You're Not Crazy: You're Living With Crazy-Making

Why You Feel Confused After Talking to Someone in Addiction

Have you ever walked away from a conversation with your addicted loved one feeling more confused than when you started?

You replay the discussion in your head.
You question your memory.
You wonder if you overreacted.
You start thinking maybe you are the problem.

That disorientation isn’t you losing your mind.

It’s something called crazy-making — and it’s incredibly common in homes affected by addiction.

In this episode, we unpack what crazy-making actually is and why it happens. You’ll learn how addiction-fueled denial creates distorted conversations that leave you doubting your reality and second-guessing your instincts.

We break down the three most common patterns:

Reality Distortion – When facts get minimized, rewritten, or denied entirely
Emotional Inversion – When your legitimate concerns get flipped back onto you
Manufactured Doubt – When subtle tactics make you question your memory and judgment

You’ll also hear why you can’t logic your way out of these conversations — and what actually works instead.

Most importantly, you’ll walk away with three concrete anchors to protect your sanity, ground yourself in reality, and respond strategically rather than emotionally.

This isn’t about villainizing your loved one. It’s about understanding the dynamics at play so you can stop doubting yourself and start approaching the situation with clarity and strength.

If you’re tired of feeling spun around after every conversation, this episode will help you name what’s happening — and take your footing back.

Denial Breakthrough Challenge: https://www.familyrecoveryacademy.online/motivation-unlocked-challenge

Episode Transcript

You're Not Crazy_ You're Living With Crazy-Making
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[00:00:00] One of the most painful parts of loving someone who has an addiction. It's not just the drinking or the using, it's the confusion. It's the going to bed at night, not being able to trust your own memory of what happened. Apologizing for things you're not even sure you did. Just to keep the peace.

Families come to me all the time and they say, Amber, I think I'm going crazy, and I tell them the same thing I'm gonna tell you right now. You are not going crazy. You have a sane reaction to an insane situation. Once you understand what's actually happening, that fog starts to lift.

What is crazy making? That's what we're gonna talk about in today's video.[00:01:00]

Hey.

All right, so crazy making is what happens when the reality inside the house doesn't match the reality being spoken out loud. Like you saw the bottle, you counted the drinks, you found the evidence, and then you're told that didn't happen, or you're exaggerating. The gap between what you know to be true and what's being acknowledged as true.

Well, that, that gap, that's what's making you feel crazy. Here's what I really want you to understand. This is what I wanna get across, is that the [00:02:00] addictive brain becomes the expert at protecting access to the s. Denial isn't just about stubbornness. Minimizing isn't just about manipulation. These are like neurological defense mechanisms.

Once you understand that, now that doesn't mean that you excuse it. It means you stop taking it personally and you start seeing it clearly. There are three forms of crazy making that I see most often in the families that that we work with. And I wanna go over those because when you can name, when you put a name on something, it stops having power over you.

You can kind of get control of it, you can see it when it's happening. The first one is reality distortion. So let's talk about what reality distortion means. It means, it's like when you bring up a conversation and they remember it completely differently. You mention the bottles, they tell you you're counting wrong, you express concern about something you saw, and somehow you're the one [00:03:00] apologizing at the end.

If you've ever experienced that, here's what's happening. The addictive brain doesn't just lie to you. It often lies to itself. First. Blackouts, memory gaps. The psychological need to protect the ego and the addiction. They're telling their truth. It's not, this is not the full picture. Now the second form that really gets a lot of people is something called emotional inversion.

And this one is really sneaky. You start out the conversation, calm, you start it with love, like just like and Amber's video. Say, I'll teach you, and then 10 minutes later you're screaming and you don't know how you got there. You brought up a concern. It became a giant fight about how you're always negative.

You always are critical. You never are satisfied, and suddenly you're the one attacking, and then you think, well, maybe I am the problem. [00:04:00] Maybe I just need to say it differently next time. And then you're stuck in that cycle of trying to find the perfect way to bring something up so it doesn't explode.

This is crazy King doing its job. Now let's move to number three, which is called Manufactured Doubt. This is the one that like takes the longest to recover from because manufactured doubt is when you stop trusting yourself, not because you made a mistake, but because you've been told over and over and over again in small ways and in big ways that your perception is wrong, that you're too sensitive, that you're always dramatic, and after a while.

You start to believe it, or at least question it. If you're nodding right now as I'm saying this, and because you've experienced it, your instincts aren't broken, they've just been overridden, and that's something that you can actually get back. But you have to first understand when it's happening to you so you can decide what to do instead of getting stuck in [00:05:00] that crazy making cycle.

