Be Ready When Your Child Is Ready To Accept Help for Addiction, With Brenda Zane

BRENDA Hey friend, it is just us today. I could be wrong, but I think this is our first time to sit down and chat together alone in 2026. It’s kind of fun to put a timestamp on an episode every now and then. Because there will be times when I’m looking for an episode to send to someone and I hear myself say, it’s the summer of 2021 or whatever, and I think back to that time and what was going on, it’s kind of cool and it places that episode in my memories.

[00:00:28] It kind of feels like I’ve captured time in a bottle or something. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, please pause what you’re doing right now. I know you’re multitasking all the things, but close your eyes and take a deep breath in. Think about this in breath is expansion, and then hold it if you can for just a few seconds and then exhale it all.

[00:00:56] Think about all the space that you just created for something new to slide in today. Try to do that again. Deep breath in. Think of expansion, and then let it all go. Releasing what you don’t need any longer and making space for something new. I used to have this recurring dream. I’m glad to say that I rarely have it anymore.

[00:01:20] But I used to dream that I had been waiting and waiting and waiting for something. I never really knew what it was by the time I woke up. I just knew it was something really important, and then suddenly the moment would arrive and I would always be completely unprepared, and it usually felt like I just missed whatever it was.

[00:01:40] By a few seconds, I would wake up in this panic because I just thought if I had paid more attention, I wouldn’t have missed it. And that’s basically what I wanna talk about today because there is this critical moment that can happen when you’re parenting a young person who’s struggling with their mental health and their substance use.

[00:02:02] It’s what I think of as this magical intersection of your young person arriving at this point where desperation. Meets willingness. And if you’re not ready for it, if you are not ready for it, my friend, that window can close before you even realized it was open. I’m gonna say that again. There’s a magical intersection your young person arrives at where desperation meets willingness.

[00:02:30] And if you are not ready for it, that window can close before you realize it was ever open. This comes directly from one of the nine core procedures in the craft approach and the craft approach is community reinforcement and family training. A horrible acronym, but it’s what we’ve got and it’s the evidence-based method that we teach in the stream community every Thursday night as we have for years.

[00:03:00] The specific procedure that I’m diving into today is called inviting the identified patient to enter treatment. But I wanna unpack this from a couple of different angles that I think are really going to resonate. I hope that they will resonate with you. So let me just paint you a little picture.

[00:03:20] Imagine that you’re having the most special, most important guests over for dinner. These are people that you have been trying to get together with for months. They’ve said yes three different times, but then they had to reschedule each time. And today, finally is the day they are coming over. You went to the store and unfortunately you forgot your list.

[00:03:44] So you have some of what you need, but not everything. You basically know what you wanna make for dinner and dessert, but you’re running low on a few key ingredients you might be able to get by and. You also chose a new main dish that you have never made before. You watched a YouTube video, but you don’t feel a hundred percent confident that you’ll pull it off the way you want to.

[00:04:11] Then you decided to run a few errands earlier in the day, but you got stuck in traffic. Then you ran into a really good friend at Target. So now you are running late and you’re just starting to do the food prep 30 minutes before your special guests arrive. The house is not clean. The bathroom definitely needs attention, and all you wanna do is take a nap because you’ve laid awake all night last night worrying about making this dinner.

[00:04:42] Perfect. Hmm. Does this sound familiar? Obviously my friend, I am not talking about actual dinner guests. I’m talking about that moment when your child, your adolescent, or your young adult who’s been struggling. They finally arrive at that magical intersection of desperation and willingness when they are actually ready to accept help or talk about accepting help.

[00:05:16] When they say those words that you have been dreaming and praying that you would hear, and if you are exhausted, unprepared, scrambling, and you haven’t done the background work, you might miss the moment Or you might be so frazzled and focused on the minutiae of the day to day that the help you’re able to offer or cobbled together isn’t the right fit.

[00:05:47] It isn’t now available or everything falls through because the logistics have not been worked out.

[00:05:55] so I wanna talk about two critical pieces of this craft procedure that I think can get overlooked. The first is about adding a third element to the intersection of desperation and willingness, and that is your preparation. And the second is about rethinking who the identified patient actually is in this whole scenario.

[00:06:18] So let’s start with talking about preparation. While you’re using the craft approach, you’re allowing natural consequences. You are rewarding non-US behavior. You’re not rewarding using behavior. You’re taking really good care of yourself. You’re holding healthy boundaries. All the things, your child’s behavior when you’re doing these things will likely start to shift.

