Amber Hollingsworth – Hope For Families Recovery Center

 

Are you exhausted from the constant conflict, the endless enabling, and the feeling that you’re the only one who sees your loved one’s addiction? Traditional interventions often backfire, driving the person you care about further into denial—and resentment. But what if there was a way to influence change without confrontation? In this exclusive interview, addiction specialist Amber Hollingsworth, creator of the Put The Shovel Down movement, reveals the revolutionary concept of the invisible Intervention. She explains why being the villain is the biggest roadblock to recovery and how shifting your role—from a nag to a trusted advisor—can help your loved one finally see their problem and choose change for themselves. Discover the counterintuitive coaching strategies that leverage empathy and natural consequences to create lasting sobriety, long before rock bottom. If you’re ready to stop digging and start building a foundation for recovery, tune in.

Learn more about Amber and her work through these resources:

Put the Shovel Down

Family Recovery Academy – Hope For Families Addiction Recovery Resources

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

 

Amber Hollingsworth – Hope For Families Recovery Center

Amber Hollingsworth is a Master Addiction Counselor, Founder of Hope for Families Recovery Center, and Creator of the YouTube channel Put the Shovel Down. With over two decades of experience, she’s helped thousands of families navigate addiction recovery using innovative relationship-focused strategies like the invisible intervention. Known for her relatable, no-nonsense approach, Amber empowers families to outsmart addiction, set healthy boundaries, and rebuild trust. Her expertise and compassionate style make her a sought-after podcast guest, offering practical advice and hope to families facing the challenges of addiction.

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Amber, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Great to see you.

Great to see you. Thanks for having me.

I’m hoping you can tell us a little bit about how you got into Put the Shovel Down and the work you’re doing, and what drives your passion for it.

The Motivation For “Put the Shovel Down”

I worked as an Addiction Counselor in an acute care facility for about ten years right out of college. I did everything in that hospital, patient advocate, ran adolescent chemical dependency, IOP, inpatient mental health, all the things. As I worked in that system for so long, you start to see the holes in it. It wasn’t that it wasn’t a good place, it was a good facility. It’s just that you start to see problems with the system. Eventually, that prompted me to try to do it a slightly different way, and I went into private practice.

From there, how I ended up with Put the Shovel Down is interesting because I didn’t start it to be a YouTuber. I started it because I found myself saying the same things to patients over and over, and they would say, “I wish I had that on record.” I thought, “I could probably just record that.” I threw it on YouTube just so I could share the link with my clients. That’s how it all got started, and now it’s turned into its own giant thing.

What’s the hope you have for that giant thing?

My hope is to provide resources particularly for people who have addicted loved ones because they’re so desperate. They’re looking for help but not getting it. Everywhere they turn, they’re sent a message like, “There’s really nothing you can do. You’re just going to have to cross your fingers, back up, and hope they decide they want it for themselves.” When that’s your spouse or child, someone you love and care about, that’s unacceptable. People want to be more empowered than that. They want other options.

What other options do you give them? Come on, don’t keep us waiting.

I do a lot of teaching on the channel about how to get through to someone who’s in denial or doesn’t want to get help. Many people think there’s nothing you can do. After twenty years of working with people with addictions, almost all of whom were in denial and didn’t even want to be in my office, I’ve developed skills for engaging people who are initially reluctant or resistant. I teach families those kinds of skills. I’m happy to jump in there and teach on this channel as much or as little as you want about that.

Let’s jump in. You talk in some of your talks and writings about an invisible intervention, and that’s piqued my interest. What can you share with us that might help people? As a therapist, I have a number of people in my caseload at any given time, either themselves or have a family member, who are struggling with an addictive process and may or may not have acknowledged it’s a problem yet.

Invisible Intervention

Most people have heard of a regular intervention like you see on the TV show, where everyone gets in a circle, you confront the person, you read the letters, and you hope to get them to agree to go to treatment. That can be successful, I’ve seen that work, particularly in cases where the addiction has gone pretty far. When you watch the show Intervention, those are all very serious what I’d call end-stage addiction cases. It work okay in that circumstance.

