10 Self-Coaching Questions Every Parent of a Child Struggling With Substances Should Ask

10 Self Coaching Questions for Parents of Kids Who Struggle With Mental Health and Substances, with Brenda Zane

[00:00:00] Hey friend, it is just us today and I am excited to finally be doing this episode because this has been germinating in my brain for like over a year, and I’m finally just now getting to sharing it with you. The idea for this originated actually in a business coaching group that I’m part of, and they provided self coaching questions for us to use because, I don’t know. Unless you’ve got your mentor or your coach attached to you 24 7, there are going to be times when you need to be able to work through questions and problems on your own, even if you’re part of our community, right? There’s still times where things are happening or you are really struggling, sort of with some big concept, and it’s helpful to have questions that you can reflect on on your own and work through some of those things. So 
[00:01:00] anyway, I thought it would be super helpful because those business questions were really helpful for me and I thought, Hey, let’s do that for our podcast listeners. So I think, at least for me, one of the things that really builds confidence when you’re trying to navigate unknown territory, unknown situations is being able to resolve your own problems and gain your own insights into what’s going on. So of course. As always, it’s great to get input from people who have been there before, people who are professionally qualified to help you, but that is not always possible and so in this episode, I will be sharing 10 questions that you can use in various situations, to ask yourself that are going to help you help yourself. I know it was a little 

[00:02:00] bit of a roundabout thing, but these questions will help you help yourself and I have to say it was a little tricky to get this down to even 10 questions because there are so many more, and maybe Cathy and I will do a follow up and we’ll get her input as well, because it’s always good to get insight from multiple brains and multiple perspectives. But these 10 in particular. I think are ones that we at, I would say at Hope Stream generally, we believe are the core at getting at things like, what is the root of your child’s problems? Why are they using substances? How can you start to create change in your family? Right. So here we go. We’ll dive right in because I know you are busy and you like to get right to it. So let’s start off with question number one, which is, what is my role in some of the
 [00:03:00] problems that my child is facing? So ITC, the Invitation to Change asks us as parents to look at our own behavior as part of the system, not just our child’s behavior. I know that that is not always the most fun thing to do, but we do have to look at our own behavior as part of the system, not just our child. Now, what this doesn’t mean is it does not mean that you are responsible for their choices, that you are the one that caused them or are causing them to use substances. By any means, that is not what we’re saying, but what we are saying is that it is helpful to ask yourself and consider what is my role? What are my responses, when things happen, what are my actions that I am taking? What are the beliefs that I 

[00:04:00] hold about substance use, about kids breaking rules and boundaries and things like that and how might all of those things, my actions, my beliefs, my behaviors, how could those potentially be contributing to the situation that my child is facing and that our entire family is facing? This is a slightly uncomfortable question that we have to ask ourselves, which is why I put it first, because it’s important in all situations to pause and ask yourself, what is my role in this particular situation? That could be a bigger like global question about, you know, in general in our family, what is my role in this? Or it could be in a more specific situation that you’re dealing with. So really asking yourself am I contributing to the 

[00:05:00] dysfunction or the dysregulation? Am I having highly emotional responses or am I helping to calm the situation and control it by responding thoughtfully with intention and presence? So that’s a hard one. Number one, what is my role in some of the problems that my child and or my family is facing? This question leads nicely into question number two, which is, am I accidentally making it easier for my child to continue using? Now, this is directly tied to CRAFT and the section on removing positive reinforcers. For use. So we do not want to be positively reinforcing or accidentally or unintentionally making it easier for our child to use substances or engage in the 
[00:06:00] behaviors that cause them to use. So if you are providing money or housing or emotional rescue or actual, like physical rescue without any conditions, that may inadvertently be funding or cushioning the behavior that you do not want to see. And one of the most common questions that we get from parents, is, what is the difference between supporting my child and this is gonna be a term that I don’t really love, but you’re gonna recognize it, so I will use it and enabling them. I think the best way to think about this is if you are supporting them. The actions that you take and the things that you do are leading them toward healthier behavior or toward accepting help. If you are 

[00:07:00] accidentally or unintentionally doing things that move them closer to using or unhealthy behavior or friends or situations, then that’s gonna be something that you wanna reconsider. So I know that is not black and white, but nothing is right. So it’s a really difficult question because often we do things or we make decisions based on trying to avoid a confrontation or an uncomfortable situation. We are afraid of their response and their backlash and the outbursts that might occur. And unfortunately when we do that, we are often removing natural barriers that would prevent them or potentially slow them down or detour them around their substance use or engaging in other unhealthy behaviors. So to recap question number two, 

