Latest / Sober Readings / Family Recovery with Amber Hollingsworth
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. My name is Scott. I'm your host. Today I'm really excited to share my conversation with Amber Hollingsworth from Family Recovery Academy. Amber is also the creator of the YouTube channel Put the Shovel Down, where she shares a lot of helpful, honest, and practical guidance for people dealing with addiction, recovery, and the impact it has on families. In this episode, we talk about what it means to get sober and just as important, how to stay sober. We also get into why addiction is rarely just an individual problem. It affects the whole family system, and Amber has a really helpful way of explaining how families can be involved in the recovery process without trying to control it. We talk about codependency, connection with other people, spirituality, and the importance of finding a healthier way to live, not just for the person struggling with addiction, but for the people who love them too. I really enjoyed this conversation because Amber brings a lot of compassion. compassion, experience, and practical insight to a subject that can feel overwhelming for a lot of families. Whether you're in recovery yourself, you love someone who is struggling, or you're just trying to better understand how healing happens, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode. So sit back, take what you need, and enjoy my conversation with Amber Hollingsworth from Family Recovery Academy. Hi Amber. Welcome to Sober Readings. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I generally start every episode with the serenity prayer. And so you're welcome to join me if you'd like. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. We cannot change. The courage courage to change the things we can. And the wisdom. And the wisdom to know the difference. Thank you so much. ⁓ so your your website is Family Recovery Academy dot com. Is that correct? It's actually dot online. ⁓ dot online. I'm sorry. You know, that's interesting because I'm I have it right here on my other screen, so I apologize for that. ⁓ Do you wanna start Do you wanna start with that? Do you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Sure. Well, I am an addiction counselor by training, right? I've been helping people overcome addictions for more than twenty years now, which is a long time. It makes me feel really old when I say that. But ⁓ so these days I sort of do that part time and then I'm a content creator the other part of the time. I'm mostly a YouTuber. And what's interesting is even though in my professional career I deal with people who have addictions and I help them, in my content life, a lot of my content is geared towards family members of people who have addictions. Trying to help them understand how to be helpful, how to be supportive, how to get through to someone in denial, how to like encourage change instead of just lock into a power struggle. So I've taken all that information I've learned about help unlike the psychology of someone who has an addiction and help family members in my content. So sort of two parts there. So how did you get into addiction counseling? It's a great question. And I wish I had one of those fabulous origin stories like everyone has. If there's one thing I'm jealous of, it's people who have excellent origin stories. And people that do the work that I do, they always have the best ones, right? Like crazy stories and all that. But I actually ended up an addiction counselor by accident. Didn't quite mean to land here. Sometimes the universe just puts you where you need to be. I ⁓ originally went to school to be a school teacher. I taught high school for a few years and that was like hell. I mean, that was awful. Ninth graders. ⁓ my goodness, that was terrible. So I was like, I gotta do something else. So I decided, well, I'll go back, get my master's degree, I'll be like a school counselor or something. ⁓ because I was already in the school system and it seemed natural, right? Well, I got near the end of that program and then I was like, Well, you got an intern, right? Well, I couldn't afford to take off like a whole year and not teach and not make any money to be an intern. So I was like, Well, this is gonna work what I'm gonna do. So I switched at the very last moment my major to community mental health counseling and they placed me in an addiction like IOP program, like in a chemical dependency IOP program. And that's kind of how I landed in addiction. Because I had done that program as an intern and because I had taught high school for a few years, the hospital system that I worked for decided I was like the perfect candidate to design and run an intensive outpatient program for teenagers with addiction. Of course, I didn't want to say I didn't know what I was doing, but trust me, I had no idea what I was doing. But I was like, absolutely, I want on it, you know. I just sort of took that direction and ran from it. And I found myself in the deep end of the ocean with no life preserver with those teenagers with addiction. Now I will tell you this because people are always curious. I do come I'm not in recovery myself in the traditional way. I come from an addicted family. Now A big part of me wants to use that as my origin story because that's kind of romantic, right? You grew up in it, you were passionate about it, you decide you're gonna help these people. I could say that, but that's not really true. I did it's true that I grew up in an addicted family system like hardcore. Like I have no memory of my Mimi, which is my grandmother, which I love dearly, without a glass of vodka in her hand. My mom was using meth with my older half sister. Like it everywhere aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, like four hundred step parents, like all the things. It was everywhere. But it's not why I got in the field because I wouldn't have even put that word addiction on it until after I was in the field and realized it looking back. Because when you grow up in it, it's like you're normal, right? You don't even think anything about it. So that's kind of how I landed here. Like I said, it's not the most fabulous origin story. ⁓ I used to be kind of insecure about it because the first thing people want to know is are you in recovery? 