It doesn’t work so well when you’re dealing with someone who’s still somewhat functional, like they’re still working or going to school, and their friends still let them hang out. Sometimes you can confront those people and get them to agree to treatment, but it’s probably not going to stick. If a person hasn’t come to terms with the fact that they have a problem big enough to stop completely, they’re not done bargaining, that trial-and-error change process. They’re going to come out and keep going. You can only play that card so many times. It’s an ace card. You don’t want to play it too soon, having that confrontation. There’s a lot of other reasons why that backfires so many times.

 

I teach people to do it in a way that they never even know there was an intervention. It’s not about getting everyone on the same page to confront you thing. It’s a quiet, behind-the-scenes way to influence someone to decide that they want to make changes for themselves. When a person that is going through that process decides to get help or change, it tends to stick. It tends to stick because the person has come to terms with the fact that there’s something in their life they want to change. It may not be fixed it on the first try, but they’ve decided they’re going to fix it. They do eventually figure that out and it sticks better because they come to terms with it.

There is a deep truth about them making the decision. They can always choose to use or not use, to get help or not get help, no matter how much we care about them or want them to get help. What are some of the things you do to help someone reach the conclusion you’re seeing?

Getting Out Of The Villain Role

The first and most important step, if you don’t do any of the other steps, just do this one and you’ve increased your chances of having a successful long-term recovery infinitely. The most important thing for the family to do is to get out of what I call the villain role. Families inadvertently end up in the villain role. There can be more than one villain but there’s at least one primary villain and it’s usually the person closest to them, like a parent or spouse. It’s the person that lives with them and sees them the most. What happens is you see someone you love making bad decisions and going down the wrong path, and you’re worried they’re going to destroy their life and yours, possibly. You do what comes naturally. You try to talk sense into them.

That doesn’t work, and they get angry and start shutting you out or sneaking around more because they feel you’re on their case. You get into a power struggle. You’re trying to force them to see the issue by proving it. You go around collecting evidence and presenting it to them. They start gaslighting you. This giant power ensues between the family member and the person with the addiction. That power struggle blocks the person from seeing the problem because they get fixated on it.

They get consumed in this story in their head about how you’re never happy with them, you’re always critical, it’s not fair, nothing they ever do is good enough for you, and you only focus on their one flaw. They have this whole narrative going on. As long as they have that to fixate on, it provides a handy distraction to focus on what you’re doing wrong, which allows them to not have to look at what they’re doing and the choices that they’re making. The most important thing is to get out of that role. I know this from twenty years of working with people and the families doing that. The person isn’t going to talk to me about anything else other than that. We can’t get anywhere else as long as that’s the roadblock.

How do you help people get out of that role?

I teach them how to get into the good guy role, which is opposite of traditional thinking. I think a lot of people teach about tough love. I’m not against tough love, but if it’s done in a wrong way or a harsh way or in a way that the person perceives as mean or cruel or unfair or uncaring, you help them continue that narrative of self-pity and resentment, which fuels addiction. It’s about getting out of the bad guy role and becoming a trusted advisor role, like a counselor. How do I do that?

Self-pity and resentment fuel addiction. Share on X

There is some stuff to that but one thing you can do is become a better listener. Use strategic empathy and classic reflective listening skills to look at the situation from their point of view. When you can articulate someone else’s situation from their point of view, maybe even better than they can articulate it, you get credibility. I call it building credit with the person. Literally like a credit score, like if you want to buy a house and you might work on your credit score or whatever. You can you know you have the credit the bank would lend you the money. In this case, it’s like you’re building a credit score so that when the time comes, this person cares what you think and they trust and respect your opinion on it because they feel like you understand them.

From their point of view.

You get them completely. It’s not even so much that they need to know you love them. They already know you love them. That’s a big burden to carry in some ways. A person’s not going to listen to you unless they feel like you get them, like you really get them. If you can get yourself in a position like that with someone, then your suggestions have a lot more weight.

