How to Use This Script

This script is designed to be read aloud during your coaching session. "You" sometimes addresses you as the coach and sometimes your loved one — just as it would in a natural conversation. Speak it in your own voice; paraphrase where it feels right. Sections in blockquotes are exercises to do together.

You: "One of the most powerful things about CRAFT is that it teaches you to recognize the moments when your loved one is most open to considering change. These are called 'windows of opportunity.'"

You: "A window opens when the balance tips — when the pain of using outweighs the relief it provides, even temporarily. These moments are often brief, so you need to be prepared."

Common Windows of Opportunity:

After a particularly bad consequence (DUI, job loss, health scare, relationship crisis)
During a sober, reflective moment ("I can't keep doing this")
After seeing the impact on someone they love (their child, their parent)
When they're physically unwell from use (hangover, withdrawal symptoms)
After a period of sobriety when they can feel the contrast
When they express any dissatisfaction with their current situation

You: "When a window opens, your job is to be ready — not to lecture, not to say 'I told you so,' but to gently suggest a next step. And that next step needs to be specific and achievable."

You: "Don't say: 'You need to go to rehab.' Say: 'I found a counselor who specializes in this. Her name is Dr. Martinez. She has an opening Thursday at 2. I can drive you. Would you be willing to try one session?'"

You: "The more specific and low-barrier the suggestion, the more likely they are to say yes. 'One session' is less scary than 'rehab.' 'I'll drive you' removes an obstacle. 'Thursday at 2' makes it real."

Important: If they say no, do not push. Say: "Okay. The offer stands whenever you're ready." Then go back to reinforcing sober behavior and allowing natural consequences. The window will open again.

Compassionate Inquiry: Tracing the Shame

You: "Let's talk about shame for a minute. Not guilt — guilt says 'I did something wrong.' Shame says 'I am something wrong.' And in relationships where mental health is a factor, shame is everywhere — for both people."

You: "Gabor Maté argues that most shame is not about the current situation. It's inherited. It's the voice of a parent, a teacher, a culture that said 'you're too much' or 'you're not enough.' And it gets activated — hard — when we're in caregiving relationships."

CI Exercise: Tracing the Shame Think of a recent moment when you felt shame in this relationship. Now trace it back:

The moment: What happened? What did you feel?

The story: What did you tell yourself about what it meant?

The origin: When did you first learn that story? Whose voice is it?

The body: Where do you feel shame in your body right now?

The reframe: If that shame belongs to the past, what is actually true right now?

You: "You don't have to share all of this. But write it down. Shame loses power when it's seen."

Mentalization Exercise: Behind the Behavior

You: "Now I want to give you a specific tool for understanding what is happening underneath the behavior you see. This exercise comes from Mentalization-Based Therapy — Bateman and Fonagy's work — and it is about looking behind the behavior to the mental state driving it."

You: "Remember Linehan's three functions of emotion. In addiction, all three functions have been rerouted through the substance. The self-communication function — the internal signal that says 'I am in pain' or 'I need comfort' or 'I am lonely' — has been trained to produce a single output: 'use.' Every difficult emotion, every uncomfortable sensation, every interpersonal wound gets translated into craving. The person may not even know what they are actually feeling because the substance has been answering the question for years. The interpersonal signal becomes manipulation, lying, charm, or rage — which you experience as betrayal, but is actually the addiction commandeering the social communication system to protect its supply. And the action motivation is hijacked by the reward system — the dopamine pathway that normally motivates eating, connecting, working, loving has been rewired to prioritize the substance above everything, including you. This is not a moral failure. It is a neurological reorganization."

You: "Here is something most people do not understand about addiction: emotional development often arrests at the age of onset of regular use. If your loved one started drinking heavily at 16, they may be 45 with the emotional regulation capacity of a 16-year-old. This is not an insult — it is neuroscience. The prefrontal cortex was still developing when the substance hijacked the reward system. The emotional maturity that comes from navigating difficult feelings sober — sitting with discomfort, tolerating ambiguity, delaying gratification — never got practiced. So when you see behavior that looks childish, selfish, or bafflingly short-sighted, you are often looking at a person whose emotional toolkit stopped growing decades ago. The behavior is the surface. The arrested development is underneath."

Behind the Behavior — Practice Script

Think of a recent behavior from your loved one that triggered you. Something that felt hurtful, selfish, or incomprehensible. Now work through these steps:

Name the behavior. Just the facts. What did they actually do or say? (Not your interpretation — the observable behavior.)

Name your first interpretation. What did your nervous system tell you it meant? ("They're selfish." "They don't care about anyone but themselves." "They're choosing the substance over us.")

Consider the addiction state. What was happening neurologically? Was the craving active? Were they in withdrawal? Were they in the shame spiral that follows use — where the self-loathing is so intense that using again feels like the only escape from the pain of having used? And consider: what emotional age were they operating from? If emotional development arrested at 16 (or 14, or 20), what would a 16-year-old do in this situation?

Generate three alternative explanations. What else might they have been feeling or needing? Force yourself to come up with three:

Maybe they were feeling...

Maybe they needed...

Maybe the addiction was telling them...

Sit with not knowing. You do not have to pick the "right" explanation. The point is to hold multiple possibilities. That is mentalizing. The opposite — locking onto one explanation with certainty — is what Bateman and Fonagy call psychic equivalence. It is the collapse of curiosity.

You: "This is the not-knowing stance. It does not mean you have no opinion. It means you hold your opinion lightly enough to wonder whether there is something you cannot see. In addiction, the internal experience is almost always more desperate than the external behavior suggests — the person who looks like they 'don't care' is often drowning in shame so deep they cannot access caring."

You: "Practice this once this week. Pick one behavior that frustrated you. Run it through the five steps. Pay particular attention to step 3 — the emotional age question. It often changes everything."

Go Deeper — Between Sessions

Relapse is not failure — it is a predictable feature of the recovery trajectory. The neuroscience: addiction restructures the dopamine reward circuit, and recovery requires the circuit to reorganize around natural reinforcers. Structural Dissociation maps the dissociative states that can precede relapse — the 'not quite there' quality that supporters often notice before the person does. Pre-Session Screenings includes the AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) for tracking.