'Cause they're looking for a reason to qualify you as or disqualify you more likely. And that's that's the question that they ask. But I've been able to really use it to my advantage, to be honest. It's actually a great story. And it's really interesting to me that one thing you said you mentioned ⁓ you found teaching high schoolers really hard. ⁓ my gosh, yes. Much harder than teaching or or counseling ⁓ in addiction. That's really interesting. Yes, I know, right? I worked in detox for a bunch of years and I was like, even working in detox, which I think is like addiction counselor hell, is better than teaching high school, trust me. It is like 'Cause at least you get to be the good guy, right? When you're helping people who have addictions. And when I was the teacher, I felt like I was like the bad cop all the time, which I really hated and didn't it just didn't work for me very well. So when when you were working in detox, what would you say the percentage was of people that were there because they wanted to be there as opposed to were forced to go there or brought brought there by, say, a family member or or a police officer? You know, I worked in detox for years and it was about like a twenty per bed unit, I would say. I can't tell you how many thousands and thousands of people came through that program the years that I was there. And I don't know for sure how many were sort of there because they wanted to, versus we had people that were committed. You've got people that are like legally committed, and then you got people that are sort of leveraged in where they're not they don't legally have to be there, they're not forced, but they're kind of like pushed into it, like ⁓ voluntarily involuntary, I used to call it. She got a a section of people that were like that. I can tell you that none of the teenagers I saw came in because they would none of those teenagers were seeing me because they wanted to be seeing me. But here's the thing. Over all these years of seeing people, most of which I would say did not want to be getting help, that's sort of where I developed my superpower, which is how to engage really reluctant, resistant, or in denial people. Because almost everyone that sat down in front of me was tricked into it, ⁓ given an ultimatum, forced into it legally. So I've had to r really hone my skills on how do you engage someone who is actively resisting you. Like does not want to be there, mad, heels dug in, looking at you like, what are you gonna do? I think I've been in every one of those situations that you just mentioned. Like I was forced to go, I was, you know, given an ultimatum to go. And then ultimately I wanted to go. But what you just said is a great segue into what I wanted to Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. ⁓ what I wanted to do was I want to read from your website here, ⁓ and it's the about page and it says I wasn't supposed to succeed. Do you mind if I read this section? Jump in there. Go ahead. My first night as an addiction counselor, I sat alone in a room with eight angry teenagers who didn't want to be there. I had zero experience with addiction treatment. No training, no playbook, just me and a group of kids who could smell my fear from across the room. I was supposed to fail. But I didn't have the luxury of giving up. These kids needed help, and I was all they had. So I threw out everything I thought I knew about professional counseling and did the only thing I could think of. I listened, really listened. I stopped trying to sound like a therapist and started treating them like the smart, capable people they were. I asked them what they needed. I built trust instead of pushing treatment. I celebrated small wins instead of focusing on failures. And something incredible happened. The program worked, not because I followed the rules, but because I broke them. So talk a little bit more about that, about that last sentence there about not following the rules. First of all, what rules and and how did you break them? There's this sort of like sometimes said, but a lot of times unsaid sort of. idea in addiction recovery of a person has to want it to get it, right? They have to want it for themselves is the term, right? That's what everyone, you gotta want it for yourself. You know, you can't do it for anybody else. All these things we get told over and over. And then there's this sort of idea from the treatment side that's this sort of like antagonistic a little bit. Like if someone is resistant, reluctant or ambivalent, then you get this, well come back when you want it. Are you haven't suffered enough? Or you're not willing, you know, if you're not willing to do every single thing I tell you to do, you're not ready, blah, blah, blah. You know, there's this attitude of find them, go away. So you've got people who are naturally coming in ambivalent, right? Even people that want to be there, they don't a hundred percent want to be there. That fluctuates moment to moment, you know, it's back and forth, back and forth. And that's people that brought themselves there. So if you meet a person like that with this attitude of come back when you've hit your bottom, come back when you've suffered enough. They're like, great, because I don't want to be here anyway. You know, they're just gonna go away. Well, I and I had a lot of friends in recovery and a lot of people that worked at that place that I was at, they're also in recovery, and there was just this attitude about it, you know, because it's like a revolving door in places like this, and you get hardened basically. But I go back to the statement of this was my first big girl counseling job. I was like all of like twenty four or something. And I didn't want the people that owned that place to know I didn't know what I was doing. So I had to make sure these kids showed up. So I wasn't gonna have this attitude, well, fine, you know, you just have a hip bottom and you're just doing this because your parents are making you go away. Like that was not the attitude I went in with. My thing was I gotta make sure these kids show up or they're gonna be on to me. So I went about like building a relationship with them. And in the end that worked beautifully. And the reason it works because 'cause I got to develop the program. I'm telling you, these people that cut me loose with these teenagers, I can't believe they did it. They let me develop this program, like write it. I mean, it was crazy. It was just me. Well, I decided that ⁓ if these kids graduated the program, their IOP, and they wanted to keep coming back to help other people, they could just be mentors and they could come back as long as they wanted to for free. And so I would win these kids over relationally. They would want to keep coming because they like coming. And they wanted to be mentors so they got sober so they could help other kids. And then the other kids would come in and I already won this group over, so they win these other groups over. It's just like this whole system that helped itself. And the kids actually they didn't hate coming and eventually they liked coming, which is not easy to get addicted teenagers to show up outpatient Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from six to nine PM. That's three hour blocks that you gotta get these teenagers to show up in this facility. And so just focusing on that relational piece of I'm hearing you and I'm not power struggling with you. I'm not trying to tell you all these things like your parents are trying to tell you and all these treatment people are trying to tell you. That whole thing worked because of the relationship that I built with them. Those kids got sober. It was it was amazing. Yeah. So I think the obvious question here, ⁓ and some people are going to be thinking this. Is how ⁓ how how how do you build that connection and that relationship with with someone in addiction, s say like