By Amanda Scott-Telford - IPHM Certified Trauma-Informed, Mental Wellness and Recovery Coach
For the People Who Love Them · Part 2 of 4
Fear of these conversations can feel like a deep dread. You’ve had the conversation with yourself in the shower. You’ve written and deleted the same text five times. You care for this person and worry about saying the wrong thing and pushing them away further, or saying nothing and things getting worse.
In order to find out what really helps and what makes things worse in the long run, we need to know what we are doing wrong in the first place.
Start by lowering the stakes of the conversation
What is the reframe? You are not trying to fix this in one conversation. This person’s brain can’t hear your argument yet (see Post 1). So stop trying to make them see the light. You are trying to stay in relationship with this person.
When you stop treating each talk as the talk, you can let it be smaller and gentler, more like something you’ll come back to than a case you have to win.
What tends to backfire
Some of the most natural responses are the ones that close the door.
Lecturing. The facts you’ve gathered, the article you want them to read, the logic that seems so obvious to you — a brain in defense mode hears all of it as an attack.
The “If you don’t quit, I’m done.” ultimatum. Said in anger, that’s rarely a boundary. It’s a flare, and it usually gets met with defensiveness instead of change.
The research on families and addiction continues to find that criticism and hostility are most effective at making things worse, and that a warmer, more inviting approach is most effective at helping the individual move toward getting help (Miller, Meyers, & Tonigan, 1999). Shame is not a motivator; for many individuals, it is a trigger for the very behavior that the person is trying to avoid.
Rescuing in the middle of a crisis. This can feel like love, but it can also remove the consequences that are trying to move someone.
What tends to help
Instead of giving a verdict, ask questions and be curious. “How are you doing with all of this, really?” is a great way to start a conversation. You are asking instead of cornering, which is the heart of motivational interviewing. People tend to defend less when they don’t feel attacked (Miller & Rollnick, 2013).
Use “I” more than “you.” “I’ve been scared, and I miss you” invites more than “you’re ruining everything” indicts.
Mind the timing. A hard conversation with someone who’s drunk, high, or cornered tends to go nowhere good. Calm, sober, and private beats urgent and heated almost every time.
The care and concern need to be stated together. For example: “I love you, and I’m worried.”
You can’t make someone change — that part is theirs alone. What you can do is stay someone they trust enough to come to when they’re ready.
When they don’t take it well
They may still be defensive, go cold, or leave the conversation. This doesn’t mean that you did something wrong. A defended brain is trying to protect itself. Sometimes the thing that you said to them can land later, in a quieter moment.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can say is, “I don’t know what to say. But I’m here for you.” This can be especially powerful for someone who is half expecting you to leave them.
Where you go from here
Again, staying both kind and clear is hard, especially when their behavior is costing you. So we’re going to get into some of the issues of boundaries, and of helping vs. enabling.
The free workbook has a page of sentence starters you can make your own, for the conversations you already know are coming.
References
Miller, W. R., Meyers, R. J., & Tonigan, J. S. (1999). Engaging the unmotivated in treatment for alcohol problems: A comparison of three strategies for intervention through family members. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(5), 688–697.
Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
