You know the reason most people fail at sobriety is because they're just not thinking about
it right. In this video, I'm going to uncover for you exactly what those thinking mistakes
are and I'm going to give you a much better way of going about this whole sobriety recovery
thing. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction
counselor. Founder of Hope for Families Recovery Center and you are watching Put the Shovel
Down, the YouTube channel dedicated exclusively for helping you understand the science and
psychology of addiction so you can beat this thing once and for all and take your life
back into your own hands. Now a lot of us have heard the old saying about you have to
change your people places and things and sometimes you hear people say playmates, playgrounds
and playthings. Well I think that is a really good piece of advice and you should definitely
listen to that, but I'd like to add a little something to that and this thing is the lench
pen to getting all those things right. So l tet's change that saying to you have to
change your people places things and thinking. You see when most people fail at recovery,
they think that they failed because they didn't want it enough. or sometimes after the fact,
if they've had a relapse they'll say well I wasn't doing it for myself. They're making
these reasons why it didn't work and I have to tell you, most of the time when someone
fails at recovery, it's not because they didn't mean it. It's not because they didn't want
it, it's because they didn't know exactly how to go about it. Unfortunately, some of
the things that we're talking about in recovery lead us all in the wrong directions. So let's
go ahead and get our head screwed on straight so we can conquer this thing once and for
all. I'm going to start by explaining to you how the way most people think about stopping
drugs and alcohol is totally counter-productive. You see when most people think about living
life clean and sober, it's almost like they're making this decision that they're going to
have to give up fun for the rest of their life. Or they're going to have to live this
long boring horrible miserable life because they think that the substance gives them something
that they can't have in life without it. In almost every single case those thoughts and
beliefs are 100% false. The other day in group, we did this exercise where I passed out the
tablets of paper and pens and I said okay I want all of you to write down the pros to
doing your drug of choice or if you like them all then just the pros of doing your drugs.
So I had people list the positive things that they thought they got out of these drugs and
alcohol. then we went through those and went around the whole group and went through those
thought processes one by one. So of course you get things like "it makes me more social,
or it makes me have less anxiety or it makes me more affectionate or makes me more productive
or lets me get more things done or work longer hours it helps me with my depression" It goes
on and on and on. But as you really look at every one of those beliefs, you're going to
find that they're not really true. Let's take for example, the one about how it makes your
anxiety better. If you're using something to make your anxiety better, whenever you
ingest that chemical whatever it is, it might make it better short term, but your brain
is going to rebound from that by producing the exact opposite of a calming chemical and
it actually releases a whole lot more anxiety chemical. So you pretty much get the opposite
of what you really want and over the long period of time the substance becomes less
and less effective at even being temporarily helpful. It does continue to dig the hole
deeper and deeper as far as creating more and more and more anxiety and depression.
This is pretty much the case for all addictive drugs. whatever it is that you think the drug
gives you it actually because of the rebound of the drug, gives you the opposite of that.
If you take something like stimulants or cocaine because you feel like it helps you get more
stuff done it lets you be more productive then your brain tries to counteract those
stimulants by producing slower you down chemical, that's why after a bunch of stimulants, you
have that crash where you can't get up for days or you're really depressed or your unmotivated
or you're just completely tired. Those symptoms keep worsening, but your tolerance for the
drug keeps going up. So it makes the drug less effective at helping the problem but
it makes the problem 10 times worse than it was to begin with. that is exactly how you
get trapped in addiction. Next, let's take a look at the thoughts about whether or not
drug or alcohol makes you more sociable or more affectionate. There's a little truth
that some drugs or alcohol can bring down your fear to such a degree that it can sort
of let you overcome your own fears and anxieties about social situations or intimacy and things
like that, but I want you to think about this, is it really making you better at being social
or being intimate or being affectionate or is it just making you less fearful of those
things? think about it like this. Have you ever been to a wedding, party social event
and you've been the only sober one there and you're watching everyone else who's totally
intoxicated? Yeah, it gets kind of obnoxious doesn't it? They think they're funny, they
think they're so smart and you're just like oh my gosh. you sound so stupid, just shut
up. That's what you eventually think, I mean it might be funny for a few minutes and then
after that, it gets on your nerves so it's not that those people actually have greater
powers at being more social, it's actually that their anxiety about it or their fear
about it goes down and basically let's them be braver and more out there the problem with
that that our anxiety is kind of important because it makes us think about those things.