myself, like if you came to me and and and like how how do you get me to open up to you and to trust you and be vulnerable with you when I when you're not an addict yourself, I guess I should say. Do you know what I'm saying? Right. Right. Well, the the first thing I do w when I get clients now, like in private practices, is I just say, Hey I'm your lawyer. Think of me like your lawyer. My job is to be on your side. I'm not your principal. I'm not your probation officer. You're not in trouble with me. My job is to have your back. What do you need help with right now? You need me to tell your wife you're coming and you're doing good? Got you. You need me to write you a left record? I got you. Right. I and so when they can see that I'm really truly on their side, that's the piece that lets them let the guard down a little bit because they're not expecting that, right? They're expecting this whole different attitude thing. And once that wall comes down a little bit and they're like, okay, maybe I'll see if I like you or doggy or something. Then I focus on doing what I call building credibility. Because people are not going to listen to what you have to say if they think you don't understand them. And you gotta really understand them, like not addiction them as a person and their predicament and their feelings and their situation and why they're doing what they're doing and the problems that they're stuck in. Because even if I were in recovery, even if I were in these things, unless someone thinks you get them specifically, it doesn't matter what you have to say. And it doesn't matter if you care about them, because like, you know, like your grandmama loves you, but you're probably not gonna listen to her advice if you think she doesn't get your situation. So the next thing is is I focus on really understanding this person as a human, not as an addict, not as an alcoholic. I can tell you that story. It's the same story every single time. I can tell it to you better than you can tell it. So my my job isn't that, it's to understand this person, their personality, their strengths, their blind spots, their predicaments. And when that person feels like I really, really understand them, they're gonna get themselves in some situation with their addiction because that's the nature of the unmanageability. And then they're they trust me. They talk to me, they're gonna come, they're say, Hey we're having this big, really terrible situation, blah blah blah, what do think I should do? And then I'm gonna tell ⁓ what I think they should do, but not until I have that credibility with I call it it's like building a credit score, like if you're gonna buy a house. Like in one of our family programs, I teach the family owners how to like literally count their credit points. Like if you hear or say these things, you know, plus this many points. If you hear or say these things, minus this many points, right? And so that's that's the way that I get people to let that guard down. And trust me, that's the big picture of how Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I'm glad you said the word unmanageability, because ⁓ in in the twelve step program, which which I am in, you know, the first step is to admit we were alcoholics and ⁓ that our lives had become that our lives had become unmanageable. And I heard this one time from someone that said, if I if I change that word lives had become unmanageable and and put in their emotions, that my emotions had become unmanageable. Like that fits really well for me. You know, and and that goes way back to when I was a kid. Like I've never been able to I've never learned how to manage my emotions. I wasn't taught growing up just my situation, I was never we never talked about emotions. I would I've never taught how to deal with my emotions. So th so they've always been unmanageable. And for me that what that means is ⁓ I would I would cover them up with with drugs and alcohol or whatever, you know, and and that addictive behavior just continues in a cycle. And so ⁓ so I I love that approach that ⁓ it really doesn't matter what the addiction is, it's what's underneath it, really really that's what you're what you're dealing with, what you would need to connect with. Right. Because I always say, like, as a treatment provider myself, whether that's inpatient, outpatient, whatever that is, I don't need to tell someone how to get sober. That's pretty freaking simple. Okay. Like it it's pretty obvious how you do that. And people know how to do that. I see it as my job is to help someone decide to do it. And stay decided to do it, you know, long enough to get it done because it's you know it's not just a one-time decision, right? And I love Scott that you swapped out that word lives with emotions. And the reason why I love that swap is because, you know, I've I've done every kind of thing in addiction treatment, but these days my sort of specialty is it just sort of happened is I see a lot of really successful people who drink too much. Like business owners, doctors, lawyers, like tri athletes, like really successful people. And so if you try to convince a person like that that their life is unmanageable, you've lost them. You know, because they're still highly functioning, even though they definitely have this problem, they haven't seen that ripple effect in all the areas of their life yet. So they'll hang on to this idea that what are you talking about? You know, I make three hundred thousand dollars a year. My life's not unmanageable, you know, I do this and that and other. So that word can be really off putting to people. But the word emotions, I think they would probably relate to. Better. Yeah, I agree. And ⁓ I I just think about my own sobriety and my own life and and how things changed when, you know, obviously when I got not on not only when I got sober, when but when I started working a program. And whether at that's a twelve step program or whatever, whether I had a vested interest in improving my own life, amazing things started to happen. And and when you said like that person that makes three hundred thousand dollars a year. But they're drinking every weekend or they're binge drinking or whatever. I just think about the the ambition, you know, like how it's lowered because of that drinking. Like w like what is what are the possibilities for someone like that if they if they stop drinking, you know? Like they're they haven't reached their full capabilities yet. I love that you use that word ambition because to me that's part of really understanding somebody. Like for example, if I'm working with somebody who's highly successful, you know, make a lot of money. Then I might say something to them like, dude, you're leaving money on the table. Cause yeah, you're making this much and you you know you're going to work like half functioning just keeping your head above water. Imagine what would happen if you were running on all cylinder, right? And that that connects to you have to really understand who you're talking to. Find out what motivates them, what they care about, what their values are, right? Instead of