SUMMARY KEYWORDS
addiction impacts, family support, setting boundaries, emotional health, codependency, harm reduction, recovery programs, self-care, enabling behaviors, communication skills, balanced mind, emotional decisions, family unity, detachment, enmeshment
00:16
Hello and welcome to addiction truths brought to you by country road Recovery Center. I'm your host, Pierce Rosengren, in this podcast series, we delve deep into the profound impacts of addiction on families. We share insights, experiences and advice on navigating this challenging journey, because it is. It can be very challenging before we begin a gentle reminder to our valued listeners, while we deeply appreciate your engagement and encourage you to reach out with questions, comments, concerns, please refrain from hosting the names of family members who are currently in our treatment program or who have been in the past. Your discretion helps us maintain the privacy and safety of all involved. He we're here to offer support, answer questions, and build a community of understanding and healing. So let's start this conversation and bring some truths about addiction to life.
01:11
Nice, cool, because you're at the Yeah. First
01:18
time I've heard, you know, it took me, it took me. It took me a little bit to write the introduction, but that's nice. Yeah, this is something that impacts addiction. Is something that has personally impacted my life. It has impacted my family's life. I have family members who have impacted my life with their addiction. So this is a topic I care deeply about, and I'm hoping to gain some insights today with sitting with you guys. So I hope all of our listeners gain some insights as well. I'm going to, I didn't prepare Kathy to do the introduction what we're talking about today, but I'm going to kick it over to Kathy and to do a little bit of to talk about what we're gonna talk about today.
02:03
Okay, um, so, I'm Kathy. That's Derek, by the way. Yeah, Derek's our clinical director. Um, I'll be representing the family side of this, I guess. Um, so, what we're talking about today is basically the impact of addiction on not only our loved ones in addiction, but ourselves, our families, their families. Um, what that can look like on each side and what we can do, because I can tell you from a place of experience, it could take you to a very unhealthy place. Um, so what we can do for ourselves on the family side, to not let the behaviors and whatnot of our addicted loved ones take us down, because I've also been there, and what healing from that and coming back from that looks like cool in a nutshell, that's
02:59
what we're Talking about. Yeah. So I'm talking about today, the first question I have for you guys is the help I'm giving to my loved ones that are struggling with with addiction, actually helping.
03:16
I mean, is it? Is it okay to say that it depends on what help you're trying to give them. Well, I was
03:23
gonna say probably we gotta look at what, yeah, help is,
03:27
because there's definitely ways that we would say that families are doing the helpful right thing, and then there's a whole long list of ways in which we would say families are doing the helpful, unhealthy thing right? And anything we do that is unhealthy is actually, even if it seems we roll this back. I think what's hard for families is everything feels helpful on the surface, right, but if it's if it's unhealthy in its patterns. It de qualifies its helpfulness, and it's really just making things worse. So that, yeah, that would be like, there's a lot of ins and outs on
04:10
that well, so I was gonna say, so thank goodness. Not only are there recovery programs for folks in addiction, but there are for families, and there's a multitude of them. The one I work we have what we call the three C's, actually there's four, but they are you cannot, or you did not, cause this addiction in your loved one. You know, I don't care what you did. I don't care what excuse you come up with how you find because we will find ways to blame ourselves. This is not your fault. You do not cause this. You cannot control it. You can't love them into sobriety. You cannot force them into sobriety. You cannot guilt them into sobriety. Trust me, I and we have tried all the things they do not work. Um, I. You cannot cure it. I don't care how much money you throw at things. I don't care how much you pray. Whatever you do, you cannot make this better for them, but we can contribute to it, and that's what that fourth one is, as much as we try to be helpful and help and make things, whether you're trying to help control what they've got going on, if you're hiding drugs, if you're pouring out alcohol, if you're trying to control the money, no matter what you're doing, you can't your helpfulness can very often, like Derek just said, contribute to the continuation of that addiction. My one of my closest people to me in my program, she has the saying, and I swear the first time I heard her say it, it was like she looked straight into my soul and punched me in the gut. One of her favorite sayings is helpfulness is the sunny side of control. And I went, Okay, ma'am, which makes total sense to me, because every time I thought I was being helpful, once I heard this from her, I realized it was me trying to make sure everything was okay, whether it was reminding loved ones of appointments, making sure you know people are did you get your meds over? Did you do this? You do that. And in my mind, I was being helpful. I was trying to do good, because I knew they had all this going on. They were going to forget things. It came down to, I felt out of control, and I didn't I wasn't comfortable with that. So if I was going to be helpful, I would get in there and help and make sure things were okay. It would make me feel better? Yeah? About trying to control everything that's going on. And in my mind, it was coming from a really good place. It usually does not always, but it usually does. But in the end, it just came down to me trying to control things, because it was a way of making myself feel better.
