Confronting the Devastating Effects of Addiction and Trauma
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Speaker: [00:00:00] We all like to think that we're in control of ourselves. We're in control of the decisions that we make, that we have free will to make whatever choices in life that we want to make, but that's actually not what research shows. There's a lot of scientific and psychological research that shows otherwise.
In fact, there are so many variables that go into How and why people make the decisions they do, that it's mind blowing. And once you hear about some of this research. You might feel a little unsettled about it because, like I said, we like to think we're in charge, but we're not nearly as in charge as we think we are.
There are so many factors, like trauma, like your childhood experiences, like how your morning has gone, like whether or not you're hungry or not, about your subconscious. biases. All these things impact how we [00:01:00] make decisions. Our environment controls our decision making much more than you and I like to think that it does.
And I want to pull apart some of this. I want to tell you about some of this research. And then I also want to tell you how to empower yourself to take more control. Especially when it comes to Addictive behaviors or having an addicted loved one. You can see that the decision making your own control over your decision making when you have an addiction or you have an addicted loved one gets greatly reduced just by that.
And when we add in these other factors, when you feel like I'm going crazy and why did I make that decision? And I don't even understand what I was thinking. Then you're probably right. I can't tell you how often I'm working with people And they're doing really good for a while and they relapse and the question, especially their family, the question they first get asked is why did you relapse?
What happened? And a lot of people will say, I don't really know. And when they say that [00:02:00] the family tends to think, Oh, you just don't want to tell me you, you were, you probably been relapsing for a month. You've been thinking about it or whatever. And you think That they're lying and then other people will say I think it was, I got an argument with my wife or I was really stressed out or work demand or something like that, they'll give you a reason and it, that one.
It makes you feel better because when we can pinpoint and identify, okay, there was a trigger, there was a reason. And we can like plan around these triggers and reasons. It gives us more of a sense of being in control and we feel better about it. But actually decisions are actually made. First, and then we look for facts and evidence to support our decisions.
We think it happens the opposite of that. We think that we're objective and we think through all the pros and cons and we're rational about things. And once we weigh all the information and evidence out, then we make a decision. But that's not how it works. What we do is we make a decision and then we look.
For evidence of that. And that's a big key [00:03:00] part into one of the things that I talk about on this channel all the time, that thing being how people with addictions will blame other people often because they're making these decisions to keep making bad decisions over and over again. And then.
They're looking for a reason because oftentimes they don't understand all the reasons why they're really doing it. So they're trying to rationalize and justify. And that's a big part of what goes into the denial process, what goes into blaming other people.
And guess what? It's not just people with addictions that do that. We all do that to some degree, especially when it comes to we feel like we made a bad decision or something that we regret or we're shameful or guilty feeling about. Then we definitely want to pinpoint all these external reasons and what all went into it.
But it's just not nearly as clear and concise as all that. It's complicated actually. Let's start with the effect that traumas can have on [00:04:00] our decision making. Now, Most people know there is a connection between addiction and trauma. A lot of people think that everybody that has an addiction has childhood trauma.
I'm not necessarily one of those believers. I think there's a strong connection there, but I've certainly worked with a lot of people who had no significant childhood trauma that they can identify. However, Even when you look at that connection, it probably isn't contributing in the way that you think.
Most people, especially family members, they think, Oh, this person, they're having like all these like terrible memories and it's causing them so much distress to remember all these bad things happen, which is a thing. That happens. Then they're going out and using to make those memories go away.
And I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but actually what really goes on that connection between trauma and addiction and just trauma and decision making in general is, especially if it's gone on in your childhood while you're like brain wiring is taking place, then it actually makes your brain feel like it's form differently.
For [00:05:00] example, like your amygdala, your stress response systems. If you are living in a very chaotic home and childhood, your stress response systems develop very differently than other children because it's a survival mechanism. Like parts of your brain will be bigger. And parts of your brain will be smaller because of the environment that you grew up in and it's your brain, it's your body's way of trying to protect you.
It's like giving you a really strong alarm system. And when you grow up with a really strong alarm system, you tend to be hypervigilant. You tend to take things much more personally. You tend to have a hyper awareness about what's going on around you, which When you're in the trauma is helpful.
You need to be hyper aware of what's going around you so you can protect yourself so you can make decisions to keep yourself safe, but then later in life, you're still have that big, giant alarm system and it doesn't just go away because you grew up or because you got out of the situation and this happens not just in childhood, by the way, like any [00:06:00] trauma can cause this it.
