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Episode 314
ABOUT THE EPISODE:
I recently stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and found myself thinking about change, why some people make it, why others don’t, and what actually separates the two. It’s a question I think about constantly when I look across the Hopestream community, because what I see is that some families are seeing real transformation while others seem stuck in the same Groundhog Day loop, month after month.
This solo episode is my attempt to provide some answers to that question directly – why some people see greater change than others. Drawing on 6+ years of watching hundreds of moms and female caregivers move through this process, some gaining traction, some spinning their wheels, I’m sharing the 10 most common reasons why parents who are doing the work aren’t getting the results they desperately want. It’s an honest, no-fluff audit of what might actually be holding you back, and it comes from my heart – from someone who has been neurotic about results my entire career for good reason: there are no more important results than a healthy family.
If you’ve been at this for a while and feel like things aren’t moving or worse, like they’re sliding backward, this one is for you.
You’ll hear about:
- The foundational piece most parents skip without realizing it.
- Why doing more things at once often backfires.
- The timing factor that determines whether any skill actually works.
- The fastest path forward when communication has broken down.
- Why inconsistency isn’t a character flaw.
- What going it alone is really costing you.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
- Hopestream Playlists – Start Here Playlist
- Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist on using Motivational Interviewing, Hopestream episode 306
- Dr. Emily Kline on using Motivational Interviewing for hard conversations, Hopestream episode 160
- Using Motivational Interviewing and CRAFT as a double punch effort to create change in your family, Hopestream episode 256
- CRAFT family resources and providers with Helping Families Help
- Using CRAFT, MI and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy together to help your child, Hopestream episode 260
- Stages of Change workshop
- Stages of Change downloadable cheat-sheet here
- Hopestream podcast episode 66 on the Stages of Change
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Get our free, 4-video course, Hope Starts Here, and access to our Limited Membership here
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol
Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.
Brenda Zane | Episode 314
[00:00:00] Hey friend, it’s just us today. It feels really good to have a minute to exhale together to take those two or three really deep breaths and just connect with each other and get grounded. I recently had the experience of going to the Grand Canyon. I’d been to the North Rim before, but I got to go to the South Rim, and there’s nothing like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon to give you a lot of perspective on life and while I was there, I was reading all of the information about the different layers and geology and the billions of years of history there, and it gave me a really good chance to just kind of zoom out on life, on goals, on change, on thinking about why things do change
[00:01:00] and why things don’t change and anyway, I won’t go on about that, but if you ever have a chance to go to the Grand Canyon, I would highly recommend it. It is a really good place to get some perspective and one of the things that I started thinking about when I was there was what is this thing about change and why do some people change?
Why do some people not change? Why does it take some people longer to change than others? And what are some of those triggers that cause people to change? I don’t know. It was a really fascinating time to think about that and I started thinking about what we see in our community in the Hope Stream community, both in our membership, but also with podcast listeners. Because I get feedback from you all, from anybody because I get feedback from you listeners
[00:02:00] about what’s going on in your lives and how things are changing and one of the things that i’ve been thinking about lately that I see in our community is some people, some of our members, the moms and female caregivers in our community really see quite a bit of change in themselves and in their kids and in the rest of the family.
And then there’s others who seem to be a little bit on a hamster wheel. There’s not a lot of change. There’s a lot of Groundhog Day and it makes me wonder what the difference is in those people. So of course I did some thinking on that and I am a fairly results oriented person. You could probably chat with Cathy about that,
my co-founder, I’m always talking about results and what are our results, and that’s because I come from a corporate background where for 20, 30 years, all I did was work towards specific
[00:03:00] results and goals and KPIs and budgets and quotas. So naturally, I have just been wired for results and I’m glad for that corporate experience because I think otherwise I may not be quite so, what is the word I want to use?
Neurotic about helping our members and our listeners get results because there are no more important results. That you could be striving for then for a healthy family, right. So. I know many of you are like me. You work in a corporate setting, you have those goals, and we are always kind of fine tuning our skills to be able to reach those goals.