Here are three anchors that will help you stop. Stop when it's happening, and try stop when it's happening and catch yourself doing it. The first thing I want you to do is stop trying to get them to see it. That's usually where these crazy making conversations start from, right? Every conversation where you're trying to get them to acknowledge your reality is a conversation.

Where you hand over the power to define it. You don't need their validation. You know what happening. I mean, you know what happened. You were there. The thing of it is, is you're trying to get them to acknowledge it a lot of times because of all these crazy making conversations, because you're seeing it and they're denying it, and you're looking for evidence and you're trying to be like, okay, here's all the evidence, or I know because, or you're acting funny and you're trying to get 'em to acknowledge it too.

Almost like, it's like a reality check on your end. But it's just not very effective because [00:06:00] even if they acknowledge it to you and then you get sort of a validation that your reality is on point, it's doesn't necessarily mean that they're like learning or understanding the underlying thing that you're really trying to get them to learn, which is this is a problem.

Sometimes they'll agree to it just as, as like a placating thing to, to make. You feel like they're going along with you and they're really not. So instead of trying to reality check with your loved one who's addicted, who the conversation never really goes well with, find someone who you can reality check in with because this crazy making thing is kind of isolating.

So you do need to have a reality check, like a sounding board. It is helpful to do that. It's just not all that productive to do it with the person themselves. Community, community really helps a lot with this, but you've gotta surround yourself with the right [00:07:00] community, like the people who understand the situation and can say, no, that's not what happened.

Or they can sort of just help you sort through all this mess of thought because you really do start to question your. Sanity completely. You know, you, you are, think to yourself, maybe I am over exaggerating. Maybe that was there before, but I know I look and you, it'll just literally make you crazy. That's why it's called crazy making.

So you need someone who can understand it but not judge you at the same time. The other thing I want you to do is just notice how you feel after these conversations. What was said that was crazy, making you feel more confused after the conversation than you did before. You feel like you became the problem.

You feel exhausted in a way that's like disproportionate to what it should be when you see it consistently. That's data. That's like information that I want you to internalize so that you can get yourself out of this pattern. [00:08:00] The biggest problem that's getting you stuck here is trying to get them to acknowledge it.

If you can let go of that and then just start trusting your own reality. And if you don't trust your own reality, you know, like sound, check it with someone else, someone that you trust that can be a sponsor, a coach, a counselor, a good friend who really understands. You just, you just wanna pick somebody who can support you and help you think through like strategically and objectively.

That can get a little complicated though, because a lot of times when you tell people this kind of thing. They either judge you or they, or they feel sorry for you, which is sometimes nice, but not all that helpful. And most of the time what they get is, is that you just get a lot of pushback on, here's what I do, and I'd say this and I'd do that, and I'd kick him to the curb.

And you get all that kind of advice. It's like a real simple advice for a very complex situation. And then you leave feeling like way more frustrated. So make sure you're [00:09:00] selective about who you pick for your sounding board. Another piece of advice I have for you is not to pick someone to be your sounding board.

And you're picking that person for the reason of like, it's an outsider, that you're trying to convince this other person that your loved one has a problem, like in an effort to come and try to talk to them or intervene with them. Like for example, like you wouldn't wanna go necessarily to like. If this is your spouse, partner, boyfriend, Griffin or whatever, you might not, you probably don't wanna go to their mother to try to get them to hear you, because usually when you're doing that, you're not really trying to find a sounding board.

You're trying to like, get troops on your side. And most of the time it's an effort to convince these other people. And the reason why you wanna convince those other people is partially because it helps you have that reality check. But mostly if you're honest with yourself, it's because you want more troops on the team to help you confront your loved one, and that [00:10:00] ends really badly.

If you guys have ever heard me talk about the whole splitting thing that happens when you, when you're in an addicted family system, that's what happens right there, right? It's like your loved one is. Likely thinking that you are critical and you're negative and you're nagging them and you're controlling and all the things, and chances are they're going to their people and complaining about that.

And so when you go to their people to say your side, most of the time they've already beat you to it. And so what happens is, is then you're coming across to that person who's filtering you through this. Critical naggy controlling filter, right? This is what they've already been told. So they're sort of set in that mindset, and then you come in trying to talk to 'em about it, and then guess what?

They're, it's just validating their thinking on it. And then the other reason why you wanna be really careful about not going to their people is because, if your loved one finds that out, they're gonna see that as a major [00:11:00] serious, like disloyal back stab. And it's one of the things that I have seen people not be able to get over, like even after they're sober.

