AI Edits from How to Maintain Hope During a Relapse
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[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Today we're gonna talk about how to maintain hope while enduring a relapse. So I'm gonna talk about it both in two ways. One from the family standpoint, from a substance relapse, and then also at the end I'm gonna touch on a relationship relapse. And although they mirror the same steps they can be a bit different.
So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna be able to let you guys know that when a relapse is happening, it's natural to feel hopeless. It's natural to feel desperate. It's natural to feel infuriate, just infuriating sense of anger. Because again, from a family standpoint, you feel like you've done all these things, you've endured this so many times, and here we go again.
~So a lot of desperate desperation, things come in, come into it. ~And also from the person that's experiencing the relapse, they feel the same things because they worked really hard. They've lost a lot of things when this relapse has happened, so I wanna be able to talk about the hopeful side of a relapse, where relapses, they don't have to mean the end of progress.
It doesn't have to mean that everything you've worked for is completely gone. They can actually provide a lot of meaning. They can also help provide a lot of sticking power for sober times and [00:01:00] long-term sobriety. So the first thing that we have to look at is, I want you guys to think about, I say this many times, but hope is a cognitive function.
And what that means is that we both feel it from a cognitive standpoint, and we feel it from an emotional standpoint, but it starts in the brain. And in order for that to happen, two things have to happen. One, we have to have a plan. And second thing is we have to do the plan. So it has to be a doable plan, and then we have to be willing to do the plan.
~And that's it. That's how we. Create hope, and that's how we maintain hope. ~And so the first thing I want you guys to think about is when you're creating your own plan and recognize your plan might look different than someone else's, and that's fine because where you are in this process might be different than where someone else's.
~And again, that's fine. ~So the first thing is, no matter where you plan is, no matter what it is, number one for everybody is no freaking out. So remember what I said in the very beginning. These emotions are gonna be high. They're gonna be intense. It's gonna be natural to want to freak out. Don't freak out because if you freak out, everything's gonna be bad.
Everything's gonna be worse. The second thing is hold steady to the boundaries that you've already set or [00:02:00] that you know you need to hold and that have worked in the past. The third one is no shaming, no dumb questions, no blaming and no emotional outbursts. And when I say dumb questions, what I mean by that is don't ask a question.
You know the answer to, don't ask a question that has a bad response no matter what you do. An example of a dumb question might be, why did you do this? A dumb question might be, how are we supposed to come back from this? Those are dumb questions. We're not going to end up with a good answer to those because they're just bad questions.
~The third thing is I want, or I'm sorry, ~the fourth thing is I want you guys to assess for immediate danger. So once a relapse is happening, and what I'm talking about is let's say that the relapse is in play in this moment. Assess for danger. Are the kids okay? Are there is drinking and driving happening?
Are the finances on the line? Whatever this is, assess for safety and then do whatever it is that you need to do in order to put safety as number one. Once we've assessed for safety, then I want you guys just to take a step back. Just stop talking, take a break, take a pause, and then [00:03:00] after that I want you guys to really lead with love.
And when you lead with love, this can be validating statements. These can be prompting questions. It can be. Hey, I know how hard you work. Something must really be going on in order for that to happen. It could be, I don't really know what's going on, but I know that you must be hurting in order for this to happen, so you can hear the love, you can hear the empathy.
~You can also hear the prompting. ~It invites the person that's struggling with the relapse into the conversation instead of asking, again, the questions that aren't helpful or the blaming or the shaming or the big emotional responses, which, again, I know can come naturally, but we wanna stay away from that as much as possible.
The next one that we wanna do is just to reiterate. We don't wanna talk if they're not sober. We don't wanna talk if there's big, huge emotions, because again, that's not gonna lead us to where we wanna go. We do wanna have calm check-ins. So as long as we can have these calm check-ins, these calm touch points, we still maintain our influences, which is what we want.
We want to be able to influence them. We want them to come to us when they have a moment of clarity, when they're ready to [00:04:00] change, when they wanna process what happened. But if we're coming at them with shame and blame and big responses and this rollercoaster that families have a tendency to stay on.
They're not gonna wanna come to us, and so we're gonna feel more isolated. We're gonna feel more hopeless, more desperate, which sets us as the family members up for more failure ~for the things that we've worked really hard not to do. ~So again, we just wanna keep our influence where it is. The other thing is we wanna ask gentle prompting questions.
