Expert Q&A: How family dynamics shape addiction and recovery with Amber Hollingsworth
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version or watch the video and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
In this episode of the Heallist Podcast, we explore the role of family dynamics in addiction and recovery with Amber Hollingsworth, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor with over 20 years of experience working with individuals struggling with addiction and the families who love them. Amber brings a psychology-informed perspective to how patterns within families — denial, enabling, shifting roles — can quietly influence both the progression of addiction and the path toward recovery.
Drawing from real-world examples and her work with families, Amber shares how certain intervention approaches can support change, including what she describes as "invisible" or indirect methods. We dig into how loved ones can better understand their own role in the dynamic, respond more effectively, and create conditions that may encourage accountability and healing over time — without falling into the common traps that can unintentionally make things worse.
The Villain Role In Addiction
Amber Hollingsworth: The person with the addiction is really full of self-pity and resentment. It's like the fuel for addiction. And it's usually aimed in a lot of places, but there's a primary place. And it's usually the person closest to them, like their parent or their partner. You can't get to the addiction until you can get the villain thing resolved.
So there's this primary villain, and the villain is always just the person that sees the addiction. They have that front row seat, as I call it. And so they see the behind the scenes of this person and they see what's really going on. And so this is someone they love and they care about. And naturally they want to help them and they want to get this person to take this serious. So they start all these various ways of trying to get this person to see how big this problem is. That's what puts them in the villain role, because someone in denial, they don't want to see this issue. And so when you're trying to show it to them directly, they just get mad at you. And it serves as this giant distraction from them having to deal with what's going on with them. And you get this giant power struggle that goes on.
And so the family members, I know what's going on, they won't admit it. And so they get really bogged down and trying to find the evidence and all this stuff to present to this person as if I show you the evidence, you're going to admit it, which doesn't even work. And then they come to the person, trying to get the person to admit it. And then this person says, “You're crazy, you're overreacting,” or “that's not mine,” or some form of gaslighting. And then that makes the family member feel even more frustrated. And then they look for more evidence, and then this whole cycle just continues and continues and gets nowhere.
So the person with the addiction, and then the villain in the story - the family member, what will happen is the addicted person will then start complaining to the people around them about this villain person. So, the mother-in-law, the friends, and everything else, people outside of the family member start to view the family member as the problem. But they don't know that. And eventually the family member starts reaching out to the people and saying, “Hey, so-and-so's got a problem. Can you talk to them and trying to sort of recruit them in on the mission?” But what they don't know is that the person with the addiction, in a lot of cases, most has already recruited these people. When you go to them as the family member, they don't take you serious. They're secretly blaming you,, which is the case a lot of times. And so what happens to this family member is they feel completely alone and isolated. And it's like, “I'm the only one that sees this, no one will take me seriously, the person won't admit it. The family, they're enabling it, and they think it's me.”
So you get this horrible dynamic that really just fuels addiction. It all stems from defense mechanisms. And so once we're able to untangle that family dynamic, we're usually able to get things moving on the right track pretty quickly from there. But we get nowhere as long as that dynamic is happening.
How Families Lose Credibility Fast
Amber Hollingsworth: The general big picture of it is that what most families do is they try to protect the person from all of the outside real-world consequences, like they pay for the lawyers, they pay for summer school, they do all these things because they don't want this person to burn any permanent bridges or, have some kind of consequence that's major life altering. So they fix all of that, right? Externally, they're fixing everything. But internally, they're very negative with this person. And so you can see how that creates denial. It's like, “I'm fine, what you're talking about? My grades are fine, whatever,” because externally things are being held together.
Now the family member knows that's only because of them. But what the addicted person sees, it's just more and more evidence that you're crazy and you're overreacting and they're not that bad or they don't have a problem. You have to reverse that. You need to let all of the natural consequences that you possibly can fall. And a natural consequence is something that happened as a result of their addiction that you didn't have nothing to do with. Because a lot of families say, “Well, that's a consequence and it's a punishment.” It has to be something not related to you. If you doled it out, it's a punishment in that person's mind and they won't learn from it. So anything that naturally happens, let that happen. And then you play the good guy inside the context of the relationship. This allows them to start seeing the truth so much faster.Let the world be the villain and you be the good guy. Because when you're the good guy, then the person trusts you and they start talking to you. Now you have the ability to influence them. Now they care what you think. Now they're going to talk to you about what's going on. And now you can lead their thinking in a direction that you want it to go, but you still have to do it sort of what I call through the side door, not the front door.
A big thing that they do is they see the problem and they're constantly talking to this person about getting help. You need to get help. You need to get help. You should go to treatment. I'm not going to say with you unless you get treatment, you know, every kind of version of that. And if you're dealing with someone who doesn't think they have a problem and you're trying to talk to them about going to treatment, you're ruining what I call your credibility with the person. Like they're just eye rolling you and dismissing you. And now everything you say is ridiculous to them. So this person doesn't even think they have a problem, and you're trying to get them to go to six months of treatment. Like we're way off base here. We got to put first things first.
