The Invisible Intervention: An Unlikely Change Approach for Parenting Kids Misusing Drugs & Alcohol, with Brenda Zane

ABOUT THE EPISODE

In this episode, I delve into the concept of allowing natural consequences as a form of 'invisible intervention' in parenting teens and young adults struggling with substance misuse and mental health issues. I share real-life examples and experiences on the benefits of stepping back to let reality teach essential lessons, emphasizing the need for patience and rock solid boundaries. 

I highlight the challenges parents face in resisting the urge to fix everything and discuss how this approach can profoundly impact a child's journey towards recovery - creating change sooner than later. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Hopestream podcast episode 174 with Brenda and Cathy on boundaries
• Checklist: Ten Parenting Patterns That May Prolong Your Child's Struggle with Substances, And What To Do Instead

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
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Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and why natural consequences?
• 3:31 The Natural Instinct to Protect and Problem Solve
• 4:42 The Unique Power of Natural Consequences
• 6:06 A Real-Life Example
• 8:56 Implementing Invisible Interventions
• 13:26 The Challenge (and necessity) of Setting Boundaries
• 15:49 Resources and Support
• 16:28 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Transcript

[00:00:01] Allowing natural consequences is not about abandonment. It's about presence without rescue. It is standing firmly in your love as a parent and allowing reality to become the teacher. When we step back, the world's consequences step forward, and the way the world teaches lessons, oh, it is often way more effective than we could ever be.

[00:00:24] I will tell you this, invisible intervention requires something. That doesn't come naturally to people like you and me who pride ourselves on finding solutions and fixing things, and that is patience. 

[00:00:42] Welcome to Hopestream, the podcast and community created specifically for parents of teens and young adults who are misusing substances and struggling with mental health. I'm Brenda Zane, and I have been in your shoes with a child who is addicted to a high-risk lifestyle and all the bad things that came with it.

[00:01:03] Listen every week to gain clarity and understanding, learn new skills, and best of all, experience real hope for what might feel like a helpless situation. We want you to not just survive this experience. but potentially find unexpected growth and meaning through it. You are not doing this alone anymore, and we're so glad you're here. After the episode, hop over to Hopestreamcommunity.org for more resources.

[00:01:32] Hey, friend, how is it going? I mean, really, how is it going? I love that we get to connect here every week because I know a lot can change from day to day, week to week, actually hour to hour when you're on the rollercoaster ride with your kiddo. I actually had an epiphany the other day about the rollercoaster ride, and I wanted to share it with you, but I wanna spend a little more time thinking on it 'cause it was kind of like a, a big, uh, realization I had.

[00:02:03] So I'm gonna hold off talking about it here, but I will wrap it into an upcoming episode for you

[00:02:10] Sometimes as I am recording. I just have a picture of you in my mind, clutching your coffee a little too tightly, wondering how on earth we ended up here together. This is probably the very last place you would've ever expected yourself to end up, but I'm so glad that you are here. You are always on the hunt for more information and resources.

[00:02:37] You're always scooping up inspiration or motivation that you can find along the way, and I am out here looking from my vantage point, wondering how I can help you where you are right now, and what I'm sharing with you today will make sense. I think regardless of whether your kiddos recently started dipping their toe into some substance use. And now you see a little bit of a shift in their eyes, in their friends, in their clothes, in their whole energy, or whether you're at a high point celebrating the return of the child you once knew, seeing the light in their eyes again, having conversations that you thought you would never have again, and watching them reenter life in a healthier, more stable way than they have done in the past.

[00:03:28] And yes, that happens.

[00:03:31] I wanna talk about a truth that I see universally across the hundreds of families that we work with at Hopestream, and that is this, your instinct to protect and problem solve, which by the way, I know you're very talented at can sometimes shield your child from the very experiences they need to grow and change.

[00:03:54] Your instinct to protect and problem solve can sometimes shield your child from the very experiences they need to grow and change. I don't call this enabling because of course you want to keep your child safe, protected, and away from bad things. That is 100% natural and you should never feel bad about wanting that.

[00:04:19] What I do call this is accidentally helping your child or unintentionally making it easier for them to continue in their substance use and risky lifestyle. Because I know for a fact that you do not want them getting high before they leave for work or getting fired for the fourth time or getting kicked off the team for good this time, obviously.

[00:04:42] What you may not recognize is there are sometimes very subtle things that you may be doing and sometimes not so subtle that again, unintentionally may be making those things happen, which is why I wanna talk about the invisible intervention approach, and it is specifically powerful and effective when used by parents.