Now, as you started saying this, my mind went to, “If I can do this well enough, then they’ll do this and this. Therefore, if they don’t do this and this, it must mean I didn’t do it well enough.” As I listen to you, I know you’re not in that realm, and I know I’ll get that pushback from people. People who are they’re trying to be whatever their friend, whatever their son or daughter, whatever their parent needs to be, I’ll be whatever they need. In that process, if they think, “If I just do this, this, and this, I’ll get this result. It’s like a recipe.” It doesn’t really work so well because there’s all kinds of parts of the ingredient and the preparation and the baking of that recipe that is in somebody else’s hands.

That’s because you don’t have the full recipe yet. That’s just the first two ingredients.

Keep going. We have this idea of learning to listen, and I’m imagining that you’re saying we need to learn a whole new set of listening skills so that we can have a deeper level of empathy. When we share that with the person, they feel that we get it. Our credibility goes up.

A person isn’t going to listen to you unless they feel like you get them—like you really get them. Share on X

Allowing Natural Consequences

You’re behind the scenes, that’s why it’s invisible, you’re building this credit score. You’re out of the villain role, you’re into the trusted role eventually. While you’re doing that, you’re allowing the natural consequences to occur. You’re not fixing things for them, but you are also not being the villain. What most families do when they’re in this situation is they do it completely backwards. They fix all the problems that the addiction is causing.

They pay for the lawyers, they call up the teachers and ask for extra credit, they do all the things. Inside the context of the relationship, they’re critical and nagging and on that person’s case. That presents a picture for that person that’s all messed up because the picture that person sees is, “I don’t know what your problem is. I’m fine. I’m still going to work, I’m still making money. There’s nothing wrong with me. My problem is you.” That is that is how they see the issue.

The problem is the family member. Instead of going about it that way, I want people to reverse it. I want you to let the natural consequences happen and then empathize with them when they do because empathy triggers the learning part of someone’s brain. A whole lot better than trying to tell them the answer, a whole lot better than trying to confront them or force them to see it. If they get a negative consequence and then you say something like, “I told you that was going to happen,” even if they know they’re in the wrong, they’re immediately going to be defensive because that’s just human instinct and we’re all like that.

Addicts even more so. If you’re like, “That’s so terrible. I know you didn’t mean for that to happen,” which I’m they probably didn’t mean for whatever happened, they may or may not say this out loud, but they will think, “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have or I knew better.” They’ll have that thought in their head. It depends on their personality whether they’ll acknowledge it, but it’s almost reflexive. Just like it’s reflexive that they’ll be defensive if you come at it directly. If you come at it with empathy, the chance that they’ll see their piece in it is so much higher.

It’s not a matter of, “If I’m nice, they’ll stop drinking or using.” That’s not what happens. It’s, “If I’m nice, they’ll stop seeing me as the problem.” If I let the world be the bad guy and not me be the bad guy, then they’ll start to get that discomfort because the cons have to outweigh the pros in someone’s mind to make them want to change. To make them want to change completely to stop completely, the cons have to really outweigh the pros there.

 

You’re letting them see that, but while you’re building this trusted credibility, eventually they’re going to get themselves in a mess. Eventually they’re going to have that moment of clarity. They’re probably going to have a lot of little ones, but eventually they’re going to have the big one where it’s like, “I’m done with this. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being mad at myself, I’m sick of screwing things up and digging myself out of the hole or feeling crappy,” or whatever it is for them.

If you’ve played your cards right, then they might even acknowledge that to you and say that to you. If you have a suggestion and you play that card correctly, they’re likely to listen to it because that’s what I do. I build a relationship with people. I try to understand them completely. I try to see their struggles but also their strengths and what they’re really good at. When they get themselves in a mess, I’ll say, “I think you know what I think you need to get on this Soberlink alcohol monitoring,” or, “I think we need to do this to get you out of that legal trouble.”

They’re like, “Amber, thank you so much. You helped me,” because then they feel like, “Thank you. You came in here and saved the day,” versus, “You’re trying to make me do something I don’t want to do.” There’s a lot of like setting the stage and then just letting addiction play naturally. It’s not that they quit because you’re nicer. It’s that they start to see their problem more clearly because you’re not in the way.