[00:08:00] the question you can ask yourself is, am I unintentionally or accidentally doing things that make it easier for my child to use substances or engage in unhealthy behavior that is connected to their substance use? And there’s a lot in there, but I will leave it with that question. Okay. Moving on to question number three that you can use to coach yourself is, am I shielding my child from the natural consequences of their substance use? Kind of ties in with number two, but I wanted to call it out because CRAFT really teaches you as the parent. To allow natural consequences to land when your child is doing things and to not remove them or scooch around them or delay them. And this is one of the most concrete and actionable CRAFT skills that I can share with you. 

[00:09:00] It is by far the most, I would say this is not like a data point, but from Brenda Zane’s standpoint and all of the parents that I see using this, it is actually one of the most actionable and concrete and effective things that you can do. Episode 263 covers this. So I would highly recommend going back and we’ll put a link in the show notes. You don’t have to remember that episode 263 is gonna be a really good one for talking about natural consequences and one thing that I really wanna call out is that the invitation to change reframes natural consequences as an act of love. Not an act of abandonment. And I know it can feel like that, right? So your child’s doing something, you know there’s gonna be a bad result from that and your natural instinct is to step in and change that and 

[00:10:00] not make them go through that and when you allow that natural consequence to happen, it can really feel like, ah, am I abandoning them in this moment? And again, we could do days and days and days of episodes around this topic alone, but it is not abandonment. It is an act of love because when you allow them to feel the impact of what they are doing, it is a way of motivating them to change. If they don’t feel the impact, they don’t have a reason to change. So. Trust me. I know this feels completely counterintuitive because as a parent, you are wired to help your child, and so when they are hurting, they are in danger. Your natural response is gonna be to step in and help them. Of course it is. That is normal. Don’t feel bad about that. Unfortunately when you 
[00:11:00] do, again, they’re not going to feel or learn that the natural response to their action is negative and it does not provide them a reason to change their behavior. I’m not gonna go into a ton of detail on this, because you can go back and listen to episode 2 63, but one thing that I do wanna say is that we often are shielding our kids from those natural consequences because it is so painful for us to see and experience, and we don’t wanna feel that discomfort ourselves. We don’t want to watch our child suffer, and often when they’re suffering, they’re blaming us and so it’s a little bit selfish actually, because what we’re doing is we are rescuing them because we don’t want to feel the discomfort of that natural consequence. So we really have to first deal with our own emotions.

[00:12:00] We have to deal with our own ability to witness our kids’ struggle, and that’s so hard to do. But until we do that, we are going to continue to allow them to kind of skirt what the world does, when you behave in certain ways and when you engage in certain activity. So I will leave it at that listen to episode 2 63 and we will move on to question number four, and this is do I understand the underlying reason that my child is using substances? Okay, this is a foundational question. Do I understand the underlying reasons of why my child is doing what they are doing? So CRAFT has a procedure, it is called doing a functional analysis. That is just I don’t know, it’s a term I don’t resonate with. So we sort of 
[00:13:00] recreated and readapted that at Hope Stream we have a framework called the Insight Map and it directly addresses this. The invitation to change also has a concept called behaviors make sense? So either one of those are gonna get at this particular question, and when you go through our insight map framework, what you discover are, or the things that you’re working to discover are what are the internal and the external triggers. That causes my child to use, and this is incredibly informative. I cannot talk enough about how informative it is to actually sit down and map this out and we literally have a framework like you’re drawing on a page to figure this out. It’s very practical and then you’re also figuring out what are the positive and negative outcomes of their use and we get into a ton of detail on that. So. If you’re not a member 
[00:14:00] we have a whole section, a whole hour session on this. So, again, the functional analysis from CRAFT, which we call the insight map, and then in the invitation to change, there’s a whole session that we do on behaviors make sense? So I call this the hot stove analogy. People don’t go around touching hot stoves because they generally don’t get anything out of it. We do things because we get something out of it. So with a hot stove, you might be looking at your child and saying, whoa, they have their hand firmly planted on this hot stove, right? All kinds of bad things. But they are getting something out of it. I will give you a personal example of this. I drink two cups of coffee every day before noon. Because if I don’t, I will have an insane headache by 2:00 PM Okay. My behavior makes sense. Sometimes, if I’m honest, I don’t 
[00:15:00] even want the second cup of coffee. You know, I have my cup at, I don’t know, six o’clock, and then I get busy and then I look at the clock and it is one or two o’clock in the afternoon and I’m like, oh no, I am gonna get a headache and I will drink a cup of coffee. Only because it is gonna prevent me from getting a massive headache. This is what we are talking about. If somebody looked at that from the outside and didn’t understand my headache situation, they would say, you’re crazy. What are you doing? Why are you drinking a cup of coffee at two o’clock? ’cause now you’re gonna be awake at whatever time. So. That’s just a little personal example might be TMI, but you may relate to the coffee situation and this also connects if you are a fan of Dr. Gabor Maté as I am, he asks a core question of, we don’t ask why the addiction, we ask why the pain? Okay, so this goes 

