We are joined by a special guest, Kevin Miller, who leads a successful business and podcast, “Self Help(ful)” where they discuss and uncover the self-improvement and personal development wisdom you can take immediate action on for your own growth and fulfillment. This one-of-a-kind Finding Peaks episode is full of wisdom and lightheartedness we all could find value in.

Kevin Miller’s Website

well hello everyone welcome back to another excellent episode that you are about to watch on finding peaks here brandon burns chief executive officer of peaks recovery centers joined by a special guest today kevin miller podcast expert as i know him at least in this moment we’ll learn more with the podcast self helpful he’ll brag a little bit about it throughout the episode as well as talk more about it we’ll provide links all the important things so that you can find him on the podcast uh in the future and uh also joined today jason friesma chief clinical officer all things clinical joined on the program and before i maybe dive into my own introduction uh here as well too i think jason you want to say a few words about kevin um kevin i i do want to thank you for coming on finding peeks it is really a big honor because we are kind of a big deal and we’re you know fledgling i would say uh in our podcast endeavor um but i really wanted to you know kevin and i we were talking before the show we go way back i think we figured maybe 17 years or so um in in our lives have woven in and out of each other but um you know kevin for me you know as i was driving down this morning like i would be remiss if i didn’t mention like that uh when my son noah was 11 years old and um i won’t belabor this story but like he had a tumor in his head and it was by far this some of the most scary moments of my life occurred during that time and one of the things was is that the the children’s hospital in denver couldn’t help him or treat him and i asked him where where can he get treatment and they said vanderbilt hospital in nashville and i’m like make us an appointment never been to nashville never set foot in tennessee um and some somewhere along the way somebody called and said hey you know kevin miller’s family lives there and i called you and we we flew to your family’s house on mother’s day that that year of 2011 and they took us in for a month as we walked through the the amazing roller coaster that was that journey and um was so grateful to you and and to your parents for letting us in so um yeah i just want to start with that uh because it you that meant a lot to me it still does mean a lot to me if i talked anymore about it get choked up like i just really want to thank you for that kind of publicly i know i thanked you back in the day but my honor to be a part of it yeah it was awesome well in in and in lieu of that i think you know here at finding peaks we’ve we’ve talked a lot about well one the thing that i love talking about is disrupting you know the industry the behavioral health industry that we work in and i think as we’ve gone on and explored some of these episodes you know from you know the feedback from finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com continue to send us your ideas thoughts opinions but you know i can only uh you know point out so many ways to disrupt this and at times i think it’s important to learn from others about their own journeys their processes how they’ve grown developed you know businesses provided solutions opportunities like your podcast kevin and so forth and so we are expanding a little bit outside of this um to learn a little bit more i think about somebody who’s created something special and brings um a great deal into this world through his podcast through relationships that jason just described here as well and uh so i think today we’re in exploratory territory and uh looking to learn more from our friend kevin here uh and and see what we can take away from that in lieu of this concept of disrupting an industry before we find ourselves in those you know waited in those waters kevin tell us a little bit more about yourself um your podcast your inspirations your goals like how did you arrive in this seat with us today now i was born into it you just mentioned my parents yeah and um i i grew up in a home two parents who were very they really came out of their left their upbringings my dad was came from amish uh background and their pursuit of psychology of understanding and awareness was their salvation i mean it really was so i grew up amongst them being kind of guinea pigs with themselves and even me i probably took more personality profiles since you know before i was 10 than anybody has in a lifetime and so the aspect of personal development and personal growth and bettering ourselves was just part of my family’s ethos so i got to grow up with that amongst that going to conferences with my dad and even as i went into other areas of life that was always the interest i spent a long time as a pro cyclist and at the end of that ended up kind of developing an organization and saying how can we help people in all areas of their lives through this platform you know realizing if you have any platform where you have some expertise you’ve got influence and man the power of that and the opportunity that was immense and so i’ve gone through a lot of different businesses some that were just opportunistic some that i really cared about but they all really had the same threads of communicating people and kind of coming together and say how can we take a common platform and help each other grow and change and really how i came to the podcasting i was leading an organization helping people who wanted to pursue self-employment and at the end or as that progressed it was just it’s just personal development you know the the employment aspect was just a platform for their lives to live out what they cared about what they what their values were and that led has continued to lead me into at this point that’s all i talk about i don’t talk a whole lot about business in and of itself it’s it’s all personal development and even how you do that through your business and it’s that’s just what i it’s just the ideas that i like to talk about yeah yeah well you know for me you know in listening to some of the you know podcasts before you know meeting you in person here and uh coming on here that that there’s this just this balance that i never could have seen when i first started you know with peaks recovery centers uh in extrinsic intrinsic motivators on top of that work life balance as a new owner and excited to disrupt an industry and all these sort of things i was unaware of all of this language and all of this responsibility really at the end of the day and what i’ve learned in time is that there’s a great deal of responsibility within running a business within an organization namely yes we are positioned as an ethos to save lives at peaks recovery centers each and every day but we are also in a position where we will never succeed on in in such a high level ethos if we’re not nurturing the culture of the organization and the individuals within that and just curious through kind of your experiences and all the folks that you have met you know how often that comes up as a balance between um you know the the personal family relationships and then the responsibility to those relationships within any type of business setting yeah i’ve um i’ve struggled in that as i’ve always been self-employed and in my intent put family first and i really did that to a degree even to the point of sacrificing finances and i never forget a time when my wife she said look the best way you could save or or serve our family right now is just go make some money you know uh or or better yet i wasn’t so bad at making it i just didn’t keep much of it and uh you know so so that balance was one on the other side when you talk about the company culture i am i have suffered significantly from being the consummate project purpose goal-driven guy and not taking care of those around me kind of taken for not kind of taking them for granted in the pursuit of the mission and i have two organizations that i that did very well that i really drove down because of that and it’s made me look at how the type of business i want to have so do i become a better you know manager and whatnot or do i have a business where i don’t have to do that as much i’ve kind of gone that direction but you still have to employ people to some degree and it’s really caused me to kind of step back and and look as as business owners at what type of business do you want to have i got the unique opportunity to see my dad dan miller and dave ramsey most people know dave as the financial guru who were buddies together at the time of their demise and then kind of grew up together and now today both very successful and where they want to be and dave employs most of nashville i think and controls everything and my dad’s the exact opposite works primarily out of his house and has lots of people who work for him but it’s been interesting to see success and how that comes to people in ways that fit them well yeah yeah yeah it’s interesting and you know how did you work through that you know once you were aware maybe that you were putting too much into you know one bucket as opposed to the other like you know maybe you know bring us close to some of the the challenges for you in that moment and how you balance that because i find myself you know coming into like my household at times with my wife saying hey look the reason this is a little stressed right now between you and i uh is okay and important to go through because we have this opportunity over here and if we get to here then this is all settled in the background and there it seems to me like as a personal relationship there’s like a negotiating going on you know at any given time to get it right because it um it feels big at times to just want to go home and just really elevate this all of a sudden and then like maybe lowered over here but um it feels like more of a project to really get that balance right and curious what you went through to arrive at kind of this piece that you seem to have around

