Why Addicts Lie To The Ones They Love

I am a licensed professional clinical counselor I'm a family therapist that works with all kinds of really heartbreaking situations and the worst of those usually involve addiction I was talking to a woman the other day and she had just discovered that her husband was in a lot of trouble that he had actually racked up like seven credit cards of $100,000 debt he made this bad business deal and they had reported him to the police and he hadn t been working for a year and a half or two years or something like that and she was just finding out about this and it rocked her world she was devastated she was scared she didn't know what she was going to do with her kids how they were gonna survive didn't know what was next and you know as she told me more about the story she had known that he was an alcoholic and had been abusing drugs for just about since they got married but she always thought he had it under control she always hoped he had it under control she was always believing him when he said that everything was okay and he was going to take care of things well now she was at a point where obviously that wasn't true and I hear stories like that all the time I wanted to make a video and talk about denial because that's a real topic that I had to explain to this woman this concept of denial and addiction it's different than denial for normal people like we just don't want to face a situation or we just want to avoid that we have to deal with something tough denial with addicts is a totally different thing one of the acronyms that I like about denial that really just sums it up well is don't even know I am lying because that's really what it is I mean addiction is one of the worst human experiences that someone can go through to have done something over and over and over to the point where you have lost control you cannot control your actions anymore you are you've lost your self-respect you have lost the people around you you have lost even control of your body and your health and it's just a horrible place to be and if you can just put yourself there for a moment to feel like crap all the time and to live a life that is just cruddy all the time and still be compelled to go back and do the same thing over and over when you know that is like the worst thing for you and for everyone around you that you are screwing up your life that is a horrible trap to be in and you just can't be in that behavior in that kind of addiction with a right mind and what I mean by that is you have to start rationalizing you have to start justifying you have to start telling yourself lies that you actually believe so that you can keep doing the same thing that you can do without completely hating yourself but the more that goes on the more far-fetched it gets the more it becomes away from reality and the more distorted your thinking has to be to be able to maintain some sort of sanity in the midst of insanity if that makes sense so what happens with someone who is a hardcore addict is they actually start believing their own lies they start believing this false reality that they have created for themselves you know early in my career I actually worked in an inpatient residential rehab facility for young adult males and one thing that I quickly learned is that about 95 percent of whatever came out of their mouth was just not true you just didn't believe it because they were thinking out of this distorted reality and I noticed some of my co-workers they would get so angry and so infuriated and so upset with the fact that they were being lied to by these guys that they would actually treat them disrespectfully and they just kind of missed the whole point and I am in no way just to find their behavior I mean it is wrong it is even immoral it's not healthy it doesn't work from them they are flat-out lying and it is it is destructive there was nothing good about it but you got to understand that in their reality they have created this world where they really believe the crap that they are saying that is how unhealthy they are now denial looks pretty ridiculous when you're in a healthy environment when you're around other people who aren't going to buy your B they are going to see it for what it is they're going to call it what it is and they're going to stay in reality but a lot of times an addictive home you have another concept you have a person who is an enabler and an enabler and someone who is a denier those go hand in hand they complement each other really well because an enabler is a person who wants to believe the denial they want to believe it's true they want to believe that everything is going to be okay they want to believe that this time it's going to work so enablers that not only do they not help the person who is in denial they enable it they make it stronger they allow it to continue to go on and you have this relationship and addictive homes where someone is in this false reality and someone else is in a completely different false reality hoping that things are going to get better but here's the thing if you were in that situation if you are living with an addicted person and just you know be real for a moment look around look at the behavior look at what is happening when you know in your heart that this person is addicted they need help it's not going to change until they get help and some people might get mad at me for saying this but you are not the person to give them that help you are wrapped up in this as well you need to take care of yourself and stop buying into the denial and stop taking it so personally I know that might be hard to understand but it's not just about you that person really isn't a bad place and they're not thinking right and they are going to walk over they're going to violate every boundary around them to maintain their denial to maintain their addiction and their sense of self worth as messed up as that is because it ultimately doesn't work that's what they're trying to do so they're going to walk right over you even though they love you even though they care about you even though you love and care about them you have to not play that game anymore you've got to be able to back away from that and know that that person needs help now that's a tough position to be in so I feel compelled to like throw out a couple of things that can help you know I love al-anon it is a self-help group it is a support group for family members who are dealing with someone who is in addiction they really help you understand the components of it and what is going on in how to help yourself first and then to help that other person if you go to a church that has a Celebrate Recovery Group those are excellent groups as well and reaching out to people in the community who know about addictions maybe a community mental health or Recovery Center something like that just reaching out and saying hey I need some direction on what to do here there is help out there but you got to seek it I hope that helped out it's actually a pretty big concept and I'm trying to fit it into a little video but I just wanted to put that out there because I believe somebody out there needs to hear that and there it is so I hope that helped you out and if it did or if you heard that and you know someone that needs to listen to it please share it that's the only reason I'm doing this is to put some value out there to help some people out thanks guys take care and feel free to comment in the comments below or you can send me a message through my website Jonathan Ling comm and I can answer any other questions that you might have thank you you guys take care I'll talk to you soon

Channel: Jonathan League

Views: 106,928

Keywords: Addiction, Counseling, Family Counsleing, Drugs, Denial, Rehab, Living with an addict, Intervetion, Alcohol, Alcoholic, divorce, recovery, meth addiction and relationships, loving an addict

Id: WF2w7FkyuO4

Length: 7min 58sec (478 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2016