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When you love someone struggling with addiction, even a simple conversation can feel like walking into a courtroom, a battlefield, or a trap.

You want to help. You want to say the right thing. You want them to open up, be honest, and finally see what you see. But too often, the conversation turns into defensiveness, arguing, guilt, shutdown, or another exhausting ride on the addiction rollercoaster.

In this episode, Jason Coombs teaches families how to approach hard conversations differently using simple, practical tools from motivational interviewing, including the OARS framework: open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.

You’ll learn how to ask better questions, reflect instead of react, validate without enabling, and use the “importance ruler” to help your loved one begin making their own case for change.

Jason also shares the Stop, Drop, and Roll framework for those heated moments when emotions rise and the conversation starts to get away from you.

This episode is for parents, spouses, siblings, and loved ones who are tired of walking on eggshells and want to learn how to stay loving, clear, and boundaried—even when addiction pushes back.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to stop turning hard conversations into interrogations
• Why open-ended questions lower defensiveness
• How to affirm honesty without approving harmful behavior
• Why reflection helps your loved one feel heard
• How to use the importance ruler without pushing or preaching
• What to do when the conversation gets hot
• How to stay loving without getting pulled back into chaos

You can’t control your loved one’s addiction, but you can change the way you show up. And that change matters.

Learn more about Brick House Recovery and the Unhooked family recovery work at BrickHouseRecovery.com.

Support the show

Join Jason Coombs LIVE each week for tips and tricks and LIVE Q&A’s. Go to https://www.liveunhooked.com/live-unhooked.

For information about treatment services visit https://www.brickhouserecovery.com/

For more information about Warrior Heart Bootcamp for men visit www.awarriorheart.com

https://awarriorheart.com/

$100 DISCOUNT CODE for Warrior Heart = 2026Brick100

To learn more about the women’s retreat, Heart of a Woman:
https://theheartofawoman.net/

$100 DISCOUNT CODE for Heart of a Woman = 2026Brick100