[00:16:00] directly toward what he has learned in his decades and decades and decades. Do you know that he is over 80 years old. I just learned that the other day. He is like, amazing. So not asking why the addiction, but asking why the pain and I mean, I could have made this question number one because it is also one of the most foundational questions that you need to be able to ask in a judgment free and very curious way. Otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re responding to the behavior. Which we talk about as just being the tip of the iceberg, instead of looking for the cause of the behavior, which is all that stuff under the water that you can’t see and it takes work and it takes courage and it takes a lot of patience to start to uncover what is beneath the surface. So that was self-coaching question number 
[00:17:00] four, do I understand the underlying reasons why my child is using substances? Moving on to number five, and this is one that is also a little painful to ask. I am sorry, but it’s important, which is am I modeling the behavior I want to see in my child? Hmm. Am I modeling the behavior I want to see in my child? Both ITC invitation to change and CRAFT. Emphasize you, mom, dad, stepmom, stepdad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, whoever you are who is listening. You are the primary agent of change in the family system. You are the primary agent of change in the family system, and the reason why we focus on you is because you have a unique position 

[00:18:00] to wield incredible influence with your child or whoever it is that you love that has brought you here. CRAFT includes specific guidance on your behavior as a lever for your child to change because your kids are watching you. You may not think they are. They look like they’re very distracted. They look like they’re not present. Even if they don’t live with you. Trust me, they have been observing and they will do what you do, not what you say to do. Your child is watching and they will do what you do, not what you say to do. So there is, I see this all the time in families, there’s this hypocrite syndrome. So if you are coming home and, you know, gotta have my beer or my wine or 
[00:19:00] whatever it is before I can sort of make dinner, or if you are using other substances in the evenings to get to sleep, whatever it is, and trust me, this is normal. This is no judgment. I am just saying that you are modeling what your child is gonna do. And so it really is important to think about, oh gosh, like what am I doing that I would be super happy to see my child doing? And this connects to self-regulation skills. We teach self-regulation skills throughout both approaches, the invitation to change and CRAFT and I wanna mention that this could be very straightforward, like I just said, the use of substances. What are you doing? What are your habits? How do you unwind at the end of the day? Or it could be more subtle than that. It could be how is your distress tolerance? What are your coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety? How is your 

[00:20:00] emotional regulation? Is it fairly even? Does your child know what to expect? You know, when they come home and there’s an issue? Are you willing to try new things even though you may not believe you can do it? Because trust me, your child is out there thinking, I don’t think I can get sober. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can get through a day without smoking. I don’t think I can get through a day without a Xanax. So what is your willingness to try to do new things and to try to do things that scare you or feel out of reach for you? Are you engaged in your own life? Are you doing things that light you up? Are you doing things that you have enjoyed your whole life? And they’re things that you can get absorbed in and kind of get into a flow with. These are all things that we want our kids to see us doing. I know this can be really difficult because if you’ve been in this for a while, and I know you probably have, you have probably let 

[00:21:00] go of a lot of the things that used to bring you joy that you used to enjoy doing, and you know, at this point you really have, with this question in particular, you have to turn the mirror on yourself. But it’s a really, really important self-coaching question. That’s why I included it. Am I modeling the behavior I want to see in my child? Number six is am I giving positive reinforcement for the things I want to see more of? This is a core CRAFT skill, positive reinforcement for non-using behavior. It is really legitimately one of the most evidence-based, most researched and proven tools in the entire approach. I talk about this in terms of what gets rewarded, gets repeated, and I’ve said this on numerous podcast episodes. I wish I 

