Hello and welcome to addiction truths brought to you by country road Recovery Center. I'm your host, Chris rosenbrin, in this podcast series, we delve deep into the profound impact of addiction on families. We share insights, experiences and advice on navigating this challenging journey 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 or concerns, please refrain from posting the names of family members who are currently in our program or who have been in the past. Your discretion helps us maintain the privacy and safety of all involved. We're here to offer support, answer questions and build a community of understanding and healing. So let's start the conversation and bring some truths about addiction into the life. What's up? Kathy, hey, it's so good to be back and sitting with you.
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Welcome everybody. Welcome to if you're this is the first time you're ever listening to it. This is the addiction truths podcast, as we, as I just discussed in the intro, and generally, we're here with, I'm, I'm, I have two other people that sit with me. Generally, it's Derek here too, but Derek is unable to make it today, so now you've got me and Cathy, which I think is a pretty good duo. I agree. I'm excited me too. So Kathy and I used to work in the same office. We worked in the same office for what? Two years, two years, yeah, and Kathy, who kind of became my work mom over there, but she moved to a different office. Still same thing, company, but different office, and I don't get to see her very much anymore. So this conversation is a is kind of like catching up with old friend
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excited today, we're talking about,
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you know, what makes addiction,
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some people compared to a roller coaster, you know, you've got the you've got the climb where you know something's coming, right? Something's coming, you can, you can kind of feel it in the air, the tensions rising, tensions rising, and all of a sudden you got the big fight. That's the climax. That's when you're at the tip of the roller coaster. You know it's all about to go downhill. Loved One leaves and they leave. You know they're about to leave for three day and go on a bender, or you're about to get in a big fight, or something's about to happen, somebody's going to get hurt. Everybody's full of fear, and they're all the way on this down slope. But something happens when we get to the bottom. It seems like, for some reason, sometimes it seems like everything's going to be okay for a second, because you might get that promise from your loved one that said, and then they're saying, Okay, I swear I'm never going to do that again? Yeah, that was the scariest roller coaster I've ever been on. I'm not going to do it again. One of my lesson, yeah, yeah, I'm better now, yeah. And then
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here comes the next float.
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And this one, yeah, you can, you can kind of see you're getting, you're getting better at starting to see when they're they're coming and but it doesn't.
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It's a scary thing, because you know the next one's coming. You don't know when it's going to happen, but you know it's coming soon. And then you start on that uphill climb again. That's the hard thing too. Is like when you
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are living through so much horrible stuff, and then you do have one of those, okay,
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they pay more promises, but maybe it's real this time. Yeah, maybe this is really it.
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You want to trust it. You don't, but you want to trust it, and you actually do kind of start to get comfortable. Things are getting good. People are going to work. Everybody's getting along, you know, maybe, maybe this is really at this time, but more often than not, bottoming out, crashing space, planning straight, yeah, ground, yeah, yeah. I did that many times. My, it's a my in my journey in addiction started when I was 12, and all it started with was, was pot
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sixth grade, all my buddies, and they were going over to my friend's house, and they had a older they had older siblings, and their older siblings had marijuana around. And so we're like, it was 420 I think, of course, it was 420 it was right after school. And side note, when I look at middle schoolers nowadays, oh my god,
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I can't believe we were doing that. They're babies. But anyway, yeah, we went over to their house and smoked pot for the first time. And it was one of those things that, right away, it felt like it just solved all of my problems, because growing up, I was so nervous in school. I was such a shy kid, not real shy anymore. No, I was, like, surprising. Yeah, I was a super shy kid, really self conscious about about my life, about who I was. I don't think anybody really knows who they are, that. I certainly don't know who they are that. No, but that was one of those.
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Things that made me kind of feel a little bit more complete, and I didn't see it then. Certainly wasn't an everyday problem at that point, but it did develop into everyday, everyday use and and so even I know for my family, it was that up and down roller coaster, but that's the way it was for me too, because I feel like,
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you know, I feel like I'm, I'm on that uphill climb, like it's
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my using is alright. It's alright for a little while, manageable. It's manageable for a little while, but it does at some point become out of control. You know, where I've where I'm starting to take, where I'm starting to take action that maybe I wouldn't have before, like I'm stealing money, or I'm stealing somebody's car or something like that, and then that uphill climb, and then consequence, a big consequence, when we're when I'm up over that hill, and as I'm falling down, I'm thinking to myself, this isn't what I want to do. I don't want to do this anymore. I really hate this life. I can see that I'm hurting my family, but it's like
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I get down to the bottom of that hill and I almost forget the pain I almost forget, and it becomes a really good idea again to go back out and to chase that solution that has always worked for me, to numb that feeling of unease in my within myself. Did you ever go through periods where
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you felt like it would be different this time, like you wouldn't go as far deep into it, or you'd be able to manage it this time?
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Is it more intentionally, just trying to
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thoughts and feelings. Yeah, I always thought I could manage it different this time.