this trying to like convince them they need to do something. And then when they don't do it, tell them it's because they haven't suffered enough and hit they haven't hit their bottom, right? It's about finding that motivation that's already there. Cause as a business person, you're walking around as a functional alcoholic, you are most definitely leaving money on the table. A friend of mine used to say all the time, if I got what I thought I wanted, I'd be selling myself way short. And I think that totally it ⁓ re relates to sobriety, like a in active drinking and using You know, I I thought I wanted all this stuff, but this stuff w isn't actually I mean, now in sobriety, I've been sober for a few years now and life is way different. Like I never would have thought I'd be in this position that I'm in now doing the things that I'm doing now. And, you know, it it's exactly that. Like I would have been selling myself short. Right. You know, 'cause it's what it really comes down to is we want to feel good about who we are, right? And and we maybe we think making, you know, twenty million dollars will make us feel good about who we are. But that connects to what our value system is, right? And that that goes to understanding somebody's value system. Now everyone, when you ask them, they'll tell you they value like family, but you know, they'll give you like the answer. But but I really listen to people. I don't necessarily ask on their values, I listen to them for a while until you can see what their values are through their behaviors and what they talk about and what they care about. It it surfaces itself, right? But when people when you can connect your behavior with your value system and you get a congruence there. That's recovery in my mind. Like you you finally get to I like who I am. I feel good about me. And when you're in that spot, you have much less need or want or desire to to medicate because you feel congruent in flow. You know, you feel consistently aligned. Yeah, we have a saying and ⁓ I I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I go to I go to meetings and only you know, it works for me and I'm absolutely a hundred percent open to other programs, other whatever that works for people. I just want people to be sober and live happy lives, you know, as we say, happy, joyous, and free. But ⁓ we have a saying many sayings, and one of them is speaking of meetings, I came for my drinking and I stayed for my thinking, which means I came because I wanted to stop drinking. now I keep coming because of everything else that I'm getting from from basically free therapy of going to meetings with my friends and we're talking and openly and honestly and being vulnerable and and discussing all this stuff that I'd never want I'd never talk about this stuff, you know, before sobriety. Like, you know, I I would ne I had no interest in talking about emotions and crying in front of people and, you know, all this like like telling them my deep, deepest, darkest secrets. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you look at those ⁓ twelve steps, because people have all kinds of feelings about twelve steps, right? Like I say I'm non-denominational. I like it all. Like I haven't found if it works, it works. And if I I like it, if it works. So I love the twelve steps. But if you look at those twelve steps, even within that, it's really a way to get your behavior lined up with your value system, right? Making a list and looking at your behavior and making the amends and you know, being consistent, you know, all these things. There's nothing in there about drinking really, or you know, there's just nothing in there about don't go to these places and don't hang out with these people. It's nothing. It's about getting your spirit back in alignment, right? So the th two pieces is like how do you get someone to want to do that and and then how to do it. I think most people already know how to do it. It's just coming to terms with whether or not they're want to do it or they're ready to do it. Yeah, that's a great point. And a couple things that you brought up. I want to ask you about spirituality, but before I do that, I want to tell you about this maybe you know about this story in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous where it's about the jaywalker. Have you heard it? Okay. So so just for the audience, a jaywalker crosses the street and he gets hit by a car or or whatever and breaks his arm. He heals up, he goes back out, and the next time he breaks his his leg and then and then gets healed up again. And he keeps doing it over and over and over and and the consequences get worse and worse. And he ends up in a hospital and really, really hurt bad and then gets out and goes back and does it again. And and that real I can relate to that in the context of drinking and and using drugs because you know the consequences got worse and worse. It's a progression. And so why would I continue to do it? It's the behavior really that needs to be changed, that needs to be addressed, not Yeah. You know, not the actual drinking and drugging. It's it's the behavior that leads to it. So so let's talk about spirituality. ⁓ what are your ⁓ what are your thoughts on it? Where do you stand? I really think it comes back to that congruence thing, getting your behavior to align with your values. To me, that gets your spirit in alignment, however that is, and it's different for each person. For me, it's about it's about helping people do that. Helping people I think the the keys are whether you do it through the 12 steps or however, the key is to Become a kind of person that you like, right? And that you respect. And in order to do that, you have to be in congruence. Otherwise you're just not gonna like or respect yourself. Not with what other people think you should do, but with what you think you should. We say in the program, we'll love you until you love yourself. And so, you know, you you keep coming back and you keep working the steps, or in in the case of some not working the steps, you do the right thing ⁓ until until you build self respect, until you build self esteem. And you build self esteem by doing esteemable acts. When I came into the program, I didn't love myself, right? But I kept coming to meetings and and the people loved me and they you know told me to keep coming back and and little by little I was doing things to build up my self esteem for myself. You know? Right. And then, you know, and then when you look at towards the end of the twelve steps, you're looking at contribution. So I call it, you know, there's some Cs, connection. is the first C that has to happen. And then ⁓ consistency is the second one. So connecting to people consistent with my values and then contribution near the end, which is where we begin to sort of connect to our purpose, our higher purpose. Our what's gonna get me through those hard days when I don't want to, you know, and my willpower's out, you know, and you know, and I've got the opportunity. What am I gonna do when I get through those days? Cause just 'cause I want it today And I'm serious