I wonder why this happened. I wonder what made you stop. I wonder what it is that made you actually willing to talk to me about this so you can hear, again, there's those prompting questions. I wonder is a great way to ask a question without asking a question because if you say directly, why did you do this?
Or what happened in order for this to happen, especially if you use the intensity that I'm using in my voice, you're not gonna get very far. They're going to automatically be defensive and we don't want them to be defensive. So instead we're gonna use the, I wonder, or maybe just that general, calmer way to be able to get someone to open up.
~So in the big picture, what I want you guys to really think about is. ~Clean time still counts. So even if you have a [00:05:00] relapse, whether you're the one that relapsed or rather you're living with someone that you love that has relapsed or is relapsing clean time still counts. A lot of times it'll be on back to day one, picking up a white chip again, and all of those things might be true and clean time still counts.
The other thing is tie your hope to progress, not perfection. People are going to relapse. We're gonna slip as a family member standpoint. ~We're gonna make this. ~We're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna slip. The person struggling with substance abuse, they're gonna slip. So again, tie it to progress, not perfection.
And then the other thing, which I said in the very beginning is, remember, relapses can be helpful and necessary. They can bargain somebody into a state of acceptance, which anybody that really lands in any kind of long term sobriety. They do, they bargain themselves into some form of acceptance. ~I'll switch from light beer, I'll switch from an IPA to a light beer.~
I'll only drink on the weekends. ~I'll only lie when this one little tiny thing is on the table. ~All of those are bargains. All of those are little slips that eventually they're gonna find out that those things don't work, and it's going to put them into a place of sobriety. It's gonna put them into a place of acceptance, but until they try every little thing, and [00:06:00] us too, as family members, until we try all these little bargains, ~I'm gonna check their phone.~
I'm gonna go to the party with them. I'm gonna be the dd. When we put all of these things in place, we eventually learn, Hey it's still happening. The bad things are still happening. They're just happening at a different rate. And so we have to bargain our way into acceptance. So when we relapse, just remember there could be light at the end of a tunnel.
This could be an important part of the foundational piece that keeps us strong and keeps us sober for a long period of time. The other thing I wanna touch on real quick before our time's Up is remember, relationships can relapse too. And what I mean by this is old narratives can come back, old patterns and habits can come back.
~Examples of this would be, I knew this would happen, or you always. ~So remember, it's easier for people to fall into behavior expectations when they're labeled with this. So an example of this would be, we don't wanna call a child. We don't wanna label 'em something that we don't want the child to consistently do.
You don't wanna say to your kid, you're such a wild child when they have a hard time with impulse control. Because what they're gonna hear is, I'm a wild child, and that gives them permission to be a wild child. So the same [00:07:00] thing with our relationship patterns. We don't wanna use language like you always do this, or, I knew it was a matter of time until you would do this because it's, it almost gives permission for the behavior that we're trying to change and we don't wanna do that.
So instead, we wanna be able to recognize within ourselves something happened. An old narrative might have come back in my own head. I might be accusing you of something that's no longer relevant in this relationship. That's an example of a relapse, a relationship relapse. ~So we wanna be able, same thing, same plan as before.~
We don't wanna freak out. We wanna be able to go back to behavior patterns that have worked in the past, behavior patterns that have anchored us to sobriety, that have anchored us to the relationship that we wanna have. We wanna lead with love, just like I said before. We wanna reflect on what went wrong and change.
Change patterns if they need to be changed. And we wanna engage in self-regulation. Now self-regulation is its own thing but in here, just for those of you that might not know that term, it's just being able to get from your fight or flight place in your brain back to your prefrontal cortex right here, where you can make executive, [00:08:00] smart, logical decisions that really encompass more of who you are not.
Who you are in a re reactive state. So that's again, quick little. When you wanna maintain hope in a re relapse, just come back to these things. Your plan might ~look different than someone else's. I would expect it to ~look different than someone else's. But in order to keep that hope, you have to have a plan ready to go that you are willing and able to do.
And that's how you get to maintain hope in this type of situation. ~So any questions that we have.~
~No. All right.~
~Looks like there's.~
Let's see. What should you do if you see a relapse coming? Good question. So if you see a relapse coming, what you wanna do is you wanna prepare for it. Just if you see anything else coming your way, you wanna prepare for it. So this is where you wanna get your plan in place. So you wanna remind yourself, I'm not gonna freak out.