[00:05:06] What if the most powerful intervention that you could conduct doesn't require hiring someone, doesn't involve tough love, and isn't visible at all? What if, and stay with me here 'cause I know this feels counterintuitive, what if allowing natural consequences to unfold is actually the pathway to change?

[00:05:29] Sometimes we are so busy trying to save our kids that we never give them the chance to save themselves. Sometimes we are so busy trying to save our kids that we never give them the chance to save themselves. This revelation can change everything about how you choose to intervene in your child's life.

[00:05:53] When I say child, that could be a 13-year-old, a 26-year-old doesn't matter, and it can dramatically change how long they stay in their addictive or experimental cycle.

[00:06:06] One of our members in The Stream, our online community for moms, had a 22-year-old son who'd kind of wobbled his way through college. He was finally living on his own in an apartment, but it was on the other side of the country from where she and her husband lived.

[00:06:22] And the reason I say he wobbled his way is because he had a lot of anxiety. He'd been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum at 18, and he had figured out through lots of research in air quotes. That a combination of Adderall and THC Vapes helped him to get through each day.

[00:06:44] It solved his problems. She knew this because she went through our invitation to change course and she'd finally gotten him to open up with her, and they were able to have these conversations and talk about what the substances were doing for him. He had recently gotten an internship at a robotics company.

[00:07:04] Did I mention that? Our kids are usually really freaking brilliant?And so he gets this internship at a robotics company and he really loved it and it was really important for him to do well because it could lead to a full-time job, kind of his dream job at the company. He told his mom that he had been cutting back on his smoking vaping, and he was going [00:07:30] to a few smart recovery meetings online most weeks.

[00:07:34] So this lovely, loving, brilliant woman had set up kind of a safety net around her son from 2000 miles away, mind you, to where she called or FaceTimed him every morning because she knew the weed would often cause him to sleep right through his alarm, even though it was right next to his head on the pillow.

[00:07:54] She had orchestrated to have a friend of a friend who lives in the same city, drop by a few times a month in the evenings. Just to see how he looked and then report back to her, and because he mentioned that he had lost some weight recently, She ordered HelloFresh meal delivery service for him.

[00:08:14] She scheduled his psychiatric appointment for him each month and called in his prescriptions to be delivered to his apartment. She and her husband continued to give him his monthly allowance that they had started giving him in college. It one felt awkward to bring it up at this point, and she knew her son would be pretty mad because since his internship hardly paid anything, he really could use the money.

[00:08:40] Now, are these bad things? No. Does his mom clearly love her son? Clearly. Could she unintentionally be making it easier for her son to continue with his misuse of stimulants and THC possibly. We worked with her on understanding the power of [00:09:00] natural consequences, and once she started to recognize that maybe some of the things that she was doing were accidentally helping him continue to be able to use, she had a conversation with him, which was very important not to spring these things on someone, and then one by one she started adjusting her behavior.

[00:09:20] She didn't pull everything back all at once because that didn't feel good to her or her husband, but over time she was no longer calling him. Every morning she left it up to him to make his doctor's appointments, and she let him know that after another two months she would be canceling the meal delivery service.

[00:09:40] You might hear that and think you would do something completely different, and that's okay. There is no one right way to do this. The important thing is she used this idea of the invisible intervention as a way to motivate her son to take on responsibilities that belonged to him, or she encouraged him to ask for help if he needed it before she would step in.

[00:10:04] It is a loving way to nudge them in a direction that creates change in their lives sooner than later. I say that because allowing natural consequences is not about abandonment. It is about presence without rescue. Allowing natural consequences is not about abandonment. It's about presence without rescue.

[00:10:28] It is standing firmly in your love as a parent and allowing reality to become the teacher. There's research that shows something pretty fascinating when we step back. As hard as that can feel to do, I know we create space for the world's consequences to step forward. When we step back, the world's consequences step forward, and the way the world teaches lessons, oh, it is often way more effective than we could ever be.

[00:10:59] A missed opportunity due to substance use will speak volumes. The loss of a relationship because of erratic behavior teaches what no lecture from you ever could. I will tell you this, invisible intervention requires something. That doesn't come naturally to people like you and me who pride ourselves on finding solutions and fixing things, and that is patience.