Messes up your fight or flight system. And so you develop these adaptive mechanisms that are still at play. And so the connection there between trauma and addiction is when you're so hyper vigilant, when you're so reactive, when everything is coming in, like your senses are coming in, or.
Really strong. That's pretty uncomfortable. And so you could see why someone might want to medicate or soothe the uncomfortableness of that anxiety, that feeling upset, having your feelings hurt, and then. Got, I'm sure most of y'all can follow all that. Cause you're probably like, yeah, that makes sense.
I got that. I've knew that ever. Now let's layer in on top of that, your attachment style. Some of you have seen my videos on attachment. If you haven't, attachment style is a whole like genre in and of itself. There's a lot of great YouTube channels about it, but basically in your very early childhood, like we're talking like infancy, Childhood up to being toddler, your ability [00:07:00] to attach to other people is that's when that wiring comes in into your brain.
And based on events that happen we'll determine your attachment style, whether or not you're an anxious attachment means you're always worried about your relationships. Does someone really care about me? Are they going to do me wrong? Maybe I should leave them before I get hurt. Maybe I should call them 400 times a day to make sure we're cool.
You've got that. Attachment style, which is layered in on a very subconscious level that's making decisions, particularly relationship decisions and how to interact with other people in the world. Attachment styles layered in there. You also have the regular old what's going on in your environment right now.
Plays a big part in your decision making. For example, if you started out your day and it was a bad day and something terrible happened at work, and then you get a call from your spouse at lunchtime, asking you some questions or wanting to make some decisions, you might make those decisions very differently based on your mood, [00:08:00] which was being impacted by what happened earlier in that day.
Let me give you some examples. I had a client not too long ago. A few months back who had been doing really good in recovery. He had been sober. It really worked hard. He really worked on himself as a person. He'd come a long way. He had months and months sober, but he was on he was on a work.
Trip one day where he had to drive a long time and he had a, and he had a relapse and, he made some bad decisions in that moment and he was confused as to why, and his family was confused as to why, and they, that's when I met him. So all that leads up to when he comes to me and they're like, okay, and we're like, and even he's like, why did I do this?
How can I keep this from happening again? Trying to understand it. And most people they're looking for some kind of deep like giant secret, like maybe He wasn't even trying at all. Maybe it's because he won't get a sponsor. Maybe it's because, and we're trying to find these big reasons, but when I analyzed the situation with him and we played it [00:09:00] back step by step about what happened and even, the weeks preceding that, I'm sure there were, you Many factors, but the big factors that came to my mind was he was on a really long work trip And he had driven many hours that day and had a couple of stops in there where he had to do business meetings which are stressful.
So you've got this long day of driving. You've got these business meetings He's a health conscious kind of person. So he tries not to eat like junk food So he's trying to wait till he gets to where he's going so that he can like, eat something healthy he stops at the gas station to get gas.
And that's when the bad decision was made. Can you see how it's, it was really not so much this like giant premeditated thing, like he wanted to drink or use the whole time. It wasn't because he wasn't calling a sponsor. It wasn't any of that, that most people think it I truly believe after a lot of discussion, it was because he was hungry.
and tired. And when you're hungry and you're tired, your [00:10:00] willpower gas tank is real low. And once you get real low in your willpower gas tank, you tend to not be able to Delay gratification or restrain yourself in just impulsive decisions and things you say to other people, how you act, how you conduct yourself in general, think about it.
You're like the Snickers commercial, right? Are you hangry? We all know what being hangry is and we will make drastically different decisions when we're hangry. And that's just one element of factors that's coming in that impacts the way we There are so many more things for example, just your general sense of Yourself, like your self confidence, your self esteem who, and how you see yourself.
One of the things I work on a lot with my clients who have addiction is getting them to change their self view. Sometimes they have a self view of I've tried, 10 times to stop and I always go back and I never make it past three months or something [00:11:00] like that. And I'm like, okay, first of all, When you're seeing yourself through that lens, you're almost like writing it in stone that you're not going to make it past three months because you've decided you're not capable of it.
And that's actually not true because being sober on day, what, 91 is the same as being sober on day 60. There's nothing different about that. And so there's no magic line in the sand, but people, Come to believe these things about themselves or people believe like I'm weak or I'm lazy or I always screw it up or I always self sabotage.
And when we have those self beliefs, we may not be aware of it at the time, but when we're making those everyday decisions, all of those things come into play. I was listening to this researcher guy, this real academic guy recently who wrote a book, I think, And I can't remember exactly, but I think the book is called You Have No Free Will.