Like, like it, it really think about it like this. If you had a really serious problem that. It was very personal. Maybe you, you felt embarrassed about and your partner or someone went to your best friend, to your cousin, to your family, and was talking to them about that. I know it comes from a place of a good place in your heart, but just imagine how you would feel.

You'd feel humiliated, which would then result in you being very angry. So select your sounding boards wisely and know what you're trying to get outta the conversation. Am I just trying to get. A place to vent because that's fair and valid. Am I trying to get the reality check 'cause that's fair and valid?

Am I trying to get strategies? Because that's also something like when people come to talk to us, we're giving them strategies because we figure not that, not that. We don't wanna [00:12:00] let you vent, but we figure you got people for that. When you come to us, you want strategies, and so if you're just wanting to vent and you come to us, you might leave frustrated.

So understand, it's kinda like you have different friends that play different roles in your life. Like you have a friend who makes you feel better, and you have a friend who. It tells you the honest truth. That's hard when you know you need to be told the honest truth. It's good. All those friend categories are important, so you need to have your support system people in all the different categories.

It's totally fine just realizing what you're getting from each one, so that that helps you to trust your own instincts and to trust your own reality. Check because you know this person. Is telling you something that's true and you can trust their reality. 'cause when it gets this messy, it's kind of hard to know, to be honest.

If you have a, a spouse or a partner who's like, who's in denial, but who's also functioning as in one or more area their life. They're still holding it together, at least for the most part. Like maybe they're [00:13:00] going to work and that seems okay or, or they're taking care of the house and the kids and that seems okay, but you can just feel this addiction, problem building and building and building, and your issue is trying to get through to them trying to get through their denial.

And you've had this experience where you. The crazy making experience where you feel like you've beat your head against the wall and you wanna figure out how to get outta that, you then I wanna invite you to my. Denial breakthrough challenge. We also call it motivation unlocked. 'cause that's what we do in there, is we teach you how to unlock their motivation to change.

We have that about every six weeks or so. We have another one coming up in March. And there's limited spots. So if you want to, you might wanna go ahead and claim your spot on that. 'cause that's exactly what we talk about in there. Like how to approach these conversations without beating your head against.

Without feeling like you're in that crazy making cycle. And the reason the techniques we teach in there work so well is because it bypasses the defense mechanism. It's, it's completely designed to speak [00:14:00] to the part of them that they can hear and then find their motivations and pull them forward. So I put that link in the description for you if you wanna check that out.

But in just a few seconds, we're gonna take some questions and comments. Now, Brie is off today, so I don't have my moderator. So if y'all see me trying to manage five things up here, that's why, 'cause I'm by myself. So I'm gonna try to do that myself. I'm gonna pop your questions up here and take a few of those comments, questions.

It helps me if you put a little question mark or something back, 'cause then I can see that you're trying to ask me something and not just talking to someone else in the chat. All right, let's get some questions here. Let's see, W hey, what is the best prescription to get sober from alcohol?

Vivitrol after six and a half months hasn't helped and actually drink even more to beat the Naltrexone lx. Well, this is a medication question, which is out of my [00:15:00] jurisdiction, so technically I can't tell you what medications. To help you beat alcohol or anything, honestly. But I can tell you Vivitrol is something that is supposed to help with cravings.

But what you're saying is you're, you're just drinking more to overcome that. And what you might need is something more along a detox, which is a whole different line of medication. So I wish I could tell you specifically, but I gotta like, you know, cover my booty here. I don't wanna get myself in trouble with medication advice.

Thank you for the nice compliment, Carrie. You're so sweet. Here's a new question. All right, here we go. My son is one year sober, but through Evangelical Christian program, traded one addiction for another, spouting, racist, patriarchal, misogynistic. Dude, I'm having, these are big words, attitudes now I can't even help.

So, I don't know exactly [00:16:00] what the question here is, but I think I understand the message you're trying to get. It's like, yeah, they had an addiction and this program helped 'em get sober, but now it's like you're feeling like they're sort of addicted to that, almost like a cult, which, which can happen.

And what's, what's kind of interesting about this is it, it's not too far out of alignment with some of the things that we teach, like in Motivation Unlock, which we talk about helping someone connect to their identity and sort of a higher purpose. Not that I'm saying that this situation your son is in is a good one.

I'm just saying the idea of connecting to a higher purpose and that this is my identity and you know, I've got, I've got more important things to do than drugs and alcohol. I think that's a good method. But what's happened is, is your, your person is attached to some kind of system that you feel like is like not healthy at all.

