I'm answering a viewer letter about a situation where more than one person struggles with addiction in one household.

We're going to take a look at the letter, and then I'll give my response and feedback.

She writes...

"My husband is currently in rehab for alcoholism for the second time. He was in law enforcement for 15 years and had a very public DUI several years ago. He went to rehab for the first time and stayed sober for over two years.

He's been a binge closet drinker. In the last two years, he falls into a depression and drinks and leaves for days at a time to the woods with no communication. On December 30th, he left for five days. When he came back, he asked me for help and decided he should go to rehab.

He's now been there for a week. He sounds good, and I'm hoping he is gaining what he needs to help himself get through this for our relationship. We don't have any trust. He's s a good man, a hard worker, loving when he doesn't drink. The person we all want him to be ...

You've probably heard of the three C's if you have a loved one struggling with addiction and are involved in family recovery. The three C's come from Al-Anon.

The three C's are:
You didn't CAUSE it.
You can't CONTROL it.
You can't CURE it.

To make it clear, you didn't cause the addiction. You can't control the addiction. You can't cure the addiction.
I want to add a fourth C, saying that you can CONTRIBUTE to the problem.
You might be contributing to your loved one's addiction in five ways.

I want you to understand that I'm not telling you that the addiction is your fault. The five behaviors that I'm about to explain trigger addiction.

It's easy for us to think about and see how addiction is the puppet master controlling all of our loved one's behaviors. I know you are behaving this way and doing these things because the addiction triggers you to react this way. However, like with an addiction, it is your responsibility to improve.

Sometimes we fail to see that addiction is not on...

No matter how hard you try, your child is going to run into obstacles, difficulties, and roadblocks. They're going to have their challenges. It doesn't matter how much money, resources, or how many people you know. No matter how much you try, there will be problems and challenges. That's OKAY!

That's a good thing because that's how we build character. Knowing that you're creating confident, secure, resilient kids is one of the most important aspects of parenting. Easier said than done, right? The good news is it doesn't have to be perfect. Once you understand these principles, you might feel a little less pressure to make everything perfect, and your kid will feel a little less pressure, too.

(This topic is relevant to addiction, but it's also relevant to any parent out there. All of these strategies I'm about to give you can work on anyone, whether they're your kid, a work partner, a friend, or a spouse. This is how to help other people feel more confident, secure, and resilient.)...

How do you rebuild trust and put your relationship back together when alcoholism is in the equation? Let's look at four practical, helpful, and successfully proven strategies. If you do these four things, you'll be well on your way to putting your relationship back on track.

Anytime there's an addiction issue inside a relationship, you will develop trust issues on both sides. The person with the addiction also does not trust the family member because both people have probably been a little dishonest.

Soberlink- A device used to restore trust

One practical and helpful tool that we use in our office is Soberlink.

Soberlink is an alcohol monitoring system that has proven highly effective in restoring the relationship. Family and trust and helping people along their journey in recovery. What Soberlink does is provide accountability for the person in early recovery, and it gives the family peace of mind.

Long before Soberlink sponsored my channel, I've been a huge fan. We've used Sob...

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...

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 ...

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 that...

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 long...

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 departmen...

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 obsess...