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And like, I think what I told myself most of the time, when I'd go and and pick up a, you know, and pick up more substances to use or get another bottle of alcohol, was I would always tell myself, this is the last time I'm going to do this. This is the last time I'm going to do this. But you know, something I say when I'm giving my giving my story, telling my story, is that tomorrow was two years ago. I'll quit tomorrow. I'll quit tomorrow, but that was two years ago. I don't I didn't know. I didn't quite know how to get off the roller coaster. I don't know families do either. So I'll tell you, we go through
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our side of it is, you know, if this happens one more time,
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I'm gonna set that boundary. Um, yeah, tomorrow, like, I need to sleep on it tonight. I need to
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pray on it, whatever, and I will handle it tomorrow. I'll take care of it tomorrow, or I'll be braver tomorrow.
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And it's, I think it's just as hard for us to actually follow through on tomorrow as it is for you guys, for very different reasons. I mean, you know, like we've discussed, we go through the
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what are the consequences going to be of Me setting that boundary? You know is my child, my husband, my whomever going to go out and put themselves in a dangerous position.
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Could they get hurt? Could they overdose? Could they a number of things. And I think that often stops us from setting that boundary. It's just that fear of the what if and the unknown like you you
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even though intellectually you know like your loved one is making these choices, and those consequences of those choices are on them. It's nothing you've done. There's always that part in the back of your head of, would this be my fault if the worst happens right after I set that boundary, right after I said no, right after, you know, I finally put my foot down and said, We're not going to do this anymore. So it's, it's, I think it's just as hard for us to
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follow through on the tomorrows,
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yeah, and you said something that you would take responsibility if something happened to me. Do you feel that way today?
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So I would love to say no.
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Even, like, recovers along it is, yeah, yeah. Even, like, I'm almost three years into the program I've been working and
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I I know, I know intellectually, know better, but also it's very different when it's somebody you love. And I literally was having this conversation with one of our co workers the other day, and I was like,
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if it was, you know, other random person who happens to work for the same company or a neighbor or something, I would
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fairly certain I'd be fine going, No, I'm not engaging in this. I'm not helping you in this. I'm not giving you money. I'm not giving you rights, whatever the things are.
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Or
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I would love to say,
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you know, if it was you or somebody else here, or a member of the family, that I would be able to do that, but honestly, I'm not sure. I think initially Yes, yeah, maybe initially Yes. But the more sitting on it that just because you're working on a program, just because you no matter doesn't mean those thoughts and feelings aren't still there. And so it's learning how to
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be okay with them, and reminding yourself that it's not actually your fault, your responsibility, that you can't control as much as we have to try to control a lot of people in our things. So now, like after you because you've been in the program for three years,
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I know that sometimes it may feel like it's your fault, but is it actually? No, no, no, no, yeah.
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In the end, it comes down to the only thing person you can control is yourself,
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which is hard to believe and hard to say, because I tell you like, we spend a whole lot of time keeping an eye on you guys,
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which I know you all love, but trying to keep you safe and alive,
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giving excuses to family, jobs, the neighbors, church, whatever, um, keeping an eye on bank accounts, um, checking pockets, checking phones, all the things, just so we can not, well, no, that'd be a lie. I was going to say not to bust you on things. But sometimes we're going that route too, because I can prove you've been lying. And, look, I caught you. That's all something, by the way, but we spend so much time, you know, thinking, if we keep an eye on you and everything you're doing and what money you have and where you're going, that we can keep you safe. And if I drag you into enough conversations or arguments, or can throw enough guilt at you, or what have you that I can make you see the light and stop it and obey if and get better.
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But in the end, all of those things we're doing,
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they don't stop or change anything. They just make us miserable and make you miserable. And, you know, I one of our people close to us. I heard him talking once, and he it's never occurred to me, but he talked about how all the guilt and shame that people have thrown at him over the years, all it's done is increased that in him and made him feel worse and make him want to go out and use and drink more. And that just does not
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enter I can, if I can't speak for everybody, but in my mind, it's never entered my mind. In my mind, I'm throwing some serious logic and reason at you, and you should Yes, absolutely, yeah. Well, I'm and while you're describing that, I'm thinking about all the crazy behavior that I partake, you know, that I, that I would exhibit. I mean, I was I from the outside looking in,
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probably pretty crazy. She's like, hey, the things you're doing right now, they're not going to be very good for the older version of you, right? Like, where do you want to you know, if I were to go back, I'd look at the 17, 1819, year old pierces. And 19 is where 19 after I graduated high school, that's when my addiction really just accelerated. I didn't realize that the younger peers was not setting the future Pierce up for success. It was really ripping the rug out from underneath. Oh, sure. You know, I'm not going to school, not doing any of that, doing what I wanted to do, going to parties or whatever.
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You know, I look back and I if I could, if I could go back to that younger peers, I'd say, like,
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this isn't going to last forever, this part of your life. I know you realize, and you don't see that you're not Superman. This isn't going to last forever, and eventually you're going to get older, and you're going to want, you're going to inspire things and aspire for things in life, and this isn't setting you up for success. Yeah, I wonder if that would have changed it, but, but from the family, my family looking in, they're seeing that they're going pierced. You can't steal a car 12 years old. This does not work out for you in the long this is not good for 18 year old peers who wants to get a nice job, right? You know? But at that time, that's not something.