When a person does start to see it and feel it, if you've created a good, what I call credit score with the person, they trust you. They'll talk to you about it on some level. And eventually something will happen out here and they'll start saying things to you like, you know, I really got to cut it back, or I really need to stop doing this, or I need to take a break from this or whatever. They'll give you what we call change talk. Some version of change talk is going to happen, and you want to encourage that.
Now, when addicts and alcoholics change, they don't go from I'm in denial to, “Oh my gosh, I have a problem, I need to quit everything forever and go to treatment and get a sponsor.” That's not what happens. It's like they go, there's layers of denial, like “I don't have a problem at all,” to “I have a problem, but it's not that bad that I have a problem, but I can handle this myself.” “I have a problem, I need to stop this one thing, but I can still do this other thing.” It's what I call the bargaining stages. And instead of fighting them on it, if you'll sort of go with it, it'll go faster. There's no way to get there and skip these bargaining, but you can speed it up.
The truth of it is, deep down inside, they see it on some level. They see a need to change. They don't want to acknowledge that out loud because they have a lot of ambivalence about it and they don't want to commit to one side or the other, and they definitely don't want to tell you because then that makes it real, and then they know they're going to be pushed to make certain choices they're not ready to make. But deep down inside, when we're engaging in a behavior that doesn't fit with our values or that's harming us in some way, we know it. It's in there. So when I say you can't come at it directly, instead of trying to push that information into someone, you have to look inside of them and find what they already have and pull it forward.
Values, Spiritual Repair, And Brain Healing
Amber Hollingsworth: We view addiction as a biological problem. But the answer to addiction, pretty much no matter who you ask, what their belief is about it, is almost always spiritual. And the reason is because it's not that bad people get addicted. It's that people that get addicted start to act badly. And what I mean by badly is against their own values and morals and identity. And so as the addiction goes on, their behavior gets further and further and further away from who they are in their heart or who they truly want to be. And so, in order to fix that gap, you gotta get the behaviors to match the person's values. And it seems crazy because we're like, oh, it's a brain disease. Well, then why are you fixing it like this? It's that spiritual component that really has to come together for someone.
It's all about identifying someone's values and their identity. And what I tell the families is how they want other people to think about it. If they see themselves as a good father, do they see themselves as a good provider? What do they care about? And then if once you start talking to this person about that, you want to positively reinforce any of that. It's not just me saying, you can do it, you're cheerleadery vaguely or whatever. I'm saying, “Remember that time, this and this and this, that's what this is gonna be like.” And so it starts to move them and get them excited about wanting something different because they think sobriety is gonna be horrible. Because when you're in an active addiction, on the days you're sober, if there are any days, you're miserable. So you're thinking, I don't even want to live life like that. When you can get someone to see “actually, grass is a lot greener over here,” then they start to get excited about it.
Relapse Types And The Family Response
Amber Hollingsworth: People will do things like take 30 days off, and then they make it two weeks and then they use, or they have these periods of off and then on. I don't even know if I would call that a relapse because the person in their mind was eventually going back to using. So I'll say that's one category that's bargaining and not relapse. I would put that over there. Then you have the “it'll be different this time” category. They'll be doing really great for a while and then they'll convince themselves, sober for six months, a year. “It's not gonna hurt me to drink just one, or you know, this won't hurt, or I can smoke a little bit of weed because I never even liked weed, I never even had a problem with. with weed.” And so it's like a bargain comes back basically. But when they do that, it's not like they're like, oh, it's on, like I'm going to go head in. They convince themselves that they'll manage it differently. That's the majority of relapses. We convince ourselves somehow we're not going to let it get like it got before, but it always gets like it got before–usually pretty quickly.
And then there's an impulsive kind of relapse. Like when you're more vulnerable, like if you're stressed, if you're hungry, if you're you've used up all your willpower for the day and then you run into a certain trigger and then it's available. Sometimes you just move into autopilot and there's not even a lot of thinking involved. I always ask, “was this a premeditated relapse? Have you been thinking about it a while? Have you been craving it? Were you planning it?”
Identity Praise That Breaks Defenses
Amber Hollingsworth: One of the concepts that we teach is connecting to people's identity. Instead of saying something to your person like “you're being a terrible father and a bad influence on the kids and they see what you're doing. Wait until you find them doing it right,” you say “I always respected how much you make time for family.” You remind them of their values which puts it in the forefront of their mind and tomorrow if they're not acting in accordance they see that gap. And immediately you can see the lights come on in his head and that just that little bitty statement does so much. It's positive reinforcement. It makes them feel connected to me because it makes them feel seen, like really seen and it starts opening his eyes of this gap between who he is as values and what he's doing. That gap, that cognitive dissonance, is what will create the desire to change such a beautiful powerful example. Sometimes just a little tiny noticing statement like that will just shift someone's thinking they may not stop immediately but the change process will start.