because I want to be sober today. Tomorrow something could happen and I could feel not so sure about it. And that's normal, right? But when we have something that holds us solid through those days, it just becomes easier. There's a lot less should I, shouldn't I, waffling, giving into cravings and that kind of thing. Then I actually added another seed to it, and that's creativity. I think that's another spiritual need of humans. ⁓ we're the only animal on the planet that has the ability for that and kind of like If you're stuck in a job where you just put widgets together all day and it doesn't use any of your talents or abilities, you don't even really get to solve problems. You just get to do the same thing. You you that part of your spirit starts to die and you become progressively more unhappy. Right. And then you either get sort of sick, like is in depression, anxiety, or you start medicating that with all the things that bring people to see me, right? So if you can get your C's in alignment, you're gonna you're gonna be way better. I love that idea of the four Cs. ⁓ so so I'll go through them real quick. Like connect and and I'll talk about my experience in in in sobriety. So connect yeah, coming to meetings, right? Connecting with people that I can relate to, connecting with you know, other for me, other alcoholics, you know, other other addicts. ⁓ consistency is is huge. I think consistency not only in in And going to meetings, which is really important for me because it keeps you know, I when I think about meeting meetings, ⁓ I I I feel like I need to keep that stuff fresh in my head on a daily basis, right? Because when I stray away from meetings and I've seen this in my own past, like I, you know, relapsed and ⁓ in reflection, it was because I strayed away from the program, I strayed away from my sobriety and from the meetings and I you know, I wasn't I wasn't consistent with it and ⁓ And that's you know, that is important in all aspects of my life, not just my sobriety. You know, I think if I want to be good at something, I need to be consistent. I need to do it, you know, on a regular basis. And then contribution reminds me of service. You know, ⁓ service is a huge thing in in my sobriety anyway. So I do service by, you know, chairing meetings. I do service by, you know, making coffee, setting up the meeting room and stuff like that, you know, because even this podcast is service. It's big. I have a problem with seeing it like that, but I yeah, you're I think you're right. You know? Yeah. How come? ⁓ maybe it it's just me. It's just my own it's the imposter syndrome, I guess, is what I have. Okay. But it but for me, I I do speaking of this podcast, I love doing this podcast because I get to do the daily readings and I have, you know, had a lot of people, you know, tell me how how much they love it. It's great. I I I really do enjoy it. So yeah, I guess it is my small contribution to doing service. It's a big contribution. It definitely counts in the service bucket. Okay. Well well, thank you. I I really appreciate that. So let's talk about, let's see, other stuff in your in the Family Recovery Academy, you have the denial breakthrough intensive ⁓ intensive. It's four days and it's live it's a live coaching event. What what does this mean? Can you talk a little bit about that? So that program is actually for people who have addicted loved ones. It's like how do I get through, you know, my person They don't think they have a problem or maybe they know they have a problem, but they're like, I don't need to get help, you know, I can handle this myself, that sort of thing. And it teaches family members, you know, what do you do? What do you say? How do you do it? When do you say it? You know, all those things. How do you get through to this person? Because a lot of people will tell you that there's nothing families can do. They basically get told by everyone around them, they're just gonna have to back up, you know, detach with love and hope this person, you know, suffers enough and then they're gonna figure it out. Well That could happen, but it's just as likely that it won't happen or that it'll take ten or twenty more years of suffering before it happens. And even if they have hit every kind of bottom of the world, it doesn't mean they're gonna get sober. So it's like for some people that whole step back and hope they figure it out, it's just not a good enough answer. This is your child, this is your partner, this is your brother, like not good enough. What else you got? And that's in the what else you got category. So I teach people how to do that. Yeah, I love that you get the family involved, you know, because even in AA we talk about it's not just a it's a it's a family addiction, you know, because we drag we drag everybody else into it. Everybody in my family. I I drag ⁓ down and and even though I justify it and and tell myself over and over, I'm not hurting anybody but myself. I'm just drinking alone. Like in the end, you know, for years I was living in a house on my own. 'Cause I had kicked everyone out and and I was just hurting myself. That's what I was telling myself anyway. But that that's not the case. ⁓ it did affect the rest of my family. I just didn't see it. And because and I think the reason is when you're in it, you don't see it. No, you you don't you don't see it. And I and I like your example that you're saying. Even when I'm by myself, I'm still affecting people, right? All those people that you pushed out of your life, right? Like On purpose or on accident, you know? All the people that you're not able to help and service with your talents and skills and abilities, right? Because you're isolated and you're drinking or you're you know, you're using or whatever that is, you're definitely there's no such thing as I'm only hurting myself, especially if you have people who love you or people who could benefit from having you around if you were there with your A game. So you have a sign on the wall behind you. Let's talk about that. This is your ⁓ Yeah. Put the shovel down. It's your YouTube channel. That's right. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's an old recovery saying. And the saying is one of those teenagers in those early programs I did used to say you hit your bottom when you put your shovel down, right? And and I love that because my goal really is these days to help people before they lose everything. So in my mind, you can decide you can put that shovel down whenever you want, right? You don't have to lose everything. You don't have to burn every bridge. You don't have to suffer longer and experience all these horrible things. You just have to say, you know. I think I'm gonna turn this around. I think I'm gonna take the exit ramp here. So you put your shovel down, you do something else. Yeah, and I love that. We always we also talk about that, like when am I gonna stop digging? You know, when am I gonna put the shovel down? There's also ⁓ I'm not sure if you're aware, there's a book called Drop the Rock. Mm-hmm. And and it's a sobriety book and and I love that concept because, you know, in it it talks about if I'm in the water, say I'm swimming and I'm drowning and I'm carrying this rock and there's a boat there with people saying, Take my hand, just drop the rock, just put the rock down. Well, the rock can be any anything in my life that's holding me back, which, you know, it could be it could be drinking, could be drugs, it could be my unmanageable unmanageable emotions. It could be anything that ⁓ my behavior, you know, that's ⁓ that's holding me back from becoming a better version of myself. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. No, it's so true. And those metaphors really kind of hit at home with us because, you know, especially, you know, the drop the rock, you know, you're you're drowning, but you're clinging to this thing for dear life and it's the thing that's killing you. And that's what is exactly what is happening to the people that come to see me. You know, they're hanging on to it. And that's what, you know, that kind of goes to the family system part because families don't mean to do this, but they make them cling to that rock. And the way they make them cling to that rock is they power struggle with them. And they try to force this person to see that they have this terrible bad problem. And the more they directly confront this person, the more it they try to magnify the problem and help them see the urgency of it the more the person clings because they feel like it's their only relief because it is their only relief when you're addicted. So they're clinging to this more and more. And a lot of people don't realize it, but I'll spend years power struggling with their family when they don't even like it anymore. They don't even want to do it. But they're busy being dug in with these other people about you're not a boss of me and you can't control me and, you know, you're nagging and criticizing and you're never, you know You never see what I do right. You get dug in on all this stuff and you're clinging to this rock that you don't even want anymore. And so when the families can st can stop doing that, that's a huge step because then a lot of people start to figure out, like, wow, why am I clinging to this rock? Why am I carrying this around? Why am I doing this? I don't even like it. It doesn't even work for me anymore. You know, they'll see it so much faster. Families don't realize it, but they're providing a distraction. And I call that distraction being the villain. ⁓ they play the villain in the story because there's a couple of things necessary for addiction to live, and that is resentment, self-pity. That's the emotional fuel that addiction lives on. People think it's money. I don't care if you give addict money. That's not the fuel. The fuel is resentment and self-pity. And it usually comes in that order. I'm gonna be resentful about something somebody, some situation, work, whatever, did that I think was wrong, and I'm gonna feel sorry for myself. And bad choices follow self pity every time. Not just for ex and alcoholics, that's for all of us, right? And so we continue to make that bad choice because we're stuck in resentment and self pity. And a lot of times most of that is coming from their resentment towards their family, from feeling criticized, ostracized, forced, you know, all those kinds of things. Right. We say that resentment is the number one killer. You know, it's what it what's taking it it's what takes takes people back out. You know, I'm glad you brought that up. And you know, a couple of things that you mentioned, the behavior We get to a point, we being me, I got to a point where I didn't even like drinking. I didn't like using a as a matter of fact, I hated it. I hated myself for doing it, for continuing to do it. And I think a common misconception is that we continue to do it because we're selfish and well, I am selfish, but but that's what I wanna do. I wanna spend my days, you know, drinking and drugging all day long and destroying my life. Absolutely not. You know, I reached a point where for years I had no choice. Like I had to do it. Like I didn't know there was an option. I didn't know there was a way out. And then you talked about ⁓ well, I I wanted to bring up the word codependency. Yeah. And it seems like that's what you were getting at with ⁓ with the parents, you know, with the family. But I think selfish the parents, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you agree or do you think that when you say the word codependency, a lot of family members or whoever don't they don't really know what it is or that th that they're even doing it? It's one of those words that like has become so big and overused that everybody has a different thought about what it means. Because a lot of people think it just means people pleasing, right? Other people think, you know, it means I'm in a relationship with an addict or an alcoholic, you know, like in the old school sense of the word. So people people put a lot of different meanings on that. And I think a lot of people even have this thought of I'm codependent, that's why I'm attracting people with addiction into my life. Like If you have someone in your life that's an addict or an alcoholic, they're going it's it's a vortex and it is going to suck you in. I don't care who you are or what boundaries you had to begin with, if you keep them in your life, it's gonna suck you in. Like I've been doing this twenty years and I have to be careful of it. Just having them in my office one hour at a time, you know, like 'cause it gets you. And so I feel like a lot of family members feel a lot of blame and shame about it. And sometimes that word codependent can really just sort of add to that. So I I don't know, I'm just sort of careful about the word 'cause it it's like the word narcissism lately. It's like, okay, everybody's not a narcissist people. You know, it's just sort of overused. Yeah, it seems like as far as the word codependency, it seems like the you know, a family member, say say a parent that doesn't know what to do could you know, you throw the word codependency out there and they could go to one or one extreme or the other. Like like you mentioned earlier, okay, well, I'm just gonna step back. I can't do anything to help my son. Unfortunately I'll I'll I'll step back and let him fail. Or codependency where they're like, you know, well, he's my son. I have to do this for him. I have to pro you know, I have to try to help him. You know, like where where is the middle ground? Well, a lot of times what naturally instinctively families typically do, at least for the first bunch of years, is they're trying to protect the person from these outside messes that they're making, whether it's legal, relational, financial. And so the person gets themselves in a big mess and the family comes in and tries to fix that because they don't want this person to, you know, burn some kind of permanent bridge or something like that, which is understandable. But inside the context of the relationship, they're mad at this person. So they're fixing all the external problems, but inside the relationship, they're criticizing, they're