How do you effectively manage your emotions? There are several ways to do this effectively, and we're going to start with part one, managing your emotions by controlling the influence you have in your life.

Negative emotional influences

What are you allowing to consume your time, energy, and your thoughts? What and who we put ourselves around has major control over how we think, feel, and our behavior. If you want to have better control of yourself, you have to have a little more control over what you allow into your environment. Do you put yourself around negative people? We've all had someone in our life who's always down, depressed, or in a crisis.

Have you ever heard the saying, you are what you eat, as in the nutrition you put into your body? It has to do with how your body functions and works. Well, think about your friendships in this way, as far as an influence. You are only as healthy emotionally as the connections that you have.

Do you have people in your life that aren't...

What do you do when someone continuously breaks your boundaries?

Do you have a person like that in your life?

Is it a friend, a family member, a loved one, a coworker, or a boss?

Boundaries are a huge topic in the realm of addiction recovery.

Now you might be thinking this video is only for the family members. Wrong! This video is for anyone who wants to learn more about holding healthier boundaries and how to do it more effectively. I know how frustrating it is to have a person in your life that can't seem to respect your boundaries.

The hard truth is no one else can break your boundary. Only YOU can break your boundary.
If someone else is crossing lines that you don't want them to cross, it means you're allowing them to break your boundary. It's so easy to fall into the idea that it's the other person that's the bad guy. I understand that on some level. Unfortunately, It doesn't work that way and ultimately falls on us to keep our boundaries. It's easy to get confused because we...

Does my drinking or substance use affect my kids?
Of course, it does, but HOW does it affect your kids? Some
of these things might be difficult to hear, but necessary.

We're going to be looking at it from the child's point of view, focusing specifically on how a parent's alcohol or other substance use or abuse affects you as a kid and even as an adult now.

If you want to know if you have an addiction or a loved one has an addiction problem and how severe that problem is, you can click HERE to download the criteria for substance use disorder.

Affect #1: When you're using substances, you are modeling that behavior for your kid. If you use substances in your home, you're modeling that's the way adults in the family have fun or party. It may come across to your kid as really glorified, "Ooh, that's how adults are happy! That's how adults connect. When I get older, I'm going to do that!"

If you're using substances to help you cope with stress or problems, then you're also modeling...

The three links between trauma and addiction...

I believe everyone knows there's a strong link between trauma and addiction, but did you know there are three strong links between trauma and addiction? What are they?

Link #1

Most people are aware of this first link between trauma and addiction. It's the idea that people with trauma are way more likely to develop addiction issues. It doesn't take a psychologist or a research scientist to figure out why.
When you have trauma, you dysregulate the alarm systems in your brain. Sometimes that dysregulation is permanent and shows itself in different kinds of anxiety and very uncomfortable symptoms.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you're uncomfortable, you're going to look for a solution. Sometimes, people think they've found their answer in using drugs, alcohol, or other types of behavioral addictions. We know that these aren't great solutions. They tend to help short-term, but they tend to make the problem WAY worse...

What is an addiction to a person? How does it happen? When does it happen? How do you break that addiction?

To be honest, it's the same as being addicted to anything else. Drugs/alcohol, gambling, and spending are all things you can be addicted to.

Addiction means that you continue to pursue something although it's having harmful effects on your life. Looking at addiction, it's not a far jump to see how it's possible to be addicted to a person. You can continue to pursue a relationship even though it's having harmful effects on your life and maybe even other people's lives, but add a little bit more depth to the idea of what an addiction is.

Other addictive symptoms include craving obsession. The loss of control and an inability to stop. Let's clarify the difference between being addicted to a person and being madly in love with a person. There are some similarities there, right. You might have that craving, that obsessive fault.

What you don't have in the madly in love department...

I love you, but I'm not in love with you. What exactly does that mean, and what do you do about it?

What that typically means is that the person doesn't have those attraction butterflies towards you. They still care about you as a person, but they're just not feeling that romantic chemistry. Usually, when people say this, they had it before, but they lost it somewhere in the process.

Let's look at what it means on the other side of the issue. It's only natural to want to feel that strong desire feeling. To have that craving of wanting to feel the excitement. The new love romance feeling happens because of the chemical dopamine.
Dopamine is the desire chemical which is one of the reasons why we're talking about this topic because all things addiction is related to dopamine.

Early on in a romantic relationship, you usually have a lot of infatuation feelings. The clinical term for that is limerence, but it's the state of mind where you crave the other person.

You're almost...

Is it possible to beat your alcohol problem without going to rehab? I think it is definitely possible. I'm going to tell you our secret formula of how we've helped hundreds of people get sober without ever having to go to rehab.

If you or a loved one is struggling with an alcohol use disorder, you may be wondering, what's it going to take to conquer this problem?

Anytime I'm talking to a person trying to overcome an alcohol problem or stop drinking, the first thing that I want to think through is whether or not this person needs a detox. With alcohol, believe it or not, it's one of the more dangerous things to stop cold turkey. If you are highly alcohol dependent and you've been drinking for a while, Cold Turkey can be dangerous. You can be in danger of having a seizure or even developing psychosis.

I have a video that I made a while back to figure out whether or not you need the detox part. You can watch it HERE.

The second thing that you'll have to put a lot of energy and effort...

One thing about alcoholism that's particularly troubling is the memory issues that accompany it.

Alcoholics genuinely don't remember what happened when drinking (referred to as a blackout), and when their family is upset, they get irritated and feel like the other person is overreacting. In this circumstance, the alcoholic isn't intentionally trying to Gaslight their loved one; they don't remember what they said or did during a blackout incident. It's a form of GASLIGHTING and will make you question your sanity. 

But in other instances (like when you find their hidden alcohol), alcoholics intentionally try to make you think you're crazy. They may say something like, "that's been there for over six months. Don't you remember your dad left that when he came at Christmas?" In these situations, the alcoholic person knows precisely what they're doing. They're trying to throw you off their scent or deflect the argument.  

Addicts and Alcoholics are...

What should you expect if your loved one is in early recovery as if they're recently sober and working on their recovery? The angle we're looking at is trying to help family members have a realistic understanding and expectation about those early days and weeks of recovery.

I know you've waited for a long time for your loved one to address this problem. Probably years, right? You've been through the mud and the muck, and you're probably 10 miles past your limit, so once they decide to get sober, you are way past the point of being ready.

I want you to hold your fire.

Even when someone decides to get sober, it's not an overnight transformation.

Sometimes you have a brief period that is kind of like that. Subconsciously we're thinking, "if they could realize they have a problem and decide to stop, it's going to solve all of our problems. Everything is going to be better, and it's just going to be wonderful and rainbows!"

When people get clean and sober, we call that the ...

Have you heard of S.G.B. injection for post-traumatic stress disorder? Recently, one of our viewers commented on my video and asked if I knew about it or if I'd made a video about it. It sparked my curiosity because I had never heard of injections for P.T.S.D.

P.T.S.D. stands for post-traumatic stress disorder, and because there is such a high correlation between trauma and addiction, we're deep-diving into the S.G.B. injection. It's going to help us understand better if this injection could be helpful for those that are struggling with these co-occurring disorders.

Generally, we all know what the word trauma means, but there is a clinical definition for post-traumatic stress disorder. In the counseling world, there's a lot of talk about something called complex trauma.
I thought the best place to begin would be to explain the issue to you, and then we'll get into this S.G.B. injection, how it works, how it impacts, and how it can be a super helpful resource for someone recovering...