And there’s a lot of connection there with the skills that you have learn in order to see change in your family and the reason why I think it’s important to see results and to think about it in that way is because otherwise this experience,
[00:04:00] well, first of all, it can make you crazy, but what you need is you need to get some of those small results, those small wins, to keep you motivated and to keep you pressing on with the perseverance that you have to have
to help your child and then in turn help your family overall, because it’s so difficult and if you’re not getting little wins and seeing some progress in that way, it can be harder to keep going. So this episode is all about the reasons why you may not be seeing the results that you want, even though you believe that you are using the craft or the invitation to change approach to deal with your child’s or some other family member’s substance use problems and I have 10 reasons why this might be happening, which I’m going to run through with you in
[00:05:00] case you are feeling stuck or even worse if you kind of feel like things are going in a backward direction. All right. Are you ready? So number one is that you may have never been through the whole series of the craft approach either in a group setting, in person with a coach, and if you haven’t done that, you might not understand the overall premise and MS an approach to what the craft approach is meant to do and within the craft approach, there are nine procedures, and I know procedures probably kind of an odd word to hear. It kind of seems very medical, but I would call those more like skills or things that you as a parent can do that change you and how you approach your response to your child’s substance use and therefore is more likely to change how they are approaching their substance use. Okay, so
[00:06:00] that’s all we mean when you hear the word procedure, it’s not as kind of medical and clinical as it sounds. So let me run through what those nine skills are quickly. I’m not gonna dive into them, but I just want you to listen and see if they sound familiar because if you are really working on this, these should all sound familiar to you.
So number one is creating a roadmap or if you’re using the craft language, a functional analysis of the persons using or drinking behavior and the second is improving your communication skills. The third is rewarding non using behavior. The fourth is doing a functional analysis or a roadmap of your child’s healthy behavior. The fifth procedure is withdrawing rewards for using behavior when your child is using. The sixth is allowing natural negative consequences
[00:07:00] of their use seven is figuring out how to do real problem solving. Eight is helping you enrich your own life. And then finally, the ninth procedure in craft is how to talk about and how to invite your child to accept help or to enter treatment. So this is a very comprehensive approach, and these nine skills do not have to be learned or used in a specific order.
Super important to understand, and this is why it’s important to have a solid foundation of the entire approach, because then you can implement the right ones at the right time according to your specific relationship with your child and the timing of what’s going on in that relationship and we know that that continues to shift constantly.
There’s a lot in each one of those individual skills at Hope stream, we cover each of those in a minimum of an hour, sometimes two hour sessions, so you can really get an understanding of how to
[00:08:00] put these to use in your real life. So if you’re not seeing results and you have not been through all nine of these and have done a really deep dive into these, not just sort of skimming them or learning about them on the surface in kind of a book smart way, but really diving in and using them in a day-to-day encounter with your child, that could be a reason why you’re not seeing the results that you want.
All right, the number two reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is because you are working on too many things at once. I see this all the time with the members in the stream community, you may be using more of a shotgun approach where you’ve heard about one thing on a podcast and then another thing in a book, and then another thing from a lecture, and then your girlfriend or your sister-in-law, or your mom told you another thing and you’re trying
[00:09:00] them all at once and that might be okay depending on what we are doing. But it also could be that nothing is really landing with your child because you’re not very focused. So the kind of spray and pray approach doesn’t typically work when you’re trying to create positive change in your family. It needs to be a little bit more intentional and dialed in.
So if you’re in that situation, you may wanna just step back, pick one thing that seems to be making a bit of a difference and really focus there or you could pick the thing that feels the best and most natural for you. So let’s say you’re having a really hard time not controlling or not rescuing, but you’ve noticed that when you watch for those green light moments and you use open-ended questions and your lip clip, communication seems to improve.That’s great. Take a week and just focus on
[00:10:00] the communication and building a stronger relationship. Then you can get some support around the control and the rescuing issues and start working on those when you feel a little bit more centered and have some of those communication wins, which are huge and will go a long way in your relationship.
Okay, number three, the third reason that you might not be getting the results that you want with using the craft approach is that you don’t understand the stages of change. Now, the stages of change themselves are not part of the craft approach, which is why I mention it here because it’s so important to understand.
The formal name for this is the Transtheoretical Stages of change, which sounds very fancy, but all it is is an approach to understand where somebody is in the process of making some change in their life and that is something in itself to understand is that change is a process. It is
[00:11:00] not an event usually and so if you don’t really understand these stages, and the stages are pre-contemplative, contemplative, preparation, action and maintenance. Sometimes people will throw a relapse in there, and if you don’t understand each of those, what’s happening in your child’s body and in their brain, during each of those stages, it’s gonna be really hard to know what of the craft skills that are gonna have the most impact on them at that specific time.
So we provide a workshop on this. I’ve done podcast episodes on this. I will put links in the show notes to those. But understanding the stages of change is a really big part of seeing success with your efforts when you’re trying to make that positive change with your child, with yourself, and just overall in your family. The fourth reason that you may not be seeing the results that you want is because you haven’t layered motivational
[00:12:00] interviewing on top of craft. I am gonna put links in the show notes to the motivational interviewing episodes that I have done and that I’ve done with expert guests, but motivational interviewing
falls within that category in the craft approach. You remember I said one of them is improving your communication skills and motivational interviewing is a very specific way for you to think first and then act and approach your child or anybody about why they may or may not be making change. You’re trying to understand what would motivate them to make change in their life. What is it that is demotivating to them? So this one in particular is really critical for getting some traction going. If you are feeling that inertia, like they’re sort of stuck, or your relationship and your communication is in that kind of paralysis mode, motivational interviewing
[00:13:00] is gonna be really important to understand. If you’re not seeing things change, if you’re not seeing things differently, if conversations are still really hard, this is a tool that you’re gonna wanna pull in. I would call it kind of the lowest hanging fruit that you could start with to see positive change. So make sure and tap into those episodes that I’ve done also into the workshops that we have.