06:59
Yeah, when you care about when you care about someone who's struggling with addiction, watching them go through the struggles, watching them lose weight, seeing their face shrink, watching them lose jobs, watching them face the consequences, that can be gut wrenching, and that's often where I find myself trying to step in and say, Hey, here's resources. Hey, let me. Let me drive you to your next job interview. Hey, let me, you know. Let's sit down and work on, let's sit down and work on some different places to fill out job applications. Let's go to a meeting. Let's, you know, let's call your sponsor. That's a, you know, that's for me. That's those are times and where I know that I'm stepping over the line and I'm not being helpful anymore, right? I'm definitely not being helpful to myself. Because what's behind that, generally, is like me feeling guilty for something that I shouldn't feel guilty for.
08:03
Well, and I'm uncomfortable because you're not in a good place, and we never think about like, it wasn't until I was in a meeting one day, one of my friends was like, more often than not, if I'm trying to do something to make you feel better or make your life better, it's because I'm uncomfortable with what's going on with you, and then you don't even realize that's behind it. Yeah, that's
08:26
that's really good. I've thought that a lot of different times, even in my own life, but certainly in clinically working with people, that most of the time, our attempts to alleviate someone else's suffering is more tied to my own discomfort about their suffering, their suffering, right? You know, if I've got a family member even outside the wrong addiction, if I've got a family member that's really anxious, and I'm like, Hey, how can I help you? It's typically more about I don't like your anxiety. Your anxiety is freaking me out. Let me take it from you. What can I do? Because that's going to make me better too, right? And so as you guys were talking on the things that I kept thinking about is there's so much pain and suffering that happens for family members of addicts and alcoholics, not just for addicts and alcoholics because we partly because we watch them suffer, but also because it puts us through our own cycles of guilt and our own stuff, right? And any, any help strategy that families give, I think, has to be rooted in self care first strategies, right? So it's like family members have to say, hey, what's best for me? Right? Because what's best for me is going to, by default, be what's best for them, right? It's best for me to work with my own counseling team or change team to get healthy. It's best for me to take care of myself physically. It's best for me to set these boundaries. And if you're doing what's best and healthiest for you, by default, it's going to roll downhill and be healthiest. What's best for the other person.
10:01
The hard part is, because I completely agree with you. The hard part is, I think more often than not, loved ones have been in this we talked about, like the roller coaster that we get on, and we've been in that cycle for so long, we are constantly waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next phone call from jail that you forget you even exist. You can completely lose yourself in this cycle, and although you're just living on adrenaline the vast majority of the time, just waiting, like I said, for the next shoe to drop. So you because you got to be prepared to handle it, because, you know they can't or they're not going to. And the hard part is it really goes back to you want your person to be okay? My kid just got arrested. Would a good mother leave their kid in jail? This goes question, would a good mother do that? Clearly, a good mom's gonna go bail their kid out of jail, and, you know, make sure he's okay and safe at home where she can protect him. Now, let's be real, you can bail your kid out of jail and they're in there and they've got addiction issues, odds are gonna go, thanks mom, and they're out the door and back to let me go find a deal. Yeah, let me go hit the liquor store. But the mom side of you, the dad side of you, says, That's my child. I need to make sure they're okay and safe and not in there with that criminal element in, you know, prison. So it's hard to if your kid's mad at you and he hasn't come home in a few weeks, or you've tried to set down that boundary with you're not using or drinking in my house. If you're going to continue this behavior, you cannot stay here, mom, brain goes to it's cold at night, my kid's going to freeze to death, or who they going to be around, because if they're here with me, at least they know they're safe and they're not out with that element around dangerous people, you know. And so that's one of the hardest parts, is you know intellectually, you know the right choices to make. You know the right decisions to make. But that parent side of you, that sister side of you, that whatever that I love, this person, I don't want to put them in your mind. You don't want to put them in a position where they could be unsafe or OD or get shot or something.
