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We discuss the complexities of boundaries and how establishing them within the recovery process is pivotal for yourself and your loved one.

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[Music]
welcome to
back to finding peaks episode six
here live at five again with clinton
chief operating officer for peaks
recovery centers and chief clinical
officer jason friesema everybody
and myself brandon burns your host
excited to be back here again today
talking about
um things that are important to this
industry absolutely
um the topic that i wanted to bring
forward and discuss with you guys today
is on boundaries
um i was sitting with a staff member
yesterday and i think kind of a
backstory to this is that when people
are engaged in
you know a recovery journey or um or
work within this industry the notion of
a boundary is sort of
intuitive and there’s a real sense about
it you know we say boundary hold a
boundary do that
and i think we get it but it’s not clear
to me that families get it i was talking
with one of our staff members and
asked her to define what a boundary was
and her face got you know big and
glowing and kind of smiley like
i know what it is i just don’t know how
to tell you what it is and i think
there’s a gap there
in families in the way that they
understand it and i think it’s often met
with what we’re going to put a wall up
in between you and your loved one or
something like this and i think that’s
the common sort of
colloquial way in which it’s viewed for
me
a boundary is um so i’m gonna i’m gonna
test my
clinical skill sets here and what it is
let’s do it it’s a it’s a
it’s an emotional distance between you
and your loved one the person who
um is going through or suffering from
addiction in this instance to me
it’s one thing to be supportive of them
and continue to love them in a very
familiar sense of things namely as a
family member and it’s
another thing to state okay my boundary
is i’m not going to give you money for
drugs and alcohol
well fine you want me to go do x y and z
on the streets to come up with this
money and then it creates a sort of
tension and we seemingly sort of
collapse in the boundary because we
don’t want them to do those other things
but i think strongly that emotional
distance is the reduction
of suffering we don’t want to suffer at
the same time of the individual so
as swift as i can make this question so
that it’s not fumbling here
is that kind of an accurate
interpretation that i’m providing
for what a boundary is and if it is not
what is your view of a boundary
jason we’ll start with you oh wow okay
surprisingly calling me out absolutely
yeah um i’m gonna put a boundary up and
say clinton
i mean i think you’re exactly right the
boundary is some sort of delineation
that says this is where i stop and you
begin
right like that’s like a boundary of a
i don’t know of land and
um whether it’s backyards or whatever
like i think
and to your point i think you you
actually your story of like
the boundary creates the space so that
regardless of what’s happening on your
side of the boundary it’s not going to
derail or hurt or
cause me to suffer i can i can have
empathy looking over this boundary and
recognize that you are suffering
but it’s not going to create that
suffering for me and oftentimes that’s
where boundaries get
so blurred right is that it seems like
sometimes we have families that that
will reach in
and pay off a drug dealer or buy heroin
for
their loved one because they don’t they
don’t want them to suffer anymore and
and we do call that a boundary violation
and it’s because they haven’t been able
to
make that delineation between this is
where
my loved one starts and where i end
clinton over to you over to me yes
um i agree actually so surprisingly okay
next question yeah well said yeah um
boundaries are definitely about um it’s
for me it’s more about differentiation
right like being able like you said
to to see where i stop and where you
begin
um and i think like you said brandon
intuitively we know what boundaries are
but we have a hard time talking about
them we have a hard time recognizing
them
and generally speaking of culturally we
don’t ever
really work on what it means to create a
boundary
and so it’s it all seems very familiar
and very new at the same time for most
people but
uh in the end you’re creating that
emotional distance and in between those
two
in that distance you’ve got this little
like uh kind of river that you can
navigate
the sort of complexities of
relationships and so um yeah
so hold on okay i don’t i don’t mean to
but
maybe you’re already going in this
direction but i do think uh
the thing with boundaries too is if they
aren’t
if they aren’t made outside of like a
contentious or highly emotional
state then usually that creates problems
right like usually boundaries
oftentimes are enforced out of anger or
frustration
or pain and and they aren’t
kind of thought through right so like
going back to the
the backyard metaphor it’s like we’re
not gonna put a fence up up here but
like now i found dog poop
and you know like i don’t know if it’s
on your land or my land and i’m just
really pissed about it and
and i’m going to have this response and
so like having
having a willingness to prospectively
create boundaries is such a key
component
in a recovery process to say not in the
moment
not when somebody’s in withdrawals what
you will or will not pay for but like
you know like when somebody’s maybe in a
program like peaks
now’s the time to establish those
boundaries so that when
when maybe the loved one begins to push
on the boundaries you can just fall back
on them because the emotions are up
and i want to respond in the way i used
to
but now i’m not enforcing this boundary
with anger
i get to just enforce it uh and just be
sad on my side of the boundary
i guess it’s for me are you going to
disagree with me no i agree with you i
think
every time you agree with me just make
sure you mention that i agree with jason
okay great
however i completely disagree with jason
and what he just said no
uh i think it the difficulty is in