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One I'm sure it also didn't occur to you that you not even may not, may not have even made it to 18, but I guarantee you, your family was terrified that that was going to be the case. Unfortunately, that's, that's, those are phone calls that we hear a lot. Well, maybe there's a, there's a loved one in the family. They're, they're calling for a loved one. Then they have a sibling that's passed away, and they pass away at like, 17 years old. Mm.
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We hear that way more frequently now because of fentanyl. You know, with fentanyl coming onto the onto the onto the drug scene. And if you're not familiar with what fentanyl is, fentanyl is a synthetic opiate where I think three granules. So if you imagine three granules of salt in your hand, that doesn't seem like much, but when you're talking about fentanyl, that's a lethal dose, right? That would kill you and me together, and that's the kind of stuff that's getting mixed in with these. You know, back in the day, what would have been Xanax or Adderall or some kind of opiate, something that kids could experiment with and not pass away.
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That's not the case these days.
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You know, kids are getting into they might think they're buying a Xanax or going to go experiment with their friends, but that's not what they're getting. Yeah, and we unfortunately get those phone calls all the time. We're like, I have a loved one. They want to get help. They lost their they lost their sibling or significant other to fentanyl, are they but, and maybe they're not even quite ready to get help, but the family members have reached out, right? You know, that's going back to that, to that insanity that I was talking about, where maybe the family members do something that we don't we do. Yeah, and
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I'd be curious about the percentage of phone calls
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that our admissions folks do get that are just families that they're wits end and scared and wanting to get help, because the hard part is like, you know this, unless your loved one is ready for that,
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it's
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it's not going to work. Yeah, it's about 10% of our call volume, yeah, yeah, yeah. About 10% of our call volume is family members calling out to get their family help and and what we when, what we tell them over the phone, is that, unfortunately, until your family members ready to get help, there's really nothing that you can do except get into recovery yourself, right? And that's when I explained that that addiction,
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even though you may not be the one struggling with the substance, you are struggling just as much, if not more, than that person. Oh yeah, there is a whole there is a whole recovery out there for them, oftentimes, as you know, and I've heard this in your story, that that is not something family want to hear. No, they do not want to hear that they have a problem too. It is not something that has crossed their mind. They are not interested in hearing from me, especially from somebody they don't know on the other end of the phone that, hey, you can recover to, like, recover, I don't have a problem. Yeah? Me, yeah. Well, because in our minds, all of this time, we've been keeping everything under control. We've been managing this crazy in our lives. And frankly, I was one of those people. The first time it was mentioned to me, my immediate reaction was,
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you don't know me. You don't know my life. I'm doing just fine. I have everything under control for all of us, and also, I didn't do anything wrong. Why do I have to go to meetings? That's no total nonsense. But honestly, I can tell you, I've seen so many people walk into those rooms,
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and their loved ones are still out there,
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but they found the courage to walk in and get help for themselves.
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That doesn't necessarily mean your loved one is going to get better, but it also doesn't mean they won't. There have been several that their loved one has seen them.
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Grow and get healthier,
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learning to set those boundaries, learning to keep themselves mentally and emotionally and physically sometimes safe, and has prompted their loved ones to want better for themselves and to get help. But I can tell you it
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getting off this roller coaster, which is so hard to do, it is so hard to do, but getting off of this, if you can find your way into one of those rooms, is like, it's one of the best things I've ever done, because I'll tell you, like, Drew was two years into his sobriety, and he was doing amazing, and I was getting crazier. I was looking for stuff to worry about,
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how I didn't torture him with these things is beyond me, because He giggled the first time he heard about all the craziness going on in my head. But I realized I was just I was miserable and still scared all the time,
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and finally he and I ended up having a conversation about that one day. And,
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you know, ironically, so I'd actually completely blocked out the first time someone had mentioned to me going, did you, oh yeah, completely it was.
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Yes, because I'd come in to a facility for family therapy, and she mentioned it to me on the way out the door, and I spent that 30 minute drive home just like
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but I'd completely blocked that out after a couple of years. So when he brought it up to me,
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I was like, you know, why is nobody ever mentioned this to me before. This may not be a bad idea, yeah. And he's like, um, do you not remember one? Uh, but yeah. Suddenly that all came back to me. But it was, it was scary, like, you know, having to pick up that phone and call somebody and admit to a total stranger that I was nuts and scared and didn't know what to do. Nobody wants to admit weakness, especially, like I said, when you think you've been keeping all this stuff, not completely under control, but
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to some degree in your mind, our minds, you know, we're managing everything. We're exhausted and we're tired and
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terrified and angry and resentful, but my loved ones not in jail. My loved ones still alive.
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They still have their job, barely,
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barely, because I'm woken up to work exactly.