12:21
This might be completely, I don't think it's completely off topic, but it's certainly a tangent. Maybe, how much of that mentality that we have of Oh, I love this person, I don't want to, I don't want them to be cold, or whatever it might be, is like completely rooted in a culture that doesn't understand what really loving people actually is and isn't. And it's like, we're taught it's like, it would be really nice if we weren't taught this, right? But we're taught from like, a really young age that loving someone is doing only, like, kind generous things, right? And there's this whole other aspect that loving somebody sometimes is like, like, if I loved Pierce and I saw Pierce doing something that was bad for him, the most loving thing I can do is go, Hey, bro, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't stab yourself. That's not good for you, right? Stop it. Like, let me take the knife away from you, right? And Pierce is gonna be like, I'm really sad. He took my knife for me, and I'll stab myself. And I'm like, be sad, man, but I'm not gonna I love you too much to allow you to engage in harmful behaviors, right? And then, but we get it so convoluted, I think at times that we're like, oh, loving them is like sheltering and protecting at all costs. And sometimes that's really the opposite, oh yeah, of love. You know,
13:47
I was just gonna, I was gonna jump in and kind of hit on a hot button right now in our society. And, you know, because I watched what harm reduction has done to a lot of my friends, and harm reduction has just perpetuated the addiction longer because there's a lack of consequences to their addiction. You know, in my personal life, I've, I have been placed in positions where, despite the consequences of my that I, you know, despite my consequences, despite the things that I was doing to my family, you know, they would let me stay in the house with them, but really, and you know, bless my mom, she's the best. She's I love her to death, and she she did so much, yeah, she did so much for me, so much. But at the end of the day, she was scared that I was going to be out there alone, cold, hungry, hungry, and so she let me in her house. Well, ultimately, what that did was it just provided me an opportunity to continue the bad behavior without consequences. And yeah, well, that's
14:56
the struggle. I remember when I first came to work here and I. I hear a lot of one sided conversations from the admissions team, because all of them love to wander around and pace while they're on the phone. I would hear things like, just leave them in jail, leave them there. When we get, you know, admissions set up, we'll get them transported here, or, no, don't go bail them out. Just it may be insane, because Mom Brain kicked in. And I'm like, of course, she wants to go bail him out of jail. She knows he's home safe and Okay, till she can get him to
15:30
you. But home isn't safe, that's the problem. No, yeah. And
15:35
mind you, this was, you know, a good I've been here a year, year and a half before I finally, I was like, You know what? I'm miserable. I should do something about this. Um, but this was my old thinking, like previous and, you know, I remember having a conversation with one of our clinicians, like, or what's the word credit for this? Nobody wants to but we were talking, he's a blood anyway. We were talking one day, and we were literally, we were having this conversation. And, you know, he said, it comes down to the what if is possible. All these scenarios, the if, if I leave them in there, or I don't give them a place to stay for tonight, all those what ifs that I think up in my brain are a legitimate possibility. And it comes down to, is there a right, right call on this absolutely but also, if the worst happens, if I set that boundary and the worst happens, can I live with that? Yeah, that's a tough one. And it yes, we can jump up and down all day going the more you keep bailing them out of jail, the more you keep giving them a bed to sleep at night when it's cold, the longer you're extending their addiction. You're giving them that soft place to land. You're giving them rescues. But also, if, God forbid the worst happened, can you go on the rest of your life? And this is not me saying, Don't set boundaries, but I'm saying you need to set boundaries that you can stick to and you can live with. Yeah, because that's the hardest part. Just setting those boundaries themselves are hard as it is, but Yeah, can you live with whatever comes of them?
17:15
We, you know, in addiction treatment, we talk a lot about denial and delusion and the fact that an addict or an alcoholic can't get real healthy until that denial and that delusion begins to break down. And I think the same thing is true for families, right? Like, there's a lot of that delusion like, oh, it's safer for me to bail them out. It's safer. I'll use a example that hopefully clearly, everybody's on the same page with me. It's delusional for a parent of a high school student to think, well, they're gonna party. I'll just they're gonna be safer if they're partying at my house than they would be if they were partying right out in the field. So I'll buy them all, I'll buy the booze. I'll have the party here. That's delusional thinking. That's crazy, right, right? But until families break that delusion, then they're not going to get there's a limit to how healthy they can get to and a part of that is you have to be okay with like, you're the one that has to go to sleep at the end of the night, right? And you're the one that's got to say, like, Hey, this is where I'm at right now. I'm not willing to go there yet. And sometimes I think for families that I've worked with in the past, just like with addicts and alcoholics, like they haven't experienced enough suffering for their own enabling, just like an alcoholic hasn't experienced