The fifth reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you’re being inconsistent in how you execute the craft skills. So maybe you’ve gone through the whole series of craft, also the invitation to change, and I’ll explain in a minute what the differences between those. You really have a good understanding of how it works and what it is and what you need to do, but because of, I don’t know, a zillion things like exhaustion. Maybe you have a partner who’s not on the same page as you.
[00:14:00] Maybe you have aging parents that you’re taking care of, or you have another child that’s got a medical emergency or a school issue. You know, basically life. You’ve just been inconsistent in applying these skills to the situation, and trust me, that is 100% understandable. It is nothing to be ashamed or sad or frustrated about. Take a deep breath, know that that is reality, and then just get back to point number two, which is pick one thing, just pick one thing, maybe two, and start to do those really consistently.
Just go back to the basics and make sure that you’re being really consistent with at least one thing, and you’re starting to see some success with that, and you can always build from there. The sixth reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you
[00:15:00] just don’t know where to start. You are so overwhelmed. You might be brand new to this. You may have just learned about the substance use issues that your child has. You may have received a mental health diagnosis. That’s scary and confusing. There is so much in your kind of standing at the base of this gigantic mountain, not having a clue where to start and just feeling really overwhelmed and my friend. That is normal. That is okay. And if that’s where you are, I would say go to our start here playlist. If you go to our website, go to the podcast page. There’s a link to playlist. Go to the start here playlist. We created that specifically for folks who are new to the situation or just completely overwhelmed and feeling like you need a starting place Just start there. Start
[00:16:00] slow, take a lot of deep breaths and know that there is a bigger community out there that you can tap into. If you wanna get, you know, surrounded by other people who are on this journey and really wanting to make change, that is a really excellent place to start, and you can do it at your own pace, which is awesome.
Okay, the seventh reason why you might not be seeing change. Is that you haven’t tapped into using a parent coach who is trained in the craft approach or the invitation to change, which like I said, I’ll explain is the invitation to change is just craft plus a few other important skills layered on top of that. So it’s kind of like craft plus. So using a coach is i’m gonna say probably the number one thing that
[00:17:00] I would recommend for someone who has been at this for a while, maybe a few months, maybe a year, maybe you’ve been here listening to me, jabber in your ear for a year, and you’re really not seeing the change in your family that you want.
And the reason I say in your family is that it is not just your child. You are not in control of what your child does, even if you wanna be, even if they’re a minor, even if they’re 15 or 14 or 13. So no matter their age, if they’re 13 or they’re 28, you can’t control what they do. And so all of these skills that we teach, all of the craft skills, motivational interviewing, acceptance and commitment therapy, they’re all about you and changing you and your actions. Your mindsets and your beliefs using a coach to help you figure all of this out is, to me, I don’t know. It kind of feels like a no-brainer.
[00:18:00] Like you are in uncharted territory, you’re in a very difficult situation. It’s a highly emotional situation because of course you love this person more than life itself, and they’re in danger, or they’re at risk of doing things that you just can’t wrap your head around and you need a partner at your side to come alongside you and guide you because they have been where you are. They have navigated this crazy storm that you’re in. So if you have not tapped into a coach. If you’re a member of the Stream community, just go to the resource section and you’re gonna find the provider
directory coaches are there. If you are not yet part of the community, first of all, please join us. But if not, we will put some resources in the show notes of where you can, find some help and get started on seeing that change that you want. Okay, we’re getting close to the end.
[00:19:00] Number eight. The reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you are not tracking what you’re doing. I know this might sound a little strange, but what I’ve realized coming through the other side of this is that time becomes a blur. Your actions, your responses, they all become a blur. The situations that can happen and start blending everything together are, as you know, significant.
And I know this personally because every once in a while my son, Enzo will call me and say, Hey mom, what was I doing in 2016? Or what year did I go to that program? Or When did this arrest happen? And honestly, most of the time I can’t tell him specifically. I may be able to land it within, you know, a year, but I really don’t know because it all just blurs together. So, tracking your actions, tracking, how is it going
[00:20:00] this week? Yeah, this week I wanna work on positive reinforcement. I have done these things and just track in a journal, phone notes, somewhere, track day to day, how’s it going? You know, I tried using a surf statement and here’s what happened, or here’s what I wanna change next time.