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But, yeah, it makes no sense. We're not the ones out drinking and driving and blowing all the money in you know. So it's hard to admit that you actually need to go and
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get help, not to mention, it feels really selfish like
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we've spent so much time
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again just trying to take care of everybody else, that it feels really selfish that you're actually taking time away from that to do something for yourself. That's a really interesting point of view. It feels really foreign, yeah, yeah, does it Yes? Especially I can imagine because you've been, you know,
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taking
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action to help somebody else for so long that when it's finally time to be like, Well, what do I want, right? What do I need? Yeah, especially if you're super family oriented and yeah, and then you pour everything you're so into this family, into your family. You just pour your soul into it, yeah, and then, you know, you are confronted with that hard wall of,
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well, I'm not okay anymore, right, right. What do I do for me, right? Yeah. Well, you just, you were saying, What do I want? What do I need? And the funny thing is, is like myself, you spend so long pouring into everybody else that you actually forget not only to take care of yourself, but who you are, what you want life, what
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shoot, what you like Like
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I remember a couple years ago at the facility, we did that like dirty Santa thing, and we
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those who wanted to could fill out this list of like, your favorite food, your favorite restaurant, your favorite drink, what have you.
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And I think I was a year into my program at that point, but everybody was turning those into me, and I had grabbed one, and I looked down at this thing, and I was broke down in tears sitting in my office, goes like I don't know the answers to any of these, like I don't know myself anymore. I cannot tell you what my favorite coffee is. I can't tell you what my favorite restaurant is, but anyone important to me in my life,
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I can go get your exact drink order at Starbucks. I could go into a restaurant and pick your favorite dinner. I could walk into a mall and go pick you an outfit that you would love. But I couldn't tell you any of those things about myself, because part of this roller coaster, you're so busy focused on your loved one who's sick,
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that you completely forget yourself, you lose yourself completely. And I can't tell you how many like men and women in my program it you can see
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when that really realization hits. I don't think a lot of people even realize it. I didn't realize it till that moment, but it's been talked about several times in meetings since then, and you can see people's faces where somebody else talks about it, and they're like,
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Wow, I didn't even realize. No idea what I want. Yeah. Like, no. Or have a desire to do, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I'm not great at the choices anyway. I'm literally that person. You're like, wait for dinner. I don't care.
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Let's go. Yeah. I am not going to pick that good time exactly. But if you know, if somebody was just like, hey, I'm going to get whatever. I actually learned to have just some standard answers for those things, because I didn't know the answers to them. So I would have standard, like, if somebody asked me that question, I would just have some.
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I could pop off just so I could give you an answer, because the other alternative was, and I don't know, spiral,
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which is not fun for anybody.
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That's all we need is a breakdown at work, because I don't know what I want for lunch, but it's funny how it's, I mean, it's funny now, but funny how you don't even realize that, and then
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suddenly you're like, gosh, I've completely lost myself because I've been focused on everybody else. And that's just one of one of
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many consequences. Many, many, many, yeah, of many consequences. I went to a really cool meeting
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this this last week, and we were talking about
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so I work at 12 step. We're going to reprogram. And step four is we make a moral inventory of ourselves. We inventory our resentments, we inventory our fears, we inventory the conduct that's hurt others. We inventory our whole lives. We take a deep dive into what,
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into into who we are and who we haven't been, and the focus is to find out how our actions have hurt others, right? And then step five, we admit those to God, to ourselves and to another human being. Well, that the the topic of the conversation was that was a really good way, the power of the power of confession. The power of confession for me, up to this point, has been a really great way for me to reconnect with God, to reconnect with myself. When I say connect with God, I mean,
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just reconnect recenter my life, where I feel like I'm okay, right? If I can get secrets that I'm holding on to, or resentments that I'm Hold on, holding on to, out and get another person's perspective, it can generally tether me back into who I am and what I like and and. But the topic of the discussion was that that isn't enough to mean to sustain long term recovery over a period of 510, 1520, years. And so we have to learn
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steps four and five are great to maintain long great to maintain recovery and and get what I'm talking about in the short term. Mm, hmm. But when you're talking about long term, we have to dive into steps six and seven and six and seven. Gosh, man, nice ones will be so mad, because I don't know six and seven off the top of my head, but
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basically, basically what it is, is, it's analyzing the character defects that are within that those those things that have caused me to hurt other people, greed, selfishness, self centeredness, fear, most of the time, is the underlying character defect that makes me take action that hurts other people, right? Because I'm afraid that I'm not going to get what I want or not getting I'm afraid that I'm not going to get what I think I deserve. I'm afraid I'm not going to get what I want, I'm afraid I'm afraid I'm not going to get what I need, and so I take action to make sure that those things happen, and it's a snowball effect that I end up hurting people in the process, and then I have to be able to clean that up, make amends for those things. But they were talking about was how we we will learn to
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see our character defects when they pop up. And I thought that was cool, yeah, and it's something that can that that can maintain long term sobriety is, is learning your character you fix. It's learning what behavior you project when you're afraid or what behavior you project when you're mad or sad or whatever the case may be. And then,
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you know, finding that fellowship that I can take those character defects to and saying, Hey, this is what I'm struggling with right now. What do you think I should do? That's that's something that
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I'm certainly not self aware enough most of the time, to realize that I'm even doing anything that hurts others, or that hurts myself, that hurts future, Pierce like I was talking about earlier. But there are people in my life because of the recovery program that I work, that we work. You have those people in your life too these days where they can stop us and and give us a whole different perspective on what we're struggling with, and that can open up our minds to like, Oh, that's not the path I have to take anymore. Right? To take this path, yeah, this path that doesn't involve hurting others or that doesn't involve getting angry or or whatever. One of the and one of the things I want to touch on, I wrote this down. Some of you were, you know, I heard you're saying, How do I feel about my addiction today?