You just said let the addiction play out naturally. That’s the piece that we disrupt when we get into rescuing or enabling. The piece that you’re adding that a lot of people miss is that if you do it with righteous indignation or anger or bitterness, “How could you do that to our family or how could you betray my trust,” or whatever to the person who’s addicted in whatever way, then you trigger their defensive turtling in response. If you do it with compassion, if you do it with learning skills for better listening and deep compassion for the struggle they’re going through, you open the door for them to see it a whole different way.

Exactly. You’re picking up exactly what I’m putting down. You got it.

So then what? One of the things I remember reading listening to some of your talks is the idea of the family dynamics in relation to the addictive process. What do you notice about that that the average person’s not going to see or notice? Family dynamics affecting addiction process.

Family Dynamics & Teamwork

One of the things that’s just so super common is that, like I said before, you have this primary villain person. You have these different roles that develop. You have this primary villain person and they’re not really a villain, I’m just saying that because that’s how the person with the addiction sees them. “You’re my problem because you’re always worried or you’re always critical,” whatever it is that they tell themselves.

 

They’re the blame target.

Main target. That’s a good way to put it. There becomes this power struggle between the main target and the person with the addiction. The other people in the family become annoyed with that power struggle and they just want that power struggle to stop. Let’s say it’s a mom and a son that are having this power struggle, which is super common. You have the dad over there which is just sick of hearing this argument.

“Can’t we just have some peace and quiet?”

He just wants it to stop. Thinking about their wife, “You’re making it worse.” They think they’re balancing it out. They start playing this overly good guy role. Now you got a really bad situation because you got good cop, bad cop going on. The one that’s the good cop will start holding secrets, start fixing things behind your back because they don’t like the way you’re handling it. Sometimes it’s because they literally don’t see it as a problem as much as you do. Sometimes they see the problem but they don’t agree with how you’re handling it because they feel like you’re making it worse. To be honest, you probably are.

The more that the other parent rescues, the more frustrated the parent with the alarms that’s gone off in their head, they get. One gets harder and one gets nicer. You’ve got this whole conflict that happens between these two people. You can mix in on top of that what goes on with all the other characters in the family, whether there’s other people living in the house or relatives, grandparents, in-laws, whatever.

The primary target person feels very scared, very resentful and isolated because they feel like they’re the only one seeing the problem and no one is listening to them. They start going around trying to gain support from the other family members. Let’s say this is your husband you’re worried about. Your inclination might be to go to your in-laws and say, “Your son has an alcohol problem and I need your help.”

 

That always backfires because what you don’t realize is behind the scenes, the addicted person has been going to all these other people complaining about you and talking about how you’re always mean to them and you’re always critical and you’re trying to control them and you’re never happy with them. When you go in with this frantic energy, trying to convince somebody that this person that they love so much is really a bad guy, they’re not going to want to hear that. In their mind, you’ve just proven the case that the other person’s in saying like, “I see what you’re saying. This person is off the rails.” They start working against you even more. This whole thing just gets bigger and worse and it will destroy the whole family.

When people aren’t seeing how what they’re doing to try and fix the problem is actually making it worse, then the system goes to the breaking point eventually.

Everybody’s making it worse. One’s making it worse by being the villain and trying to force it, and the others are making it worse by trying to soften the blows and fix everything. You’ve got double enabling on both sides which is all making the problem worse, plus all the disagreement between all the other family members. The wife is mad at the in-laws and in-laws are mad at the wife. That’s another whole distraction. While all that’s going on, this addiction is just growing and growing.

I particularly like the idea that you can shift the focus to the family dynamic as something separate because if you can’t understand that set of forces and how it’s like these massive pinchers coming down on the actual problem, which is the addictive process or the pain in the person, you know like Gabor Maté would say, instead of asking why so much alcohol, just ask why so much pain. Let’s get at the pain of the dynamic within the person that is at least aggravating an addictive process that’s going on.