This part of it didn’t go great or I tried positive reinforcement for two weeks straight and here’s what happened or I started using the information sandwich and then I forgot all about it, and I just plowed through the conversation and I lost my lip clip and everything fell apart. So it’s important to track these things.
It doesn’t have to be fancy or sophisticated, but just track some of those changes that you’re seeing because when you forget about the little changes that you’re seeing day to day when something bad happens that is gonna override and overshadow all of those good little steps that have been taking
[00:21:00] place.So being able to track those using whatever technology, low tech, high tech format you want, track what’s going on so that you have some evidence of that positive change so that you can keep going. It is super important.
The ninth reason that you might not be seeing results from what you’re doing is that you’re not practicing the skills before you use them with your child or your partner or whoever it is that you’re here for. I can tell you that not practicing the skills means that these words or these responses are coming out of your mouth for the very first time with the most important person to get them right with. It’s not like you would ever do that with a business
[00:22:00] presentation, a work presentation. Let’s say I came to you and asked you to do a TEDx talk. There is no way that you would just show up for that without practicing it first and using somebody in your family, you know, a friend, a sister, brother, coworker, and say, Hey, can I just run this by you?
Of course you would and it’s the same with these skills. You can just find a friend, find somebody, say, I really need to have this conversation with my kiddo, and I wanna get it right. I wanna feel confident, I wanna sound confident, and I wanna know how this is gonna feel when it comes out of my mouth.
What’s gonna happen in my body when I have this conversation? We all know that, you know, our body keeps the score right. Our body’s gonna have a response. Those are all things that take practice and that might sound silly. You might think, well, I should just know how to do this. It’s just a conversation. I should be able to have these conversations. No, you
[00:23:00] shouldn’t. No, there’s no possible way that you could be prepared for the conversations that you have to have when you have a young person in your life who you love beyond measure who is struggling with mental health and substance use. Period. So take the time that it takes. That could be five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it needs to be.
Run through your surf statement, try out the information sandwich, run through, making a request, asking a question, offering information. Use those skills and then practice them. So when you get to the real deal, when you get to that moment with your child or whoever it is that you’re here for, you sound and feel really confident using those skills. Okay? I am guessing that you might already know
[00:24:00] what number 10 is, right? Number 10 reason why you may not be getting the results that you want with your young person is that you are digging in and trying to do this alone. You’re feeling like, I don’t wanna talk to anyone about this. I don’t wanna share all the gunk that’s going on in our family.
I just really don’t have time to participate in one more thing. I am just gonna figure this out and get it done and get it in the past. I want this to be in my rear view mirror, and I get that, but not being a part of a community to connect with, to lean on, to get resources from, to just help with understanding like, what the heck is going on in my family that will hold you back. There is just no doubt about it. Whether that’s a community like Hope Stream.
[00:25:00] Whether it’s Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, whether it’s your local group of moms that get together for coffee every week and go through some skill building, being part of community, and especially one who gets you, who understands you, who doesn’t gasp when you tell them the things you’re going on with your child.
This is critical, and of course, we would love to have you in hope’s dream because we can provide you not only that sense of community and connection like oh. Yeah, these people totally get it. This is my tribe. We can do that but we also can provide you with credible vetted resources that kind of speed up that whole research process, the education that you need, those nine procedures of craft plus motivational interviewing, plus a bunch of other things that we know are really important for you to know. So my friend, those are
[00:26:00] the 10 common reasons that I see, and Cathy and I see as we sort of purview and look over all of the hundreds of families that we see going through this. Those are the 10 common reasons that you might not be seeing the results that you want, that change that you want.
I will do a quickie recap because I know it’s a lot. Number one is that you have never been through the entire series of the nine procedures of craft, and you’re not understanding the premise of the approach. Number two is that you’re working on too many things at once. Number three is that you are not understanding the stages of change.
Four is not using motivational interviewing layered on top of craft. Five is being inconsistent because life is impossible and it’s hard to focus. Six is that you just don’t know where to start.
[00:27:00] Seven, you’re not using a coach. Eight is you’re not tracking your actions. Nine, not practicing the skills before using them, and please don’t underestimate the value of doing that. And 10, you are going it alone. You are not part of a community to get the connection and the support and the understanding that you really need. I have put links in the show notes for many of these things, and I also wanna let you know about a fairly new thing that we have, which is our free limited membership.