And when you look at his theories on it, he literally says you have zero free will. We just think that we do. And one of the studies [00:12:00] that he talks about or cites in in his book and in this interview I was watching was he talks about, and I've never heard this before, but, For me, I was like, what, like I, I knew all this, but like when you hear it in this study, it's just like, the study was about parole hearings.
When people, they make bad choices, they go to prison, they get prison sentences. And after so long, most of the time they can be eligible for parole means released from prison. And when that happens, you go before a panel of people. I didn't even realize they were judges until this guy's sister, but it's judges or whatever who make the decisions about who to get released and who not and what they found in this study has been replicated more than once and it's consistent findings is that your chances of getting parole if you were early in the docket.
We're like 60, I think 5%. If you were on the docket late in the day, or you're one of the last cases, you had almost [00:13:00] zero chance of being paroled. And if you were right around lunchtime, right before or right after that had the biggest impact on whether or not people got. If you got to come before the judge right after the judge ate and had some blood sugar and he was full and it was thinking clear, you have a much, much larger chance of getting paroled.
Now, when the, when judges look at this, they, they think, no, that's not true. We want to fight it. You're like, I have all this education and I'm making these decisions based on all of these factors. And it gives us the illusion that. We're being rational human beings, but in fact, we're oftentimes not being rational human beings.
We're making decisions emotionally. We're making decisions because we're hangry. We're making decisions because of something that happened to us in our childhood, and now something's happening in the current that reminds us of that. And we either react. Favorably or unfavorably, depending on our experience earlier in the day or way back, there are just all [00:14:00] these things that come into play.
And when I think about that, it's really amazing that any of us overcome any of these, any of our long term habits. When it comes to addiction that's like crazy to think about. You got to overcome these habitual patterns that you've done over and over and over again. So you like created these giant entrenched grooves in your brain of neuropathways, but you got all these other factors coming into play too.
There was a, There's also a, I think this is still on Netflix, I watched this a year or two ago, but there's a cool show called, I think it's called 100 Humans. Have you seen that? Put 100 in the comment section if you've seen this. This is really fun and interesting to watch. But it's they take 100 humans and they're doing all these like psychological experiments on them.
And one of the tests that they do is they the participants and they put them in an environment, it looks like police training, like you see on TV, like police, it's they train, and things pop up, and they have to decide if it's a bad guy or a good guy, and they shoot it, or like men in black, I don't know if [00:15:00] y'all remember men in black, where they try to get the aliens and not the people, but they put the, Participants in the situation where it's dark and they have a gun on them and they have to decide in a millisecond, like a fraction of a second, whether or not someone is a threat to shoot or to not shoot.
And so they put these I think they use actually live bullets. People as the props instead of like hardware cutouts. And some of them had guns in their hand and that would represent a threat. And you would be like, I need to shoot that there. He's about to shoot me. And some of them had cell phones in their hand and you had, they would pop out.
It was fairly dark and you had to decide almost without thinking, really fast to shoot or to not shoot and the findings of this. Alarming, honestly, because what they found across the board, the factor that influenced that wasn't what was in the hand. It wasn't whether it was a gun or a phone.
It was the color of the skin of the person that was the prop In [00:16:00] the experiment, the person that was holding the gun or the cell phone. And you might not be too surprised to know that research shows that darker skinned people got judged or viewed as a threat more quickly, more often. But you might be surprised to know that darker skinned people got judged more threatening, more quickly by all the study participants, no matter what their race was.
It's these subconscious biases that we have that we're not even aware of that are coming into play in our decision making. Another one that I thought was, 100 Humans, you guys should check it out. It's fun that I thought was interesting is one of the, one of the experiments they did is they had these three guys and three girls and they're, So there's six people total and there's three couples between them and they had them all mixed up and then they had participants come in and literally pull the people and match them together.
He said, there's three couples here. Group them together. Who do you think are the couples? And all the [00:17:00] participants, they come up and they group them, indifferently or whatever, but everybody grouped them all. Man, woman, man, woman, man, woman. And it was actually one heterosexual couple one homosexual couple men, and one homosexual couple women.
And. All the participants, except I think one, grouped them man, woman, man, woman, man, woman, even participants that were not heterosexual themselves. So again, it's our automatic thinking that comes into play so much more than we realize. We can be going through our day and there can be a smell in the environment that we're not even aware of.
And maybe it reminds us from something in our past. It's an unpleasant memory, or maybe it reminds us something in our past. That's a pleasant memory. Like for example, when I go to the beauty shop, when I go to the hairdresser, even if it smells like hair chemicals, it reminds me, I have a fond memory of that because my mom used to do hair.