I can’t do that if I’m at war. I used to talk to people about the teeter-totter effect. The teeter-totter works on the fulcrum. When people get together, they meet at that fulcrum wherever it is and they talk about. “I think you’re attractive and you think I’m attractive.” We both want kids and to live in a nice house etc. This is how we want to raise our kids. We’re agreeing on all these sets of issues. We get married and have kids and all of a sudden one of us is a little bit more strict than the other one thought.

You know what happens if you’re on a teeter-totter. That means you start tipping in that direction. To balance it out, the other parent decides to be a little bit more lenient cut to make up for the fact that mommy’s so harsh on you etc. Pretty soon, if you extend this out after weeks or months or years, we have neither parent acting the way they said they wanted to, relating to their children or doing parenting the way they dreamed they would before they actually had them. One is way too lenient and one is way too strict or one is way too distracted and the other is way too hovering and focused.

How do you fix that? You’ve got to you got to recognize that you can’t be doing the action based on what this other character out here is doing. You have to be doing it based on what’s the central need of the person I’m interacting with? I have to say, “I can’t be more strict to counteract a too lenient parent on the other side. I just want to do what I think is best for me and my child in this moment.” Turn a blind eye to what the other person is doing. All the upset I might generate when I think about it. “Do you believe what she gave them five cookies before dinner?”

The person in this whole scenario that’s most motivated is that primary target villainized person because they’re the ones that are trying to fix something. Everyone else is just trying to escape what this person is trying to do. I like to start with that person because that person is the one looking for some solutions, to be honest. They’re the most motivated at this point.

The one who’s being blamed by the person in the addiction process.

The one that’s in the power struggle. The co-dependent one, which I don’t like that word but that’s what other people would say or the main enabler, whatever. If you start with that person, and I say to them, “The first thing you’ve got to do is you got to get these other people to see the situation you the way you see it.” They’ll say, “I’ve been trying. They don’t listen to me.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I need you to stop doing it that way.”

Everything I teach about how to get through to an addicted person, I say, “I need you to apply that to your spouse or your in-laws,” or whoever this other people are. Instead of trying to force them to see it, I want you to be a good listener. I want you to back up. If grandparents think he’s just the sweetest thing ever, let them go stay with grandparents for a while and just empathize with them and they’re going to see pretty quick because now you’re not blocking their view. Now they don’t see you as the bad guy because not only does the addict see you as the bad guy, everybody else sees you that way too.

If you just back up first and let these other people see the issue and the more, you can use those same skills with those people, they start to see the problem and then they get more on board. The first thing you do is you go up and you get a team if that’s possible if there are other people. There usually are. If you don’t do them, they’re going to sabotage everything you try to do anyway. You’ve got to do that first.

Particularly when it’s parents, I like to suggest a system I call it front guy, back guy because one of you, I tell them they have a really good sketch star. They know when something’s up and that’s the one with the alarms going on. Whatever they think is happening is probably happening because they just have this radar like they can’t miss it but they’re not good at dealing with it because their radar’s going off.

The other one that tends to maybe want to minimize it or not see it, their radar is not as good, but they’re usually a lot better at dealing with the person. Instead of working against each other, I say we’re going to be a team, you have two different skills. Front guy, back guy. The one that’s good at seeing it, the other one has to trust. If that person says it’s happening, it’s probably happening. I’m just telling you.

You can trust what they’re say but you’re going to be the one to address it because you have better skills and you’re not in that villain role as much so you already have more credibility. I want you to figure out how to interact and you have to trust each other to do that. One has to trust that the other one’s radar’s right and the radar has to trust that this one can navigate the situation better. Now we can get on the same team and use those differences at in a way that’s helpful, like if you have a pitcher and a catcher on a baseball team, instead of adversarially.

We can get on the same team and use our differences in a way that’s helpful. Share on X

Excellent. Basically, using the same good listening skills and empathy for the other team members that you might want to recruit to help with presenting a united front to the addicted person, but again, it’s just something you’re doing as a natural course of your interactions with them, it’s not some big production where you hire a therapist to have an intervention.

