having healthy boundaries is a constant struggle that requires us to back up
really think through a situation and make strategic decisions about how to
handle it now many of you have probably see a lot of my videos on boundaries
but you may be thinking okay I get what you're saying but what words do I use
how do I have these conversations well you're in luck because that's what we're
gonna discuss in this video for those of you who are new here I'm amber
Hollingsworth you're watching put the shovel down the YouTube channel
dedicated to helping you understand these science and psychology of
addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track
okay the first thing we're going to do is define some terms I know it's like
school right but understanding these terms and how I'm really well defined in
your brain is gonna help you understand which category you might be falling into
at any given time so let's talk about assertiveness right we hear that word
all the time most of us have an idea about what it means but let's get down
to the nitty-gritty and really pull the pieces apart now the way I like to think
of assertiveness is more like a continuum so if you had a line and down
here you had aggressive and on this end you had passive right in the middle you
would find assertiveness now there's also this other category called passive
aggressiveness which we're gonna come to so hang in there okay so only aggressive
end the simple way to think about that is that you are getting your needs met but
you're doing it by being either physically or emotionally forceful in a
way that crosses someone else's boundaries so it's like yes you're
getting your needs met but you're running over someone else in the process
passive all the way down here on this end of the continuum means that you're
not getting your needs met and someone is running over your boundaries and
crossing into your territory so as you can see neither one of those things are
very ideal now the simplest way to think about assertiveness is that it is right
in the middle of that continuum and it's a way that you get your needs met but
doing it without running over anyone else or crossing into their territory that
is the healthy place that we want to stay now I told you we talked a little bit
about passive-aggressiveness I know we've all heard that word and we have an
idea about what that means but let me put a little bit more clarity on it for
you okay the problem down here with assertiveness
is it it's going to cause the people around you to build up a lot of
resentments frustration and anger towards you which is ultimately probably
gonna lead them to acting out against you somehow the problem down here with
being passive is is going to lead you to building up a lot of frustration anger
and resentment towards the people around you which is probably going to lead you
to acting out against them somehow in some way now I've told you before we
would talk about what passive-aggressive means and I know you've heard that term
and you have an idea about what it means but let's put a little more clarity on
it if you take the problem down here with being aggressive and you take the
problem down here with being passive and you smash those two problems together
you have passive aggressive simple right so the problem with being passive
aggressive is you're not getting your needs met because you're not addressing
the situation you're letting things go on but you're acting out toxically or
problematically in response to that so when you're passive-aggressive other
people are building resentment towards you because your behavior is offensive
or problematic and you're still running around with resentments towards them
because you're not getting your needs met so honestly the worst possible
category to fall in is passive aggressive because no one's the other
needs met and everyone's walking around feeling upset angry resentful all kind
of not good stuff now having said that I realize how difficult assertiveness can
be and I'm not perfect at it myself but most of the time when we step back from
a situation and we're not in the heat of the moment let's zone in on that for a
second it's really hard to think about how to be perfectly assertive in the
heat of the moment so step number one towards practice good assertiveness is
think about the situations that could arise beforehand
my guess is the situations that are going to arise for you are the ones that
have been arising for you so of course you can't predict
everything that's going to be thrown your way but my guess is about 80 or 90
percent of it is pretty predictable and so if you can think about how you want
to assertively handle those situations before you're in them you're on your way
to some good healthy boundaries now before we go much further let me just
put this little disclaimer out there if you're dealing with an addicted loved
one and you're trying to be assertive you're gonna be being put to like the
ultimate test like this is gonna be like the Ironman championship of
assertiveness because dealing with someone that has a drug alcohol problem
it's gonna make it really really hard because their behavior is gonna be
constantly challenging your boundaries and it's gonna force you to have to
address some things and make some hard decisions that you probably really don't
want to make so that brings me to the second step that I want you to address
when it comes to assertiveness I want you to really think about what is it
that I am trying to avoid why is it that in the past I've either let it go down
and not do anything about it I've yelled and screamed and threatened about it but
still not do anything about it what is it you're trying to avoid is it you're
trying to avoid throwing them out is it you're trying to avoid paying for
expensive treatment is it that you're trying to avoid them going to jail if
you can at least identify the fear that's holding you hostage there that's
gonna clear the road and make it possible for you to actually behave in a
strategic way because even if you make some decisions about how to handle
something assertively but you're still being held hostage by that fear we have
some videos on this if you haven't seen them if you're still being held hostage
by that fear then that fear is probably still going to be running the show even
though in your mind you've got these perfect assertive plans hang in there
because I'm going to give you the steps and then I'm going to give you some kind
