September 23, 2025

Ep 177, Addiction and Recovery

57 minutes

This week on Conflict Managed we welcome Severn Lang. Together we explore:

🌱 Planting seeds of support when a colleague is struggling

🌱 The real gift of a manager who shows up with care

🌱 Why excellent managers know their employees’ goals

🌱 The power of cheering on your colleagues

🌱 When a colleague or client is upset, or when you’ve made a mistake, start with acknowledgment

Conflict Managed is available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube: @3pconflictrestoration

Severn Lang helps people see addiction for what it is: not just a battle with substances, but the quiet, everyday ways we hold on when we should be letting go. Whether it’s staying in the wrong relationship, clinging to clutter tied to old grief, or numbing oneself with digital distractions, Severn invites listeners to recognize their patterns—and meet them with honesty, humor, and compassion.

Severn’s journey includes experiencing both active addiction and periods of homelessness, even during his first year of long-term sobriety.

Now twelve years sober, Severn draws from both lived experience and creative practice to explore what recovery looks like beyond the AA room. His work is grounded, reflective, and rooted in a belief that healing doesn’t require perfection, just presence. Working with his extreme dyslexia has been a daily challenge, but it has also taught him creative problem-solving techniques and new ways of thinking, fueling his determination to keep trying until he finds solutions.

As a playwright and filmmaker, he tells stories that make the emotional tangible—like his powerful account of cleaning out a kitchen shelf overflowing with old ketchup bottles, a moment that mirrored his journey of letting go of grief and baggage from his father, who was his main caregiver but refused to speak to Severn or his brother due to schizophrenia.

Before this chapter of his life, Severn worked as a top-tier hairstylist and model. But it’s his role now, as a quiet disruptor of outdated recovery narratives, that feels most aligned. He’s not here to preach or package a perfect solution. Instead, he offers small, honest shifts in how we see ourselves and what we’re attached to.

Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services and hosted by Merry Brown.

#ConflictResolution #WorkplaceCulture #LeadershipDevelopment #Recovery #Addiction #EAP

...more