AI Edits from 3 Steps to Take When No One Believes You About the Addiction
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[00:00:00] That notices addiction in your family. It's a bad place to be. It's a bad role. It's a bad spot. ~You're pretty much have a, you're gonna lose. And the reason for this is because ~it's easier for your family to think that you are crazy or to think that you're neurotic or insert any other word there than to admit and recognize that there is an addiction in the family.
So when you're the first person, you tend to make very predictable mistakes. You tend to talk about it too much. You tend to try to convince, you tend to try to plea. Prove all these things, ~and that's the first thing we do, right? So this first thing Kim's talking about is the first thing we want you to stop doing, right?~
And the second thing we want you to stop doing is tending to it. And what we mean by tending to it ~is. ~Is this is where we fix the problems. ~We might ~our spouse might be drunk, so we drive the children to school. We might be not able to go to our in-law's house for dinner. So we tell a lie.
The boss might call and say, where is he? Oh, he is really sick. We lie to it. We go to school meetings because your child's not going. 'cause he's out using drugs. And ~we go and say I'll get him here. Yeah. ~We ask them, ~we, ~we ride them to do their things. All of this is just too, for us.
To feel better about it so that it doesn't maybe un unravel as much as it's going to unravel. And even [00:01:00] another kind of sideways point when we tend to it is if you're the first person in the family to see it, then you probably wanna start doing things differently. But the other family members don't want you to do things differently because remember, they don't see the addiction.
Teenagers will be teenagers, or he has a big day, or he has a big job, or whatever this might be, boys will be boys, right? So all of these things are gonna come at you as far as what the family members say to you. ~And so they, ~they don't want things to change because it disrupts the normalcy in the family.
So tending to it also might look like if I have a family member that isn't seeing the addiction the way that I'm seeing it, they may say, just give them the $20 Kim, or just pick 'em up or just, just do whatever, get line informed this caution's paycheck for God's sakes. It's not the end of the world.
So tending to the addiction means that you fall into that trap as well. ~In addition to what Campbell had said and all of these things. The talking about the tending to it. In the last one we're gonna talk about in a second. ~These things are actually enabling the disease because. The other, what you're doing is you're keeping the blindfolds on the other people in your family, whether this is your mother-in-law, your whatever.
Because they're running into the defense mode. And when, and so as we do these things, [00:02:00] no one else can see it, which means the disease is just out there marching along it's merry way, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we are only getting more talky. More attendee. And then the third thing we want you to stop doing is being pissed off.
~Yeah. ~Because that's not helping the situation. It is actually feeding it. And ~mo ~most importantly, and I think this is one of the things we talk about a lot with our clients, is when we are pissed off, sad, lonely, completely fixated on this, I call it dancing around the merry-go-round of addiction is we're stealing from our own lives.
We are not functioning well at work. We are not seeing our friends. We are depriving ourselves of pleasure. We aren't taking care of ourselves as well. We're not doing fun things because if I am not at home to stop it he'll use more. Or if I'm not, if I go on a vacation with my girls, what will happen?
I can't leave my husband with my children because he'll drink. And so we just, as we do these things more and more we rub from us, right? And [00:03:00] the other part we want you to stop being so mad is because you become the scapegoat in the family. And so when you're mad and you're always in a bad mood, it doesn't, and you lose credibility.
And so remember if you're the first person or one of the only people, when you have a bad attitude, when you're constantly talking about it, when you're constantly mad. Nobody wants to hear it. And so everything you say at that point becomes null. So you don't wanna give your power away. So what do you do instead?
~What? ~What do we do? 'cause these are the top three things to stop doing. So what should you do instead? What do you think the first thing they should do? And the first thing they need to do is recognize that you are not in control of thes bad boy, and you better figure out what you got going on.
So I think you need to do, like if we go back to even like in our coursework, so like we talk about the reeling stage, which is when we're doing all of these things that we're talking about, that's not a good feeling. The word reeling is negative in my opinion. Then we go to the learning stage and the learning stages, become educated, figure out what's going on, be [00:04:00] quiet.
Start listening to counselors, start reading, start figuring out. But be careful in the learning stage to not get conflicting advice. ~Oh, yeah. ~And that is a huge problem. That's one of the things we talk about ~in, ~in the Beyond Boundaries course that we're launching later on this month, is there's not gonna be a one shop fits all like this.
