Could you be inadvertently sabotaging your loved one's chance at getting sober? As a counselor, there are a few ways that I regularly see family members do that can undo all the work the counselor is doing to help a person trying to find sobriety.

Families, I'm about to call you out here, but before I do, let me say I've done every one of these. As I said, we don't inadvertently do these things. We're not trying to sabotage their recovery in any way. The things that we say are natural things to say. When you say these things, it can be counter-productive. Not only is it not helpful, it is also pulling everything in the wrong direction.

1. Negative forecasting. Maybe you have it in your head that your loved one can never get better. Perhaps you have it in your head that your loved one can never get better. I get why you'd want to do this. Negative forecasting is like making future predictions that the person's going to fail or it's never going to work. Let's look at...

Advanced strategies of recovery.

How do you create a life that you love and that you can maintain?

Let's identify what those beginning strategies are.

• detox
• managing triggers/craving
• changing people, places, and things

All of those seem so blatantly obvious and that's why it's so important to learn those skills to get sober from substances. Keeping your sobriety is another story, am I right? There are some more advanced skills that you need to adopt if you want to manage them.

You see, for me, recovery management is, is all about sanity management. If you want to keep your sobriety or recovery long-term, you have to keep your head on straight. The reason why that's so important is that when you get yourself in an awful situation or you're upset when life throws you curveballs. These are the times that are likely to send you spiraling backward.

The first one on the list of advanced recovery skills is you have to learn to deal with problems and address them as they happen. We all...

We hear this all of the time. People say tough love is the only thing that works. When talking to people in recovery, if you ask them how they think you should help or not help your addicted loved one, they'll probably tell you to use tough love.
Research shows that tough love isn't the most effective strategy for helping an addicted loved one.
In this video, we're going to take a look at what tough love does. So what do I mean when I say, tough love? I have a thought process or vision and definition of my head, but you may have a different awareness about what it means.

When people usually talk about cutting someone off emotionally, they're letting them figure it out and allowing their loved ones to hit bottom. Now there's a little truth in that. I'm not one hundred percent against that. I do think that there are times where you have to back up and let people learn some hard lessons.
But in general, do I think you have to cut your addicted loved one off emotionally, financially,...

When you have a loved one with addiction, the pain, suffering, and loneliness are sometimes overwhelming. Do you know what makes these feelings worse? Having someone else in the family in complete denial over the loved one's addiction.
It's particularly frustrating when you can see the problem but someone else is 
sabotaging you behind the scenes.

We see this play out so often in our office.  The person in denial is either a parent, grandparent and occasionally a sibling.  This creates a big problem because you have
one person who doesn't want to believe that the person has an addiction. It can interfere with the whole process of getting the addicted person to recovery. 

This happens in almost every case. I get it, it's uncomfortable to absorb this information and to sit with it. It's much like a grieving process. 

The denial is a self-protective mechanism of some sort. Denial is always protecting you from something that you're not...

Where is the line between helping, supporting, enabling, and having empathy for someone struggling with an addiction? We're going to shed a little light on this for you so you can figure out what's helping and what's enabling.

I'm going to give you five reasons why being kind to someone, showing empathy, and even giving positive reinforcement can them figure out that they have an addiction problem way faster than when you try to do it more directly.

We get so frustrated and impatient dealing with someone who has an addiction because it's so clearly right there and it's just mind-blowing because the person with the addiction, can't see it.  The more you push and try to get them to see the issue faster, the longer it takes them to get out of denial. When you come at someone directly like that, they immediately put their walls up and they get defensive. They'll no longer hear, listen, or even consider what you're saying. It's almost like a reflex even if they don't...

These five common communication mistakes are probably damaging your relationships. In fact, you may be doing them automatically but it's pushing people away from you. We're going to start from the least problematic and go to the most problematic mistake. I think you're going to be surprised by the fifth one, you're going to be like I can't believe a counselor said that but I think it's an important one!

When you hear these common mistakes people make, you're going to think, "oh I've done that before!" and it's okay because I've done all of these things before too. Anyone can benefit from understanding these five mistakes.

The first common communication mistake is the one-upper or relating to someone's story too soon. This one is probably the one that I'm most guilty of doing. For example, someone says, "oh my gosh I had the worst day!" Then they start telling you about their bad day and you start to relate to that because you're like "oh yeah I know what that's like"....

It's always easy looking from the outside-in to know what
someone else should do. Take it from me, a counselor, this is what I do all-day
every day. You don't need to be a counselor to be good at this, promise!

If you're watching a loved one, a friend, family member struggle with something, it's hard not to just jump in there and want to either fix it or tell them how to fix it. That can be a landmine of a situation.

You've probably stepped in it before, haven't you? I know that I have! When you offer someone advice there's a particular way that you need to go about it, otherwise, you're going to come across as a know-it-all, judgmental, or critical. Even worse, you're
going to get Charlie Brown'd... "Wah wah wah". They're not going to listen to you anyway, so in this video, I’m going to talk to you about what formula to use to give someone a piece of advice in a way that's going to feel helpful and supportive instead of critical and judgmental.

If you take no other piece of...

This live video with Campbell Manning will have you shocked at the depth of denial some of these families had.

We always think about denial being an issue that happens to people with drug or alcohol addiction, but denial happens to family members too.

We, as family members we see the signs and symptoms, but it's easy to rationalize it away. When you look at the big picture, you'll easily be able to see that you're dealing with a bigger problem. Most families don't want the problem to be addiction and that's what will keep a lot of families in denial. This denial will allow the addiction to continue on. Watch the video to find out how to spot denial and what to do about it. 

Amber Hollingsworth

Get Access To FREE Addiction Recovery Resources! 

Do you confront your loved one? Do you throw it away? Do you just leave it where it is? What do you do when you find your addicted loved ones hidden stash. 

In this video, I give you practical ways to deal with this without starting a power struggle between you and your loved one. I think what I'm going to tell you is going to surprise you.

Learn how to talk with your loved ones about their addiction without arguing. https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/motivational-interviewing-session

Amber Hollingsworth

We're going to be looking behind the scenes of addiction recovery. Family recovery coach Scott Nunnery will be sharing about his personal journey having two sons struggle with addiction, and also what he's learned since beginning to work in the field, trying to help others struggling with an addicted loved one.

Amber Hollingsworth

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

To make an appointment with Scott (or any of our recovery specialists): https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/consultations

Download Scotts Do's and Dont's Checklist For Rebuilding Trust in Family Recovery: https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/scott-s-do-s-and-don-ts