You start changing the system, like you said, that fulcrum, if you change where you’re putting the weight, it’s going to shift the system and you start pulling that system back in a direction that’s helpful. That is such powerful influence. You can make things happen so much faster that way.

How do you provide services most? Is it in person? Do you have more of an online, a virtual ability to do this? Do you do it with individuals, families, groups? Tell me a little bit about how you do this work.

Historically, we saw people in our office, like everyone does. We started getting big online just before COVID hit. The two things combined, we help people all over the world now. We don’t really do full long-term counseling anymore but we do short-term coaching and consultation. We help a lot of family members who are in this position, what do I do when I’m in this situation and we help them through that. We have several ways we do that.

One way is people just watch our YouTube videos and learn these skills and use them and it works for them. People that want to go more in depth can either take one of our online courses like the invisible intervention is an online course that you can take on your own time and you can go through it and learn these lessons it teaches you all the communication all the things and you can do that behind the scenes.

Highlighting Values To Create Discrepancy

We have some group coaching and things like that. We run a challenge every month that is specifically for spouses of functional alcoholics where we walk you through the process together on how to not just use these invisible intervention skills but how to speed it up by identifying things like how does your person want to be seen? What are their values? How to pull those values to the surface by just reminding them. Not reminding them of them by telling them they’re not doing it, but just reminding them of that strength that they have and that purpose that they have and those values that they have.

When you bring those to the surface, the person starts to see the discrepancy between their values and who they want to be becomes even more clear. For example, instead of saying something like, “You’re destroying our kids’ lives. You’re messing it up,” you say something more like, “I always admired the way you were always so involved with the kids. A lot of moms and dads aren’t like that. They’re just too busy and you’ve always made time for them.” That brings that part of that person, which is a true part of them, back to the front of their thinking. They feel good about that. It also makes them see where the discrepancy the gap is, where they’re missing the mark and then they see it. Now you’re speeding it up.

It’s not the mark you’re setting for them.

Exactly. You’re just reminding of them of their mark in a really good, aligning way. You can even say, “I know it’s so important to you because you went through that with your dad and I know you never wanted to be like that. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.” See how powerful that is? Tomorrow, when they forget the basketball game or they get short at homework time, they’re going to feel that deeply. They’re going to see how it’s affecting them instead of seeing you as the villain. As I said, it clears the path for them to get honest with themselves. Those are the things that are going to motivate someone to change because it’s not who they want to be.

That filter through which they’re seeing themselves or blocking themselves from seeing themselves is what you’re going to call in a question. You’re going to shine a spotlight on it so they can see, “I’m hiding from myself the fact that I’m missing the mark on all these things I said I want to achieve in my life.” It’s happening without the blame as the distortion. I’m not doing it because he, she, they. I’m just noticing what I’m doing.

Yeah, that’s not my intention, that’s not who I want to be, that’s not me. They start to see it so much more clearly. For example, I was working with this fellow a while back who’s a very successful person, a highly respected person in their field. They had an alcohol problem and had had for years and years. When this person drank, they were not a nice person. They make mean, snarky comments. They were just not nice.

This person’s in complete denial when they start seeing me and they just talked to me about their work and how respected they are and how people think that they’re just the greatest thing since sliced bread. They are literally laying it on to me thick and how they treat this person and that person and how they’re the favorite person in the whole place.

I listen to this for a few weeks and then I say, “You really put a lot of effort into being kind and considerate and helpful, so much more than most people. That’s who you are.” We can sneakily bring in, “I know that this alcohol thing frustrates you because it makes you the opposite of that and clearly, this is important to you.” You could literally see the light bulbs go on. You could see the whole facial expression change where they’re suddenly realizing, “Yeah, but I’m a jerk to my wife,” which I didn’t say you’re a jerk to your wife. He had told me that alcohol makes him not the nicest or whatever. I could say that because he told me that. He knew that.

You have to help someone see that they are part of the problem—enough to motivate them to change, but not so much that you destroy their sense of self. Share on X

There’s some part of him that sees enough of the pattern that can show it to you and then when you look at the pieces, you go, “Look at that pattern,” and the person who handed you the puzzle pieces is like, “I don’t see anything.” You get to shift their view until they see what they’re handing you in a different way and they go, “There it is. It’s in me.”