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And if you'd have told me three years ago that I'm grateful for my addiction, I would have
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been like, what
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grateful for the things that have hurt me for so long, right? But, but I.
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I'm grateful today, and the reason that I'm grateful is because it has given me a whole new lease on life. We get our interesting
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I think, I think the family and the the loved ones struggling, we struggle with the same things, absolutely, just look different. Yeah, right, they just look different. So we struggle with a lot of the same things.
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But I'm grateful for my addiction today, because I feel like I have a whole different life where I have one life,
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that's my past life. I've gotten to live 222, lives, that's my past life. This is my current life. And I almost feel like I get to step out onto a new stage and explore life in a way that I haven't been able to before, and that's something that recovery, that's something that my that's something that my addiction gave me, and I didn't realize it at the time, but God was working in my life in a way back then that was going to prepare me to have the future that I have today, the level of gratitude that I have in my heart today for even just the small things, is because I experienced those really hard things in the past, right? You know? And how cool is that oftentimes I have no idea what I really want,
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and then I think I know what I want.
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What did I write?
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I think I know what's best. Yeah, I think I know what's best for my life and and so I will create all these expectations of what I want and what I need.
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When they don't turn out, yeah, they don't quite turn out like I thought they would. Man,
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I'll get mad.
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I get mad I remember. I've gotta remember that I'm grateful for the things that happened to me four years ago that I never thought I'd be grateful for, because it set me up on a path that I didn't even know I needed.
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And so things that in the things that have seemed like that they were
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the salt of the earth, the those ended up blossoming into the most beautiful flowers and trees that I had in my life today. That's nice. Weird. Weird, how that works. Yeah. What's
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funny you were talking about? I remember the first when I first got into my program, and my sponsor was like, anytime she was going to anything for either side of the programs, she's like, come on, we're going and picking you up, getting in the car. Let's go. So I'd go with her to all kinds of events. And I've listened to so many speakers
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in your program talk about being grateful
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that they were an alcoholic or an addict or what have you. And I remember thinking, you've lost your minds. That makes absolutely no sense. You make no sense. But the longer I've stayed in and the more I've watched like people I love, like you and
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Drew and Mr. Wyatt, so many of you like, grow and change.
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I get it now. And the longer I've been in my program, I get it now. I think you have to go through those struggles to appreciate the good little things, to even more appreciate the bigger good things.
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Two touching back on, you know, character defects like,
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yes, you definitely need to learn what those are. And as you grow and work your program, you actually start to notice those things change.
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Yes, things will still pop up. Yes, you're still going to you're human. You have feelings. Life happens. You're going to get angry, you're going to get anxious, you're going to get fearful, you're going to get resentful. But the cool thing is, seeing the growth in your loved one or in yourself and how you handle those things
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as you grow like, I can't tell you how many times
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in the last year something has happened that three years ago would have just taken me out for days, because that's all I would have done, is ruminate and spiral, and
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it would just take me down, like I wouldn't be able to do anything else. But think about that and be more angry and more sad what have you, um,
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but when things happen now,
34:33
yes, those feelings pop up, but I actually can see myself reacting better than I used to handling it better than I. Used to not allowing it to completely dominate all of my thoughts and feelings for days on end, which is really cool, like when you have one of those moments where you're like, hey, I handled that better than you.
35:00
This, I'm not walking around just, you know, mad, sad, all the things, if they're not there, it's, it's really cool to see that growth in your loved one, but also see it in yourself, like it's,
35:13
you know, when you finally get off that roller coaster and you can focus on you and your mental, emotional, spiritual health, it's God, it's incredible.
35:27
Even better if your loved one does it too, but if they don't, you know on either side of it like because I'll tell you, you and I have both seen this. There are plenty of people who have gotten into a recovery program from addiction, and their loved ones do not make that choice as well, but I can tell you, like just drew and I, for example, like
35:47
he, bless him, put up with my crazy couple years into his sobriety and the more he got Healthy.
36:00
Yeah, so I could see him when we have issues come up. I could see him using, like, his recovery tools. I would call him on me, and it would just make it worse. It would make me more angry. I'm like, don't, don't program me. Like we're this is your put your program over there. You and me. We're gonna have us out. We're gonna have this conversation. But ironically, once I started working mine, it's like, yeah, there are days I want to push them down still, but I don't actually do that. But, you know, we don't want you, um, but God, we communicate better, like we can have healthy conversations, um, somehow, ironically, we've never had an actual fight, but, I mean, we've had some
36:45
disagreements and setbacks, yes, things that hurt. Yes, yeah, yes, um,
36:56
but as we go forward, programs, we've we've learned to communicate better and
37:02
healthier and kinder,
37:05
and those aren't as bad as they used to be. You learn not to take everything personally like you used to. Not everything that somebody else is doing or saying is about you. More often than not, it isn't about you,
37:20
but the more you grow and learn, the healthier all of those kind of things get. And the cool thing is, is it's, it's not just the one on one. It branches out your entire life when you have a co worker that you're just not loving today,
37:38
you've you've learned how to handle that in a healthier manner. If there's somebody being a little precious at the grocery store, you'll learn to just stay out of it or handle that healthier. It really bleeds into your entire life, which is really cool, like I'm not out hollering and cursing IT people while I'm driving anymore.
