The Isolation Trap: How Addiction Prevents Meaningful Relationships
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[00:00:00] Have you ever wondered why addiction can change or how addiction can change someone's personality so much? It can even take people from every walk of life, different personalities, different cultures, different value systems, and it Eventually, those people, if they have addictions, will make choices the same way.
Their personalities will be similar. They'll make the same decisions in a very predictable fashion. If you have an addicted loved one, you may feel like the person that you're seeing now is not even the person that you remember, and it's hard to wrap your head around, how's this person so different?
It literally is like dealing with a different person. If you have an addiction yourself. You may wonder the same thing. There are those moments where you literally look yourself in the mirror and you think, who is this person? You don't even recognize yourself anymore. If you've ever wondered those things, [00:01:00] you are in luck.
Cause I'm going to explain to you how addiction does that to us. Why it changes our personality in such a drastic way. You know what really happens is it's not so much that addiction changes our personality. Instead, what's happening is addiction forces us into survival mode. It essentially reduces us down to our more primitive, lower self.
And guess what? We all have a more primitive, lower self. So what happens is all of those higher level aspects of your personality are not being able to come to the surface because it's keeping you in that survival mode. But if you're just listening, like you're listening to the podcast version, it's okay, because I'm going to describe it to you. It's not overly complicated, but it is going to give us a visual model and an understanding about how and why we really do.
Become different people. The further addicted we get, the more different our [00:02:00] personality will seem. Basically Maslow's hierarchy of needs is this big pyramid or triangle shape. And at the base of the pyramid, think about the old like food pyramid that they used to use.
That's what it looks like at the base of the pyramid, at the bottom is your physiological needs, which are things like. Food, water, air, right? Like the things you have to have, your body has to have to physically operate properly. If you don't have those needs met, if you don't have food, air or water, guess what?
You're not going to worry about anything else because if those needs are not being taken care of, then The rest doesn't matter. They're so essential that we have to meet those needs first before we can even begin to worry about the rest of them. And that's the same way with this whole pyramid.
You have to level by level, have your needs met in order to go up to the next rung. Otherwise, you'll say stuck in a certain aspect of this pyramid. the next level up is safety. So after you are in a position where, you have food, [00:03:00] air and water, the next thing that you have to concern yourself with, and this is all survival stuff, is whether or not I am safe.
Is there somebody going to come after me? Is there a lion that's about to eat me? Do I have A safe home to live in is my environment safe. So once we know we are physiological, our body needs are met, then it's our safety needs. And it's not until all of those two rungs of needs are met that we can move on to worry about the next level, which is our love and belonging needs.
Human beings have a need to connect to other human beings. It's wired in. It's not just a Desire. It's an actual need because humans don't survive well without each other. So , we have an innate need to feel like we have a tribe, a belonging somewhere, a family, a group, a sense of community somehow, because we need that for protection.
It's a safety need on , just a little higher level there. Once we have those three layers met, then we [00:04:00] can move on to our esteem needs. And that's where, you look at things like self esteem, confidence, career the goals that you want to achieve in life.
Those four layers are what we call actually deficiency needs. So it's like these things, if they're deficient, you cannot move on to the next run. Addiction keeps you in these. Lower levels at the very top of the pyramid, you have self actualization, which is like your best version of yourself, your creativity, where you can transcend and be a better human being where you can actually really, truly be present and care about other people because.
Everything in your world's okay when things in your world are not okay. Your needs are not being met your whole limbic system, which is your emotional center of your brain. It is going crazy in my mind. I like to think about it almost like sound waves. If you've ever seen sound waves on the screen or like earthquake waves or something, it's it's going [00:05:00] so chaotic and fast.
You cannot be present. In your life when your limbic system is going crazy like that. And that's why when you're addicted, you feel completely alone and isolated. You can be in a room full of all the people who love you and care about you the most, but you're still going to feel alone and isolated because on a.
On a brainwave level, you don't even have the capacity to be present and connect in with other people the same way. And that may help you also understand that if you're the loved one and you want to know why is it that your addicted loved one, they don't seem to care what's going on with you. They don't seem to have empathy for other people.