enough suffering for theirs. So they're not willing to change that, because they just haven't. They haven't hit their codependent bottom, yeah, right. And they're like, No, I'm okay continuing in this behavior because I can't. I haven't gotten to the point yet. And I've worked with families that do get to this point, I haven't gotten to the point yet where I'm going to be okay saying, if you're homeless, you're homeless like, and I'm just not there yet. And I don't think there's anything wrong with not being there yet. It's just the same thing with with somebody that's using, like, that's that CO dependent bottom, that when you hit that, some more, some more, things are going to change, and you're going to be willing to take different action than you were willing to when you were like, well, I'm willing to set this boundary, but not this one. And I mean, I agree with that, like you're the one that's got to sleep at the end of the night, yeah, yeah, leaving somebody in jail or leaving somebody on the streets or whatever,
19:27
yeah? Well, like, you just said, like, I So, for the record, I have permission to talk about him, but my cousin drew I remember when he came through here, even while he was here, I knew he was somewhere safe and people were taking care of him. Now, of course, that codependent side of me was like, I don't know these people, but really taking care of him? Um, but I remember he got out of treatment, he moved into sober living, and one would reason, okay, he's sober, he's in a safe place. He's with like minded people who are all working on the. Recovery that should give me a chance to calm down, right? Yeah, my co dependent brain went. We gotta think up new stuff to worry about. Okay, is he going to his meetings? Is he paying rent at a sober house? Did you order your meds? Have your meds come in yet? Are they getting low, and if they are, did you wait too long to order them? Do you need to go to the VA to get some more. Um, are you calling your sponsor? Do we like this sponsor? Maybe we should check out this sponsor. Don't do that. Don't check out your loved one. Sponsors on your business. This part of we did that, right? Um, he did not know. He knows now, um, but I like I literally, I was making myself insane because things were good, and that made me uncomfortable, because I've been living in this chaos. And I don't mean just him, but I mean this chaos and this fear for so long that I didn't know how to be comfortable in it. So my brain went we got to find stuff to worry about so we can help and keep an eye on things. And it wasn't till he was probably about two years into his sobriety that I started realizing he's getting so much healthier, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and I'm just illustrative, crazy person. Um, it even got to the point where I was at work, and I was this close to asking the previous clinical director, can I sit in on some of these groups and maybe I can learn something? Because I was like, something's gotta give, and I honestly don't have the courage to go to therapy. I probably need it, but I didn't have courage to go to therapy. So it wasn't until but I hit that point where I was like, I Why am I still scared and worried and looking for stuff to worry all the time? And it comes down to literally what you just said. I had to get sick and tired of being sick and tired and miserable before I would do something to help myself.
21:47
You know, the question that comes to mind is, where do I draw the line? Where do I draw the line with my loved ones, behavior and like we've been talking about, just addressing, where am I what boundaries Am I comfortable setting? What boundaries can I live with if there are consequences to me setting those boundaries, you know, where do I draw the line? I you know, for me, I had to get to a really low spot before I was willing to change the behavior, before I was willing to address my addiction, and like we've been talking about, I think families do also have to get down to that bottom line, they kind of have to hit a rock bottom themselves. And it's uncomfortable. Where, where do I draw the line? Sometimes I don't know. And it's not necessarily something that's very clear. It's not like, one day you're gonna be like, Okay, that was that was it, you know, that's a really, you know, maybe sometimes that happens, but, but oftentimes it's more subtle.
22:44
I think that's an important question, where do I draw the line? But I think that might change, right? Like with you, where you drew the line at one point is different than where you draw the line today? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And so as important to me is, where do you draw the line is? I have to make sure I'm communicating where that line is with the people in my life and sticking to it. And yeah, like I don't, I don't need, if I can't stick to the line, that's not where the line needs to be, right? And if I do have a line, let's say, let's say my line for my family member is, hey, I'm no longer willing to give you cash. That's not a wise investment in my money, because I don't know where it's gonna go. If you're hungry and you call me, I will take you to lunch, sit down with you and talk and travel beyond me, or something like, you know I'm I will, I will gladly pay for drug and alcohol treatment when you're ready to go, but I'm not going to bond you out of jail again. That's, you know, me having that boundary is useless. If I don't communicate that boundary with that person, right? I've got to communicate with them, because often times we don't know. People are like, I get upset, you know, I set a boundary, and then I get with Cathy, and I'm like, I'm gonna get Cathy any cash. She's borrowed money from me for sodas for far too long. I actually think I owe you first order from when I first started.
24:16
Owe me. What a soda. Oh.
