if you currently have an addiction or you have had an addiction in the past you might feel like
your family has become a little bit controlling maybe even to the point of micromanaging you
and i completely get just how frustrating that is and i'm 100 sure it is not helpful for your
recovery whatsoever definitely agree with you however if you really want to get your loved one
to stop engaging in these behaviors you kind of have to understand why they're engaging in those
behaviors and you're going to have to look a little bit deeper than the fact that you say
well i know why because they're trying to control me let's look a little bit deeper than that which
is why in this video we're going to take a deep look into exactly how your addiction has hurt
your family now if you feel like your addiction has never hurt your family and it just hurts you
and no one else then you probably shouldn't watch this video for the rest of you i will prepare you
there's a lot of truth bombs coming your way and some of these won't be pleasant but just
remember these things are not to try to make you feel guilty i know that you already feel guilty
this is really to help you understand and have empathy for your family members behavior because
after you do that then you can figure out how to actually make the situation better
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down i'm amber hollingsworth
and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction
so that you're always five steps ahead of it and you can get back to living the life that you want
to live now if you are new here introduce yourself in the comments we'd love to welcome you to our
little community now if that sounds like something that you're interested in consider subscribing
okay here we go here's the list this is going to be 10 big truth bombs coming your way that may be
a little bit hard to hear and probably not all of these apply to your situation but at least some of
these probably do during the course of developing an addiction it is pretty common that the person
the one that has the addiction will villainize in their own head certain people in their life they
sort of divide people into like good cops and bad cops or good people and bad people
that is a way in which we continue to justify our addiction and in our head we need to make this
other person these people that are in our life that are trying to sort of get us to see something
or make us change they become the adversary and the reason is is because your addiction needs
to keep those people emotionally far away from you and distant because they're a threat to the
addiction now i'm not saying that the other people haven't done anything they shouldn't have done
i'm guessing they've probably done a lot of things that they shouldn't have done or that
weren't helpful but do take into account that it's possible that in your own thinking you've made
them a bigger villain than they really are or that yes they're a villain but maybe some of the other
behaviors and things you've done have kind of turned them into a villain so let's take a little
bit of responsibility for our own psychological thinking about this subject number two way that
your addiction has hurt your family member it's very likely highly likely even that you have done
some gaslighting towards your family members now if you haven't heard that term basically it's kind
of like when you make the other person think that they're crazy so like for example if your loved
one found evidence of your addiction and then you told them that was old or that hasn't been there
or that was from someone else and they must be crazy and why are they on your case
basically it's kind of like when you get pushed into a corner and you make that other person
question their sanity as a way to sort of get out of trouble or weasel out of the problem or
just in general sometimes there's even bigger like gas lighting strategy where you pretty regularly
do things that make that person question themselves this is a way to sort of throw
attention off of the addiction number three this one may seem a little bit obvious but kind
of gotten their hopes up and disappointed them a bunch of times and it's possible that you didn't
do this on purpose maybe you promised something or you said okay i'm done never again and you
completely meant it when you said it but because of the addiction you were not able to follow
through on that promise so there's been a lot of disappointments and unkept promises number four
you've pit family members and loved ones and friends against each other you've probably
done this in a couple of ways maybe you've told a little piece of the story to this person over
here and a different piece of the story this person over here and this third person over
here they know a different part of the story because they were there when it happened or
something like that all these different people know different things so you purposefully try to
keep those people from not talking to each other because you don't want the whole story to come out
another way you might have engaged in splitting is by pitting people
against each other in the way that you get these people you think in your mind are the good cops
to really be on your side and see how these other people over here have been treating you
mean and they're not fair and life isn't right maybe that's a family member maybe that's a boss
or a teacher but you've probably done a little splitting some of that's for practical purposes
like keeping the information separate and some of that is for psychological purposes because
you want someone to be on your side so they sort of buy into your narrative about what's going on
number five might seem a little obvious and that's that your addiction may have hurt
your loved ones financially there's about 10 000 ways that your addiction can hurt your loved ones
financially if they've had to pay for treatment centers or value out of jail or pay for lawyers
that definitely counts if they've paid for college and you've flunked out and they've
paid for more semesters and more classes and you haven't completed those classes
that definitely counts if you stole them from them or pond their items that for sure
counts but there are other more subtle ways that your addiction can impact someone financially you
know a lot of times when family members are going through this they get so preoccupied and consumed
just like you do when you have an addiction they get preoccupied with you just the same way as you
get preoccupied with the addiction that they don't function very well and they don't work very good
and they could cause them problems at work work performance problems they could lose their job
altogether i've seen that happen because they've had to take so much time off work or things like
that all right now i know i'm giving you a lot here this is heavy but just remember this is to
help you understand things from their perspective and i know you're thinking well i already know
all these things but it's just good to get inside the mind of the other person so you can understand
