Are you dealing with an alcoholic spouse, you know an alcoholic wife, husband, partner?
If so, then you probably know how frustrating it is to hear them minimize the problem to
hear them say that you're the one that's overly critical or that you're making too big of
a deal about it. Stay tuned, because in this video i'm going to explain to you why alcoholic
denial is worse than other addictions. I mean alcoholic denial is way worse than someone's
denial about heroin or cocaine or meth. You may be thinking, Amber, those are way harder
drugs how can alcoholic denial be way worse than that? Well don't worry just keep watching
and you're going to find out the answer for those of you who are new here I'm Amber Hollingsworth
master addiction counselor and founder of hope for families recovery center and you're
watching Put the Shovel Down the youtube channel dedicated to helping families understand the
science and psychology of addiction so you can recover your loved ones and your life
and get back on track. So if that sounds like something you need to do consider subscribing
and i'll make sure you have every tool and piece of information you need to get that
job done. Okay, so I promised to tell you why alcoholic denial is worse than other addictions
in denial. Here's the thing, when people are doing drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine,
they may deny to you that something's a problem, but deep down inside they really know it's
a problem for themselves they just don't want to admit it to you out loud because they're
scared of stopping or because they don't want to stop or they're fearful about what life
will be like if they have to stop or they're fearful of withdrawals. So denial for them,
they may deny it to you but they probably on some level get that it's a problem for
themselves occasionally they'll minimize the problem or make it seem less than what it
really is to themselves but with alcohol, it seems to be a whole different story and
here's why you see because alcohol is a central nervous system depressant fancy for shuts
down your thinking brain or what I call takes your filter off what happens when most people
have an alcohol problem is they drink and use other drugs with the drinking to the point
that they end up in a blackout So alcohol particularly distorts your memory process
people either don't remember at all what they did or how bad it was or they remember little
pieces of it and even if they do remember the whole thing, their memory of the event
and what happened has this weird filter over it that makes them not remember the situation
the same way you remember it you know like the instagram filter it changes the whole
thing and so when I deal with alcoholics you can almost count on the fact that they're
going to tell me some version of it's not that bad this other person is overreacting
it's probably because their mother had a problem and they're just projecting that on me they're
going to tell you some version of that and they may admit to you that there was this
time or two where things got away from them but overall they really are quite clueless
about how bad those situations really were so they tend to stay in denial longer. This
is a really delicate situation, you can't just go in there and rip that sort of denial
layer off and say oh let me tell you how bad it is because I've had family members in the
past make videos and show it to the person but even when you do that usually the person
feels so humiliated and embarrassed they have those other defense mechanisms that immediately
kick in about defensiveness about you're recording me you're trying to trap me and then they
get stuck on those thoughts instead of what was actually happening in the video so the
issue about helping people break through denial is complicated. Have you seen that movie,
Shrek? You know where Ogre says Ogres are like onions, we have layers. Denial is like
Ogres it has layers so it's important on how you go about dealing with that denial the
first thing you might want to understand is that someone does not have have to admit the
severity of the issue in order to make a change. they just have to get to a point where they
realize that at this moment for whatever reasons they need to make a change, they don't have
to like it they don't have to want it they just have to be willing to do it so if you
have a loved one in your life who's in alcoholic denial, stop trying to force them to say how
bad it is because the more you try to force them to be honest and admit to themselves
just how bad this problem is, the worse is going to get. The more defense mechanisms
they're going to get the more they're going to project and blame and minimize you know
the story. Oftentimes as people get sober and they work their recovery program they
become more and more able to see how bad the problem was and to admit how bad the problem
was and sometimes they need a little sobriety they need to step back from the situation
long enough and far enough to really be able to see how bad it was so that's part of it
is stepping back to see how bad it was and second part of that is they need to have enough
ego strength to be able to see it and admit it and acknowledge it to themselves and maybe
to other people without totally falling apart and crumbling. Think about it like this I
bet you've made really big mistakes in the past and at the time when you were making
them or shortly after you felt really embarrassed and horrible about it and you probably didn't
want to talk about it and you definitely didn't want to tell anyone about it. but now maybe
you're years past that You know think about when you were a teenager and things you did
that you wouldn't have done You wouldn't have admitted that to anyone but now when you look
back oh when I was a teenager I did this that and the other because you don't have your
identity all wound up in who you were at that moment you have more ego strength and plus
you know that teenagers do all kind of dumb stuff. So you're able to really admit to just
how big that mistake was it's kind of like that so stop trying to force your loved one
to say just how bad it is. focus on trying to get them to be willing and not like it,
to make a change and i know what you're thinking, well amber how do we do that, that's a long
complicated answer but don't worry i've got a path for you and this video right here is
you next step in that journey