They seem so self focused and self involved. The truth is they are very self focused and self involved. It's just that the addiction has disrupted these things to the point that they're stuck in one of these levels. The longer and more severe an addiction is, the further down these levels you get [00:06:00] stuck.
At first, when, addiction first starts, the, one of the first symptoms you're going to see is that. Deep down inside, you start to feel shameful about yourself. You start to feel bad about yourself. Your work or school performance is probably not going to be up to par, so that esteem need starts to dwindle down.
Then and we all know this very well, Everyone around you starts to get upset with you. You start burning bridges. You've upset people. You've let them down and your love and belonging need dwindles down Eventually, you can find yourself not being able to properly take care of yourself Like housing like having a job all of those kind of things your safety needs aren't being met And once you become completely like chemically dependent on a substance, then your physiology your body chemistry is not okay unless you have the substance.
So you, that's why if you knew a person before they got [00:07:00] addicted, they may have been up here in these higher levels and you see them as that person, but as that addiction grows and gets stronger, They're being reduced down this pyramid all the way down to the bottom of those physiological needs. Even if you're dealing with someone who's what I call functional addict or alcoholic, which isn't a real clinical term, but we all have an idea what that means.
Maybe they're still going to work and their family hasn't left or something like that. If you're catching them in withdrawal and their physiological needs are not satisfied, Nothing else is going to matter. There's going to be no rational, reasonable conversations you're going to have with them. You might be trying to talk to this person about your relationship and why are they so distant?
Why don't you love me? If they're in withdrawal and those physiological needs are not met, they're not capable of having that. Kind of connection or even conversation about having connection with you because they're reduced down into these [00:08:00] needs that get more and more important for survival.
Some people are stuck in that physiological stage all the time. Once someone gets to the point where they have to have like a. a constant source, especially if we're talking about a chemical dependency, but also if we're talking about a process addiction, like love or gambling or sex or shopping.
Once our physiology adjust to the addiction, if we don't have it, our body actually gets sick. We feel unwell. The best way I know how to describe it is, it's if you're Sick with the stomach bug and you're literally laying with your head over the toilet puking. You don't care about anything else.
You don't care what you look like. You don't care if you don't have any makeup. You don't care that your report is late for work because right then and there in that moment you got this to deal with and nothing else matters, right? It's like that. When you're dealing with somebody that's severely chemically dependent they're staying in that state almost all the time.
There [00:09:00] may be brief moments when they have the exact right amount of their substance in, that they get functional when the body chemistry levels out, but immediately their body is fighting against That drug or whatever they're putting in and it's dysregulating that physiology and they're constantly staying in this survival mode Once you can get on the other side of addiction And you start conquering this problem one by one starting with detox You can see how you start to move back up the pyramid again and eventually The person becomes their regular real self again, some of your higher level self comes out, your ability to be present, your ability to connect with other people, your ability to be creative and create.
All of those things will eventually come back, but it's not until we can get out of these survival needs. The other thing I want to point out to you about this that Is something maybe you haven't quite thought about before is if you're the loved one, this [00:10:00] is for you, if you're the loved one, while you're looking at this pyramid, can you think about how coming at someone and telling them how they're being a piece of crap and they're a low down, dirty, selfish, whatever, and, outing them from the family and saying, we're not going to talk to you anymore.
And, they're on the streets, they're not safe, can you see how that's such a. counterproductive way to come at someone to help them come out of addiction. All of that tough love that really what I would call maybe is like harshness when you come at someone like that. All you're really doing is tamping them even lower down in this Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
That's why it's on this channel. We talk about. The best ways to get someone to come back to themselves, to think rationally, to make the decision, to overcome this problem. And I can promise you it's not by trying to take away or pound on any of these other needs, like esteem, love and belonging and [00:11:00] safety, we think and Society says to us if we squeeze on them hard enough, they're going to have this wake up call.
They're going to hit that bottom. They're going to get it and they're going to decide to come out of it. But actually the opposite is true. The harder that we squeeze on them the more typically that they clean, To the only thing that's working for them. The only thing that helps them feel safe, that helps their body not feel sick.