why they're doing what they're doing don't worry i make them do that same thing all the time to
understand why people with addictions do what they do it's just your turn number six and most
importantly you need to understand that your loved one is living in fear when you're an
active addiction they're scared that you're gonna ruin your life they're scared that you're gonna
hurt yourself or someone else they are scared that they're gonna get that phone call in the middle of
the night with that really bad news that no one ever wants to hear they're scared that you're
gonna back them into a corner and make them make a hard choice to put you out of their life they live
in a constant fear and that fear state eventually turns into some kind of anxiety disorder that
we think that hope for families we describe as somewhere in between obsessive compulsive disorder
and post-traumatic stress disorder it's that anxiety disorder that your family develops because
all these things we're talking about that causes them to do all those crazy controlling nagging
threatening bothersome unproductive behaviors now if you're really relating to what i'm
talking about and you really accept the fact that you've done some damage in your relationships and
you really want to repair it then you might want to consider taking our rapid relationship repair
course and in that course i'll walk you through the step-by-step process of healing all these
things we're talking about making it better so that those behaviors go away so that everything
calms down and you can get back to living the life that you want to live i'll put more information
about that in the description below number seven you've probably on more than one occasion maybe
even a lot of occasions put your loved one in this sort of like rock and a hard place position where
you're trying to get them to do something or not to do something and either whatever choice they
make kind of sucks right like there's no good choice like for example maybe you put them in a
position to say hey i need money for my electric bill well now they can either give you money
for your electric bill which might cause them financial trouble if their finances are tight and
if it doesn't even cause them financial trouble they'll probably feel guilty because then they
think they're enabling you right so that doesn't feel good or they have to make a choice of knowing
that you're living without electricity which makes them feel guilty and worried and anxious and all
those other negative feelings so it's like no matter what the family member chooses it sucks
for them and if you're honest with yourself you've probably put them in a position like that over and
over again here's another example maybe even a harder more difficult example let's say if your
struggle with alcoholism and you have children your spouse has to make a really hard decision to
let your children stay around a parent that is struggling in active alcoholism or to separate
from you which may cause all kinds of practical and logistical problems for them and the children
and they don't want to take the children away from you or make the children think bad of you either
choice they really feel like they're stuck in this dilemma of not having a good choice whatsoever
now you could be trying to tell yourself that your addiction does not impact your children i'm going
to have to disagree with you there even if your addiction is on the milder end if you're addicted
it is definitely impacting your ability to be the best parent possible for your children so let's
just get real honest with ourselves about that now that doesn't mean you're abusing them or anything
but come on you know it's not letting you be your best self number eight because you're pretty aware
that your loved one gets in this sort of rock and a hard place situation it's pretty common
that when you're an active addiction you guilt them into things you think oh well you don't love
me unconditionally or you only love me if i'm a certain way or are you really gonna put me out in
the cold and leave me if there's just all these different ways which you've probably engaged in
trying to guilt your loved one now i know they've probably tried to guilt you back like i said this
isn't me saying it's all you this is just looking at how your addiction has affected your family
let me give you a little example that the other day i was talking to this woman who was telling me
that her son even when he messes up and he knows he really messes up he'll do something like call
his mom and just say you know i'm just a terrible person i can't believe i did that
like i'm just a loser i just screw everything up now that may sound like the person is
taking responsibility for what's going on but they're really not when you do that you're really
just engaging in a self-pity party even if you're feeling sad for yourself you're still doing that
and it's a way of putting guilt on the other person it's a way that the other person feels
guilty if they're hard on you or if they hold a limit because they're like oh they feel terrible
about themselves it's definitely an unfair stance or unfair thing to do to your loved one
okay number nine at the very minimum even if you feel like you haven't done any other stuff
which i'm a little doubtful of if you've really had an addiction but let's pretend
that's true you have definitely done number nine okay we're just going to accept this
when you have an addiction you no doubt have secrets about it now listen i've had people
tell me on my videos that they are completely honest and have no secrets about their addiction
i do not believe that so if you're thinking that think about it harder so let's just agree
on the fact that you've kept some secrets maybe you've told everything you've done but you've
kept secrets about where you've done it or how you've done it or how you felt about it or other
details of the situation there is some secret keeping happening when you have an addiction
and when you're keeping a secret you consciously or subconsciously keep everyone else around you
at a distance because it's as if your subconscious knows that if you let them in close they're going
to see your secret and so you're pushing them further and further away now they may not be
able to put their finger on this or say this is what's happening but they can feel that
they can feel that you're pushing them away and it makes them super stressed out and feel crazy and
triggers all of those controlling behaviors that you don't like and that you really wish they
would quit doing okay so if you've been able to make it through all that and tolerate all those
really heavy truths okay be proud of yourself because you've made it through a whole list of
very difficult things to hear now your next step is obvious how do you repair that i'm going to put
a video up next about how to rebuild trust with your family and if you need a little bit more
extensive help on it then take a look at our rapid relationship repair course link in the description