~I'm going to be able to stay in my own lane, and ~I really do think it's important to be able to hear the fact that relapses can mean good things. And so it might be that somebody has to go through this process in order to land on a more stable place in their sobriety. So I think being able to cognitively remind yourself of that from a behavior standpoint, I think being able to not walk into the [00:09:00] bad guy role, not let them set you up into the bad guy role.
What you're gonna see is they're gonna be more agitated. They're gonna try to fight with you. Old behaviors are gonna start to come back. Remember what I said about the relapse in a relationship standpoint, a relapse happens in the mind before it happens in the body. So you're gonna start to see some of these relationship old patterns come back.
Don't slip into it, don't take the bait and just recognize that this is coming down the pipeline and your job is to handle it as self-regulated as you possibly can. If the person's open to feedback, you can certainly give a process comment. You can give a reflective statement. If they're not very open to it, then I would just keep your mouth shut and do your part.
Let's see, what is the best way to decide on talking about the relapse? ~I, that's a good question too. I would. Based that, ~based on how your loved one is engaging with you. If they're really defensive and argumentative and in any of those old patterns that might be coming up, that's probably not, I wouldn't talk about it at that point, because you're probably just gonna end up in a fight.
If it's more, if they're not being that way and they're just a little [00:10:00] bit more isolated or removed or everything seems okay, there's just a couple things that seem out of place, then I would come at it with. You could start with anything like, Hey, I, I don't know if this is accurate, but this is what I'm seeing or what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling, or, I hope this isn't true, but this is one of the things that I'm telling myself.
Another thing you could do is you could reflect on, Hey, I'm noticing that your mood is a little bit different. Last time I saw this move. We had a, there was a relapse on the table. I'm just curious if you're thinking about that. But again, in, in both of those situations or in the talking situation, you have to be able to, your loved one has to be somewhat ready to engage.
I'm struggling with how to connect with my child without getting into the danger zone. The last exchange ended in a not so great boundary holding moment. Haven't heard from her. How do I check in? I think on that, ~I think ~depending on what the not so great moment was, you might need to leave space as hard as that is.
And also depending on the last time, how long ago it was that you guys had any kind of [00:11:00] exchange. If it's been a decent amount of time, then I would just send a quick little message that doesn't require a response. It could be was thinking about, you saw this funny meme just checking on you.
So I just, something that. Doesn't require anything. Just a funny little thing. I think that would be a good way to just see if your child's willing to bite with the interaction at all.
~Let's see if I understand. ~Okay. Life updates. So ~that's what, ~that's what Chloe had said. She's looking for life updates. I don't know if you're gonna get 'em, so I wouldn't ask directly. And that goes for everybody. Don't ask directly. Especially if we're dealing with a parent child and you want a life update, you're probably not gonna get one if there's been any kind of situation, what you just described.
So instead again, just throw cast, cast your hook in the pond and see what happens.
Denial is a very hard thing to break. Yes, it is. Let's see if he does see the downfalls, but can't do much. He does see the downfalls, but can't do much. I'm not sure what that's connected to. Is there another part of that question? Brie?
Denial is very hard to [00:12:00] break. ~Okay. Yeah. Yeah. ~It's true. ~If. Sometimes. ~Sometimes you can see the pitfalls and you can't do much, and that is where, from a family standpoint, if I'm looking at it, if I think I'm understanding you correctly, that you're looking at it from the family standpoint, where you can see your loved one is in denial, you can see the pitfalls coming and there's not much to do.
You're right. You're absolutely right. What if they avoid you? If they avoid you, then shame. Shame is a huge, powerful emotion in this process, as you guys already know. And so one of the shame shields is to avoid, and even if we're not dealing with shame, if we're just dealing with anxiety, avoidance is another major tactic that people use to manage anxiety as avoidance.
So if they're avoiding you, I wouldn't chase 'em. ~Again, just like I said before in the other. ~Comment, just being able to give a quick little, Hey, just thinking of you. Here's this funny thing. I think humor's a wonderful way to try to connect with people if they're open to humor. Most people are to some extent.
So if they avoid you, read the room, don't come in too strong, recognize they're avoiding you, because that's their way of communicating to you. Something is uncomfortable on their side. And so sit still, be [00:13:00] approachable, keep your influence and just wait.
All right. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day and we will see you next week.