They're going to go more and more towards that. So I personally feel like a more productive way of helping someone to make the choice to come out of this addicted state. Is not to necessarily threaten these things anymore. You don't have to, you don't have to fix these things for someone.
These are the natural consequences of addiction. You don't have to fix them, but you also don't have to make it any worse. What you want to do is you want to help someone feel safe with you. There's not a lot you can do to help them physiologically regulate [00:12:00] unless you're like a detox doctor.
But what you can do as a family member is you can help someone feel safe and heard and understood. And when you can do that, then you're automatically, you're getting them to come up a rung back to themselves. If you can get them to feel like they have a community love and support and belonging, now we're up another rung, right?
And If we can actually do some things to satisfy some of these needs, or at least help someone feel like there's hope of having these things, I think they're a lot more likely to come out of this diction to poke their head out and consider doing something else. The main thing that I want you to get is that the person is still in there.
The personality hasn't changed, it's just bringing out the lower forms of their self. And guess what? It would happen to me. Or to you or to anyone else. You can literally take any person, you can pluck them out of any situation in life you [00:13:00] can think of. You can get them very chemically dependent and they're going to do the same things.
They're going to make the same choices. They're going to the same places. And that's why That's why support groups for people with addictions work so well because it can literally be all kinds of people from all kinds of places and they're going to relate because they're going to be like, I thought that too.
I did that too. I said that too. I went to those places. I did that. I stole from my mom too. And it helps you to feel a sense of love and belonging. That's what 12 step groups do is the community of the group helps you to feel a sense of belonging. Belonging, which helps you to feel safe. And if you work the 12 steps teach you how to be a better person, which helps you meet that esteem need.
Those 12 step groups really do give you a map out of this thing. Now you don't have to do it through the 12 steps because any community is going to create that same sense of love and belonging for you. So I'm not saying 12 step is the only way I'm just saying that as an example of how that is working on a [00:14:00] psychological level, it's why, Two heroin addicts can understand each other, literally can probably not even speak the same language and can be like, I get you, man.
You can see it on TV and be like, I get you. Because you have that shared experience of thinking the same things, feeling the same ways, making the same decisions, but essentially your personalities are probably not the same because once you alleviate all of those needs one by one, it allows your full self to come into picture, right?
When all of your things are in play, your morals, your connection, your sort of essence comes back in, you're not just in that survival mode. The key is helping someone get Out of that survival mode, how do we, how do we do that? How do we reach someone who's in that state? One way to do it is if you're another addict, you can talk to the person and you can immediately help them feel heard and understood from those, I've been there, I've done that.
That's immediately pulling them up out of that. State that they're in of being [00:15:00] so stressed scared. It's really a fear based place It's a need or deficiency based place that they're coming from In just a second i'm going to take some of your questions and comments.
I will remind you of course we have resources in the description one of the resources we have is our family recovery membership, which is led by our two family counselors, Kim and Campbell, and they do an amazing job of looking after you. Those of you who watch my videos, y'all know I'm always taking up for the person with the addiction.
That's just what I do. Kim and Campbell, they do a better job of looking out for your needs, helping you to stay healthy and setting good boundaries. I think our Strengths Based Recovery Coaching, that's recovery coaching with me personally, is full for May, but there's two spots left for June. So if you want those, make sure you secure those spots and the links for all of that is in the description.
Alright, here we got our first one from K cup. If a loved one is homeless, to provide safety, [00:16:00] do we bring them back home? They hate being homeless and doesn't believe in treatment. Keeps asking to come back home and feels abandoned when we say, I don't see the rest of that, but I'm guessing like when we say you can't come back home.
This is a really great question and it is, Perfectly on topic. I love it. Thank you. That's a good question The thing of it is when that person is that far down in their addiction You can bring them back home, but those needs still won't be being met They are still not going to be any safer actually in your home than they were on the street Because of how reduced they are.