[00:22:00] could remember all the numbers, but I can’t. What gets rewarded gets repeated and CRAFT is explicit in that most parents dramatically under reinforce positive behavior and they over respond to and over reinforce negative behavior. I’m gonna say that again because it is so important. CRAFT is explicit in the fact that most parents dramatically under reinforce positive behavior and over respond to negative behavior and guess what? That makes sense because you are scared, you’re freaking out, you don’t know what to do and so the negative behavior gets all of the attention. The invitation to change in that approach, we really talk about this as shifting the emotional climate of the relationship. Relationships and your 

[00:23:00] home environment become sort of this, I think of it as like a big pit of negativity. It is usually, at least this was true in my home, and I know most of the people I talk to, they say, oh my gosh, my home just feels very negative, very toxic. There’s just this tension and really negative energy in the home and again, that makes sense because there is somebody in the home or maybe multiple people in the home who are really struggling, so that makes sense. The way I really think about this one, when I apply it to myself is. I don’t love to work out. I work out because I know it’s good for me and after COVID, I think like a lot of people, I had put on some extra weight, and so I was really being intentional about losing some weight and getting in better shape and I got a few comments from people. Oh gosh, you look amazing. You 
[00:24:00] look really great. What are you doing? I had even gotten a Peloton. If you’ve been a listener for a while, you might remember my Peloton days. I so wanted to be a Peloton girl. I just ended up not being a Peloton lover. However, while I was doing that concentrated effort of getting back in shape. I got comments on that, and guess what? Every single time somebody gave me a positive comment, it made me wanna go get back either on the bike or with the weights or walking or whatever I was doing, because that behavior was being reinforced, so it got repeated. So that’s just another little personal example, but I think you can probably relate when somebody positively reinforces you for something and it is genuine, it makes you want to do more of it. So, more negativity and nagging and yelling and all of sort of the default 

[00:25:00] behaviors that we end up doing can lead to a cycle where our child decides to use more and this is not you again, not you causing it. But when there is more yelling, more negativity, more nagging and like all when they come home and when your relationship is filled with those things, they don’t really have other coping skills to deal with that. And so their way of dealing with that is to use more. So being able to use positive reinforcement, find something that they have done that is. Either positive or less negative, and I’ve talked about this on other episodes as well, reinforce that. Hey, that was really great. Thank you for, you know, taking the garbage out. I was really glad to see you got up in time for work yesterday. I can see that you’re really putting effort into keeping this job. Those kinds of things go a long way to somebody who is working on changing their 

[00:26:00] behavior. Now I will say that this one can also be very confusing because you may be reluctant to be positive and reward your child with attention or connection or words of affirmation when they are actively using. You might think, oh, is that enabling them again, that horrible e word? But no, it is not. You are reinforcing positive behaviors, behaviors that you want to see more of and because this is so confusing, we have a full hour session that we do on this in the community because we want you to know how to use this properly. We want you to know how and when to provide that positive reinforcement so that it becomes a really effective tool in your tool belt. Alright, so that was number six. Am I giving positive reinforcement for the things that I want to 
[00:27:00] see more of? Moving on to number seven, self-coaching question, which is, am I reacting emotionally and participating in the drama around my child’s substance use, or am I able to stay calm and respond thoughtfully with intention? Both the invitation of change and the CRAFT approaches identify emotional reactivity on your part as parent as one of the primary ways that we can inadvertently reinforce the cycle, so. One of the reasons I think, and this is what I see every day, one of the reasons that we as parents tend to respond emotionally, which is a contributing factor to the drama and the chaos, is because we are scared. Naturally, we’re scared, and because we have not found our 

[00:28:00] own way to handle our emotions and control our distress tolerance and to navigate that. We also tend to react emotionally through outbursts and we say things that we don’t mean and things that we are not gonna enforce when we are not taking care of ourselves. When you are exhausted and frustrated and you haven’t slept and you are isolated, it is really, really easy to respond from an emotional standpoint and contribute to sort of the ongoing dysfunction. One saying that we have at Hope Stream, and it is not unique to us. This is not something that we created, but we say it a lot and that is don’t pick up the rope. Don’t pick up the rope. As you know, it takes two people to play a game of tug of war, and if you don’t pick up the rope, the other person can’t play the game. They can’t pull on 