So I don't know what the question there is, but I hear you that that can happen for sure.

Let's see. Mike has a comment here. Mike says, [00:17:00] anxie anxiety speaks in questions and gut feeling speaks in statements. I've not heard that before, Mike, but I like it. One thing it reminds me of one thing I have heard before that I, that I also like is anxiety screams. And your gut feeling whispers. So if you're trying to figure out, am I having a gut feeling that something's gonna happen or am I having an anxiety, anxiety is like loud.

Like you, you can't hardly ignore it to turn it off, but that, that intuition is quiet. Like you gotta get quiet and really kind of connected to yourself to, to tune into that, Leanne says I use chat GPT for my sounding board, not sure if it helps or hurts. To be honest, I use, different ais for different sounding boards, for different things all the time.

Like when I'm making videos or whatever and I want to come up with video topics, sometimes I use an AI to help me with that. So I feel like it can be a pretty, a pretty useful tool if you ask me. The thing about the thing Aboutis though, is you have to [00:18:00] tell them specifically what you want out of it, because most ais are geared more towards being nice to you.

And so they're, they're not necessarily gonna call you out, like if you're thinking it's completely wrong unless you ask it to do that. So that's the piece of advice I would give you. Some of you probably already know, but I, there's an AI version of me. You can talk to Ambre inside my Recovery Practice Lab, which lets you, it's a sounding board that's specifically trained on my techniques, strategies, theories and stuff like that.

So if you want a sounding board that for sure follows these strategies, that would be a good, a good place to do it. I, I also like chat. I also like Claude. I use them myself all the time. The only thing with those is that it's not that it's not good information, but that those ma major AI get information from everywhere.

And you probably already know if you've been following me for a [00:19:00] while, that my techniques are not necessarily mainstream. In fact, a lot of my techniques sort of go against mainstream. Ideas that are regularly, you know, just sort of accepted or whatever. Like, I'm sort of like, be nicer not meaner, which is, which is the opposite of what you hear.

So just make sure you tell AI whatever AI use what it is you're. You're you need from it. Like if you're, you're like, you know, tell it to me straight, you can do that. Chat has a new feature out. I like that you can actually tell chat what kind of personality you want from it. Kinda like we were talking about before, about how you have different friends with different personalities that give you different pieces.

Like you can, you can tell your chat like, what kind of friend do you want it to be? Like, I want you to be like, blunt with me, or I want you to be nice, but still tell me like it is. Which is kind of cool. Like you can give it a personality that's sort of neat. Here's a question.

Cindy says, my fiance asked me to find her a [00:20:00] good therapist. What therapy is best for trauma? And where do you find a good therapist? Great question, Cindy. It, it's hard. The best way to find a good therapist is word of mouth, to be honest, because you can search online and you can look at like. Therapists and treatment centers and stuff like that, and all the websites kind of look the same.

I call it like the butterflies and oak trees effect, you know, and they have these flowery words, but you can't really tell from that word of mouth is best. So if, if you, if there's someone in your area that you trust that you know has been around, you can do that. Or if you belong to any kind of like. Facebook group or something like that.

You can even ask in there, Hey, has any, does anyone know of a good therapist? And then put your city in there and then you can get word of mouth that way. There's various different kinds of therapy for trauma. The one I think is, and I'm not saying this is the best one, I'm just saying the one I think is most interesting.

I did a, a couple of videos on this. It's been at least a year ago, but it's called [00:21:00] art therapy, a RT, but not like drawing and painting. It stands for Accelerated Resolution Therapy and it's a it's a spinoff of EMDR. It's like the fast track EMDR. You can check out those videos if you want, specifically to look at that.

But MDRs also good therapy. Like there are, there are different kinds. So it's like you wanna find someone who does the thing you want 'em to do, but you need the word of mouth to tell you who's good at it. So you can find out, do you do this therapy? But you need some personal experience to say yes. Go there.

They're the one Christie says, how do they help someone stuck in a relapse cycle have been using empathy, holding him processed. Oh, helping him process through what led to dr. But he keeps going back every few weeks. He makes promises and has insight. So it's, it's like you're hearing the change talk.

What actually, from what you're saying, you're not just hearing the change talk, you're seeing change behaviors, [00:22:00] it's just that something keeps leading 'em back. It makes me curious if, since they. They're able, first of all, the fact that they're able to process it with you, what led them back that they actually do that tells me that you are like gold star handling yourself.