People think, I'm going to keep them safe. I'm going to keep them in my house. And I'll say actually they can overdose in your living room floor just as easily as anywhere else. It's a false reality. And to prove it, what I would say to you as a family member is. If you offer them a place to stay a shelter, or a group home, or a [00:17:00] treatment center, you're offering them shelter, they won't go because they're down there in that physiological need so much that they really, it would be nice if they had that, but because they're so low in that dependency, they're not home.
They're more worried about that chasing the drug because they have to at that point than they are the safety. And you can tell that because they'll turn down offers of shelter over and over again unless you're just making it super easy saying you can come back to my house. Hopefully that answers your question.
Mail says Their addicted loved one, Mellie, says her addicted loved one is an alcoholic, states that he wants to change, but doesn't want to feel the negative effects, but gets drunk again, and states he doesn't want to quit, but to manage. Why? This is a really good question too, Mel. So basically you're getting some change talk is what I call it.
It's some I need to stop this, or I need to cut this back, those kinds of statements, but there, that want and desire [00:18:00] isn't to the point where they're willing to you. Go through the uncomfortableness to get there as far as how you interact with that melias. I would just validate their feelings about yeah, dude, like It's not going to be easy.
It's going to be Worse before it's better. It's going to be harder before the light comes at the end of the tunnel. And so instead of trying to say you need to do this and you got yourself in the situation you want to Empathize with them first of all and then also maybe even empathize with their desire to manage it Even though you and I know that's not going to work, it's understandable to want to manage it because at some point this addictive behavior, substance, whatever served some kind of purpose for them and may still serve some kind of purpose for them.
It helps them with something in their life. So it is natural to want to keep it around to do that bargaining. The way I deal with that, Millie, is I let people go through those bargaining stage. I'll say, all right, let's try that. Basically you have to let them prove to themselves that the managing isn't going to work.
I have a ton of [00:19:00] videos on that. Stages of change, all of those, you can check them out if you haven't seen them, Mellie. Crystal says, my alcoholic husband recently told me he feels so alone. What can I say? So he makes the connection that it is the addiction. Instead of trying to. Get him to come to a realization, because if you're trying to get him to come to a realization, it's not going to help him feel more connected to what you want to do is actually see if you can connect to him on some level, instead of trying to get him to realize what's happening, because it's, that's too far up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, what you're trying to do, you want to meet them where they're at and talk to them.
Like when they say they feel alone, just. Ask them to tell you more about that. Use reflective listening, ask questions, be curious, not in an annoying way. Like sometimes family members can ask questions like in an interrogation kind of way, but in a curious kind of way and an interested kind of way. And if you [00:20:00] can help that person feel heard and understood, they'll actually feel connected to, because that's what connection means.
It means you feel like people understand who you are. People get you on a deeper level. So I would say. See if you can do that or help do that for them instead of just talking to them about it.
Emily says, I'm having a really hard time coming out of the bad guy role. I want to, but I have not been able to help. Emily, I have a question for you on that. Those of you who haven't seen a lot of my videos, I talk a lot about family members. The first thing you have to do is get out of the bad guy role.
And that's what Emily's talking about here. Are you having trouble coming out of the role because No matter what you do, they won't let you out of it. If you're nice, they turn it against you. It doesn't matter what you do, because that's the thing that happens. Or is it like, you're trying to be calm and cool and collected and you do good for a while, but then you relapse and then you lose your crap again, because that's another thing that happened.
Which one of the things is it that's keeping you stuck? [00:21:00] I need a little bit more information about it. Tori, the mom says, I'm back with my ex husband. I'm finding out that now he's active, now that he's actively in treatment, there's a weird new dynamic between us. For decades, it's been all about the alcohol.
So how do we now adjust basically? I guess it is. It is weird because now that maybe the person's in treatment and they're probably just Just not coming back to life, like coming back to themselves and they're, and they don't even possibly, they don't even know who they are and they're not completely back in themselves and their self yet.
So they're awkward. So they don't know how to connect to you in this new state. And you don't know how to connect to them in this new state. I would just acknowledge the situation with persons. Hey, it's weird now. I don't even know what to say to you. And they're probably going to be like, I know me too and right then and there if you can just acknowledge it and meet them on that level That will help bring a little bit of connection back in just to acknowledge like this is weird Like I don't even know how [00:22:00] to do us anymore.