of like specific examples and we can talk about the word the actual words to
use so once you've identified the problems that need to be solved
hopefully proactively and once you've identified the fear that's been holding
you hostage that's been preventing you from solving those problems now we can
move on to the actual meat of the subject how do I actually address these
boundaries with my addicted loved one probably the absolute number one key is
to address them have the conversations before you're in the situation remember
earlier I told you you can probably predict what's going to happen I know
you're thinking of like five scenarios in your head right now that make you
crazy and you want to eliminate them so we're gonna start plan a with have a
conversation with them about it an assertive conversation so you're not
gonna avoid it you're not going to pretend it didn't happen but you're also
not going to scream about it and in order to do this in this sort of
objective nonreactive way you're gonna have to do it in a neutral kind of time
but if you'll do it in a non-threatening kind of way here's a little tip that
might help you keep the situation non-threatening don't say something like
we need to talk or hey sit down I've got an issue just start the conversation if
you're in the kitchen and getting dinner ready or you're pouring a bowl of cereal
or in the living room whatever and it just seems to be sort of a natural time
just open the door to it if you put a lot of preset around it then immediately
the person gets on the defensive because it's like okay warning here it goes I'm
in trouble and so when you say things like we need to have a talk it immediately
makes someone feel like oh my gosh I'm going to the principal's office
like seriously might as well just heard over the intercom of the whole school
amber Hollingsworth report to the principal's office that's what it feels
like I know you know this is true because this has definitely happened to
you before okay there's a next step this is going to be a little bit hard and I'm
not even gonna promise that it's going to go well that's why we're gonna have
this sort of plan a idea Plan B idea so in the perfect world we're gonna sit
down we're gonna have a conversation about it we're gonna say hey a lot of
times we're running into this problem right here let's give a problem example
maybe the problem example is your loved one is coming in
really late at night disrupting the house they're super loud you're trying
to sleep you got to get up for work the next morning and it's causing all kind
of chaos in the house and it's making you crazy
let's go with that scenario so you're going to sit down you're gonna have this
conversation with them about coming into the house late now what could happen to
you when you're dealing with someone with a drug or alcohol problem is they
could flat-out deny that it's happening now that isn't nearly likely to happen
in a normal regular situation but when you're dealing with addiction it's a definite
possibility and that could be just because it's an instinctive defense
mechanism to just deny because a lot of things if you say to someone with a
substance abuse disorder they immediately deny it like automatically without even thinking
or it could be depending on what substance they're using they literally
don't remember it because if they're in a blackout late at night when they're
coming home like they've been drinking or on benzos which are things like xanax
or something like that then they literally may not remember it and that's
some of the most difficult denial to deal with and there are some videos on
the channel about that particular kind of denial but if you run into this
obstacle I don't want you to engage in a big giant argument about whether or not
they're doing that or not you can say well just sort of bypass the whole
trying to like get a judgment on whether or not they did it or not and say well
this has been historically a problem for me it feels kind of late it's disruptive
it's loud and see if you can come up with a solution together listen to their
point of view don't jump to conclusions don't immediately jump in there with all
of your thoughts and defensive hear what they have to say first and do some
reflective listening you know we talked about reflective listening in an old
video do that and if plan a works you guys can come up with a solution
together so if this is your child maybe that solution might look something like
hey if you're gonna be out past 11:30 you need to find someone to spend the
night with because the rest of us have to be in the bed we got to get up for
school or work the next day and here's where the plan B assertiveness can come
in and you can even say so at 11:30 I'm gonna lock the door so that I can rest
easy at night and know everything's locked up and not be waiting up all
night for you to come around be startled have all that drama so your plan in this
situation is you're locking the door to 11:30 you're turning on the security if
you have security and you're going to bed and you may be thinking well what if
they have a key in the first step I'd like for you to just ask them and give
them the chance to make the decision to either stay out if they're past 11:30 or
come home or whatever it is allow them the chance to make the right decision it
may very well come to the point that you have to do something drastic like change
the locks I know that's a pain in the butt I know it costs a lot of money but
it may very well come down to that so go ahead and be prepared for that remember
that's part of this five steps ahead we're gonna hope we don't get there but
if we do we know what we know what the plan is
now since money is such a big issue and family struggling with addiction it
causes a ton of fights it's a lot of drama around it let's use that as our
next example now money can be complicated because it's different depending on is
this your spouse is this your child it could be your spouse and the money issue
is they're addicted to pain pills and secretly behind the scenes they've ran
up all these bills they've got all these creditors that you may or may not know
about they've pawned things they've sold things that's an issue or it could be
you're dealing with your teenage or young adult child or maybe even adult
child and there's an issue with money because they keep asking for money
or taking money from you now if they're taking money from you you need to be