[00:06:47] It might be slow. You definitely have to have patience, but more often than not, they will start to change and get closer to that point. Desperation can meet up with willingness,

[00:07:00] and let me just highlight that everybody’s point of desperation looks drastically different. For some people, it’s losing their job. For others, it could be a medical scare for someone, it could be watching a friend overdose or losing a friend to suicide. As I know many of our kids have. Sometimes, and I have heard this from so many podcast guests, it’s just waking up one day and realizing they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

[00:07:30] They’re tired of the chaos. They’re tired of lying. Tired of sleeping on the couches or sketchy hotel rooms, and tired of disappointing the people that they love. Of course, you cannot predict when this magical intersection is gonna happen or what it might look like, but what you can do is be ready when it does.

[00:07:55] So, while those subtle shifts that I talked about are taking place in your child, it’s vital that you are also working in the background to find the right resources for them, and importantly also for you. Think about it like this. It is like keeping your passport current even when you don’t have an international trip planned.

[00:08:17] And I have a fun personal story about this. I’ll tell you one day you are genuinely hoping that your friend calls and says, Hey, you wanna go to Mexico next week? You want to be able to say, yes, of course you want that opportunity, and so you keep that passport valid. You have a little travel fund set aside.

[00:08:37] You know what suitcase you’re gonna grab because when that invitation comes, you do not wanna have to say no or start scrambling and risk missing that trip if there’s been no preparation work done in the background. That short window of opportunity when your child is open to even considering getting some help might be lost while you’re scurrying around dealing with insurance and finances and logistics and exes and current co-partners and travel arrangements and all the things.

[00:09:13] And let me tell you, trying to figure out if a program takes your insurance at 11:00 PM on a Tuesday night when your child just said, I think I might need help. It’s not the time you wanna be starting to do that research,

[00:09:28] here’s another layer to all of this. The resources that you need might change over time. Likely will change over time, especially as your child ages, like when they go from 17 to 18, that’s a big change. Or when they turn 26 and they’re no longer on your insurance, legal issues can complicate things and change your options.

[00:09:50] Your finances can change. Your child’s mental health and potentially even a specific diagnosis can shift what is available and appropriate and what’s actually going to help them. So it’s not a one and done thing where you make this plan, set it aside, and just wait. It’s a living, breathing plan, and I like to think of it as a set of options or sort of simmering on a back burner.

[00:10:17] And preparation isn’t just about having a list of phone numbers or having a therapeutic consultant on speed dial, which is a great thing if you can do that or it’s not even knowing what programs are covered on your insurance plan. It is about you being mentally and physically prepared for what can be oddly, a really trying time when your child does accept help.

[00:10:43] Because what almost nobody tells you, which is what I’m gonna tell you, is when your kiddo goes off to treatment, is that there are almost always moments where they change their mind, where they demand to leave treatment, or if they’re 18 or older, they bolt, they leave a MA, which is against medical advice, where they beg and plead and say they have to come home.

[00:11:06] Or where they quit going to their therapist or counselor after one or two sessions. So those are things that you need to be prepared for. Those are the moments where you need the ability to stay calm through the chaos. You need a team around you to lean on, and we built that in the Stream and Hope Stream because you really cannot do this alone.

[00:11:31] You need to be physically well enough and have. The community and the stamina to continue on what is absolutely a marathon, not a sprint.

[00:11:42] This preparation work that you’re doing is also true. If your child is currently doing well and they’re in early recovery, as they sort of tend to wobble around in the first year. They might find that they need some more scaffolding. They might want to do some work with a life coach or try a new therapist.

[00:12:02] Try a new type of support like EMDR and having a few options already vetted can be incredibly helpful as long as they are asking for the help and you’re not kind of inflicting it on them. Unwanted desperation, plus willingness equals opportunity. Only if you have added that third piece, your preparation.

[00:12:28] Okay. So now let’s talk about this identified patient terminology. ’cause I think there is a huge misperception here that really needs to be addressed, which is when we talk about inviting the identified patient, entered treatment, which is literally the title of the chapter in the book. In craft language.

[00:12:49] When we talk about that, there’s sometimes an assumption on behalf of the family that your child, the young person who’s struggling with substance use is entering treatment, and that once they get there, you get to exhale, sleep through the night and stop living with your heart and your throat, which is likely true.

[00:13:11] But is that all you need to be doing? Probably not. The reality is your child is entering treatment or getting help with the person or program that best fits their needs, and you and any co-parent and even sometimes siblings or grandparents, should also be entering treatment in the format that’s most relevant to you and fits your needs.

[00:13:39] I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of program owners. Therapists, staff members, founders, consultants, people across the entire spectrum of addiction, treatment, and family support, and I have yet to hear of one single family where the child, the ip, the identified patient, was the only one who needed help.

[00:14:04] Let me say that again. Not one family. Now, when I say that. I’m saying your child might be the only one who needs to go to detox. They might be the only one who needs to get substances physically out of their system, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of the work that needs to be done. You, your co-parents, siblings, anyone else that’s close in your child’s life, you all need your own version of treatment so that the dynamics around the entire family are examined.

