to try to throw you off the scent of something in the moment
I'm not saying that's appropriate obviously but it's a deflection tactic
and other times someone with an addiction problem will literally launch
like a full-out gaslighting like strategic
ongoing plan and if you don't know a lot about what gaslighting is it's basically
when you make someone else feel like they're crazy like you set them up and
you set the situations up in such a way that makes them really really doubt
themselves completely make you think you can't trust
yourself at all and so they may move things around in the house they may say
things and then deny it later they may have people come and tell you a totally
different version of a story there's all kinds of ways of doing this but when
this is an ongoing manipulative strategic plan this literally crushing
you and bringing you to like the point of nervous breakdown and you can't even
trust yourself and you're just torn up inside that is a time that you need to
back away from the situation that you need to consult someone that you trust
now the hard thing is it's because when you're dealing with an addict or
alcoholic they're really good I mean really good you guys know me I know how
to call out this stuff I deal with addicts and alcoholics every day but if I
didn't deal with their families I would fall for some of this stuff that's why I
won't see them without seeing the family cause I'm like I don't know I wouldn't
know what to believe and so they'll get even the people
around you and on their side because they're gonna spin some stories about
you to your friends your other family to the counselors involved
they're gonna say that you're mean and you're controlling and you're evil
and you're you know you're emotionally crazy and all this kind of stuff they're
gonna spin these stories and then when they get you in front of those people
they're gonna push your button in such a way that's going to cause you to act
that way they're gonna set you off so now you've just sort of proven in front
of these other people that everything they've been saying about you is right
and this is another one of those ways in which they're really intentionally and
purposefully setting you up don't let yourself be treated this way get an
objective point of view call it out if you think that's what is happening
say hey I feel like you're setting me up here like what's going on
because when you take those secrets those things that are
going on and you calmly and you rationally bring them up to the surface
it's really hard to deny and they may start to backpedal and they may start to
argue with you and they may get a little bit more escalated but I just want you
to hold your calm and if they get mean or violent I want you to back out of the
situation do not allow yourself to be treated really badly do not put yourself
in a dangerous situation that's not okay so some of you have heard me say that's
my formula for dealing with people is safety first and then what's therapeutic
and I think maybe that's the point that's not coming across completely on
some of my other videos there's a lot of things that I can teach you to do get an
out addict an alcoholic to come around to get out as well to stop enabling them
and a lot of those things involved empathy and all those other nice things
but that does not surpass safety so remember safety is first all right the
last psychologically aggressive behavior that we cover in this video is emotional
blackmail and this is when a person is literally holding you hostage from a
threat not a threat to like hit you or kill you or blow up your car or
something but a threat to do something that would emotionally devastate you
sometimes the person with the addiction will actually threaten themselves
they'll say well if you're not gonna give me that I'm so sick I'm gonna be in
withdrawal and I'll probably just kill myself because I can't live with that
you see that's like give me this money because if you don't I'll be so sick I'm
gonna kill myself oh my goodness that is emotional blackmail because now you're
really held hostage other times they do it in slightly more subtle ways like
they'll say things to you if you don't give me the money that I'm just gonna
have to go out on the street and get it and so then you start imagining all
these terrible things that they'd have to do on the street to get it or to say
well if you don't give it to me then I'm just gonna steal it and I'll probably
even get arrested and I guess that'll be on you you know they'll flip that on you
but they'll emotionally blackmail you with threats to their own safety and
well-being other times they may threaten other things
you know they may know a secret about you and literally blackmail you with it
they may say well if you don't do this I'm gonna tell the kids about XYZ you
know so it's that like holding something over your head and in that kind of thing
you cannot let emotional blackmail work you got a call that immediately and if
you don't know how to do that especially if you have someone that has a tendency
to sort of threaten their own self in some kind of way then make sure you
check out my video on what to do when someone threatens suicide because in
that video I go through exactly what steps to take even if you think they're
bluffing even if you think they're just trying to
manipulate you I want you to take those steps because we remember safety before
what's therapeutic this is all about getting back control of your self and
your life and that is truly the first step to getting control over your family
situation and I'd love to hear more from you guys what are some psychologically
aggressive things that you've had done to you or that you've done to someone
else because these stories when you share them could really help someone
else so let me know your experience in the comments