I’m then like, “That must be terrible because you put all this effort into this and this and then one little thing you say and then it just destroys it and that’s so unfortunate.” You can watch the light bulbs go off.

The essence of what you’re talking about, there is the core of what they are going for in coherence therapy. When the person sees inside their own mind how they’re these two completely incompatible beliefs but they both feel true in this essential feeling inside, then their own system goes, “This can’t be right,” and comes up with an integrated solution that’s far more functional.

They start to see the alcohol as the problem. On some level, they’re going to be upset with themselves but it’s better if you villainize the addiction because you have to help someone see, “Yes, I am a problem here,” enough so that they get motivated to change, but also not so much that you destroy their sense of self because then they just give in to it and that’s not good. You have to let it be uncomfortable enough but not too much. Say, “This thing out here is messing up everything you’ve ever worked for.” They can start to see where the real villain is clearly. That’s how you get people motivated to make changes.

Do you know about the book Push Off From Here?

I don’t. I like the title, though.

This is a this is a book that is written by Laura McKowen and essentially, there are these nine statements that she really valued when she was hearing them from people when she was starting her recovery from addiction. She used it as the epilogue of her of her first book which is titled We Are the Luckiest and then the second book uses that nine points from the first book and just expands it into a, “Here’s what we mean by this.” One of the statements is it’s not fair that this is your thing, that you have to struggle with alcohol that other people can drink socially and not get a problem etc. It’s not fair, but this is your thing. You’re the only one that can fix your thing. The other nine points are just loving support. They’re the hard cold fact with loving support brought in.

People can hear hard cold facts if they feel loved and supported because their defensive brain isn’t working.

I’m hearing this wonderful synergy between so many other things that I’ve read and worked on over the years and what you’re presenting. I really like that you said that you’re not doing the long term. You’re doing the short-term coaching because that to me that gets everybody’s minds set with the idea that we’re going to teach you tools and you’re going to pick them up and use them. It’s not me coming and fixing your family or rescuing you. It’s you learning some tools and then applying them in your life.

That’s exactly it and it really is coaching because it you know when you deal with these families, they want solutions. There’s plenty of places for them to go and feel heard and supported but they’re like, “What do I say?” We say, “I want you to say these words. Write them down and say them exactly in this moment and say them for exactly this amount time and let’s practice the tone of voice you’re going to say them in.” That’s why it really is coaching. Do this at this moment. These are the plays in the playbook. You teach them when to run what plays. They come back and they tell you how well it went and we said, “Let’s make this adjustment. Now run this play.”

You’re not just telling them a play to do. You’re helping them understand how it fits into a system that makes sense and could lead to better outcomes.

The reason why all that works the reason why the family members willing to listen to us is because I can articulate their situation better than they can articulate it. When I say all those things, they’re like, “That’s exactly it, Amber. It’s like you were in my life. How did you know that?” Now they have felt heard and understood and now they’re willing to listen to what I say. If I just went into that mom or that wife and I said, “You’re being too mean and you need to be nicer and here’s what I want you to do,” that would not have worked. You have to get yourself in a trusted position with that person.

You have to help them understand that what they’re trying to accomplish is something that you understand as has value and you understand why they’re doing what they’re doing to try and accomplish it and you can also see it’s not working.

How they’re being treated in the process and how other people can’t hear them and how they’re being manipulated and gaslighted they’re like, “Yes, that’s it,” and now your opinion matters.

You’re literally aligning with them the way you would align with the person with the addiction process.

That is the core pieces to the invisible intervention. It’s the foundation underneath.

Who are your favorite people to have show up in your various websites or intake portals? What kind of person do you just really like or families do you really like?

Any of the families that are stuck in that situation that we just described, those are our people. We particularly like to help people who have addicted loved ones who haven’t lost everything yet. Sometimes, when you get that far out and you’re dealing with someone who’s homeless or someone who’s been in prison ten times. That other more direct approach might be the better approach because we’re at life and death now and we just got to have to do what we got to do. Our goal is to hit people before they hit bottom before they’ve lost everything and burned every bridge. There are ways to do that. You don’t have to step back and let someone ruin everything.