How many times have you been intoxicated and done some things that you felt really really
really embarrassed about? If you would've had your filter working right, you would have
never done that. You know like starting a fight, saying really mean things to people
that you care about or drunk calling or texting your uex, you know those things. So even though
you may think okay I want that filter taken off of me because I don't want to be inhibited
and I want to be able to let myself out, what usually happens when you take that filter
off, you end up doing a whole lot of things that you really wouldn't have done being sober
and that you really regret. We could keep going through this list of false beliefs that
people have but maybe a more effective thing for you to do is to make your own list. What
is it that you think this substance does for you in your life? Make a list, write it down
and then really look at it. Is it really doing that for you? Be honest with yourself and
take a rational look because you're going to realize most of those things that you're
telling yourself and what society tells us just aren't true. Now here's the other HUGE
mistake that people make when they're trying to get clean and sober. You see the problem
is people ten to focus on what don't want to do like I'm not going to drink I'm not
going to do cocaine and they're telling themselves don't do this or some sort of like thing that
they can't have the more you tell your brain don't do something, you can't have something
the more your brain naturally wants that. I mean everyone knows that it's like your
reverse psychology yourself. Not very effective, right? But the problem goes even deeper than
that. Not only does it bring out that rebellious side of you that naturally wants it, even
more, when you think you can't have it but this is going to take a little explaining
to understand. So, do you know what like a vision board is? Do you know people who write
their goals down every day or who say out loud to an accountability group what they
plan to accomplish. The reason people do those things is because if you can see it in your
mind if you can say it out loud the chances are those things are so much more likey to
happen but the way the brain works, think of it's almost like a movie camera you have
to see it and when you do that you actually manifest recovery. You're actually bringing
these things that you want into your life but the problem is people go about it wrong
because they tell themselves what they don't want. The issue is when you say that immediately
you start thinking and in your mind you see those bad things that you don't want. Those
drunken episodes, those getting caught because you've stolen abunch of things. You start
envisioning that and so what's happening is you're actually manifesting that because you're
envisioning that. So a much more productive way to go about things is to talk to yourself
about what you do want. What are the reasons to get sober? for example, you may want to
get sober because you want to be the best father you can be. You may want to get sober
because you want to make a big go for it in your career. I can't tell you how many salesman
I've seen who tell me this very thing. They'll tell say you know what I actually like going
to these conferences and not drinking, you know why because everybody else stays up all
night partying and when they come to the meetings the next day you know where the work needs
to be done and where you need to bring your a game? They're like terrible, they feel awful,
they're dragging and I got my a game. So, what you want to think of instead of thinking
to yourself don't drink you want to think to yourself I want to bring my A game. Think
about what you do want don't think about what you don't want. When you think about it your
brain starts envisioning it and it's like you're creating this vision board of terribleness
you're bringing those negative things into your life by doing that and you're activating
that rebellious part of yourself that just wants to fight against it anyway. So this
means the two main things that you need to do to get your recovery game in check is you
need to make sure that you're telling yourself the truth about the substance that you're
using and you can do that by making the list of all of those things that you think are
true about it. Then decide them for yourself. Is it really true? Or is it not really true?
Or is it true in the short run for like 5 minutes but then the opposite is true for
the next 10 days? Then after that, you want to go and you want to envision what you do
want in your life. You want to manifest those good things and bring them to you it is so
much easier to tell yourself if you've got a goal to do more of something than it is
to do less of something so always go in the positive direction when you're trying to accomplish
something