This isn't a. There's not one solution to solve addiction for every single family. They're all gonna be unique. They're all gonna be different, but they're mostly gonna have to do with your inner abilities and your ability to learn to understand. To know what you have to change, to know what you have to do differently.
It's super non instinct, non-intuitive, and it's super scary and hard to do. So that's the first thing is get outta the wheeling stage. Go into the learning stage. I would say the second thing to do be pleasant, which I know is hard. So if you need to go be mad and crazy somewhere else, do that, but be pleasant when you are in the face of those that you're trying to convince.
Because ~if you come in, just like I said before, ~if you come in angry, obsessed, all these [00:05:00] things, you're not gonna get anywhere. So if you come in pleasant, if you come in almost confused~ I don't know how that. Weird thing, ~this unexplainable thing happened versus Oh, I can tell you exactly how it happened.
So you wanna come in pleasant, even come in a little bit confused because the more you step back, the more the problems are gonna bubble up and the more the family is going to see what's actually happening for what it is. And the target comes off your back. And it goes on to the fact that, ~hey ~we have a problem in the family that gets you outta the bad guy role.
Which feels so liberating in the first place. And it also takes the. I guess the power of the addiction remembered addicts always come at it from the victim standpoint. So when we become pleasant, when we become curious, when we become quiet then they do not have as much room to spread. ~I wasn't gonna do it, but my mom's crazy.~
~I wasn't gonna do it, but my wife and Naomi like CR like insane. ~And so that also now we begin to un feeded the disease when we become quiet. And the third thing I would say, as far as just. Figure out what you're gonna do and what you're not gonna do. And this really goes into know your boundaries.
And so do not [00:06:00] become rigid, which is what a lot of people wanna do. We tend to wanna be overly passive or overly rigid. We wanna find that sweet spot in the middle. So I would say that third thing is don't become overly rigid. Don't declare these big, huge ultimatums because you're gonna lose and you also may change your mind.
~And then. You wanna be able to do that? I think a lot of us tend to back ourselves into corners. And if you don't then you can't. ~And then we have, then we're there and we have to do it. Yeah. And often that's something we don't wanna do. And I think with our clients, we consistently see it's things that they might want to do, but they're things they're not going to be able to do.
It's better to have no boundaries if you can't hold any. Then to have five that you're not gonna hold. So I think that's definitely really wise point is know what you're, know that, yeah. Know what you're capable of. Know what you're going to do and just sit on the rest until you do know.
~All right. You wanna read that? I need my shades too. Yes, I do. ~All right.
My daughter-in-law is having drinking addiction, living with my son, her husband, and four children. Any suggestions on what I can do to help for the children feeling bad at being yelled at many times. Boy, this is a common theme. This is [00:07:00] such a common theme, Kathleen. You said something yesterday in the live call, which I thought was really good about somebody in the situation was to, depending on the age of the children, yeah.
Is validate. You see what's happening and you get the, to the child, to the directly to the child. If they're old enough. And this little girl yesterday was eight. Eight, and we decided that eight was definitely old enough. Even probably six. I'm sorry, that's happening. It's not cool.
~But unfortunately I can't help you out. I can't get that to stop. ~I'm wondering in this question, Kathleen, what the husband, the children's father's ability on that might be to I have a boundary of how much longer he's willing to put the children in that situation. Yeah. Again, depends on the age and the severity of the problem.
Yeah. I think regardless of the age, unless I would say they're like. I dunno. Three or younger, maybe even three, depending on how advanced they are. Talk to 'em. Just say, Hey, I'm really sorry that happened. Or, validate it, talk to 'em, educate it. Model different communication. Go outta your way to make that child feel loved, supported, wanted, cared for and you're not going to fix it for them and you're not going, you.
That whatever's happening [00:08:00] is still happening, but you're giving them another memory, another experience in addition to this other negativity that's constantly coming their way. And if you can, again, depending on their ages and your proximity to them, ~'em ~spend the night with you every now and then, so that, ~that is ~is replicated. By experience as well as ~by, ~by words. Yeah. It's a hard spot. Yeah. And always, if you feel that children are in danger and they're not unsafe, then you, I would do an information update to your daughter that says, Hey, this is making me super uncomfortable, and if it continues I'm gonna have to make a report.