[00:29:00] anything. They can’t tug you and jerk you around, and that diffuses the drama and the emotional reactivity and the dysfunction. So a really good question as a follow on to this that you can ask yourself, and I would highly encourage you to journal on this, is what am I doing to take care of myself? What am I doing to enhance my ability to stay calm, to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting emotionally? This is a really important one, and write in big, big font on your paper. Don’t pick up the rope. Alright, we’re down to the last three questions that you can use to coach yourself through this experience. And number eight is, have I reached a place of acceptance about where we actually are right now? Or am I still living in denial and 

[00:30:00] pushing back? If you have heard of Tara Brock, she has a reign practice and she talks a lot about radical acceptance. She actually has a book called Radical Acceptance. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes, radical acceptance is a prerequisite for effective action. You cannot move forward and create change if you don’t accept where you’re starting from. It’s just a really simple fact. You can’t move forward if you can’t accept where you’re standing in this moment and one of the most important things that I wanna mention is acceptance does not equal approval. If you say, I accept that my child is using harmful substances, I accept that my child is really struggling with their mental health. I accept that our family is not functioning in a healthy way right now. That doesn’t mean that you’re saying, 
[00:31:00] oh, this is all good and I’m fine with it. You’re just saying this is what is, and it takes time to get there. So if you’re not there, that’s okay. The invitation to change, as you know, draws really heavily from motivational interviewing. It’s one of the very core concepts within the invitation to change, and that requires you to meet your child where they are. Not where you want them to be. So if you’re gonna use motivational interviewing, you’ve got to get to a place of acceptance. Otherwise, you’re coming at this with an agenda, with a desire for them to change. And that is not what motivational interviewing is about. You have to be able to meet them where they are. It’s also, acceptance is really foundational to CRAFT because CRAFT is a very specific set of tools and what we call procedures, which another weird word, but strategies and tools that you can use 

[00:32:00] and you can’t use those effectively if you are sort of bargaining with reality. So. Episode 2 76. Again, that’ll be in the show notes, but episode 2 7 6, is a really good one to listen to. I did a deep dive on acceptance and also the difference between acceptance and accepting. Very different things and people sometimes get those confused. So listen to episode 2 76. It’s a huge one. We could spend a lot of time on it and you could spend a lot of time just getting to a place of acceptance and that’s okay. And if you’re still sort of pushing back and, you know, oh, maybe it’s really not that bad. Maybe this is gonna self-correct. My child couldn’t have a substance use disorder if you’re still in that place. It’s okay. Just start working on getting to and learning about 

[00:33:00] acceptance. I would highly recommend Tara Brock. Just look her up. Google her. You’ll find all of her material but I included this piece on acceptance because it is the foundation and the requirement before you can change yourself and therefore influence anybody else in your world to change. Okay, we are getting down to the last two questions. Number nine is, have I neglected my own health and wellbeing by attaching myself to my child’s struggle? Have I neglected my own health and wellbeing by attaching myself to my child’s struggle? I did an episode with Cathy where we talked about this, it’s episode number 3 21, and we talked about asset protection, and I am really very, 

[00:34:00] invested in this idea of asset protection because you are likely one of the only positive assets in your child’s life. Maybe, maybe they’ve got other folks in their life who are really positive and trying to move them in the right direction and have their best interest at heart, but likely there are not so many of those people in their life. So we need to protect the positive asset in your child’s life. So episode 3 21. Take a listen to that. We also talk sometimes about, you know, don’t circle the drain with your child. They may be like circling that drain and they really need you to remain above water and to remain healthy so that you are there and you are solid and you’re able to help them when they need you. I also wanna talk about with this question, the difference between 