38:05
I haven't said a bad word to another driver on the road in a while, really. But the other day, talk about some character defects. Great. I got cut off on the highway or something, or I was gonna make a turn into like, Walmart
38:22
or something,
38:24
and they made a move that upset me, and I got mad, and I threw the middle finger up. I did, I did do that. And then I put right away, like, put it back down. I was, like, years. That's not okay to do that, right, you know? And and so one another. Another thing that that that recovery has given me is is just like we're talking about step six and seven, analyzing and recognizing your character defects. I realized in that moment that I took behavior. That was some old behavior. It came back. I recognized it. I immediately took action to stop doing what I was doing. And then I turned my thought pattern over to, how can I help that person? Is there anything that I can do to help that person? And in that moment, no, there wasn't. They were on the road.
39:21
But what I can, what I what I did do is I backed off of them a little bit. And my I backed off them. I didn't, I wasn't so close to them and and it changed my thought pattern about especially when I went when I said to myself, what can I do to help that person? Something weird happens when you take that something really magical happens when you take that perspective, when you can real, when you can see in the moment. Hey, whoa. This is pump the brakes here.
39:49
That was not okay for me to do that. What can I do to help that person? And it does. It changes that because we're not promised recovery does not promise us that all of our problems.
40:00
Problems are going to be solved? No, it just gives us another it just gives us a solution to those problems, tools to use. It gives us tools to use. Yeah, spiritual in nature, the tools are and and so when I can recognize that and turn it back to service, how can I service that? How can I help? How can I help that person? It really just, it doesn't
40:22
that the goal is to be a servant, but ultimately, what happens when I become that servant is that I'm helping myself. Oh yeah, I'm helping myself, you know, yeah,
40:37
yeah. Just came up with it all on my own. I up.
40:46
I
40:47
remember
40:50
watching several of you guys like over the last few years, and when something you know bad would happen,
41:00
watching you know, you guys,
41:03
yes, it's a, it's, it's not, you know, Yeah, but you're able to turn that sort of stuff around and go, Okay, this is not awesome, but it could be worse.
41:18
What? What am I supposed to learn from this? Yeah, like,
41:23
Okay, I'm fear I'm not going to enjoy this. But there's a reason this happened, for a reason. What can I learn from it? And maybe you're there's even something I can be grateful for in this. You know, I I may not be getting what I want or doing what I want or something. I mean, bad things happen. It's again, it's life, and it goes on, and we cannot control the entire rest of the world.
41:46
So when those things happen, what can I learn from it? And is there something I can be grateful for? Could it have been worse? Tell me
41:57
different things, like brings up a story. So
42:02
I bought last year on my birthday, I went and bought a car. I had wrecked my car. I got into a little fender bender, but it was enough to total the car. It wasn't a very nice car. It was a little bigger so, but I thought to myself, You know what? I'm going to go and get a new car for myself.
42:24
They had baby on the way, and it was just time, yes, time to get a bigger car. And so I went to the dealership, found this really awesome car that I like. It was right in the price range of what I what I needed it to be. And so I got the car, took it home, and right away, started having mechanical problems. They sold me a limit. I'm telling you how to put like, five grand into this engine, right? Whoever had it before me wasn't doing regular oil changes, that's for sure. Yeah. And so I'm I'm having to pay for all of that damage that had been done before. So about six grand is where I'm at my total. Now, I know so, so frustrating, but
43:01
so every, I don't know, every it seems like every month something happens right to take it back to the dealership. Me and Wyatt are we planned at the beginning of May to go to a conference in Austin. And so I take my car to get an oil change, and they come back and they say, Hey, you have an active oil leak again. And so I'm thinking, like,
43:24
dang it, I'm not about to go on a trip with this thing. I'm just gonna set this car on fire at this point. Yeah, at this point, I dropped I went to the so I went, took it to the dealership.
43:33
I didn't react to this time. I kind of knew it was coming. I just thought to myself, you know, what do for another maybe there's a reason for this, right? And so I took it to the dealership, and they put me in a really cool loaner, nice. And they said, go ahead and take it to Austin. We're not going to charge you a full owner. We'll look over your car see what's going on with it. And by this time, they've been working on my car for a while, they they know me familiar, but this dealership is like my second home, right? And so I know them by name. And I was just like, Okay, thank you. Appreciate it very much. And so they took my car back. I took the loaner me and Austin me and Wyatt ended up having a wonderful time in Austin and driving around this brand new Honda Accord, super cool car. And I was just feeling, just feeling pretty good about that. So I take it home. I get to the dealership, and they're like, there's no there's no charge for the service that we we went ahead and changed your oil. We one of the the problem was, because a mechanic didn't tighten the bolt right, you really get a little bit of oil. And we also found a hole in your tire, and so we patched it up. And I thought, there it is.