That you have created a credit score. Y'all know how to talk about the credit score. Your credit influence score is really high. That you can have that kind of conversation with 'em. I mean, that's amazing. So a plus for you, Tristy, I'm impressed. But. I would, I would probably just, you know, like think is it the same thing that keeps leading them back?

Is it something different that keeps leading 'em back? Is there some sort of pattern or something like that? If he was sitting in my office, that's probably what I would be looking for. I would just ask the person, you know, why do you think this happens every few weeks? And let them tell you. So I hope that's helpful.

Probably not super helpful, but I will tell you the fact that your person, your husband, I think it is, he talks to you about that. It tells me you're doing a whole lot of things [00:23:00] right. So, very nice. Congrats. Little little Betty says, therapists take a few tries. Sometimes you have to try a few. Here in West Palm, we have an actual business called the Trauma Center of Palm Beach. That's so, so true, Betty. Like sometimes you. Sometimes you have to try for you to find the right one, but sometimes you have to go to the same person like a couple of times to get a feel.

Because I think anytime you meet someone new, there's always like a little awkwardness. So I usually suggest to see someone at least more than once to kind of get a really good feel. Is this good or not? But yeah, therapy is like a relationship and so there has to be some bobbing or, or it just doesn't work.

You're right. Danita says, my spouse has hid his addiction from me for 10 years, and I just found out he is telling me he has never used drugs despite the evidence. Is this common? Well, Danita, [00:24:00] I hate to say welcome to our little community here. Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about today is like you're saying, despite the evidence is exactly the crazy making kind of thing.

It's like you see the evidence, but they're telling you it's not true. And I, I mean, I don't know the situation, but it sounds like gaslighting, obviously. I can't say for sure 'cause I don't, I don't know the person, but we hear you and you're in the right place. Yes, that is common. Let's see. Cindy says, if our loved one is dual diagnosis, for example narcolepsy, B-P-D-C-P-T-S-D-S-U-D. Is L-A-C-L-A-D-C the go-to or a different there? Dude, that is a lot of letters. Okay. Like I had to like slow down and be like, wait, what does that mean? What does that mean? Okay. And LADC, that's not what we call 'em here in South Carolina, but I'm pretty sure the LEDC is, is a licensed addiction counselor.

Maybe that is what we call here. I a [00:25:00] lot of times and, and a lot of. In most states, if they're licensed, that means they went to counseling school, which is different because some states require a certification versus a licensure. If they're licensed and they went to counseling school, most of the time they have training, like general training across the board.

Like when I went to counseling school, it's not like I majored in addiction counseling. I just majored in counseling and then I found this as my specialty. I kind of fell into it for those of you know my story, but. So, so I have experience in training, dealing with other things like that. So most, most of them can do dual diagnosis, but you, but you kind of wanna find out like what's the main other thing?

Is it the. The narcolepsy thing is a medic medical thing, so the therapist piece, that wouldn't matter so much, but is it the BPD, the CPT sd, that stands for complex post-traumatic Stress Disorder. For those of you are wondering what do you think is the most aggravating thing and look [00:26:00] for someone who specifically does like either mood disorder and substance abuse, or the complex trauma and substance abuse.

One of the things I look for if you are gonna try to like look through websites or like Psychology Today or something like that, is look for someone who, on their profile, it's clear that they do a specific thing. 'cause like I said, even though, you know, when you go to counseling school, you get trained in all the different things, you're probably not good at all the different things When someone says, this is what I do, and they specifically say like one or two, maybe three.

Specialty kind of things. That's what they do. You, you have a better chance of knowing like, okay, this is a person who specializes in something. Whereas when you look at some profiles, like the counselor, therapist or whatever will list like 800 things. I see. You know, kids, teenagers, adults, geriatric. I do this, that the other, I'm not saying that they're not qualified to do that.

I'm just saying you can't, you can't specialize, you can't be really good at all that so. That, that might be [00:27:00] another piece to help you kind of narrow in when you're looking at websites and stuff. All right guys, I'm gonna have to jet outta here a little early today 'cause I gotta get my son. He's got an appointment and I gotta pick him up from school.

But thank you for all of you who hung, came live and hung out with us. And thank you to all of you who are watching on the playback. We're glad you're here too. We know you're probably working and got other things going on. If you relate to this whole crazy making thing. Write the word crazy, making in the comments or chat below.

That way when other people see it, they'll know that they're not alone. That there's a whole tribe of people who've been in this situation. All right, everybody. I'll see you next time. Bye.

You're Not Crazy: You're Living With Crazy-Making

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