[00:11:28] The timeline for change is not like a quarterly report filing or a beautifully crafted PowerPoint presentation, if that's even a thing. I'm not sure those things are easy, easy compared to what you're doing. Your child's transformation is going to unfold according to its own schedule with some influence from you, and it often begins with small moments of awareness that at some point if you let them, they will bloom into [00:12:00] larger realizations by lovingly not allowing them to circumvent the realities of their behavior. You expose them to what the future holds if they remain in their current patterns.

[00:12:14] Now, if your kiddo's in a pretty good spot today and you're past the days of them using and all the chaos that comes with it, this is still for you because it can be even more tempting to help and fix and rescue because they are doing well. It may be a familiar pattern that you're in. Where it feels kind and helpful now to do these things because they're doing so well and you're kind of tiptoeing around the fear of a return to use.

[00:12:43] You're still doing things that they really need to be responsible for doing in their own lives at this point. It can become over-involvement and even enmeshment when you're tangled up in the day to day of their life and stepping back still feels hard.

[00:12:59] This invisible intervention is paradoxically the most active thing you can do. It activates the internal motivation that external pressure could never create.

[00:13:12] It activates the internal motivation, that external pressure, AKA you could never create. Now, here's where things can get a little squirmy for you. Holding this space of allowing natural consequences [00:13:30] requires boundaries that will test you to your core. And if you're anything like me, and I know you kind of are, the chapter on boundaries wasn't exactly highlighted in your what to expect when you're expecting book.

[00:13:45] And these aren't just any boundaries. They are the kind that get tested daily, sometimes hourly. They're the boundaries that have you sitting, literally sitting on your hands and applying your lip clip when every fiber of your being wants to rush in and fix, they're the boundaries that have you answering a desperate 2:00 AM call with compassion, but not your AMEX number. One of our members who is a badass marketing executive who never met a deadline, she could not conquer, described this perfectly. She said, setting boundaries with my daughter feels like trying to hold my breath underwater for an hour.

[00:14:27] Everything in me screams to give in, especially when I see her suffering, but I've learned that my discomfort with her pain. Doesn't justify rescuing her from the exact experiences that might save her life.

[00:14:43] That is one brave mom, and trust me, I recognize the boundary challenge hits differently for people who pride themselves on and even often get paid to make things happen. We're used to moving mountains for our [00:15:00] children and often also in your career. Then suddenly you are learning that sometimes love looks like saying no when everything in you wants to say, yes, I can fix that,

[00:15:14] and let's be honest, this is not a one and done decision. This is something that will continue to evolve over time. It's choosing your boundaries again and again, sometimes minute by minute, and often without immediate validation that you're even doing the right thing. 

[00:15:33] If you're nodding along, maybe a little tear is sliding down your cheek, know that you do not have to navigate this terrain alone. The path forward has been walked by thousands of others who understand exactly what you are facing. One place I want to point you to is episode number 174.

[00:15:53] Kathy and I did a deep dive into exactly how this invisible intervention approach can work. And importantly, we talked specifically about the boundaries it requires. It really can transform relationships and we share some examples, even some embarrassing ones from our lived experience. Another great resource is our checklist of 10 parenting patterns that may prolong your child's struggle with substances and what to do instead.

[00:16:22] That is on our resource page, hopestreamcommunity.org and then click on resources.

[00:16:28] Right now though, I want you to do [00:16:30] something simple. Take a deep breath, give yourself a giant pat on the back for being here, for seeking wisdom instead of a quick fix. You have figured out that in order to see your child change, you will first have to make some change in yourself. That recognition alone shows the depth of your love and your bravery.

[00:16:53] It's why I always say you are an elite level parent doing elite level work. If this conversation resonates with your heart and your situation, I encourage you to not only listen to episode 174 and download our checklist, but also consider joining us in the stream community. If you're a mom.

[00:17:13] Where a group of truly inspirational women, coaches, and therapists are all supporting each other through this journey with education, with real time guidance, and compassionate accountability. It's where Cathy and I hang out in between the episodes and we would love to see you there. Just go to HopeStreamCommunity.

[00:17:33] org to get all the details and you can even try it out free for two weeks. Remember, friend, the most potent interventions often happen in spaces where your quiet wisdom speaks louder than your fear or your anger. Your willingness to try a different approach, maybe an invisible intervention, could be the turning point that you and your child need right [00:18:00] now.

[00:18:00] I know it's hard. I know it takes patience and the ability to stomach the outcomes. But I also know how strong you are and how much you want and need to see things change. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for showing up and doing the hard work. I'm sending you all my love and light and I'll meet you right back here next week.