44:40
There's the reason why, you know, there's, I don't, I don't even call them coincidences anymore. I think of them as, like divine intervention, and so me taking that and me and me not reacting initially, when he told me about my oil, I was just like, You know what? I'm going to just take.
45:00
The next right action. I'm going to take it to the dealership. I'm gonna have them look over it and see what's going on with it, instead of just riding it through. And they ended up finding a hole in my tire.
45:10
And I don't know what could have happened me and Wyatt drove over 1000 miles. I don't know what could have happened with that tire. It could have blown out on the highway when we're all the way down in Austin, and I had no idea what to do, or something worse than that. Yeah, and so when things happen in my life today that are like that, so frustrating. I mean, I spent so much money on this car, why isn't it fixed yet? I could have reacted poorly.
45:33
And but on the back end of it, I can look back and I can say, for one, I didn't react on a character defects, you know, and also there was something, maybe something could have happened different, and I wasn't. I wasn't aware of that. The God of my understanding that I have today, he was aware of that, and then he made sure that it didn't happen. And so these things in our lives that we that we initially take is something that's bad.
46:00
We don't know. We don't know it's an, it's a it's an old stoic idea that
46:08
our minds are too finite to understand if something is good for us or if it's bad for us, because we can't see into the future far enough to to know, right? What I originally thought was a really good move, going to get that car ended up being a very frustrating experience, and what ended up being a bad oil change ended up being a good experience. And so I just never know. I never know it's not something that I've gained
46:35
in hindsight, looking at my addiction, that I just don't know what's coming in the future. And if I can stay grounded, if I can stay in the moment right now, weather the storm, use the tools that I have in the recovery program that I work, just come out on the other end. I might just be alright, you know, I might just avoid a pop tire on the side of the road in Dallas. Wow.
47:01
Yeah. And so that was a funny that was a fun experience. We ended up having such great time in Austin. Got to eat some cool food,
47:09
nice go walk down Sixth Street. Never been to Austin. Sixth Street is like the party central. I don't party anymore, but sometimes it's fun to go and walk. Yeah, we didn't do we didn't party, but sometimes it's going it's fun to go and walk me check out scene. Yeah, we had a good time. Yeah?
47:27
Gosh, my mind's spinning over here. Like, what could have happened? I know mine too. After he told me about my tire, I was like, thanks. Yeah, you got me appreciate you.
47:38
You're the best. Oh,
47:40
goodness,
47:43
yeah, it's good stuff. There's a quote here that I want to read. It kind of can be the last thing that we we touch on. Okay,
47:54
so the quote is, I've been so busy trying to keep things together that I haven't stopped to think about how my how my life has changed. I focus on the times when things seem normal, but I've been fooling myself. If I'm honest about how I've been affected by his drinking, I'd have to admit my life is pretty screwed up. I don't go out with my friends anymore. I'm always worried about getting the bills paid on time. What about the lies I have to tell my family to get out of holiday gatherings?
48:31
I think that circles. You know, that really comes back in circles to what we've been talking about, the loss of
48:40
maybe we don't realize at the time, but when we have somebody in our life that's struggling, because I have people in my life too. Not only do I work in a in the recovery industry, I also have people in my life that I love very much, that are family members of mine, are very close friends, that are struggling with addiction and and we don't. And so, you know, we don't realize it, but those that can take our piece, they can complete absolutely take our piece. Yeah, we have to worry about things that we wouldn't have normally had to worry about. And it sounds like it sounds like this nice lady. She's realizing that
49:18
for her to admit that her husband has a problem, is to admit that she also has a problem, yeah, and that's hard, yeah, that's hard. Yeah, you
49:30
literally, like we talked about earlier, you get so focused on trying to keep your loved one safe, alive, just okay, to some degree
49:41
that you don't even realize that is all you're doing all of the time. You know, the funny thing is just, I don't know why it's reminding me that, but I
49:53
have like this gmail account that I had opened
49:56
three years. It four, three.
50:00
Four or five years ago,
50:02
three four years ago, that's not point. Anyway, I'd open this Gmail account, and then I clearly used it for a short period of time, but then hadn't touched it for, obviously, quite a while, and I needed one for something I was doing online, and I didn't want to use one of my regular ones, because, frankly, I'm too much spam mail. So I was like, Hey, I have this old Gmail account. I'll see if I can get back into it. And so I did, like, got in, used it for what I needed,
50:34
and started getting because I'd done it on my phone. I started getting, like, emails to it, which spam nonsense.
50:42
But for whatever reason, I logged in and was looking at one of those emails one day, and then I popped out of that and looked at the count. I don't know what made me look at the calendar. I hadn't put anything on it, but I started looking at the calendar and scrolling through it, and there was like
50:58
repetitive reminders in there for certain things.
51:02
And I, as I look through them, they were all about other people, like, make sure you remind somebody to do this every month.