assertive and deal with that which is probably gonna mean they need to go
elsewhere you do not need to be living in a house where you can't feel safe
because to me if someone's taking things from you in your own home and stealing
them and sell it or whatever that's abusive you don't need to be dealing
with that don't just ignore it because like I said then you're being passive or
you're being aggressive and don't make all these little snide remarks about
either because then you're being passive-aggressive you've got to deal
with the situation like I said assertiveness sometimes means making the
hard decision that you've really been avoiding if this is your spouse to be
assertive about you may need to take a step like
separating your finances to protect yourself because if they're ruining the
credit if they're doing a lot of things that you can't control then you really
are going to need to step back and figure out what's the best way to
protect yourself sometimes spouses get into this whole like surveillance thing
where they're trying to control all the money and they're trying to monitor
everything and that's kind of an iffy situation I think if the person is in
early recovery and it's something that you guys have agreed on as part of their
recovery plan or whatever then I'm kind of okay with that if you're trying to do
that when they're an active addiction then you're really sort of doing it in a
reactive stance which is going to keep you probably in a constant fight
argument being the CSI person gonna keep you all vigilant it's just not gonna
serve you or them if it's your kid and they're asking for money all the time
instead of doing this whole going around like on each thing they want if they
want a burger can they have three dollars and forty-five cents you know if
they want to stop and get a Pepsi at the store you know you're like those cost a
dollar 65 I stopped at the QT the other day I know what they are you know don't
do that you can decide for yourself hey I'm just no gonna give you cash at all if
you want to that could be a decision you make assertively you can decide okay I'm
gonna give you the cash but it's not gonna be more than 20 dollars a week and
I'm gonna give it to you in five dollar increments whatever it is just make a
decision about it that's more general and across-the-board instead of trying
to have these conversations each little bitty teeny thing because it's gonna
save you a lot of argument it's gonna save you a lot of headache of trying to
figure out are they trying to be sneaky with that money because again you're
trying to stay out of this investigative mode because it's not good for anybody
now sometimes being assertive feels like you're being mean it especially feels
that way when you've eventually come to the wall that you've had to make some
very difficult decisions and very likely the other person is going to really
even make you feel worse about that and they're gonna tell you that you're being
mean they're gonna push your buttons and they're gonna call you bad things but
that's their way of trying to continue to force their will and their way on you
you are not being mean when you are protecting your boundaries in a totally
healthy and reasonable way you may feel like you're being mean but you're not
what's gonna happen is if you don't do that you probably are gonna I really
mean because they're gonna cross your boundaries they're going to do things and you're
gonna act like a crazy lunatic you're gonna do a lot of things that are gonna
cross their boundaries back and that really is kind of being in what I would
call the mean category so if it comes to it you may have to back up and really
say okay am I really I mean here is this reasonable not reasonable and if you
don't trust your own judgment run it by someone else he's either really
objective that you trust or who understands these kinds of situations
you know just last week we had a really great example of assertiveness in our
office we have this young man who's still in college the parents are paying
for the courses and it's not so much that he's doing terrible or anything
like that but he didn't want to take very many hours for the semester and the
parents like oh my gosh we're gonna become handcuffed for college forever so
they can either choose to get into this power struggle with this young man about
how many hours he takes at college or they can say hey we're willing to pay
for school for three more semesters two more semesters one more semester
whatever it is eight more semesters doesn't matter what it is but if you'll
say hey we're willing to do this much then they have to make the decision
about how to make it work within that boundary either they're gonna have to
figure out how to take their classes quicker and take more hours so they can
get out or they're gonna have to figure out how to fund it if it takes a little
longer than planned that is assertiveness you're managing
your boundaries you're taking care of yourself and your own financial needs
but you're not intruding on them and you don't have to make all these
passive-aggressive comments you know if you don't deal with this and you just
let it go on you're probably gonna be making all these little snide comments I
call them like drive-by knifings it's like you're at the dinner
table everyone's having a good dinner and they're talking about school and
then you make some little snide comment about like I guess you're gonna
be in school when you're 30 you're just a career student aren't you that's
passive-aggressive that's crossing their boundary and it's still not getting your
need met so please definitely stay out of that territory now before you go any
further I'm thinking of this one pitfall that you could accidentally fall into
and that is trying to take a mess of a situation where there are 10,000
problems and assertively address all of them all at once that's going to be
really difficult you're not going to go from disaster not adressing anything or
not adressing anything effectively to cleaning it all up at once so I'd like
for you to pick one or two problems to focus on at a time address them
assertively a couple one or two at a time and you'll make more progress that
way now of course boundaries is a very difficult complicated large subject and
this video is really only the start of it so I want you to watch this next
video about boundaries and by the end of this you're gonna be a healthy
boundaries ninja