It’s a way to dip your toe into Hope Stream, see what we’re all about. The limited membership is available to all parents. Moms, dads co-parents, caregivers. It’s got a four part video course in there for you. It’s called Hope Starts Here, and it will give you a basic introduction to the four of the core
[00:28:00] craft skills. It’s got downloads and resources. We have the full podcast library in there in searchable format for you, which is awesome. And then twice a month, Cathy and I and other leaders, from the Hope Stream team do a livestream with our limited members. So you can come and chat, ask a question, get a view of what the full membership looks like.
It’s really casual. You’re not on camera, so you can just show up. It’s really fun. So if you wanna check that out, just go to Hope Stream community.org/limited. Woo. We covered a lot and I hope that those made sense to you. Maybe one of them sort of stood out to you like, Hmm, that kind of sounds like me. So rewind to that and just know that you are doing the best that you can. So thanks for hanging out with me today. Thank you so much for doing your work. Thanks for showing
[00:29:00] up here, getting real, taking a good look at yourself, your relationships, and your actions, and of course, for doing all that you can to help your child who’s having a really hard time right now. I am sending all my love and light and I’ll meet you right back here next week.
[00:00:00] Hey friend, it’s just us today. It feels really good to have a minute to exhale together to take those two or three really deep breaths and just connect with each other and get grounded. I recently had the experience of going to the Grand Canyon. I’d been to the North Rim before, but I got to go to the South Rim, and there’s nothing like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon to give you a lot of perspective on life and while I was there, I was reading all of the information about the different layers and geology and the billions of years of history there, and it gave me a really good chance to just kind of zoom out on life, on goals, on change, on thinking about why things do change
[00:01:00] and why things don’t change and anyway, I won’t go on about that, but if you ever have a chance to go to the Grand Canyon, I would highly recommend it. It is a really good place to get some perspective and one of the things that I started thinking about when I was there was what is this thing about change and why do some people change?
Why do some people not change? Why does it take some people longer to change than others? And what are some of those triggers that cause people to change? I don’t know. It was a really fascinating time to think about that and I started thinking about what we see in our community in the Hope Stream community, both in our membership, but also with podcast listeners. Because I get feedback from you all, from anybody because I get feedback from you listeners
[00:02:00] about what’s going on in your lives and how things are changing and one of the things that i’ve been thinking about lately that I see in our community is some people, some of our members, the moms and female caregivers in our community really see quite a bit of change in themselves and in their kids and in the rest of the family.
And then there’s others who seem to be a little bit on a hamster wheel. There’s not a lot of change. There’s a lot of Groundhog Day and it makes me wonder what the difference is in those people. So of course I did some thinking on that and I am a fairly results oriented person. You could probably chat with Cathy about that,
my co-founder, I’m always talking about results and what are our results, and that’s because I come from a corporate background where for 20, 30 years, all I did was work towards specific
[00:03:00] results and goals and KPIs and budgets and quotas. So naturally, I have just been wired for results and I’m glad for that corporate experience because I think otherwise I may not be quite so, what is the word I want to use?
Neurotic about helping our members and our listeners get results because there are no more important results. That you could be striving for then for a healthy family, right. So. I know many of you are like me. You work in a corporate setting, you have those goals, and we are always kind of fine tuning our skills to be able to reach those goals.
And there’s a lot of connection there with the skills that you have learn in order to see change in your family and the reason why I think it’s important to see results and to think about it in that way is because otherwise this experience,
[00:04:00] well, first of all, it can make you crazy, but what you need is you need to get some of those small results, those small wins, to keep you motivated and to keep you pressing on with the perseverance that you have to have
to help your child and then in turn help your family overall, because it’s so difficult and if you’re not getting little wins and seeing some progress in that way, it can be harder to keep going. So this episode is all about the reasons why you may not be seeing the results that you want, even though you believe that you are using the craft or the invitation to change approach to deal with your child’s or some other family member’s substance use problems and I have 10 reasons why this might be happening, which I’m going to run through with you in
[00:05:00] case you are feeling stuck or even worse if you kind of feel like things are going in a backward direction. All right. Are you ready? So number one is that you may have never been through the whole series of the craft approach either in a group setting, in person with a coach, and if you haven’t done that, you might not understand the overall premise and MS an approach to what the craft approach is meant to do and within the craft approach, there are nine procedures, and I know procedures probably kind of an odd word to hear. It kind of seems very medical, but I would call those more like skills or things that you as a parent can do that change you and how you approach your response to your child’s substance use and therefore is more likely to change how they are approaching their substance use. Okay, so
[00:06:00] that’s all we mean when you hear the word procedure, it’s not as kind of medical and clinical as it sounds. So let me run through what those nine skills are quickly. I’m not gonna dive into them, but I just want you to listen and see if they sound familiar because if you are really working on this, these should all sound familiar to you.