24:21
Like my first week here, my first week here. I like that somebody bought me a soda. And I don't remember who this. They're probably at home or a year now, but if, like, if my boundary is like, Hey, I'm not going to do that anymore, right? But I never tell Kathy I'm not going to buy you sodas anymore. When Kathy comes to me that's like, Hey, can I borrow money from a soda? I get angry. And I'm like, Why do you ask her money for soda? You know, but I never told her that I was done with that. Like, I've got no, I'm old. I can't be mad at Kathy for asking me for money when I've never told Kathy, hey, I need you for my own health to stop asking me for money. I. You know? And we do that all the time. We don't communicate our needs and our boundaries, and then we get frustrated and emotional on the back end, and it's like, oh, man, I probably should have told them I was going to do that, you know. Well, I
25:12
think too is understanding the difference between boundaries and I don't know what there's a difference between, because I'm frustrated with you because you never pay me back for all the folks I loan you money for. I'm not gonna buy you some cokes anymore. There's a difference between that and if you do this, I'm not gonna do this. So we don't always understand what boundaries actually are like. If you keep drinking, I'm gonna do this. If you keep using drugs, I'm gonna do this. And it needs to be more along the lines of in my home, yeah, this is not allowed if you know, if you continue this behavior, I will not be it needs to be about you and not them, necessarily, if
25:58
that makes sense well, and it needs to be things that I have control over. Like, I can't set boundaries about what, yes, like, because there's no working order to do what you do, right? You know? So, like, the examples of, I'm not going to bond you out if you get arrested, uh huh, you have zero control over my that boundary for me, I'm totally in control, right,
26:16
right? Yeah,
26:17
that's a good that's a good point that you are in control of the boundaries that you set. Because often times, like, I'll set a boundary, and then it feels like that boundary gets crossed, and I'm kind of left feeling like, well, I didn't, you know, I didn't hold that boundaries. Maybe next time I'll hold that boundary or, yeah,
26:38
or imagine for not respecting it, even though the whole point of it being there is, you know, that's a continued behavior, yeah, that you're not okay with, and you should have expected it not to be respected. I
26:48
saw a silly reel that really explained that to me in a way that I never heard before, probably because I've never raised small children. I've only raised medium sized, I know, right? Yeah, I had friends ask me that before I got married. They were like, are you okay? You know, being a step dad, he's 12, you're, you know, not having a baby. And my view was like, Man, this is like going from college straight to the NBA. You know, no no all nighters. I'm never going to get puked on. I've never changed a diaper. I'm straight into Marvel movies and baseball and roller coasters without any of the, you know, the bad stuff, but not those are beautiful things. Yeah, I'm sure you love your child puking and pooping on I love
27:34
like but
27:35
the real was about the example of a lady who was talking about her, I think, four year old, pressing all the elevator buttons. Oh, yeah. You know that the that her setting a healthy boundary with her four year old isn't you're not allowed to press all the buttons at the elevator because she can't control that. Her setting a boundary with her four year old is, hey, from now on, I'm going to stand between you and the elevator buttons, because she that's, that's her doing something different, not just demanding that he does something different. And that made a lot of sense to me. You know, it's like, Hey, you can't make a kid not do stuff, but you can say, hey, in response to you doing this behavior, I'm going to put you over here and I'm going to stand next to the buttons to prevent it from happening again. And I think we probably get that wrong a lot when we're trying to sit down.
28:28
Yeah, the only person I'm in control of is me. Yeah, I can't control and I always love saying it's, it's, it's the saying, if I'm not the problem, there is no solution. Yeah, because if I'm looking at you to solve my problems, then I can't, I can't work with you. You know, the only person I can change is me. I can't change you. I can change me. So if I'm not looking inward and saying I'm the problem, what can I do about
28:59
my Yeah, that was the number one piece of advice, especially when I worked in adolescent treatment, when parents were like, what should we be doing while they're in treatment? My advice was always, you should be trying to become the healthiest, emotionally, physically and spiritually and socially healthiest person that you can possibly be while your child's in treatment, because that's the only thing you've got control over. And so much of what I think families experience is like learned unhealthy emotional behavior, you know, and especially working in adolescent treatment, it's like, it's very it's very clear where they learned this behavior, like you have this behavior, and you need to find help for that behavior, because if she changes and comes back home for another three years and observes more of this same unhealthy behavior, the likelihood of her recycling that is really high. So you've got to get really healthy, you know, you've got to examine, as a family member, your own patterns of alcohol and drug use, even if they haven't been problematic for you. Because. It's that's what you do, like you examine your life, and if you can't have a social event at your house that doesn't involve alcohol, then you shouldn't expect a family member to be able to have a social event at your house that doesn't involve alcohol. And that doesn't mean that just because you have a family really gets sober, you can't ever have another drink again. Like that's certainly not what I'm advocating for, but it means that we have to consider how our own behaviors are impacting the family system around me, right? And so it seems like a really easy ask if my wife goes to treatment for alcoholism and comes home, it seems like a really easy ask for me not to drink at my house anymore like that seems like a no brainer, but if I don't take a look at that, and if I'm incapable of doing that, maybe I actually have more of an alcohol problem than I thought. Maybe, you know, like, if I can't have dinner without a glass of wine when my wife's in recovery, what am I doing, you know, and if I can, then we make those changes. But for me, it's, it's full circle. It's the same thing that I work with with our clients here, like, like, addiction creates physical problems and spiritual problems and emotional problems and social problems. And a robust program of recovery should address all of those things. And a robust family recovery should address all those things in the family, like, families have to get socially healthy and spiritually healthy and physically healthy and emotionally healthy if they want to be able to demonstrate to their loved one, hey, I'm getting healthy too, like we're all in this together. Yeah?
31:31
You, you said something the last time we filmed the podcast, and unfortunately, it didn't get to be aired. But you said something about a mogul, yeah? Describing that again, yeah.