And so when I was younger, me and my friends, me and my sister, we were like, go sit at her shop on Saturday. She would like little old [00:18:00] ladies, blue hair, tease their hair up for the week. And we would sit there and have fun. And we would watch. Wash each other's hair, we would do makeup and hair all day long.
We did all the stuff and it was back in the time everyone's getting perms. So it always smelled like perm and if I smell those smells, it just makes me happy because I have those good memories associated with it. My husband is the same when it comes to going into Lowe's or Home Depot because his dad is like an electrician and plumber.
And so it reminds me of his dad and he has good memories just going in there and like smelling the wood, all the smells in there and all of those things are impacting our decisions. Sometimes we're aware, like I'm aware about the hairdresser thing. My husband is aware about the Home Depot thing, but there's a lot more that we may not have memory of.
Our brain at any one time. second or moment is taking in thousands and thousands of pieces of information through our senses. And we're only aware of a few of them because we can only consciously we can only consciously think through a few of them at a [00:19:00] time. And the rest of it is, it's in there.
All the information is being taken in but we're not necessarily aware of it and we don't know what it is. And because we're not aware of it and we don't know what it is, we don't know how it's affecting us. And when we, when all those things are subconscious and we don't know how it's affecting us, we have less control over our decision making.
So when I think about all that, it's frightening to be honest, because I like to think I'm in charge of me. I like to be the boss of me. And I like to think I'm in charge of my fate, my future and everything like that. I'm sassy that way, but there's a lot more going on in there.
It's frightening. However, you can use that same information, this knowledge, and you, and once you understand the environment is why you make the decisions you do. Then you can choose to control your environment. That is the most powerful empowering thing that you can do to influence your decisions.
Because if the environment is influencing your decisions, then you put yourself in certain [00:20:00] environments. You have to be honest with yourself about the power that you have over that environment. There's some other really, um, I don't know if they're cool, but super interesting to me studies about evil, about why people make evil choices and there, there's a Ted talk and I can't remember the guy's name, but it's really good.
You should watch. I used to show it to my IOP group, but he says everybody thinks it's one bad apple ruins the whole thing. All the other apples in the barrel, but that's not true. The barrel ruins every apple in the barrel. And he talks about this from some of those old what was it called?
Somebody tell me what it's called. I've blanked on it. The study, everybody learns about it in psychology where they had a group of students and this really happened. A group of students, college students come in and play prison guards and they put them in a real prison and a group of students that came in and they were Prisoners.
So you had the guards and the prisoners and they put them in a real prison environment and they let it play out. And what they saw was massive abuse of [00:21:00] power, like major mistreatment of the prisoners by the prison guards. And there, it wasn't, they picked only like mean jerk. People to play the prison guards.
It's the environment. It's the setup. And we see this in war crimes We see this play out in real life over and over it if you think that you're not capable of making a horrible Decision you are wrong. If you think you're not capable of killing someone you're wrong if you think oh my gosh You know you look at other people and you judge the decisions they've made and you think I would never You got to be careful about that because you're, we're all capable of any of it in the right situation.
So it's so important to control the influences in your life. For example, if you many many of you who watch this channel, you, I hear every day I read comments and the comment says, Oh my gosh, I wish I would've found you five years ago. I was doing it all wrong. And now. I've just been doing like your stuff for three days and it's already better.
So they [00:22:00] watched some videos and that changed their decision making, right? And then once they made some different decisions and it worked, then that behavior is getting reinforced. And so then they're more likely to do that again and again, whether or not they are a person trying to overcome addiction or a person trying to help a loved one overcome an addiction.
It's the same way. So it that's because of an influence you put in front of you. And that happened because of influence I've put in front of my own self. So we talked to people in early recovery about people, places, and things. And we say, don't hang out what you're using friends and.
And hey, I stand by that. That's good advice, but it's more complicated than that. Usually I tell my clients don't hang out with people who have crappy energy. Don't hang out with people who have bad attitude, who make bad decisions, who aren't doing anything with their life, whether they use drugs or not use drugs, because that influences you, how you feel, how you see the world, and how you make decisions.
If they use drugs, you're a lot more likely to do that, right? So if you're a family member [00:23:00] and you're trying to get through this with a loved one and you're constantly subjecting yourself to movies that end really badly about this and you belong to support groups where everybody's negative and nobody ever makes it out and you're Looking at terrible research statistic numbers Guess what?
You are literally implanting it in your brain that it cannot work, that no one gets better. This is a hopeless situation. And guess what? Your situation will be hopeless. Because you have inundated yourself with that information. It works the same way with people in early recovery. It's people say, do you have to go to meetings every day?