So number one is creating a roadmap or if you’re using the craft language, a functional analysis of the persons using or drinking behavior and the second is improving your communication skills. The third is rewarding non using behavior. The fourth is doing a functional analysis or a roadmap of your child’s healthy behavior. The fifth procedure is withdrawing rewards for using behavior when your child is using. The sixth is allowing natural negative consequences
[00:07:00] of their use seven is figuring out how to do real problem solving. Eight is helping you enrich your own life. And then finally, the ninth procedure in craft is how to talk about and how to invite your child to accept help or to enter treatment. So this is a very comprehensive approach, and these nine skills do not have to be learned or used in a specific order.
Super important to understand, and this is why it’s important to have a solid foundation of the entire approach, because then you can implement the right ones at the right time according to your specific relationship with your child and the timing of what’s going on in that relationship and we know that that continues to shift constantly.
There’s a lot in each one of those individual skills at Hope stream, we cover each of those in a minimum of an hour, sometimes two hour sessions, so you can really get an understanding of how to
[00:08:00] put these to use in your real life. So if you’re not seeing results and you have not been through all nine of these and have done a really deep dive into these, not just sort of skimming them or learning about them on the surface in kind of a book smart way, but really diving in and using them in a day-to-day encounter with your child, that could be a reason why you’re not seeing the results that you want.
All right, the number two reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is because you are working on too many things at once. I see this all the time with the members in the stream community, you may be using more of a shotgun approach where you’ve heard about one thing on a podcast and then another thing in a book, and then another thing from a lecture, and then your girlfriend or your sister-in-law, or your mom told you another thing and you’re trying
[00:09:00] them all at once and that might be okay depending on what we are doing. But it also could be that nothing is really landing with your child because you’re not very focused. So the kind of spray and pray approach doesn’t typically work when you’re trying to create positive change in your family. It needs to be a little bit more intentional and dialed in.
So if you’re in that situation, you may wanna just step back, pick one thing that seems to be making a bit of a difference and really focus there or you could pick the thing that feels the best and most natural for you. So let’s say you’re having a really hard time not controlling or not rescuing, but you’ve noticed that when you watch for those green light moments and you use open-ended questions and your lip clip, communication seems to improve.That’s great. Take a week and just focus on
[00:10:00] the communication and building a stronger relationship. Then you can get some support around the control and the rescuing issues and start working on those when you feel a little bit more centered and have some of those communication wins, which are huge and will go a long way in your relationship.
Okay, number three, the third reason that you might not be getting the results that you want with using the craft approach is that you don’t understand the stages of change. Now, the stages of change themselves are not part of the craft approach, which is why I mention it here because it’s so important to understand.
The formal name for this is the Transtheoretical Stages of change, which sounds very fancy, but all it is is an approach to understand where somebody is in the process of making some change in their life and that is something in itself to understand is that change is a process. It is
[00:11:00] not an event usually and so if you don’t really understand these stages, and the stages are pre-contemplative, contemplative, preparation, action and maintenance. Sometimes people will throw a relapse in there, and if you don’t understand each of those, what’s happening in your child’s body and in their brain, during each of those stages, it’s gonna be really hard to know what of the craft skills that are gonna have the most impact on them at that specific time.
So we provide a workshop on this. I’ve done podcast episodes on this. I will put links in the show notes to those. But understanding the stages of change is a really big part of seeing success with your efforts when you’re trying to make that positive change with your child, with yourself, and just overall in your family. The fourth reason that you may not be seeing the results that you want is because you haven’t layered motivational
[00:12:00] interviewing on top of craft. I am gonna put links in the show notes to the motivational interviewing episodes that I have done and that I’ve done with expert guests, but motivational interviewing
falls within that category in the craft approach. You remember I said one of them is improving your communication skills and motivational interviewing is a very specific way for you to think first and then act and approach your child or anybody about why they may or may not be making change. You’re trying to understand what would motivate them to make change in their life. What is it that is demotivating to them? So this one in particular is really critical for getting some traction going. If you are feeling that inertia, like they’re sort of stuck, or your relationship and your communication is in that kind of paralysis mode, motivational interviewing
[00:13:00] is gonna be really important to understand. If you’re not seeing things change, if you’re not seeing things differently, if conversations are still really hard, this is a tool that you’re gonna wanna pull in. I would call it kind of the lowest hanging fruit that you could start with to see positive change. So make sure and tap into those episodes that I’ve done also into the workshops that we have.
The fifth reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you’re being inconsistent in how you execute the craft skills. So maybe you’ve gone through the whole series of craft, also the invitation to change, and I’ll explain in a minute what the differences between those. You really have a good understanding of how it works and what it is and what you need to do, but because of, I don’t know, a zillion things like exhaustion. Maybe you have a partner who’s not on the same page as you.