31:41
So when we think about family systems, the common example that we all talk about, like in graduate school and stuff, and it's just gets passed down and passed down, is thinking about family systems like a baby mobile. Your baby has one. Well, I forget what it was you told me. Is it planets? No, it's bears,
31:59
lions, bears. Oh, my, I did the same thing.
32:05
I've got no filter. So, like, the family system is like that mobile, right? Like, when we talk about and tell me, if I'm going off too much of the tangent, when we talk about healthy families, there's two extremes that we want to identify. And I didn't plan on talking about this, and I'm trying, in my 40, mid 40s year old brain, trying to recall information I was prepared to talk about, but we talk about families that are overly detached and and are have distant relationships and no unity, and we talk about families who are overly enmeshed to the point where there's codependency, right, which is usually what we see on our end of things, is the investment piece, not the detachment piece. But when we think about that, that mobile, each little thing on there is autonomous and unique and different, right? It's a bear, it's a monkey, it's a lion,
33:03
giraffe, right? Something like that, something like that. All the animals,
33:07
all the animals, they're all different, and they're all unique, but what keeps them from being detached is some sort of common bond and common unity and common purpose, right? And that's what we want in families. We want families to all be made up of individuals who have different strengths and different weaknesses, but that have some sort of like bonded unity and and same purpose, right? We're moving in the same direction as a family, and on the other end, we would see like being worried about enmeshment, like they're all on different things, and they've got different strings. You wouldn't want it all wadded up and tied in one knot where it was all jumbled up, you know? And so when we see that family system, that mobile that's in balance, I can grab that bear and shake it violently, right? And nothing is going to move as violently as the bear is moving, but everything is going to move and rock and shake, and that's what a family system does when somebody's addicted to chemicals or alcohol, they're being shaken violently, and it disrupts everything. And all of our attempts to fix and help and enable are our misguided attempts to recreate equilibrium and balance in the midst of that shaking, right?
34:25
Yeah, that's good. I've been trying to tell that to the people that come across, oh, I've got this great mobile story.
34:34
Well, I see you saying mogul, but mobile, mobile, yeah, that I heard the other day, but I can never seem to get it just like my other the other thing that I love to use when I'm talking about investment and detachment is donuts, because I like donuts. It's probably how I became a diabetic. Sorry, Doc, but when you think about a box of donuts, is the same way, right? Like a healthy box of donuts is a box of donuts that are individual. Digital, autonomous, unique donuts, like there's a jelly filled and there's an old fashioned and there's a chocolate covered, there's one pink sprinkles, right? But those donuts the
35:08
best, the pink sprinkles. I'm an old fashioned. Every pink sprinkle donut,
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healthy box of
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donuts, healthier, relationally healthy box of donuts, right? The picture of family health is in this box of donuts. But we know, and we identify, that all those donuts came from the same place. They're all branded the same. They all have the same purpose of going to an office and brightening every once in a morning in the sugar hut, right? That's different than what we would think of as like attached, detached donuts, which is if I walk through our facility, and I walk through admin, and Cathy's eating the with bear claw, sure, bear claw one morning. And then as I'm walking out the back, somebody in one of the other offices has a donut. And then I get over and Mo's eating a donut in the kitchen, you know? And I'm like, What did everybody go to the donut shop this morning? I don't connect with their unified donuts, because there's nothing that ties them together. But we also don't want enmeshed donuts, which is where we, like, smoosh all of the donuts together, and not just like, smoosh them, but like, really work them up together, because at that point it's hard for me to even tell, like, how many donuts there are. Like, we're so enmeshed that there's zero autonomy. I see some sprinkles. Maybe there was a sprinkle, or looks like there was a jelly filled somewhere in there. But there's just absolutely no autonomy and ability to, like, have your own feelings and thoughts, right? Do you have to watch watch swamp? Mm, hmm, yes. I'm a junkie TV lover. I've nodding myself. I need a 12 step program for junkie TV, for people who aren't familiar. Wife Swap is this crazy show where they would find two of the most different families possible and make the wife of one family go live with the other family and vice versa. I think for two weeks. I think so, yes, long enough where stuff hit the fan, like it wasn't just a weekend, right? Hold it together for a little bit, yeah, but like, after a while, you're like, this craziness. And this is how extreme, like, one of the shows illustrated this to a T. And I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but one of the families in this particular episode were all Lumberjacks? Right? Like, these are the people that they look for, right? Like, who has a family of all Lumberjacks? Well, these people did. And when I say, like, competitive, like, that's what they like, were those competitive Lumberjacks? Dad, Mom, all the kids, except the oldest child who hated Lumberjack, right? Well, you can imagine what his relationship with his father was like, not good, right? He was an artist and liked to paint, and Lumberjack dad was having none of that, right? And because of that, they were like, detached and distant and had no relationship. But the problem was, is that everybody else in the family was wanting enmeshment. They were wanting everyone to be the same, no uniqueness, and they like gone way to the other side, and that's what we've gotta be careful of. Like everybody in families should be able to be different. I should be able to have my own emotions. My 16 year old should be able to have their own emotions. But there's still a common bond in unity as a family like, there are going to be things we have in common. There's going to be things we don't have. You know, luckily, by the end of the episode,
38:29
was going to ask, do you remember which, what the wife that they said?