nagging, they're upset with this person. And that is the worst formula for getting someone sober. If you want someone to get sober, you reverse that, right? You let the world be the bad guy. So you don't fix their messes for them. But inside the relationship, you if you let their messes fall and you respond with empathy, that actually activates the learning center of people's brain and dramatically increases the chances that they gain insight and they start trying to find ways to solve the problem. It's like it's like if it's a parent and they're like You know, I don't want this person, you know, they're about to graduate college, but they're gonna fail their last English or whatever, and they're calling the teacher up. Can you please give them extra credit? And they're making up lies that grandma died or whatever they're doing, you know. And and then this person graduates college, but then you're mad at them, you know, this was a lot of money, and I can you know, wasting all this money, you're wasting your life, and you can't live here, you know, saying all that in the relationship. This person is thinking, What are you talking about? I just graduated college, I got a freaking degree, my life is fine, my problem is you. And we need to We need to reverse that about what they're seeing so they can see the situation clearly. Yeah, I love that. There's also this ⁓ this thing we say where if you know, it's talking about blame where if I'm pointing the finger at you, I'm I've got three pointing back at me. Right. And I love that because, you know, it makes me look at my own at myself, at my own actions, my own behaviors. But ⁓ I also think that can go a little too far in saying, Well, everything's my fault, you know. ⁓ which which I don't think we want to do either. No, because when you get to to that, like everything's my fault, I'm a horrible person. If you get too far into that, like if someone hits too many bottoms and experience too much consequences, it it's counterproductive 'cause they're just like, Well, I'm just a f up. This is just who I'm meant to be and they literally just give up and give into it. And that's dealing with someone in denial is not that hard because denial cures itself eventually. But dealing with somebody who's just literally to that mindset, that is really difficult. And I love that you ⁓ Y your your idea is to get people to get people in into sobriety or working with you, working with with coaches before they hit that bottom, before they get too far in and and you know, c because you get too far in, you can destroy your life. Who knows what's gonna happen, you know, nowadays especially nowadays with what's being mixed in all kinds of drugs and and ⁓ you know it can get it can it can turn bad real quick. So so I love that you're trying to ⁓ Trying to get people sober before they hit that bottom. What do you tell people? You know, how do you what's your approach to get people to get people to come see you, to come talk to you? And I think you talked about this a little earlier where where people are saying, Well, I you know, my life is great. I'm not it's not unmanageable. Why would I come talk to you? Right, exactly. These days people come now 'cause they find me on YouTube and they've decided to come talk to me. But historically they've come in because they were leveraged in somehow. and It's like the first couple of things are what I told you before. I build credibility, right? I align with them. I I become their ally. But deep down inside, even when you're dealing with someone who has lots of ambivalence, there's a part of them that wants to change. What what they're clinging on to usually is it's like, I don't want to let this go completely. I wanna cut it back. I wanna keep having it a little bit, but not give it up totally, but I wanna get rid of the unmanageability. And so people go through I call it bargaining. People go through these years of bargaining where they're trying to sort of manage the unmanageability without completely letting it go. And that's normal. I you know it's understandable that someone would want to do that. But it doesn't work. And deep down inside, they're unhappy about it. Even if someone says, you know, I call it big talk, like big healthy talk, like I'll I'll drink you under the table. I'm never gonna quit. I'm gonna die drunk. You know, whatever they're saying. List one question. And they don't have to answer it. But if you say, is there anything about it you don't like? Their brain will immediately come up with a bunch of things they don't like about it. They may not tell you, especially if they're big talker, you know, they're not gonna give you that satisfaction, but they're gonna think of it. Cause there are things in everybody, there's already motivation there. And when you can find what that is and you can nurture that a little bit, it helps move it along much faster. There are active strategies that you can use to help people figure this out without just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. Yeah, I do find that too sometimes where ⁓ me being sober and and you know, it kinda makes people look at themselves, you know. It makes it makes some people some people uncomfortable about their own drinking because it really makes them look at that at their own issue if they have ⁓ about like when you don't drink and other people are drinking, ⁓ they hate ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ they don't like that. I I explain it in my cons. I say this is what it's like. It's like if I go out with my husband and we're at a restaurant And the waitress takes my order first and I order cheeseburger and he orders the salad, I would be so pissed at him. Right. I'm like, dude, really? You know, now I feel like an idiot. That's what it's like, really. You know, it's like it makes people uncomfortable about it. 'Cause then they feel kind of, you know, edgy about it. Yeah, that's a great example and and I can totally relate to that. Just just last week at work, you know, I I try to eat pretty healthy. I I would say I'm a pretty healthy person and and so I bring the I work at a college and I brought I I cook at home a lot and so I brought some vegetables and couscous and whatever else, you know, and and yeah and I offered it to the the the kids that were there and they were like they looked at me like I had two heads. They're like, What's wrong with you? Yeah. And and you eat vegetables and you don't drink. What's what's wrong with you? Yeah, right. And meanwhile they're opening the drawer and pulling out a bag of Cheetos, you know, and and Right you know, and feeling bad about themselves and their choices. But, you know. again I'm not responsible for their for their feelings or their emotions. Only mine. So there's a question here on your website that I wanted to ask you. ⁓ what's what's the difference between counseling and coaching? And I think that's a great question. ⁓ and you must get that all the time. I do because even though I'm trained as a counselor and I have all the license, I have several of them, ⁓ these days what I do is more coaching. Counseling