[00:14:00] Maybe you have aging parents that you’re taking care of, or you have another child that’s got a medical emergency or a school issue. You know, basically life. You’ve just been inconsistent in applying these skills to the situation, and trust me, that is 100% understandable. It is nothing to be ashamed or sad or frustrated about. Take a deep breath, know that that is reality, and then just get back to point number two, which is pick one thing, just pick one thing, maybe two, and start to do those really consistently.
Just go back to the basics and make sure that you’re being really consistent with at least one thing, and you’re starting to see some success with that, and you can always build from there. The sixth reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you
[00:15:00] just don’t know where to start. You are so overwhelmed. You might be brand new to this. You may have just learned about the substance use issues that your child has. You may have received a mental health diagnosis. That’s scary and confusing. There is so much in your kind of standing at the base of this gigantic mountain, not having a clue where to start and just feeling really overwhelmed and my friend. That is normal. That is okay. And if that’s where you are, I would say go to our start here playlist. If you go to our website, go to the podcast page. There’s a link to playlist. Go to the start here playlist. We created that specifically for folks who are new to the situation or just completely overwhelmed and feeling like you need a starting place Just start there. Start
[00:16:00] slow, take a lot of deep breaths and know that there is a bigger community out there that you can tap into. If you wanna get, you know, surrounded by other people who are on this journey and really wanting to make change, that is a really excellent place to start, and you can do it at your own pace, which is awesome.
Okay, the seventh reason why you might not be seeing change. Is that you haven’t tapped into using a parent coach who is trained in the craft approach or the invitation to change, which like I said, I’ll explain is the invitation to change is just craft plus a few other important skills layered on top of that. So it’s kind of like craft plus. So using a coach is i’m gonna say probably the number one thing that
[00:17:00] I would recommend for someone who has been at this for a while, maybe a few months, maybe a year, maybe you’ve been here listening to me, jabber in your ear for a year, and you’re really not seeing the change in your family that you want.
And the reason I say in your family is that it is not just your child. You are not in control of what your child does, even if you wanna be, even if they’re a minor, even if they’re 15 or 14 or 13. So no matter their age, if they’re 13 or they’re 28, you can’t control what they do. And so all of these skills that we teach, all of the craft skills, motivational interviewing, acceptance and commitment therapy, they’re all about you and changing you and your actions. Your mindsets and your beliefs using a coach to help you figure all of this out is, to me, I don’t know. It kind of feels like a no-brainer.
[00:18:00] Like you are in uncharted territory, you’re in a very difficult situation. It’s a highly emotional situation because of course you love this person more than life itself, and they’re in danger, or they’re at risk of doing things that you just can’t wrap your head around and you need a partner at your side to come alongside you and guide you because they have been where you are. They have navigated this crazy storm that you’re in. So if you have not tapped into a coach. If you’re a member of the Stream community, just go to the resource section and you’re gonna find the provider
directory coaches are there. If you are not yet part of the community, first of all, please join us. But if not, we will put some resources in the show notes of where you can, find some help and get started on seeing that change that you want. Okay, we’re getting close to the end.
[00:19:00] Number eight. The reason that you might not be seeing the results that you want is that you are not tracking what you’re doing. I know this might sound a little strange, but what I’ve realized coming through the other side of this is that time becomes a blur. Your actions, your responses, they all become a blur. The situations that can happen and start blending everything together are, as you know, significant.
And I know this personally because every once in a while my son, Enzo will call me and say, Hey mom, what was I doing in 2016? Or what year did I go to that program? Or When did this arrest happen? And honestly, most of the time I can’t tell him specifically. I may be able to land it within, you know, a year, but I really don’t know because it all just blurs together. So, tracking your actions, tracking, how is it going
[00:20:00] this week? Yeah, this week I wanna work on positive reinforcement. I have done these things and just track in a journal, phone notes, somewhere, track day to day, how’s it going? You know, I tried using a surf statement and here’s what happened, or here’s what I wanna change next time.
This part of it didn’t go great or I tried positive reinforcement for two weeks straight and here’s what happened or I started using the information sandwich and then I forgot all about it, and I just plowed through the conversation and I lost my lip clip and everything fell apart. So it’s important to track these things.
It doesn’t have to be fancy or sophisticated, but just track some of those changes that you’re seeing because when you forget about the little changes that you’re seeing day to day when something bad happens that is gonna override and overshadow all of those good little steps that have been taking
[00:21:00] place.So being able to track those using whatever technology, low tech, high tech format you want, track what’s going on so that you have some evidence of that positive change so that you can keep going. It is super important.