And probably nothing will happen, but you'll feel better. And it could, yeah. ~All right. All right. ~This is from Cindy. My loved one has BPD Borderline Personality Disorder, along with benzo addiction. It's a hard mental health issue when only 7% population now has BPD and 70% tries suicide. Can't find help. Yeah.
~Or the DBT. Yeah. ~Borderline's tough. It is. It's really tough. And you're right, there aren't that many providers that are really fully [00:09:00] trained in DBT but that is research shows that's your best option. Absolutely. And I do think though, for families also being able to get help.
How do I wanna handle this? What am I willing to do, what I'm not willing to do? And be able to really get this internal knowledge of when you need to take a couple steps back, when you need to recharge, in even maybe some deactivating strategies that you feel comfortable using. So if the drama, the dysregulation starts to amp up, then how are you equipped to handle that?
And try not to feed into that chaos that, ~that's ~tends to be a chaotic mental health issue. And they thrive more in the chaos. The rest of us if we get up here and we live up here in Happy Land, and if we get down here in chaos are scary or bad we figure out how to get back up. ~Yeah. ~But often for borderline, it's the opposite.
They live down here in this chaotic space. And if they mess up and get up here in good space, they'll figure out pretty darn quick how to get back down here. Yeah. And that's dysregulating to us and we don't like that, which I'm really super glad you said take breaks, charge your battery, [00:10:00] know when you've hit your limit on that kind of engagement. ~Yeah. I hate that. The ages eight and 13. 18. Okay. Good for Kathleen. Oh yeah, those are old enough. Yeah. Okay, good. Definitely good. ~All right, Melissa, family gathering. I'm sorry. I'm leaning into you, Kim. You're good. Will be happening this weekend. How should I handle my substance use disorder?
Loved one acts out with a gathering. How should I respond by the overactive addiction problems in a public surrounding? Holiday weekends are tough all around in the addiction world, and 4th of July is one of the best. What do you think on that? I think you, without knowing anything about the situation, I think if you can bring your own car, that's always a good thing.
I think for you to prepare for your own safety and sanity before you even enter into the event is always good. So rather that's bringing your own car, ~having, even ~having a conversation with yourself that says, Hey, I'm giving myself permission too. Uber home to do whatever it is, if it gets outta control.
And so I think one that, that's a good place to start, just getting that in check in your mind and in your heart before you even walk in. I think the other thing to do is if the acting up, unless kids are involved, [00:11:00] unless it really is a safety thing, I think it's better to take your hands off and just let it happen, even though I know that's really hard.
But going back into tending we don't want to tend to it because it. It's so easy when we tend us to be blamed for whatever happened, or at least take some of the blame or take or to feel that we're taking the blame. I'm so sorry. He is doing this. I'm so embarrassed what can I do to help?
Instead of just get in the back of the crowd and pretend you don't know him. And even that question, I think that's probably already starting, like, how do I do this? And so it's a very difficult place to be though. Yeah. I would take your own car. ~I would know.~
Listen to yourself and when you've had enough exit stage left, just say goodbye. Thank you for having me. I need to go. Actually nap. Yep. Just have to go home. And if anything that you do is going to be different, substantially different, or even moderately different, give an update and let your loved one know, Hey, just so you know, I'm gonna be taking my own car to this.
Or, Hey, just so you know, last time we went to this other thing and it was really difficult for me. So this time, this is what I'm planning on doing. And so you're just updating, which does two things. One, it informs them that there's going to be something [00:12:00] different, but it also starts to pave the way for you to give yourself permission to do something different.
You just said something really important. Talk about how this is this change is gonna happen because last time it didn't go well for me. Not last time. You drank too much. Last time you were high. Don't go there. ~Stay on. ~Last time I became overwhelmed last time I realized I had stayed over a limit that I had wanted to set.
~Keep it on you so that you are not dragged into that victim in a fight. Yeah. All right. All right, Suzanne. My son. I have to read it in the blueberry.~
~Okay, here we go. ~My son just completed a 28 day inpatient is returning home to us mom and dad. He's returning to his outpatient program. Do you feel we should have any say in doing 90 meetings in 90 days, or is inpatient counselor suggesting along with some tight boundaries. For a while regarding car use, et cetera.