is really sort of looking at what's wrong with you and giving you a diagnosis and going back and looking at everything happened to you in your childhood and why you got this way. It's very problem focused. Where I feel like coaching is very sort of like future focused. It's like, okay, this problem, this strategy, do this, don't do that. Say these words, don't say these words, you know, go to this place. It's a lot more directive and not as focused on what's wrong with you. It's it's a lot more focused on Getting out of it or getting what you want from life, really. Not even just getting out of a problem, but getting what you want. Yeah, I have ⁓ I have a running coach and ⁓ which seems odd. ⁓ odd to me anyway, because I'm a little older and and but you know, the reason is because ⁓ I don't have all the answers. You know, I've been running my entire life, but I don't have all the answers. I don't I don't th I don't think I do anyway. You know what I mean? Like ⁓ the I I think Just like one of your C's, connection, you know, connecting with other people and and getting input from other people. And that's that's I think what coaching does, you know, get some fresh perspectives on something in my life and ⁓ give me some new ideas. And that's it's very I find it very helpful. Yeah, because you know, it that's a good analogy because the thing of it is is like people they say, Well, I can do this myself, right? I don't need help. And I understand that, right? ⁓ what they're really saying is I don't want judgment and I don't want to be pushed faster than I wanna go. That's what they're really saying. But with this idea of like getting help, I'm like, okay, if you were gonna build a house and you had never built a house, I guess you could do it yourself and you would probably figure it out, right? But it's gonna take you a long time and a lot of setbacks and a lot of money. Or you could at least watch a YouTube video on it, or you could hire someone to consult with to tell you you could skip a lot of years of misery. So I'm like, Do you have to get help? No. But if Getting help's gonna help you fast track it, right? Like just like a running coach, right? They're gonna give you the insider tips and tricks. So you don't have to spend years and years and years like winging it and like messing things up, you know? Un needlessly. Yeah. And and I don't know if you noticed, but when I said the Serenity Prayer at the beginning of this episode, I used the word we, you know, and and and some people call it the we version. And, you know, some people in in in AA don't agree with that. You know, it's it's I, it's not it's not we. But anyway, ⁓ my point is I I use the word we and us because I didn't get sober alone. You know, I didn't do it on my own. And I don't stay sober on my own. I I absolutely have such a good connection with with the fellowship and w with my friends in sobriety and I need them just as much as they need me. Right. You know, and and we help each other stay sober. And that's why I use the word the word we and us. ⁓ because I know that it's not just me. It's not it's not ⁓ not anything I could ever do on my own. Right. It goes back to that connection piece, which is the first piece that happens in the twelve step program, right? It's like you connect to the other people that are in there, right? You you don't you're not you don't know, do those steps unless you decide, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna go back because that one guy's not that bad or whatever. You know, that one guy he seems like he's got his crap together. I'll listen to him a little bit, you know. You have to connect first, right? Before you're even gonna consider doing the things they're telling you to do, that connection piece is so important. It's the fellowship. The fellowship is the part that keeps you coming back. It's the part that got you to go back the second time and the two hundredth time and all that kind of thing. The fellowship part. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Amber, we're just about out of time here. Is there anything else that we missed that you'd like to talk about? No, I really enjoyed our conversation, Scott. I love the way you think and I can tell that you're very well versed in all this recovery literature, which I love. ⁓ and I love what you're doing with this podcast. It's it's definitely service. Well, thank you so much. I really like People don't realize how much work goes into this. Like it I'm telling you guys if who don't know, a lot of work. A a lot of this compared to, you know, turning the coffee on at the meeting. Let's be real, Scott. This is a lot of work that gets into this. It sure is, you know, and and I ⁓ you know, since I started doing this podcast, I I have always said that, you know, ⁓ I don't care if no one listens to me. it's a selfish program and I'm a selfish person and I do it for myself, although I realize other people are getting getting something from it. I get to read these books every day. I get to read our daily literature. You know, and share it with other people. And so it helps me too. It helps keep this stuff fresh in my mind every day. And it you know, I I just love doing it. So Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're doing it. And I know that a lot of other people are getting a lot of value out of it and getting help. Well, thank you. And thank you so much for coming on the program. I really appreciate it. I love I love talking with people that have a different approach to sobriety other than AA. And I know some people in AA don't agree with that, but There are other ways to stay sober than just AA. And ⁓ and I love talking with people like you that offered offer alternatives, you know, for sobriety. Right. There's no bad way and there's no bad reason. Absolutely. Well, Amber Amber, thank you so much. It's been great talking with you. Thanks again. Bye everybody. And there you have it. That was my conversation with Amber Hollingsworth from Family Recovery Academy. I'm really grateful Amber took the time to come on and share her experience, her insight, and her approach to recovery. I think one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is that addiction doesn't happen in isolation, and recovery doesn't have to happen in isolation either. Whether we're talking about sobriety, codependency, spirituality, family recovery, or just learning how to connect with other people in a healthier way, there's a lot of hope in knowing that we don't have to figure this out alone. Be sure to check out Amber's work at FamilyRecovery Academy dot online. And you can also find her on YouTube at PutThe Shovel Down, where she shares a lot of practical guidance for people in recovery and for the families who love them. As always, thank you for listening to Sober Readings. If this episode helped you, share it with someone who might need to hear it, and be sure to let that person know that they are not alone. So again, thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading. And I'll catch you in next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.