38:34
I don't remember what I think she I think she was like, from like a super waspy Silver Spoon family,
38:41
my brain went to either that or, like, Jersey Shore. It was, yeah, it
38:45
was something like, she had a lot of money and, like, you know, like, wore super high in clothing. Wasp means white, Anglo Saxon products, yeah. Like, the Kennedys are lost, not the Wasp, the rugged people, they're still lost. But by the end of the episode, the dad had actually, like, had some realizations, and he took half, not half, but like, a quarter, of their lumberjacking barn and built this kid in our studio nice so that he could be out there while the rest of the family was out there, but could do his own thing and have some autonomy. And it brought them back to that center, place of balance in a really healthy way, you know? And I think that's what we really strive for, for all the families that we work with, like, let's find some balance that's going to look different for everybody. And I think you gave a
39:32
perfect example, because what I was thinking about like between your mobile story and the lumberjacks so good, um, is that I don't think people actually understand what a detachment is when it comes to this sort of thing. So I remember when I first got into my recovery program, and I was really struggling with a lot of things and in relationship, what was your truth anyway? There was a point where I was just so resentful.
45:00
That's getting a lot better. But anyway, um, one of the things she taught me is a couple things she's like, take a deep breath before anything comes out of your mouth, um. And also, you don't always have to give an immediate response or answer to something like, um, if somebody is your kid's begging you for money again, you know what they're going to use it for. You're not stupid, but they're telling you they're hungry or they don't have gas or whatever. You don't have to give an immediate answer, like you're allowed to say, I need a few minutes to think about this. I'll go back to you with an answer. Um, I let me look at my calendar. If they're asking for, you know, I need rights this, or you're, you're allowed to take a pause, take a breath, and that doesn't mean stand there while they're staring at you, waiting for an answer, but you're allowed to say, I need, I need time to think about this. I need a moment, or I need a couple days, or I need to look at my calendar, whatever it is for said scenario. But you're allowed to take that pause, go breathe, calm yourself down before you give an answer. You don't always have to give an answer in that moment.
46:15
Yeah, that's good. You're gonna like some of my response to your question, dislike, some of my responses,
46:23
I'm here for intrigued. Well,
46:26
first I wanted to like, put like in clinical terms, what you articulated a second ago by being emotional, like, making emotional decisions, what we there's a therapeutic modality called DBT that really speaks to this. And what she talks about in DBT is that you don't want to be in emotional mind. Right? Emotional mind is 100% based on how I feel. It's erratic, it's spontaneous, and it typically isn't healthy decision making. But on the other side of the spectrum, we don't want to be in logical mind, right? We don't want to be stuck thinking through every problem like we're mathematicians, because that doesn't honor how we feel, and it doesn't account for the emotional part that decision making needs. And so she says, you always want to try to be in balanced mind, where you're honoring how you feel, you're using your emotions to help make decisions, because we know we have those gut feelings and we want to make decisions that are based, sometimes in empathy and those type things, but we're also using logic and reason and those other things to inform our decision, to make sure that we're not just flying off the cuff, right? So balanced mind was the thing that you were after in terms of, like, what's doing a crisis moment. This is a partner I'm like, part of me wants to say, follow up on Cathy and say, unless there is a life threatening situation, there's no such thing as crisis period. Nothing requires an immediate decision, unless somebody's bleeding out from an artery or having a heart attack, right? Anything else, you have at least some amount of time, even if I have somebody come into my office who is like, I'm thinking about suicide, that's not a crisis, because you're sitting right here in front of me and you're safe, you're not actively trying to harm yourself. We've got time to talk about this and explore options, and we've got to remember when we feel like something's a crisis, that doesn't mean it's a crisis. That's my emotional surge in the moment. And I can walk that back by reminding myself this isn't an emergency, like, let's think this through and talk about this, right? So that would be part of it, the other part of it. The other part of my answer is, we oftentimes have that surge of emotions on the when things happen because we're consistently way too close to the red line, right? Like that, like red line in a car, right? Like thinking about an RPM Gage. Like when I red line, I panic, and I didn't make bad decisions, but I'll do it this way. So you can see, when I red wine, I make bad decisions. But so many of us live like just under that red line all the time, and it just takes a little bit of pressure on that gas to pump me over the edge right, like my goal should be, to live in a way that's so far down here that I can give it a lot of gas and not ever hit that crisis emotional response, right? Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Yeah. Um, one of the things, and maybe, like, I don't think I can do it in two minutes, but it might be worth adding to our podcast list, is there are like, five essential skills that I teach all of my clients that I didn't make up, that came from a book that I read. But it's really these skills are like, Hey, what are some foundational and formational ways that we can live that actually, they don't make me a better human in the term. Of like, good and bad, but they they give me the ability to human better, if that makes sense, right? And like these five skills, like when we do them consistently keep us off that red line, right? So it's things like being more experientially engaged, not ruminating on my thoughts, decreasing my emotional labor and engaging my nervous system recovery. Like those, they're very teachable, very tangible things that when we can do those regularly, like, I can't do them today and expect a change tomorrow, right? But same with the gym, like, I don't go to the gym workout today and then wake up tomorrow and be like, Why don't I have a six pack I went to the gym yesterday. Like, no, there. We do them over time, and as we do them, the more results we get. But when we do that, we come so far back from that red line that we really, unless there's a big time crisis, don't get that surge of crisis feeling like we get during what's really probably a normal conflict. You know, it's
50:58
a great that's a great place to end this. So I just learned so much. I'm so happy to have Derek on the podcast. I'm
51:05
over here going, let's train up on that one later.