He doesn't want us to talk to his counselor about these suggestions before he leaves his inpatient program because he says he knows what he needs to do. But we are still scheduled to talk today. Oh, Suzanne, I hate this for you to, I'm curious as how old the son is, but. Yeah, I definitely think everything you want to do is right to do, but I don't think you [00:13:00] can do it because those are rules.
You have to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I think you should just instead look back and those are rules you can't enforce. He could say, sure, I'm gonna go and be lying and be at the mall. We can't manage someone else's recovery. ~30. Okay. ~We cannot manage anyone else's recovery. We can only set boundaries of what we will and will not do anymore.
So if he comes home and he ~doesn't do the 1990 and ~doesn't do the things that he's agreeing to do, ~which would be a hundred percent likely that's gonna happen, ~then you just have to be able to say inside, if he relapses, if this becomes a problem, he can't live here. Like you're good. That's where that goes back to what Kim said earlier is you gotta know what you will and will not do because that's where your work is gonna be.
~You. ~We can't tell them what they have to do. It's just not possible. If you don't think he's sober, I would not let him use your car. It's just that simple. But it would not let him use the car because you don't want him to go get drugs. So I think you have to look at your ulterior motive in having a boundary.
Remember, rules are not ours to enforce and he's 30. He's absolutely not gonna follow any rules he doesn't want to follow. Yeah. [00:14:00] So the fact that he doesn't want you to talk to his counselor and he is coming to your house, there is a red flag. ~Yeah. ~In my opinion I would have said you could not come back home.
~You can, ~we'll help you with sober living. We'll help you with good quality sober living. 28 days is a great start, but if recovery was 10 miles long, 28 days is an inch. Yeah. I just, we don't even have brain recovery till 30 to 45 days of sobriety. So I think you're probably in for a little bit of a bumpy ride.
So I would put my energy in when will we know that it's too bumpy for us? And then what will we do once we learn that it's too bumpy for us now? And I, to piggyback on that, I think being able to say whatever you're comfortable with before he comes home Hey, just so you know, we're not comfortable with you using the car, yeah, if that's where you're at, just an example, whatever that is.
All right. I'm trying to understand why I'm so heartbroken. I'm getting divorced from my addict ex, but I have to protect my peace now. That ~is sad. It ~is sad. There's a ton of grief ~in, ~in loving somebody that has addiction [00:15:00] and or struggles with addiction. And sometimes, a lot of times that grief isn't discussed.
It's not validated, it's not understood. So you're, you're losing something huge. This is a serious loss of dream. Yeah. You guys, addiction is a loss of dream, whether they we leave them and we don't have anything else to do with them again, or we have to. More than what could have been or more.
~We saw things going, and ~this is true for spouses, partners as well as children, kids, because nobody walks down the aisle. So they can be married to an addict and no one has a baby so they can have an addict child. ~So ~it's a very, it's huge grief. It's not talked about very much in, in addiction.
It's also a lonely grief because when our mom dies or our dog dies, there are cards and casserole and the churches around and there are services and there are processes that let the grief dissipate out into the world. And with addiction, there's none of that. There's good support groups if you can find them.
There's support for us, but it's not necessarily around the grief. And so that's what I [00:16:00] call disenfranchised grief, which means it doesn't really have anywhere in the world to go. So it sits right here. ~But I, you're just gonna have to warn it 'cause it's sad. I'm sorry.~
All right. This is from Diana. My eldest daughter, who's 15, does not want to have any contact with her father, who struggles with substance abuse alcohol. I separated from him when she was three, and he has lived overseas since. They have not had much contact over the years. Now she wants to cut off contact completely.
I'm worried that she might regret this decision later on in life. ~She might not. She might not. ~She might. Yeah. ~I think it's, ~I think the fact that you're concerned about it just shows your commitment to her. But I think as far as she's 15, she's making the decisions that she's making. She may or may not regret it, so it sounds to me that she.
She unfortunately hasn't really had a relationship with her dad. And so it's easier to, I don't know how to word this, but if you don't have something you, it's, you don't really mourn ~it. It's easy. It's easy to not miss ~it. Because you never really had it. So I don't really see it as a, I do see it as a loss for her in the fact of what could have been, had her father been different, but [00:17:00] who her father really is and her actual experience of the father-daughter relationship.