51:13
You know, remind somebody else to do this, remind somebody else to do that. And
51:20
today, I would
51:24
I'm well aware that you all are grown y'all are grown people. You're responsible for your own stuff. It is not my place to Mother you, even though I'm really good at it, but it's not my place to Mother you and remind you you know that you need to pay your rent or order your meds or what have you. But scrolling through this calendar, I was like, I was a mess. I'm still a mess, but different kind of mess, but I was a mess like everything. None of those, not one of them, was about me.
51:55
All of those was me thinking I was taking care of other people and making sure they were doing what they needed to be doing. And
52:07
it was actually, it was sad to a degree, but it was also cool in a way, to find because I realized I like I don't, I don't do that stuff anymore. I'm not making myself crazy with that stuff anymore, and I'm not making the loved ones crazy. I'm not causing someone else to think that I don't think they're capable of handling their own stuff. And
52:35
just coming across that has helped me
52:39
kind of see my growth and their growth, and see that
52:45
back to gratitude. Be grateful that I'm not like stuck on this roller coaster anymore. I still like yourself. I have people I love in my life that are still out there doing this thing, but
52:59
I've been able to come to the point where, yes, I love you, yes, I'm gonna worry about you. That is not something I'm capable of turning off. It's just who I am. But it's not going to engulf my entire life, and I'm not going to make both of us crazy because of it. I I will love you. I will allow you to make your choices. I will allow you to face the consequences of those choices. That's not going to stop me from loving you,
53:29
but my frustration, my fear, my anger, my anxiety, my resentment, all of those things are mine. That's my stuff, not yours,
53:39
and I will talk to my people, you know, to get through them.
53:44
I get to go hear someone else's perspective, which I'll tell you
53:50
my sponsor, every time I go to her in the middle of my crazy, because I still love crazy, of course, a person
53:56
crazy yesterday, yeah, I will call her and I will tell her what's going on. And more often than not, She giggles at me, whatever. But she will then say, Have you thought about this, or here, maybe you should look at doing this, or what have you. And I'm always like, why?
54:15
Like, how? Why? Why do you always know the right thing to do or say or not say, and she reminds me, I'm not the one in the middle of the crazy, and I think that's why it's so important that we have, you know, a program, whatever that looks like. But we have like that fellowship. We have those mentors, we have those people in our lives.
54:38
So we're when we're in the middle of the crazy or all the big feelings
54:44
they can give you that perspective from the outside to
54:50
help you see a little more clearly and remind you that you you know all you can do is take care of you,
54:58
and God willing, love your people. Pray.
55:00
For your people,
55:02
but you need to let them do whatever they're going to do, and you take care of you. Yeah? Because you can only control you, yeah. What works? So in your family, we're about to wrap it up here, but
55:16
I guess the last question that I have is, when you have somebody that's struggling, what works?
55:22
What do you mean? What works? So like,
55:28
when I was thinking, what had, what my what my mom did back in the day, because I was using up all the resources, staying in her, eating her food, you know, stealing her money, whatever,
55:42
the final straw for her,
55:46
and what she told me was, you can either go get help or you can live on the street, but you're no longer going to live here. And it was a boundary that my mom set that worked.
56:01
So I guess that's kind of what my question is like. And then my mom, my mom, decided that day she was going to start taking care of herself. So what works,
56:10
honestly, I think that depends on individuals.
56:16
I think those for me,
56:19
learning to set those boundaries, because when you do that, you when you're not used to doing that, when you're used to being very co dependent and a people pleaser, and I'm speaking about myself, yeah, um,
56:32
it feels mean and aggressive and selfish, again, um,
56:39
but also
56:42
you have to come to a place where you're you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, yeah, um, and
56:50
ready
56:53
to take your life back. Um,
56:56
the hard part too is, you know, earlier, we talked about that guilt and that fear that comes with setting those boundaries. And so in the end, you're you have to, yes, you need to set those boundaries, but they need to be ones that you're comfortable with,
57:12
that you feel okay with, whatever comes of them, you're going to be okay with, and that you're actually going to stick to
57:20
making threats, that's not setting boundaries, trying to dictate someone else's behavior. That's not setting boundaries. The boundary is, Should this occur? This is going to be my behavior, my reaction to it, and you gotta stick to that. But it's, I think it's all very personal. Yeah, it's whatever you're comfortable with, whatever you can live with, whatever you will actually stick to, yeah? And at the end of the day, it comes down to, I can't control your behaviors, but I can control mine.
57:55
So it's
57:58
good stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. Cool. Well, if you guys want to continue this conversation,
58:05
please reach out to Kathy or I, we're going to, I'll post our numbers into the chat when this, when this goes live on the last Monday of the month, and feel free. Yeah, if you got questions about what we're talking about, you want to learn a little bit more about what steps look like, or you want to learn more about what sponsorship or mentorship looks like, just reach out to us. Give us a call. Yeah, we're available. I might not answer in the middle of the night, but I will call when I get up. Yeah. You can also put questions in the chat if you're not big on making phone calls, or if you prefer to text, we are both down for texting as well, but sure, yeah, please reach out anytime. Cool. Thanks for joining us. Y'all see you next time bye.