identifying
who you are right like boundaries
require a lot of
um self-reflection and self-awareness
and you have to have a pretty good
understanding of your own personal
identity in order to create boundaries
yeah um and when you’re talking about
families particularly families that are
impacted by addiction
those boundaries are those identities
are completely enmeshed
right there there’s just it’s really
hard to see
where you where a mother’s love turns
into enabling
right or where um manipulation turns
into survival
right like there’s just it’s really hard
to be able to figure that out and so i
think that that’s where
most of the time that’s why these
boundaries are created in frustration
and anger because there’s
not enough self-reflection and
self-awareness to be able to do it
unless you’re in that actual emotional
space that makes sense
yeah yeah it does yeah absolutely so
we’ve used
you know words in principle to describe
this and so i’m going to
uh attempt through a stolen metaphor
here to present
kind of what it looks like conceptually
um it’s a little bit medical so
bear with me clinical might have to come
along on a medical journey with me
i’m on it i know it’s outside the box
yeah um but i think about it
in this stolen metaphor from a group
setting i was in once upon a time
that it’s um it’s
it’s similar to a cell that we as
individuals are the nucleus within the
cell
and the cell membrane is permeable it
can
allow for things in information and so
forth to come into the cell and then it
also has this very
fluent component of it that it can even
flow so if the membrane’s out here
i can bring the membrane really close
and when we’re in intimate relationships
family and so forth we bring people
really close to here so
for me the metaphor resonates because as
we go to create the boundary
and we move people away in the sense of
like i’m not going to pay for your drugs
and alcohol i’m not going to suffer in
the same way with you
it’s not a wall we still see the infra
the individual we’re still willing to
allow information within it
but we’re really creating a space of
safety um
that informs it so i don’t know if that
totally resonates you know for the sake
of time about you know
um as a fluent metaphor here but i’m
curious if you guys see it similarly or
um if that’s inappropriate maybe a way
that families can start thinking about
it conceptually
yeah i mean i think ultimately we
have a need to connect to other people
and
we want that membrane we want it close
uh
and so it feels good to to have people
be close
and and sometimes it feels worse to kind
of be pushing
people away but like um when we allow
people too close to us and they’re not
safe
it does create pain and usually chaos
truthfully
or conversely we can move that boundary
out
so far that it creates kind of this
loneliness and and this
wall and so we are i actually
teach this uh in in some of my groups
about
how like we can challenge people and see
if they are safe and
worthy of being closer to us and
sometimes they are and sometimes they’re
not and we
we can kind of be mindful about how
close or how far away
we keep our loved ones and sometimes
that
it hurts to push boundaries out with
people we love
even if it’s really important and even
if it is protective and keeping us safe
um it can be really painful yeah
yeah i i mean i think i take a slightly
different approach clinically
just again focusing more on identity
right like really helping people to
identify
who they are um focusing on purpose
especially now that they
are shifting their identity from uh one
of active addiction to one of
sobriety and abstinence so but again i
think that that level of awareness
helps to it doesn’t make the membrane
more permeable but i think it makes it
easier to recognize
where what that membrane feels like
exactly how translucent it is exactly
how permeable it is
and to also know what feels comfortable
versus what
will ultimately become chaotic so yeah
yeah
and uh i was speaking with a past uh
client’s mother just yesterday who you
know some new things are coming up for
the individual as she progresses in a
recovery journey and so she was just
looking for you know thoughtful feedback
and
i reminded her as we you know go to
implement or continue forward with the
boundary that she has set with her
daughter in this instance okay you’re
looking
at your daughter on the other side of
you know this membrane
you know so to speak and that distance
that’s between you i get it as like a
mother that’s got to pull on the
heartstrings and i think
really what i would like to resonate
here for you know the audience is to
just recognize that i think we’re in
agreement here that that is a difficult
thing to do and to look through
your loved ones in front of you
suffering in a in a fairly significant
way
and with that space and that distance
what can we
you know as far as feedback to families
who are appearing through the membrane
they’ve held the boundary and they’re
witnessing their loved ones you know
suffered
you know jimmy who was six years old in
the birthday party and all the positive
memories right they’re looking at a very
negative situation
and who isn’t a parent that wants to
jump forward and
rescue and save in that regard so
what do we say to them and and on top of
that
how important is it to continue forward
with that boundary to reduce their own
internal suffering and the impact on the
individual on the other side
well a lot of times if we’re talking
specifically
about addiction here too like a lot of
times it
is honestly the suffering and pain that
creates the change
and so frequently when when parents or
other loved ones are
softening natural consequences uh
for their loved one like maybe their kid
is
a lawyer to get it somehow thrown out on
a technicality
that’s kind of great news in the moment
but like it doesn’t create kind of the
the longer term change that just
allowing
a kid to face natural consequences will
create and and i get it as a as a father
like it
it hurts sometimes to watch my kids
you know face the world the world is
hard sometimes and sometimes they have
to
fail a class or fail a test or