Just have a conversation about it.
Julie says What about knowing that your spouse started drinking to cope with childhood trauma? He uses alcohol to cover the mental pain so the alcohol is working in his mind But ripping our family apart I don't know Julie if you've seeing the videos do on this. Some of you have though, but, and you probably already know this, but the alcohol is probably what's bringing the trauma to the surface.
I'm not saying the trauma didn't happen. I'm saying the alcohol is what's keeping the trauma traumatic. And it is really hard to get them to see that. If you stay out of the bag I roll, if you do a lot of the techniques that I teach you, eventually they're going to see that the alcohol isn't even helping with that anymore.
They may not recognize that the alcohol is, necessarily bring in the trauma to the surface, but they'll realize that it's becoming less and less effective, that they're more and more unhappy and miserable and stuck. Most of the time, all you have to do is [00:23:00] step out of the way and not block someone's point of view so that they can see more.
accurately what's going on with them.
Jennifer says my daughter who's 26 lives on her own contacts me only when she's in dire need and drunk. How can I build her up? Does she does live a reasonable drive from me. If the, if she's only contacting you when she's either drunk or in dire need or both, it sounds There's not a lot you can do in that moment because in that moment if she's just drunk She's not even going to remember it and she's not even she's not even coming from her real self, right?
She's coming from a drunken self or if she's calling you in dire need in survival mode You're not going to be able to build her up Because it's like she's down there in that physiological state if you're trying to build her up You're trying to hit that esteem state and we're way down here on this So you, again, you have to come back and meet the person where they're at.
You can if you want to send a a text throughout the day, just trying to connect, not a [00:24:00] heavy text, not like the, I hope you get help and that kind of thing, just like a connection text to try to get some kind of dialogue going on that's beyond just this desperate dialogue that's happening.
Debbie says my addicted person was kicked out and supposed to have moved to a new place two days ago I haven't heard a peep and I was supposed to help him. Should I call even though I can't offer him a home? You obviously know this person really debbie If you call, are they going to start hounding you and saying let me come back and, or making you feel guilty or putting a lot of pressure on you?
If that's the case, then I probably wouldn't. If it's not the case and you just want to say, hey, I'm just checking on you making sure you got situated or something like that, then I think it's fine. It just depends on how this person is going to react. If they're going to make you feel bad and guilty and push you and all that stuff, then I wouldn't.
Melinda says, question. My functional addicted loved one is in the bargaining [00:25:00] phase. Recently went three weeks without drinking and made statements that he wished he could never drink again. Back to drinking. What do I need to do next? When I hear this Melinda, it makes me think that this person is either in the active stage of change or really close.
I know they're back to drinking again but what when they're saying things like I wish I could never drink again That tells me that they're really getting it. It's which is different than probably things they've said in the past, which is I wish I could just drink socially or I wish I could manage it some of that more bargaining kind of state the Statement, I wish I could never drink again.
Makes me think that the person is feeling some kind of hopelessness about it. And I'm trying to imagine, what I would say to them if they were in my office. I'd say, dude, you got three weeks. You did it like three, day 22 is the same as day 10 is the same as day 15. You have the skills.
You have done it was, this is just a little blip. So I would come at it from, A positive context to help them feel [00:26:00] hopeful that they actually they're already doing it And they've already done the hard part because it sounds like they're feeling like oh my gosh I'm never going to get this. So that's the thought you want to come at trying to address Teresa says question Are you saying we should never lower?
Are you saying we should lower our expectations then? That we shouldn't expect to have a deep meaningful relationship with our loved one. Hope is a scary thing I guess I am Teresa I mean I know it sounds bad, like literally when I think about saying, yeah, you need to lower your expectations. You don't have to lower your expectations, but I'm telling you this is what the reality is.
So you need, instead of thinking about it like that, you need to say, I need to accept the reality for what it is because once I understand what it is, I can do a lot better job of deciding how to interact in this. If I'm telling myself it should be a certain way and it's not, and I'm trying to interact with the situation that way, I'm just beating my head against the wall.
