E236: Angels with Dirty Faces: Amber Hollingsworth on Seeing the Good in Addiction

Sober Friends

Matt J

Alcohol Free, Alcoholics Anonymous, Recovery, Dry January, Spirituality, Sober, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Sobriety, Sober Curious, Addiction, Religion & Spirituality, 12 Steps

4.2 • 718 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Send us a text What if the person you love isn’t broken—just buried under addiction? In this powerful episode, I sit down with addiction counselor and YouTube creator Amber Hollingsworth of Put The Shovel Down to talk about something we don’t hear enough in recovery: how to actually help a loved one struggling with addiction—without enabling or playing the villain. Amber shares insight from two decades of working with addicts and their families, including: Why tough love often backfiresThe da...

Transcript

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0:23.7	Substack.com.
0:25.3	All right.
0:25.7	Let's get into the show.
0:27.9	And worse than that, you're playing what I call a bad guy role.
0:32.1	And all that person is ever thinking about is you are their problem.
0:37.0	And that's, and I know this from all these years of seeing people in counseling.
0:41.3	If you are still playing the bag of roll, even if you get them into my office,
0:45.3	you're going to be paying me money for them to sit there and complain about you.
0:48.2	That's what's going to happen.
0:49.3	And I can't get them talk about anything about their life until that family member gets out of the bag, I
0:54.7	roll because they just villainize you and they just feel like you're unfair and you're trying
0:59.2	to control them and you're judging them and nothing they ever do is good enough for you.
1:03.3	Like these are all the things that I hear all the time.
1:06.1	And so you got to get out of that role.
1:08.4	You got to get out of the villain role and into the I'm on your side role while simultaneously letting some of those consequences.
1:15.8	Today's Super Friends podcast is brought to you by Moosey Bill.
	...

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