this is the couple's survival guide to addiction you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that
the divorce rate of couples who struggled with addiction is four times higher than the national
average but you might be surprised to learn that most of those divorces actually happen after the
addicted spouse gets into recovery but believe it or not that is the case and in this video
we're going to talk about why that is and what to do about it i'm going to share with you three
very critical skills that a couple must master if you want your relationship to survive this crisis
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down i am amber hollingsworth
and this youtube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction
so you can get your life and your family back on track it's my goal to keep you five steps ahead of
addiction at all times and today is no different we've got some very very important information
out there for anyone who's in a relationship where addiction has caused problems whether
that's you you're the person who struggles with addiction or your partner or your spouse is the
person who has struggled with addiction if you want your relationship to survive please pay
special attention to what's contained in this video now you might be thinking why in the world
is the divorce rate higher after the individual struggling with addiction has gotten into recovery
well i think there's probably a number of reasons for that for one when the addiction is going on
the couple gets locked into this system of crisis and both people are navigating a crisis and
someone's like while you're in the crisis you're just stuck navigating that and it kind of creates
this almost like trauma bond together that keeps you together trying to figure this whole thing out
after the fact once someone begins a recovery process or gets into sobriety believe it or
not there is not a lot of help and resources out there for couples to navigate through the recovery
process as a family unit and because of that all the trauma that both partners have experienced
doesn't get addressed and it's just lingering out there and typically couples are not treated
for that trauma and they don't get any help about how to move past those problems how to communicate
how to resolve couples issues and the whole system just falls apart from there
i've seen this so many times and it's always surprising you know i'll be working with
a family or a couple and the addicted person struggles and struggles and struggles and it
feels like right when they're just about to get it or right when they finally got it the whole couple
falls apart and honestly it makes me feel pretty devastated because i'm like oh my gosh we just
got here what's going on and i don't want that to happen for you so let's talk about the three
really critical shifts in thinking that you must wrap your head around if you want to get through
this and stay together number one it's very very helpful if you will both wrap your head around the
concept that this addiction this outside force has come into your relationship and caused harm for
both people so instead of villainizing each other as good guy bad guy and all that kind of
stuff you realize that this problem out here this external force is the problem and not necessarily
any one person in the family system when you do that you can stop doing all the blame shifting
and you can start to wrap your head around the fact that everybody has been hurt by this issue
once you realize that then you can start working together as a team to do a lot of damage control
to clean up all the messes and get busy with the process of recovering as a family or couple
which brings me to mind shift number two that you really need to wrap your head around and that
is you need to shift your thinking from the idea that either i'm in recovery from addiction or i'm
in codependency recovery into a concept of we are a couple in recovery or we are a family
in recovery you see for way too long and the whole like addiction and recovery world
we have separated couples out or families out to try to get this recovery process done
and the reason for that is because there's so much chaos going on in addictive family systems
that you sort of have to separate it out a little bit at first to get the whole thing
to kind of stabilize so pete the person with the addiction gets their support group they get
their treatment they get all of their help and the family members usually the spouses or the parents
go to a completely separate support group and they get their own sponsor and their own help
and both individuals are working on themselves separately but where in the process do you work on
the connection where do you work on your relationship or even your family as a whole
you see there's just not a lot of resources out there for that and it is a major lacking component
once you realize that this outside force has caused all this trauma to both
people and you realize that you are a recovering couple as a unit together then the last thing i
really want you to wrap your head around is the idea that it is okay for both people to be able
to express how they feel what they think and what they need and for me family recovery and
couples recovery is all about how to help the members of a family do that in a productive way
how to help each person hear the other person how to express yourself in an assertive but effective
way basically it's like how do we get our needs met better in this relationship you know i hate
to say it but a lot of the traditional recovery wisdom is all about detaching any of you who are
in like an al-anon or a partner or spouse support group you know this it's like detached detached
attached and if you're the person that's trying to get into recovery you're the person that has
had an addiction then you hear you know like recovery is a selfish process and addiction
is a selfish disease and you got to focus on yourself and so you get all this messaging
that pulls you apart and tries to get you to focus on yourselves which in some ways is a little bit
helpful because typically the whole system has become so emashed and messy and toxic that you
do need to pull the pieces apart and work on them a little bit individually but please don't forget
that you've got to put those pieces back together and work on the unit itself otherwise those pieces
well when they do come back together they're not going to work together they're not it's just not
going to work right unless you address the systems issue now if you're watching this and your spouse
is still in active addiction and you're trying to get to the recovery process then i would
recommend our invisible intervention online program for you because not only is it going to
teach you how to intervene and get your loved one to take steps towards sobriety and recovery but
in the process you're going to already be starting to heal that relationship so that when your spouse
does start the recovery process you're already halfway down the road because the relationship
is already going to be working about 100 times better when they get there and if you're watching
this and you are a person in recovery yourself and you've done some work on getting sober
but the relationship is still a mess and there's a lot of distrust and just a lot of toxic behaviors
that are still going on then i would recommend for you our rapid relationship repair course because
that's all for the person who's in early recovery or in recovery in general and that needs to
address the family dynamics like build trust like be able to communicate assertively what
your needs are like how to make honesty and truthful communication a safe issue
within the relationship rapid relationship repair is all about that i'm going to put
the links to both of those online courses in the description below but up next your very next step
in being able to work on the relationship issue i've got these two videos for you i'm going to
put them right up here which specifically focus on the relationship part of recovery