I'm like, hey, I love meetings. You go to meetings every day because that's a good influence. It keeps your head on straight. But there are other ways to do it too. You just need an influence, right? Whether it's church, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a different kind of meeting you want to go to all of the, a book, anything you're just, if you will control the influence, you'll control how solid you feel, whether you feel hopeful or hopeless, whether you're in a good frame of mind or a bad frame of mind that affects how you interact with [00:24:00] other people all day, which affects how they interact with you, which affects how.
Stressed out and triggered and where your willpower tank is. All of these complicated factors come into play. It's just not nearly as simple as we think. And if I could get one thing across to you guys today to help you really understand this, I want you to pay attention to the decisions that you're making.
And if you will slow it down and you'll watch yourself, you'll notice that you make a decision and then you find the evidence. For example, maybe you go to the mall and you buy a really expensive pair of shoes because they look cool and you wanted them. And then you tell yourself I really had to buy some new shoes because I have this big presentation coming up anyway and I really need some nice shoes.
That's what I mean when I say we make a decision and then we find the evidence on the back end. A person has an affair. And then they start looking for how their spouse or maybe they want to have an affair. But, and then they start looking at how their spouse isn't treating them right. Isn't doing, what they should be doing and is unfair and all these things, because [00:25:00] we're trying to support the decisions we make.
And we got to get, we got to get that in reverse, especially if you're trying to overcome an addiction, because. Your mind is being controlled by so many things already without the addiction. You throw the addiction on top and it really does put you in a powerless situation, but you don't have to stay there.
The best way to do it is to control the environment and the influences. And I actually have my son with us today because he's out of school. This is summertime and he had an orthodontist appointment anyways.
So he's going to be my moderator because Bree is going for a little trip. All right.
Weston, you ready to come on here? This is Weston. This is my son. He's almost 13. He's about to be out for the summer. And he's going to moderate these questions. You got some questions you're going to give me? All right. Pop them up there.
All right. Oh, I'm going to have to put my granny glasses on Weston. I can't even read. I know. All right. This one is from hope and hope says my addicted loved one and I are separated because [00:26:00] of use. How do I handle the affection he tries to give when I'm not. Attracted and I feel repulsed by him knowing he wants connection and probably will bring us closer.
I think it depends on which way you want to handle that hope. Do you want to be more receptive to the affection? If you want to be more receptive to the affection, then put influence in your life that makes you feel more hopeful, that makes you see that people can change, that makes you feel Okay, we are going to get through this and that will help you be more optimistic about it, which will help you let your guard down.
If you're trying really hard to stay solid, no matter what he does, because you don't want to go back, then keep influencing your life that keeps you like on that path. So I don't know which way you want to lean, but I know that there are things you can do to reinforce either which direction. What else we got Weston?
All right. This is from Judy. Judy says, what about children and adolescents experiencing constant trauma because of addiction and [00:27:00] now are in fight, flight, or free state? That's a really great question. It's such a big question, Judy. I probably won't do it justice here, but a lot of us grew up in traumatic environments and some of those things that happened to us service well, and they turn into gifts of ours.
And sometimes it turns into curse, a curse for us. It's I usually say your superpower is usually also your kryptonite. The thing that makes you great is the thing that will take you down. And so if you understand about yourself, what your triggers are, what your The things that remind you of childhood are and how you react to them.
You, you have more power and control because you're bringing them from the subconscious into the conscious. And there are other things that you can do. It sounds crazy, but you can do some things to resolve that trauma. I was listening to an expert the other day and he was talking about just experiencing that trauma, telling someone else, and having someone else witness that trauma with you means just sit with you, hear you, understand you, have an [00:28:00] emotionally corrective experience, have that person respond to you in a way that's, care for you in a non judgmental way, the way you should have got cared for as a child.
That can actually, Help rewire. So there's some ways to rewire that. But most of all, if you can bring it up to your conscious awareness, it won't control you nearly as much.
Maymay says, my husband will tell me constantly how he's struggling, acknowledging his addictions. I tell him there is no shame in seeking help. And he will tell me I'm making it worse. How do I encourage him?
Is he telling you, I guess I have a question for you, Mama. Is he telling you, like when you say, you should get help. There's no shame in that. Is he saying you're making it worse by telling him that like in that moment, or he's trying to say you're making it worse. The whole reason I'm addicted is because you're like a.
naggy wife or whatever. Is he saying like in general you're causing it or because you're saying that? Typically, and I have some videos on this too, Maymay, is instead of [00:29:00] saying the words get help to people, because I know it seems minor and it seems like, gosh, it's just coming from a loving supportive place.