51:08
Yeah, it's a great book. It's called, when I say the title, people are gonna go, I'm not reading that. I need to know. It's called reducing secondary traumatic stress. And it's a book that a guy wrote specifically for trauma professionals to not experience secondary trauma in doing trauma work, right? Sounds
51:32
like exactly what family members of it's 100%
51:37
so I read it initially, because it's written, it's written for people to do trauma work and those type things. But as I was reading it the whole time, I'm going, everybody should do this. Like, it's kind of like how I feel as a non alcoholic reading the AA book. I'm like, reading it, and I'm like, Well, this just makes good sense.
51:57
Like, for all of us,
51:59
should work the 12 steps, yeah? I'm like,
52:01
I'm like, wait, yeah, this just makes good sense for people who don't have alcoholics, yeah? So as I was reading that, I was like, Man, this makes actually, really good sense for my clients and for anybody that, even if they don't do trauma work. So as a read, it's a little dry because it was, it's very like, clinical, yeah, there's a lot of research and stuff like that in it. So, and it's clearly used for a textbook, because it's like 160 pages and 40 bucks, and I'm like 40 bucks for that little thing this day and age, Amazon. What do you do but the skills that he teaches my textbook? Yeah? Anyway, yeah. But they're big. They are, yeah, yeah. Like, this is like a little paperback, 160 pager, and you're like, 40 bucks. But the the stuff that he talks about in terms of the skills, I think, really translate to, like, man, it just makes good sense that I not ruminate on my negative thoughts. It just makes good sense that I learned how to be emotionally vulnerable as much as I possibly can be. And what I love about him is just like with any other skill, and I tell I tell clients this here, like, if you give me enough time, can teach any human being on the planet to shoot a basketball. It can be done. Now. That doesn't mean that I'll pick on JP just because someone walking around that doesn't mean that JP is ever going to shoot a basketball as well as Steph Curry, right? But it's a skill that is teachable, and the more you practice it, the better you get. And some people are going to be naturally better basketball shooters than other people, but you can teach anybody to do it, and these five skills are the same way some of us are naturally, really good at not ruminating. I thankfully don't have a problem with remaining on negative thoughts. That's not one of the skills
53:49
that I have to practice much, right? I have to
53:53
practice a lot and some of the other skills, right? But because it's a skill, and because you can teach it and practice it, it means anybody can get better on them, right? We just have to put in the work to do.
54:04
Let's dive into that and another, another podcast today. Thanks, Derek.
54:09
I can send you guys. I the write up that I give my clients.
54:13
I can send it
54:14
to you, not to speak for you, but we need it.
54:16
Yeah, yeah. Well, just so that you can brush up on it, so that we can come in and, yeah.
54:23
Anyway. Derek, Thank you, Kathy, thank you. I'm going to post when this podcast airs live, I'm going to be posting Kathy's phone number, my phone number, the facilities phone number, and we will. I'm
54:41
really glad you didn't say,
54:48
but I would be happy to answer like, if people want a private Facebook message country road, I would be happy to answer questions through that. Yeah, I'll make that happen if people wanted a private Facebook message. Community, like, if you want to tag me in the post, and then they'll send me Facebook questions, I'd be happy to answer it. Oh, cool. That's awesome.
55:05
We'll do thanks for everybody for joining. It's been a it's been a really insightful podcast. Bye, y'all.