[00:35:00] self-care and self preservation. If you are in the thick of it, if your child is in active use, if they are in treatment even, and maybe they’re new in treatment and you’re still in that really uncomfortable, like weird stage of like, oh, what do we do now? Even if they’re new into recovery, that can be a really challenging time. You are more likely in self preservation mode than self-care mode. I believe, and I know Cathy believes this too, that you get to do self care when the boat is mostly stable. If your boat is rocky, if your boat is tipping over, if your boat is upside down, you are in self-preservation mode. And that means that you do, you know, you have to be very intentional and very strict about taking care of yourself. Make it a project. It’s like Project me and once you get 
[00:36:00] into a more stable place, then you get to do self care and you know, have your meditation practice, have your morning routine, your evening routine when you’re in self preservation mode. That may be more, basic, like I am going to make sure I eat today. I’m gonna make sure I have water today. I’m gonna make sure I move my body today. So just wanna make a note on that because I think it is important. We also know that this is highly counterintuitive, and yet it is critical. It’s a critical part of your child’s recovery. So if you are in that self-preservation mode, start small, add one healthy activity to your day, and know that it is okay to have fun when your child is struggling. It’s okay. To go out to dinner with the friends, to go to the concert to take a vacation. I know it 

[00:37:00] feels crazy. I know it’s so hard to do that. But again, go back to question number five. Are you modeling what you want to see in your child if you are always sad, always crying, always moping around, always stressed out and anxious, and your body’s falling apart, which trust me, I did all of those things. I was all of those things. How does that look to your child? Would they look at you and say, gosh, sobriety looks awesome. I would really love to be in my mom’s shoes or in my dad’s shoes, maybe not so, this is so important that in CRAFT there is one entire module, whole procedure on self care for caregivers for you, and it is not a luxury, it is a clinical necessity. That’s why it’s actually a full procedure in CRAFT. If you’re gonna be able to sustain yourself and to 

[00:38:00] be in this for the long haul, the marathon that it is, you have to be taking care of yourself. There’s research actually that shows that caregiver burnout, you parent burnout directly undermines the consistency that is required to help somebody who’s struggling with a substance use. It really does. So. This is just again, another plea from myself, from Cathy, from all of us at Hope Stream to prioritize your wellbeing because it is actually inseparable from your child’s recovery journey and trajectory. Okay, so important. All righty. Number 10, self-coaching question that you can use on this journey is, am I able to separate my identity from my child’s 

[00:39:00] or have I lost myself in their story? This is such a hard one. It is really common when you have a child who’s struggling seriously to become a hundred percent consumed with and obsessed by their actions and their behavior and their challenges, all of it. And I’m here to tell you a, that is very common. So if that’s, you just know you’re in good company. And the other thing to know is that your child is not your report card. They are not despite what our culture tells us of, you know. Oh wow. What a successful kid must be their parents, very successful or if this kid is struggling, not graduating from high school, bombed out of the second year of college.All the things that we go through. That does not mean you caused it. They are not your report 

[00:40:00] card. So we have a whole session on that in our hope starts here course that we really go into a lot of that disconnecting your identity from your child’s, really looking at enmeshment. You know, do you know where your borders are? In relation to where your child’s borders are. This is really challenging stuff and sometimes my friend, this takes a therapist to go through these questions with, especially this one because for parents it’s really easy to have that fusion of myself and my child and I hear this a lot from folks in our community from parents in our community, I call it the talking in the we. We are in a great program now. We have a great therapist on board. We are moving into sober living next week, and when I hear that, it really 
[00:41:00] makes me want to encourage you to reconsider. Pulling away a little bit. I’m gonna find the episode. I can’t remember the number, but we talked about un vel crowing from our kids and really getting some distance between them and ourselves and I know that’s really hard. I was very guilty of this one myself. A lot of times we hear parents describe themselves as being addicted to their child’s addiction. Right. It’s been so long you’ve been at this for years. Sometimes 4, 5, 10, 15 years and what happens is we as a parent, becomes addicted to our child’s addiction. It is all consuming. It takes up all of our brain space, all of our soul, all of our spirit. Everything is about our child’s addiction and again, this is where it’s really helpful to have a good therapist. I would highly encourage you 