It can come across as judgy or pointed or like you're saying, something's if you ask somebody like, have you taken your medicine today? You're definitely saying something right. It's oh, you crazy when you don't take your pills. So please take your pills.
There's an implied messaging there. And sometimes, and even though you don't mean it that way, Sometimes people will take it that way. So I usually encourage people not to use the word help or doctor or professional or something like, cause it just can be triggering. It's oh, you're saying I'm crazy or whatever.
And instead of telling someone to encourage, just say, what do you think would help and let them come forward with the ideas and It's all these questioning techniques. It's like the invisible intervention program. I've literally teach you how to interact with someone, which changes their environment, which will absolutely 100 percent change the way they interact with you.
And you can influence their decision making. If you didn't think that people could influence other people's decision making, you wouldn't. [00:30:00] Send them to counselors, right? You feel like, Oh, the counselors have the magic power. Not really, because we can only control the environment for 45 minutes a week.
And if they live with you or around you, you control the environment a lot. So you have so much more influence and power than a counselor could have. It's just that you just need to know how to use your influence and power to create the right kind of environment that's more. Conducive to someone making a decision for change.
What else we got? Patricia, childhood trauma and coping mechanisms plus attachment style do not change in my experience because he got sober. How do you approach that topic with him? Oh, you're, you're right, Patricia, someone gets sober, they may have had a tat, their attachment style has been there before they had an addiction.
Some of these defense mechanisms have been there long before they had an addiction. The addiction was probably just one of their like maladaptive coping mechanisms. So we took one of the defense [00:31:00] mechanisms away, but the other ones are still there. One thing I would say to you is a lot of people in this situation, they'll want to call the person a dry drunk.
And that's a term that basically means, Oh, you're not drinking or using, but you haven't worked on yourself. So you're still like alcoholic y. It's an old recovery term. I wouldn't use terms like that because I think it minimizes someone's progress. And I think it, it feels like everything that the person does, It's because of addiction and it's not, and we all have character defects.
The first thing I would do is I would normalize whatever those things are, and I would come at it in a nonjudgmental way and help that person to realize why they attach or don't attach in the ways that they do or don't and help them identify their own defense mechanisms, because all you're trying to do is bring it from the unconscious awareness into the conscious awareness.
And once you're aware of that, you will decide differently. Thank you for listening.
CB says, isn't trauma just part of the deal of growing up with [00:32:00] addict? How would one ever start to work on noticing our actions because of trauma? Growing up, seeing it, and now dealing with it again. Example,
I can never see someone get hurt because they are a mess. I have to stop and breathe for a while and move on. Okay, go back up to the first part of that Weston. Yeah, that. Yeah, there you go. Huh. The first part of what you're saying isn't trauma just a part of growing up? And then you're also saying with an addict.
I think, to some degree, we all have some life changing experiences. We might not call them trauma, but Lord, if you've been to middle school, you've got a little trauma, right? And it may not be like trauma to the level that you identify as trauma, but we have experiences which shape our brains and shape our reality.
So the question is yes, and if you grow up in a home with an addict, then yes, there's a certain amount of trauma that's associated with that. Even if the person's not like a screaming, aggressive, drunk or something, It still affects everyone [00:33:00] else in the house. What else we got? Okay, you're doing awesome.
Question, Sharon says, why does the addict blame me? It's so frustrating to know I haven't done anything wrong. That's a really good question, Sharon, and we talk on this channel a lot about it. I have video after video about it, but I'm just going to give you the short answer here.
Part of it is because they're using, like I said before, it's like they're making a decision and then they need a reason why they made that decision. So we're justifying on the back end. And one of those, I always say when someone is an addict or an alcoholic, there's going to be a villain in the story.
Speaker: There has to be a villain in the story because it's part of how they continue to justify And continue to make decisions that they don't feel good about deep down inside. And they know it wrong. They deflect their own shame and guilt by focusing on the wrongdoings of others. That's the first half.
The second half is while you're watching someone become more and more addicted, you get more and more crazy because They're lying, sneaking, hiding. They're not being themselves. They're not taking care of their responsibilities. And so you start to change as a person. And so you actually start [00:34:00] to take on the villain role.
So not only are they like trying to mentally say that you are, it puts you in a position where you can become, not yourself. And so there's just a lot of factors that go into it, but that those are the big two. My daughter's room is cluttered corner to corner. She currently lives in the street and when she comes home gets overwhelmed.
Should we clean it for her? It may really upset her. Torn mom. I think you should ask her. I think you should say, I know it's like overwhelming for you. When you come home to see all that and you probably don't know when to start, would it help if we either helped you with that or did that for you?