She hasn't really lost much 'cause she never really had much. And that's not to say let's just fast forward 10 years and she's 25 and maybe miracle of miracles occurs. Yeah. And he gets sober and he can reach out with humility and willingness. She's not, she's cutting him out of her life, but she's not killing him.
If that were to happen then she could, and you can leave that, like you can say if that's what you wanna do for. That's up to you darling. You're 15 years old and you're old enough to make this decision for yourself. If you change your mind at any point in time in the future, just give yourself permission to change your mind.
~Yeah. ~I think ~that's, ~that would be the best momming thing to say to her. ~Yeah.~
Alright. This is from Mel. My husband has been struggling with alcohol use for several years. He's making recovery efforts, but relapses. Every three to six months, I usually notice something is off. When he starts drinking. Oh yeah. We can always tell the fact that he can make it three to six months is pretty good.
~Yeah. There's an next part. Oh, there's more. Sorry. ~But he gets very defensive and angry. If I say anything and says I'm policing him, should I just [00:18:00] ignore it until it becomes a problem? Or should I bring it up when I notice it? I usually ignore it. I would ignore it. Because exactly what's happening is you're going, you're getting put into the bad guy role.
He's viewing it through the lens of the victim, which is fueling the lapse or the relapse. I would ignore it, although Kim would say, you could say, I noticed that it seems like you're drinking again. I just wanna let you know, I saw it. You could give an information update or something like that.
I don't see the point. I'd be real curious, Mel to know. What stops it again? How long does it go? What stops it again? I'd be curious to see that. Yeah, if he's stopping himself, like if this is bargaining denial, ~which I would totally let happen, ~or if some precipitating external event happens that he says, oh, I have to stop.
~And just a little plug in there for the information update. ~Most of the time that's for you as the spouse, because there comes a point when we are in this cycle long enough that we start to feel muted. When we feel muted, our body shuts down. ~It's. Terrible for every single piece of us. And so ~by simply giving an update that says, Hey I don't wanna play this game anymore.
I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like [00:19:00] you're drinking. I'm gonna go for a walk. I don't wanna do this right now. And that's just an update. But what you hear on that is there's, I'm not being muted. I'm not minimizing anything that I'm experiencing. I'm also not picking a fight.
They may want to pick a fight back. I don't have to engage. And so I do think that it's a really. Delicate place of do I update, do I not? With the bargaining, we wanna be able to let that bargain play out so that we don't get pegged as the bad guy. But if this is just a cycle that is just a repetitive cycle, you may need to say something for you.
Yeah, I would like to know more on that one until it becomes a problem. Last time I had to ask him to leave the house until he could come home. Until he could come home sober. ~Okay. That's good. Yeah. Do we have one more? One more break. We have one more minutes.~
There we go. All right. This is from Lillian. Hi there. Is it dangerous for me to refuse money to my addicted 36-year-old son when he doesn't have meds in place? Please? I think it depends on the meds. Yeah, me too. I think it really depends on the medication. Okay. And [00:20:00] even money, I would say no. If you want him to have access to the medication, maybe you go to the doctor and somehow facilitate it that way.
Or pick. Pick up the prescription. Yeah, and then you know what it is. All right, Leah, my brother offers to switch from alcohol to marijuana. He gets angry with alcohol. Is this a window of opportunity? A move in the right direction, or just another manipulation. What do I say? It's just a trade off of what I'm gonna be addicted to.
Yeah. It's a bargaining tactic. So I think on that, what I would do is I would say, Hey, I'm really glad that you recognize that these bad things are happening with alcohol. And I don't really think marijuana's gonna be much of a difference. To me, it just sounds like a shift, but it's not my decision to make.
I hope you find what you're looking for. I would say it with much more kindness than what I said, but the message is there. Definitely a little bit better tone. ~Yeah. Yeah. Softer words. ~Yeah. That's just either manipulation or bargaining. And neither one is positive. ~Yep. Yep.~
So acknowledge. Acknowledge that there's efforts. Don't put too much hope in ~it. Yeah. All right. That's ~it. All right guys. Thanks for joining us and we hope you have a good day. ~All right.~
Perfect. [00:21:00] All right. What time do you wanna meet tomorrow? ~I.~