The ninth reason that you might not be seeing results from what you’re doing is that you’re not practicing the skills before you use them with your child or your partner or whoever it is that you’re here for. I can tell you that not practicing the skills means that these words or these responses are coming out of your mouth for the very first time with the most important person to get them right with. It’s not like you would ever do that with a business
[00:22:00] presentation, a work presentation. Let’s say I came to you and asked you to do a TEDx talk. There is no way that you would just show up for that without practicing it first and using somebody in your family, you know, a friend, a sister, brother, coworker, and say, Hey, can I just run this by you?
Of course you would and it’s the same with these skills. You can just find a friend, find somebody, say, I really need to have this conversation with my kiddo, and I wanna get it right. I wanna feel confident, I wanna sound confident, and I wanna know how this is gonna feel when it comes out of my mouth.
What’s gonna happen in my body when I have this conversation? We all know that, you know, our body keeps the score right. Our body’s gonna have a response. Those are all things that take practice and that might sound silly. You might think, well, I should just know how to do this. It’s just a conversation. I should be able to have these conversations. No, you
[00:23:00] shouldn’t. No, there’s no possible way that you could be prepared for the conversations that you have to have when you have a young person in your life who you love beyond measure who is struggling with mental health and substance use. Period. So take the time that it takes. That could be five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it needs to be.
Run through your surf statement, try out the information sandwich, run through, making a request, asking a question, offering information. Use those skills and then practice them. So when you get to the real deal, when you get to that moment with your child or whoever it is that you’re here for, you sound and feel really confident using those skills. Okay? I am guessing that you might already know
[00:24:00] what number 10 is, right? Number 10 reason why you may not be getting the results that you want with your young person is that you are digging in and trying to do this alone. You’re feeling like, I don’t wanna talk to anyone about this. I don’t wanna share all the gunk that’s going on in our family.
I just really don’t have time to participate in one more thing. I am just gonna figure this out and get it done and get it in the past. I want this to be in my rear view mirror, and I get that, but not being a part of a community to connect with, to lean on, to get resources from, to just help with understanding like, what the heck is going on in my family that will hold you back. There is just no doubt about it. Whether that’s a community like Hope Stream.
[00:25:00] Whether it’s Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, whether it’s your local group of moms that get together for coffee every week and go through some skill building, being part of community, and especially one who gets you, who understands you, who doesn’t gasp when you tell them the things you’re going on with your child.
This is critical, and of course, we would love to have you in hope’s dream because we can provide you not only that sense of community and connection like oh. Yeah, these people totally get it. This is my tribe. We can do that but we also can provide you with credible vetted resources that kind of speed up that whole research process, the education that you need, those nine procedures of craft plus motivational interviewing, plus a bunch of other things that we know are really important for you to know. So my friend, those are
[00:26:00] the 10 common reasons that I see, and Cathy and I see as we sort of purview and look over all of the hundreds of families that we see going through this. Those are the 10 common reasons that you might not be seeing the results that you want, that change that you want.
I will do a quickie recap because I know it’s a lot. Number one is that you have never been through the entire series of the nine procedures of craft, and you’re not understanding the premise of the approach. Number two is that you’re working on too many things at once. Number three is that you are not understanding the stages of change.
Four is not using motivational interviewing layered on top of craft. Five is being inconsistent because life is impossible and it’s hard to focus. Six is that you just don’t know where to start.
[00:27:00] Seven, you’re not using a coach. Eight is you’re not tracking your actions. Nine, not practicing the skills before using them, and please don’t underestimate the value of doing that. And 10, you are going it alone. You are not part of a community to get the connection and the support and the understanding that you really need. I have put links in the show notes for many of these things, and I also wanna let you know about a fairly new thing that we have, which is our free limited membership.
It’s a way to dip your toe into Hope Stream, see what we’re all about. The limited membership is available to all parents. Moms, dads co-parents, caregivers. It’s got a four part video course in there for you. It’s called Hope Starts Here, and it will give you a basic introduction to the four of the core
[00:28:00] craft skills. It’s got downloads and resources. We have the full podcast library in there in searchable format for you, which is awesome. And then twice a month, Cathy and I and other leaders, from the Hope Stream team do a livestream with our limited members. So you can come and chat, ask a question, get a view of what the full membership looks like.
It’s really casual. You’re not on camera, so you can just show up. It’s really fun. So if you wanna check that out, just go to Hope Stream community.org/limited. Woo. We covered a lot and I hope that those made sense to you. Maybe one of them sort of stood out to you like, Hmm, that kind of sounds like me. So rewind to that and just know that you are doing the best that you can. So thanks for hanging out with me today. Thank you so much for doing your work. Thanks for showing
[00:29:00] up here, getting real, taking a good look at yourself, your relationships, and your actions, and of course, for doing all that you can to help your child who’s having a really hard time right now. I am sending all my love and light and I’ll meet you right back here next week.