Just ask. If you don't ask, it's a bit of a boundary issue and you're right. She might feel upset. Thank you. I would just ask.
All right. Laura says, how do you help someone that only ask for money keeps leaving rehab? She doesn't talk to family unless she wants something. It is very hard to have influence over someone when they don't communicate with you. And I say all the time, like the techniques [00:35:00] I teach they definitely work, but you have to have contact with the person. If they're only talking to you when they want something. And that means the only influence you have at that moment is whether or not to pick them up from rehab or give them money or not give them money. Either which way is like a bad choice, right? It's if I don't pick them up, then they're like screaming, mad, I'm the villain.
If I do pick them up, then I'm enabling, you don't have any good choices. It is very difficult to influence someone when you don't have contact with them because you're not in their environmental. CB,
how does one know if action we have as a partner or parent of the addict is from trauma? That's a good question. The, my first instinct when I read that CB was to say, after you do the action, do you feel good about it? Do you feel like, okay, that's what I wanted to do. That's how I wanted to handle it.
That was reasonable. That was rational. Or do you feel like, dude, I lost my mind. If you lost your mind and you did something that you're looking back on and you're [00:36:00] like, I don't really even know why I did it that way or how I handled it that way, then probably you're having a reaction to the environment, to the situation, which is chaotic.
Just. someone else's energy impacts you. If you're around people that are sad, you're going to feel sad. If you're around people that are happy, you're going to feel happy. So if you're around someone who's addicted, they're like on a motion rollercoaster, they're up, down, sideways, doing backflips and all this other stuff.
And just their energy, even if they say nothing to you, they're just in the room with you, is going to impact you. And that's almost like some kind of magnetic force that you have no control over. And that in some ways, that's the environment influencing you and how you react. Barbie says my son relapsed last night and I was supposed to take him to rehab early this morning He was starving just got out of jail and is now MIA What can I say when he calls me today? I still want him to go say where are you? I'll pick you up and we'll take you there if he calls you later today and Then that's your chance to say hey, I know you [00:37:00] probably You Got scared or got freaked out or whatever, but I'm still here for you.
I'll still pick you up and I'll still take you. And if he says no, then say, that's okay. You can change your mind. Let me know when you're ready. Sharon says, when can an addict stop using trauma as an excuse? He's 56 and doesn't do anything about his addiction. I am not. One, even though I'm making this whole video saying all these things influence our decisions, I'm not one that says that you can claim anything like that and let yourself off the hook.
I can't hit my child and then say my daddy hit me and that's, I can't help it. Uncool, man. Because, Once you're aware that it is trauma that's causing it, it's not in the subconscious, it's up here in the conscious, now you have some ability to decide how to influence that, decide whether you're going to get help, to be aware when you're being triggered.
There's so many things. And so for me, understanding it, an explanation is not an excuse. And that's what I, so yes, there's an explanation for it, but it doesn't, once we're aware of that, we [00:38:00] can't just keep using it as an excuse.
Asha says, question, I feel like saying whatever toxic behavior he did and how he is getting what he sows. It's coming back to him because he used to be mean, narcissistic personality, but now I think I got some leverage
how do I handle it when finances is in his control? The first part of what you're saying, I think is you're saying he's reaping what he sows. So it's like he's put a bunch of bad junk out there and he's getting a bunch of bad junk back. But the second part of what you're saying or your question I think is different than that.
If I'm understanding you right, Asha. You're saying how do you handle it when he controls the finances? This probably isn't the answer that you want to hear. But the answer is you get yourself more financial independence. Whatever you need to do that. Because otherwise, you're Being, you can be held hostage by that.
If you have no means to support yourself, no income, no access to finances, [00:39:00] that's just a bad position to be in. So figure out how to get yourself more financially independent. And then you have more decision making power about whether to stay, go, how long to stay, go, all those things.
All right, Julie says, how do I give validity to an anxiety issue, but also looking at the issue of addiction? My husband wants me to see anxiety as a mani issue, but I feel he has to address the addiction first. Oh, as the main issue. That's what you're saying. I actually, I have some videos on this, Julie.
It's a really good question and you're right about it. It's like people think I'm drinking or amusing because I have an anxiety disorder, this or that or the other. And and maybe there's some truth in that. Maybe they had some anxiety that it, that did get the process started out.
But you can't address anxiety or trauma or anything else. As long as someone is using, they're pouring chemicals on their brain. For goodness sake, there's no way you can get in that brain and heal some of these other things or address these things effectively when [00:40:00] they're pouring constant chemicals on, it just doesn't work that way.