[00:42:00] to find a therapist who is well-versed in addiction and substance use, helpful if they’re CRAFT trained. And I’ll put a resource in the show notes of where you can find a CRAFT trained therapist so you have that. But if your identity is tied to your child’s success, then you’ll be forever, forever trying to change and mold and create something in them that may not be them. And that often comes at the expense of their health, of their mental, you know, wellbeing because they feel your need for them to be something that they may not be. Okay, so episode 3 24, Raleigh Glass, who is one of our hope Stream contributors. He does monthly coaching with our 
[00:43:00] parents. Listen to his episode, please, with a notebook, because you’re gonna be taking notes but he really reframes codependency into an understandable concept that I know for a fact many, many, many of our members and many parents are really caught in this cycle of what he refers to as external dependency. So listen to episode 3 24. It is a gold mine. I said before, and I’m gonna say it again, there are so many other questions that I could include in this list. It was really difficult to get to these 10, but these ones are foundational. Okay? So they’re a little bit higher level concepts versus some additional questions. That I promise I will do in another episode that will be a little bit more tactical and practical. 
[00:44:00] So a little bit more of like, my kid just came home. It’s 2:00 AM they’re wasted. They drove home, you know, like in the moment type stuff. We’ll do, some self coaching questions that you can ask yourself in that moment. But I wanna just start with these because I think we have to start at some of these higher level concepts that will start to move you into a different place and move you into a place where you can reflect on how am I doing and how am I impacting this situation? Okay. I’m gonna do a quick recap because I know that there was a lot in here and again, go to the show notes because there’s gonna be all the resources there but number one, what is my role in some of the problems that my child is facing? Number two, am I accidentally 

[00:45:00] or unintentionally making it easier for my child to continue using? Number three, am I shielding them from the natural consequences of their substance use? Number four, do I understand the underlying reason that below the iceberg reason why my child is using substances? Number five, am I modeling the behavior I want to see for my child? Number six, am I giving positive reinforcement for the things that I want to see more of? Number seven, am I reacting emotionally and participating in the drama around my child’s substance use, or am I able to stay calm and respond thoughtfully. Number eight. Have I reached a place of acceptance about where we actually are right now? Or am I still living in denial? 

[00:46:00] Number nine, have I neglected my own health and wellbeing by attaching myself to my child’s struggle? And number 10, am I able to separate my identity from my child or have I lost myself in their story? As I went through these, you may have gravitated toward a few that just felt a little more pertinent and a little more like, oh, that kind of hit hard and if that happened, I would really encourage you to go back to that one or those few and write them out and take some time to journal on these things. Talk through them with your therapist, however it’s best for you. And do that every day for a couple of weeks because what you’re gonna start seeing are some patterns that emerge around these specific questions and then from that place, you could 
[00:47:00] start working on creating change. I know some of them can be uncomfortable. They’re icky to have to think about and reflect on, and that’s because they require us to look at us. They require you to look at your own actions, your behaviors, your beliefs, and that’s okay if it does make you feel a little ugh. It’s because you’ve been doing the best that you can with what you have, and now that you have more information and you have some of these questions to coach yourself with, you’re able to do something different. The fact that you’re here, the fact that you are still listening, the fact that you’ve gone through all 10 of these coaching questions means that you’re serious about wanting to create change in your family, and I love that you are doing the work. That is what we see in the members of our community and the stream, 

[00:48:00] and that is why we call you a SEAL team parent because you do things and you experience things that most normal parents don’t. And when I look at these, I truly wish that I had had these questions to ask myself. When I was in the thick of it. I would have had to do some self-examination that I wasn’t doing because I was so 100% laser focused on my son’s behavior and trying to fix him. Versus looking at myself and seeing how I could change myself, and when you change yourself, those around you will begin to change as well. This was really nice just to have this time with you to chat about these things. It’s so, so admirable that you keep showing up, that you keep finding new ways and new approaches to take. To create that 
[00:49:00] positive change. I also hope that you are seen as you adapt some of these skills and strategies that they impact all of your relationships, not just the relationship with your child who brought you to Hope Stream. I think that that is one of the cool things about becoming more psychologically and emotionally intelligent and informed. You’re able to relate to people in a different way, whether that’s being curious about their behavior, being more compassionate, being more empathetic to what somebody might be going through. Or if you’re trying to respond differently to the people who are in your life and who you interact with on a day-to-day basis. I know for me, I have a completely different mindset when it comes to things like tolerating physical and emotional discomfort because of the skills and the tools that I’ve learned. I would 
[00:50:00] also say that I am so much more intentional and mindful about how I move through the world and interact with people because I have learned that everybody, every single buddy in the world is going through something and just because on the outside I don’t see it, doesn’t mean that it’s not there. And that has been truly, truly insightful for me. Okay my friend, thanks for hanging out with me today. And thank you as always for doing the hard work that is required. It does pay off if you stick with it. It pays off in unimaginable ways. Alright, I will meet you right back here next week.