Is it a matter of at the earliest warning sign or after you’ve crossed this level then you’re a good candidate for the put the shovel down approach? How do you talk about that? Just at the earliest warning sign of addiction problem, we can help you or if you’ve had this happen and this happen but you’re not here yet, this is a good sweet spot for us?

Helping People In The “Middle Ground”

If you come to us when you’re seeing those early warning signs of addiction, we can tell you how to play the cards in the right way so that you don’t have to go through as many years as other people are going to go through. If it’s the first warning signs there’s probably not enough uncomfortableness in that person’s life that they’re going to change but we can prevent all those years of you being the villain. We can side step. We can expedite the process.

You can’t make someone not go through the bargaining phases but you can speed it up. As long as there is addictive behavior there and that it is addiction, then this system will work. If this is, “I caught my kid smoking weed for the first time,” and maybe it’s not even addiction and maybe we’re jumping the gun, we’re probably not the right place. It has to be clearly there’s a problem. An addictive process is in play but not so bad that it’s all the way that far gone to where it’s like literally life and death every day. It’s when we’re in that middle ground I feel like that we help people the best. I love that because I feel like those are the people who aren’t being helped.

You can’t stop someone from going through the bargaining phase, but you can speed it up. Share on X

How do you prefer people reach out to you?

I prefer that people find us on YouTube and consume a little bit of that content first because what’s interesting is people that get to us that way they’re already halfway down the road and then when they need our services, then they actually already got almost all the puzzle pieces they may just need us to help them tweak the plays that they’re running just so a little bit and so it’s so much faster. You can come to us straight out the gate and we can walk you through 1, 2, 3, all the way to the end but you can get a lot of it just from YouTube and it’s free.

To find you on YouTube, they would just search for your name Amber Hollingsworth or they would search for Put The Shovel Down?

Either one, it’s going to come up. The channel name is Put the Shovel Down. I know that seems like a weird name but it’s an old recovery saying meaning you hit your bottom when you put your shovel down. You don’t have to keep digging, you don’t have to burn every bridge. You can just be like, “Okay, I’m done. I can see this isn’t going where I want it to.” Put the shovel down. As the family member, put your shovel down. As the addicted person, put your shovel down. There’s so much content on the channel for every angle of that, so whichever role you’re playing in that system, there’s content on that channel to help you with wherever you are in that process.

Excellent. Thank you so much for taking time to share with us and I’m literally thinking of several people in my caseload that will benefit from what I’ve already gotten from listening to the channel and I look forward to following the channel.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for all the good work you’re doing as well.

You’re entirely welcome and deserving. Take care.

—

Amber Hollingsworth is a Master Addiction Counselor, Founder of Hope for Families Recovery Center, and Creator of the YouTube channel Put the Shovel Down. With over two decades of experience, she’s helped thousands of families navigate addiction recovery using innovative relationship-focused strategies like the invisible intervention. Known for her relatable, no-nonsense approach, Amber empowers families to outsmart addiction, set healthy boundaries, and rebuild trust. Her expertise and compassionate style make her a sought-after podcast guest, offering practical advice and hope to families facing the challenges of addiction.

 

Important Links

• Hope for Families Recovery Center
• Put the Shovel Down
• Push Off from Here
• We Are the Luckiest
• Families Anonymous

 

About Amber Hollingsworth

Amber Hollingsworth is a master addiction counselor, founder of Hope For Families Recovery Center, and creator of the YouTube channel Put The Shovel Down. With over two decades of experience, she’s helped thousands of families navigate addiction recovery using innovative, relationship-focused strategies like the Invisible Intervention. Known for her relatable, no-nonsense approach, Amber empowers families to outsmart addiction, set healthy boundaries, and rebuild trust. Her expertise and compassionate style make her a sought-after podcast guest, offering practical advice and hope to families facing the challenges of addiction.