You can sometimes do it simultaneously. Or you can do the addiction first and then the trauma, but I personally don't think it works to do the. anxiety or the trauma or the depression or whatever without addressing the addiction. I've met other people that feel differently, but I have personally have not seen that work and they will use that as an excuse to not deal with the addiction.
They'll hide behind it. So you validate the anxiety. But you also make it clear, but this is an issue like this isn't solving it or you help them come to see you don't really say it to them that way because that doesn't help. But you help them come to see that
Olivia says, how do you balance building trust with an addict who is trying to recover from fear of being lied to and trying to protect yourself again? I think that if you examine, why you're so fearful that they're going to lie to you, I think we overworry about being lied to. I have clients that lie to me all the time and I just know it.
Sometimes I know exactly that they're lying because I've talked to Campbell or Kim and they've already told me what happened and [00:41:00] I'm just trying to see if they're going to tell me the truth. And sometimes they're lying because they're shameful. People lie for all kinds of reasons and addiction always will show itself.
You don't have to look for it. You don't have to search out all these lies. You don't have to collect evidence. If someone is addicted, the unmanageability will make itself very clear. And so if you let yourself off the hook of even needing to be like the lie detector and know when you're lied to, because most of that's just about ego.
When you let it go it is going to. Show itself. It's going to manifest and you don't have to catch every lie. Then you just feel calmer.
Liz, how should I talk to my kids, 14 and 19, about their father's alcoholism? I've tried covering it up for most of their lives. However, in the past year, it's been hard because I'm done emotionally. This is a really complicated question. I think Kim and I did a video on this. It's been a good while back, but it's on this issue about talking to kids.
If they're not aware that dad drinks at all, then it's it's if you're the one says dad has a drinking problem and they're not, they're completely not [00:42:00] aware, then he's going to blame me and it's going to say you're turning my kids against me or whatever, but if they're already aware.
That dad drinks too much or has a drinking problem or whatever. And you just say it's alcoholism. And just explain to them some about it that will help them understand what's going on. But also you don't want to, sometimes as. Adults, we try to make it better by saying, I know your dad said, or did those things, or he didn't show up, he loves you D Down.
And it's like the kid is upset, but we're invalidating their being upset about it. And I think it's okay to let them have their emotions. I know that was upsetting and that wasn't right. And you're not saying that you don't villainize the other person, but you don't want to say he can't help. And I, he didn't mean to do that.
He loves you. Let's say. Dad drinks too much and he yells and screams and he throws things. And the kid is really upset about it. You can say, daddy loves you. And he didn't mean that stuff. And he was drunk and he didn't know what he was doing. All of that is true but the kid's experience needs to be validated and you're not piling it on to try to turn them against their parents, but you can say, I [00:43:00] can see why you're upset about that, they really let you down or whatever, you just listen to them and hear them and take their lead on it, mostly.
Some of them want to rescue the parent and they want to keep contact because they think they can help them or whatever. And some of them want to move completely away and they don't want to talk to them at all. And if they're 14 and 19, I think they should have at least some decision making in that. I think there's a question, but let me know.
All right, let's see what we got. Green says, I'm new to this, learning about addiction, and I hear a lot. Whatever help, whatever you help an addictive person, you enable them. Oh, whenever you help an addictive person, you enable them. What are the studies to support invisible intervention versus the old method?
That's a great, that's a great, if you want to look it up, the old method for intervention is called a Johnson Stahl intervention. The invisible intervention is my methodology for doing it. There's a big piece of that, that, that [00:44:00] incorporates the craft method. But so it's like the craft method, which you can find the research on which shows that it's like almost.
Two to three times more effective than the other way. But in the invisible intervention that's my method. It's the craft method plus a lot of other like counseling techniques and some other things that I teach you just to give you more skills. But my thinking on enabling is the most enabling thing you can do is play the villain because we worry about money We worry about giving them a place to stay and we say if i'm giving them money They're never going to stop if i'm giving them a place to stay they're never going to stop I'm, not saying you should do those things.
I'm just saying like rich people get sober Rock stars get sober every day and they have plenty of money and plenty of places to stay and people standing right there Ready and waiting to give them drugs and alcohol so it's about Creating the environment that helps them to see what the problem is and to feel like there's hope in a better way out.
So it's about the mindset, not the [00:45:00] money. And you have a lot of influence over that mindset, not complete. I don't want you to feel responsible for it, but I'm saying like, you do have some influence over that. I'll see you next week. Bye-Bye.