bump into things that are hard or have a
difficult break in a relationship and
that sort of thing and it’s difficult as
a parent to watch that
and i can feel the urge to want to
protect them like that that was healthy
a long time ago when they were really
young it was my my job as a parent to
protect them
now they’re older and they’re an adult
it’s important for them to kind of face
some of their own
consequences because that’s what’s going
to lead for them to change
right uh softening that i think creates
a scenario where
it removes some of that ability to
change or to recognize kind of the
consequences of their own
behavior i don’t know if that makes
sense but like i think that’s an
important
piece the softening of it because the
converse of this too is i’ve watched
parents
soften consequences for their loved one
and then be like why won’t they change
and it’s like
they’re not fit you’re facing all the
consequences they’re not facing the
consequences that’s why
yeah yeah they’re change requires some
level of tension
you know if you’re taking all of the
tension away because of the narrative of
that you’re telling yourself as far as
like what a mother does what love looks
like who your kid is like you know
playing back these birthday parties from
when they were younger
um you know you’re not actually looking
at reality or
addressing reality and you are you’re
creating more
difficulties and barriers than anything
but to answer your other question as far
as what do you tell parents who are
looking through that membrane i guess
for me it would be to stop looking
through the membrane and actually look
at the reflection of yourself in the
membrane
because you have to stop looking outside
like it’s
there’s no more at this point if you’ve
made it to a residential treatment
facility
for addiction then that’s it like
there’s there’s no more
trying to fix this um and do it the old
way it’s now you have to lean in and let
the process happen
and you have to have faith that your
family member is going to be able to get
through it because you
cannot take them through this all you
can do is become healthy within yourself
and figure out but it’s just a thing
and figure out what your boundaries are
and what your boundaries what boundaries
you need your non-negotiables
to to make you happy and to to be
healthy so that you can actually show up
for your kid in a way that
it’s not about softening the edges but
it is about being there to support them
when they fall
yeah so you know whether piercing
through the membrane you know visually
or
you know reflection in the cells the
common experience that i
witness happening is you know be
prepared to be emotionally beat up
there’s a manipulative
you know individual namely on the other
side trying to accomplish
their goals namely to continue to use
drugs and alcohol
you know sort of at will and so we
become punching bags in that well you
weren’t a good mother and you weren’t a
good dad and if you had done this i’d be
here and i don’t need this and
that chaos that falls out of it can be
quite penetrating but i want
every family member to know there’s no
certain rule book about how to raise a
child and do things perfectly here
and just because you set the boundary
you know from this room to you as a
viewer
know that we know you love your loved
one there is
nothing every family member i talk to no
matter how frustrated or seemingly angry
the situation has come to
they love their individual their family
member and their love life
and so i just want to honor that you
know as far as the love mechanism goes
within that and that we see that and
you know maybe at the the end of this
you know
um episode here what would you guys like
to add to that notion
i i mean i think you captured it really
pretty well and pretty passionately
brandon but like
that isn’t to your point um
it’s almost never a lack of love uh it’s
almost
never a lack of care or concern or
willingness to work
um work to get
somebody out of the suffering it’s just
it often times just a lack of
information or lack of skill
um and then a little bit of what clinton
said too which was
like sometimes it takes parents too of
like i don’t how could i have a drug
addict i don’t want to have a drug
i don’t want my kid to go to rehab like
sometimes there is that
that self message of like working
through one’s own shame
about about being in a situation and
you know i’m just here to tell you like
addiction and mental health affects
so many families so many loving families
so many caring families
uh from all walks of life it permeates
all of those families and it’s not a
reflection of
good or bad parenting quite frequently
it’s a factor of many other things
absolutely i mean i think i would go
i would actually say that boundaries are
love like that is
the healthiest way to express love is
through boundaries because in that
moment when you have healthy boundaries
you’ve given one another space to to be
able to explore within yourself
to integrate um to uh and also to
interact in a way that’s healthy
that is supportive that’s genuine um and
really yeah i guess for me boundaries
are probably the ultimate
expression of love and it feels so
counter-intuitive but
that’s kind of recovery like a lot of it
is very counter-intuitive
you know um and but if i could tell
parents one thing i would probably
leave them with that yeah wonderful well
i’ve greatly appreciated this
conversation i think
boundaries is an important topic that we
should definitely come back to and
hopefully provided some insights
that make this concept more clear for
individuals
and families going through treatment you
know approaching treatment
whatever the case might look like but
it’s a very impactful tool that we all
have access to
in each and every moment to
nurture change in our loved ones
behavior especially when they’re
suffering from addiction are
you know any underlying or co-occurring
mental health disorder order along the
way
so that’s a wrap for episode six
greatly appreciate everybody joining us
again here full cut
thanks for joining us again with finding
peeks and we’ll see you next time for
episode seven
[Music]
bye