[00:14:41] Understood and improved. Otherwise, while your child’s in treatment or working with a therapist or a coach or a mentor, you are sitting at home relieved, of course, trying to make life go back to normal, trying to get things back to the way they used to be. And in doing that, you’re actually working to keep things as unhealthy as they were when your child was struggling.

[00:15:11] In the first place, you’re maintaining or trying to get back to the exact conditions that contributed to their struggle with substances or their mental health. Now, that might sound harsh. That might even sound like I’m blaming you. I am not. I promise you I’m not because I am guilty of this exact thing.

[00:15:36] When my son was in treatment the first time, I assumed he was off getting fixed, and then when he got home and got done with treatment, everything could just go back to the way it had been. Needless to say, many of you have listened to episode one and know that is not how things went. And now knowing what I know, I would never want things to go back.

[00:15:57] We had an unhealthy dynamic between us. He was not thriving with my parenting style. We all had to do a lot of work at undoing those things to make a better life for all of us. You may not have been aware or even are today aware of why your child was or is struggling or why they developed an unhealthy relationship with substances.

[00:16:22] A lot of parents don’t know those. Is exactly why Being involved in your own program, learning growth in your own version of treatment is absolutely vital to your child’s ability to create, and importantly sustain change. This experience with your child is going to require you to examine some very challenging things that can get very uncomfortable.

[00:16:51] It can bring up memories and emotions from your own past that you would rather leave buried. It may require you and your spouse, or partner or ex-spouse to have conversations about things you really don’t wanna talk about. Really uncomfortable conversations. It often requires you, the parent, the caregiver, to take the high road and be the bigger person.

[00:17:18] When your child, who by the way, might be six inches taller than you and a hundred pounds heavier than you when they’re being disrespectful or avoidant and not wanting to engage with you and saying things designed to hurt you, this is really hard. This experience that you’re going through with your child will test you in ways that you never knew were possible.

[00:17:44] And the truth is, if you allow it to, it can also teach you things about yourself that will help you have better relationships in all areas of your life. Not just with your struggling young person, but with your partner, your other kids, your parents, your even colleagues, and importantly, a great relationship with yourself.

[00:18:08] But you have to allow it and you have to look at what I like to call the long game. We have to pick our head up and not think about and obsess about the dishes left in their bedroom again, or the four days of school that they didn’t do this week or the fifth part-time job in the last six months. Not focusing about the arguments about food and what food they like and what food they dislike and what they want to eat or not eat, or whether they should be responsible for their own laundry at age 17, which by the way, I would say yes, absolutely they should. Those are distractions from the bigger work of internal examination.

[00:18:51] I’m gonna say that again. Those things, the small things, the day to day Are the distraction from the bigger work of your own internal examination.

[00:19:01] This is exactly why we created Hopestream, so that you as a parent have your own treatment, quote unquote program, your own coaches, your resources. Your community to talk about this stuff with and access to information that can be super hard to find. We also created the Stream, which is our full membership for moms and female caregivers because it is so much easier to adopt these mindsets, to really see the value of a comprehensive approach that includes the entire family rather than just focus on the young person.

[00:19:39] And when you’re doing this together alongside other moms who get it, it is so much easier when you are not isolated, when you’re not trying to figure this out alone at three o’clock in the morning with Google and Chachi PT as your only resources. That’s a very lonely and difficult place to be. We know.

[00:20:01] Okay. That was a lot. So let me bring this back around. At the intersection of desperation and willingness, it is real for sure, and it is so powerful and it can be fleeting. Your job isn’t to create that desperation in your child. That’s not what craft is about. Your job is to stop preventing or prolonging your child from arriving at the intersection.

[00:20:28] Your job is to stop rescuing them from the discomfort that can actually motivate them to change. Again, your job is to stop preventing or prolonging your child from arriving at that intersection. You wanna stop rescuing them from the discomfort that can actually motivate them to change and. While you’re doing the work of stepping back and allowing these natural consequences while you are rewarding positive behavior and not rewarding their use, when you’re taking incredibly good care of yourself and holding boundaries, while you’re doing all of that, you are also preparing.

[00:21:13] You’re researching, you’re making calls, you’re getting familiar with what’s out there. You’re lining up your own support. You’re doing your own work so that when your child is ready, you are not scrambling to throw together that dinner party with a bunch of missing ingredients and a messy house on no sleep.

[00:21:35] You are the prepared friend who gets to go on that trip to Mexico next week. Because you have your passport all up to date and travel fund ready to go. You know what cute little suitcase you’re gonna bring? And you are not desperately trying to get that renewal expedited because you have planned ahead even when you didn’t know what was going to be offered.

[00:22:00] And that’s when the real growth and fun can happen. So this isn’t just about your child getting help, this is about your whole family system becoming healthier, and that requires all of you, not just the one who needs detox or residential treatment, or an addiction counselor, all of you to do the work. It isn’t easy, but it is possible, and luckily you do not have to do it alone.