So yes you need to shift in your mind what you're dealing with [00:27:00] and come to terms with this is where they're at. This is a level I can, this is where I can meet them at. Or it may be that you don't want to meet them at that level and that's okay too. But yeah. I think you're going to have to get more reasonable if you're dealing with someone that's addicted, as far as what they're capable of.
Barbie says, When you say they don't hear us when they're in withdrawal, is that when they are starving? When is a good time to talk to them? My son is addicted to meth. Yeah, it like it Barbie, it is like when someone's starving, right? If someone's like literally starving and you're trying to talk to them about I don't know, philosophical things or something.
It's just, they can physically hear the words coming in, but they can't concentrate on that. Just if you're sick, you can't concentrate on other things. I can remember the last time I was really sick and I was just literally laying in the bed trying to watch Netflix, I couldn't even concentrate on the TV show.
I was so sick, right? I couldn't even [00:28:00] follow the storylines that, because we're just in That state where our physical needs are, is what matters. So you have to eat, you have to like, if they're in detox on purpose, they're trying to detox themselves. You need to save any kind of deeper conversations until they're feeling a little bit better.
Sometimes when I have an initial session with someone and it's like they're day two or three, I'm like, dude, do you even want to do this? A lot of times they're like, yeah, I can do it. I'm like, okay, but You can say today's not a good day if you want, because I'm like, yeah, they can see and go through the motions of this, but their head cannot be in like a therapy session when they're feeling super terrible.
Good question. Emily says, I'm trying, but I can't be calm. Being nice doesn't matter. Being mean doesn't matter. I just want to not let his drinking affect me. Bri, is Emily the one that I asked the question from before? Okay, good. I thought so. So you're Emily's the one that asked the question said that she couldn't get out of the bad guy role.
So what you're saying Emily is like you do good But then you hit the [00:29:00] wall or something happens or you get triggered and then you lose it again I think that's what you're saying. The first thing I would tell you on that is Give yourself a little grace. You're not going to do it perfectly. And no matter how hard you try, you're going to slip up.
You're going to get upset. You're going to say some things. And in that situation, you want to try to damage control it. You just want to come back afterward and say, you know what? I'm sorry. I dealt with situation that way. You don't really have to say I was wrong, but what you can, cause you probably don't feel like you were wrong in whatever you said, cause you probably weren't, but you can say, I wish I would have handled that differently.
So you can damage control it. Being nice. isn't going to be the thing that's going to make your loved one get sober. So I know I talk a lot about getting out of the bag at all. What being nicer does is it doesn't, is it takes away their main deflection point, which is usually the primary person in their life.
The thing that they're so upset about, the thing that they feel a victim of, it takes that away. And that leaves not a lot else to think about except what [00:30:00] is going on with them. They don't get better until they start making some decisions to do better, but they're not going to start seeing that and making the decisions as long as we give them some kind of something to be upset about.
Then they're just focused on us and our wrongdoings. instead of looking inside. Hopefully that helps you a little bit, Emily.
Caroline says, I asked my fiancΓ© to leave because he was screaming at me. Now I feel like I should have been more patient. He will not speak to me now. Is there a way I can fix it?
If the person was scared, I'm just thinking about this, Caroline, if the person was scaring you, I don't know what was happening, but in my mind, it makes me think they were out of control in some way. They were either, maybe not physically, but verbally somehow it was escalated and you were scared and asking someone.
When you're scared, I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. Maybe you said it or did it in a way that you wished you would have been gentler or more nice about it, but you probably still [00:31:00] did the right thing. You said you wish you would have been more patient. I don't want to encourage someone to be patient to the point that they put themselves in an unsafe situation, which I'm getting the impression you might've been in.
So I don't think you should rethink that decision that you made is what I'm saying, Caroline. You may want to say, Hey, I wish I wouldn't have. Spoken to you harshly the other day or something like that, like how you reacted to it, but you probably did make the right decision.
All right, everybody. That's all we've got for you today there are resources in the description.
Bye everybody. I'll see you next time.