gosh that’s gracious probably um i i so often i don’t know if it’s a fair perspective but talk to figuring out ways to manage our dysfunctions and i think i say it that way because we you know in the industry of personal development and self-help we have that idea of you know you gotta overcome the weaknesses and as time has gone on i don’t know that i’ve overcome them as far as eradicating them but i have figured out ways to manage them so even to a degree you know to manage them and so even with work and family again i think i took on what my parents did and work was not such a separate dissimilar thing it was it was so much of i was fortunate privileged it was so much of of of who we are and what we do and what we’re doing at work is the same thing that we’re talking about at the dinner table and that really helped bring it together you know even today in my office is kind of like the hub in town where the kids come after school and they see me and i i had a kid sitting down one time and i was doing some intros and outros for the shows and he hadn’t seen it was one of the kids but i guess i didn’t see and i said dad i mean you’re like a rock star awesome well thanks man it’s great to have them see uh to see that and to be a part of that it’s where it’s not but you know it’s hard to have them involved in everything because yeah so much happens you come home at the end think how on earth can i get you guys up to speed yeah there’s a lot of times when i just don’t i just it’s just i’m i’m gonna set that down i had a friend one time talk about you know going into work and picking up that sword it was his terminology so i swore for work and then coming into his driveway and having to learn i’m going to put that one down and pick up a different one and i probably vacillate you know back and forth i have realized as my kids have gotten older i’ve got a lot of kids so i’ve got older ones and then still younger ones the i should have i should have known it from seeing it with my parents or experiencing it but the inspiration it is to them to see me doing something i am really inspired by that has been profound and so in that talking to them about work and what i do and the relevance of it in their lives is significant it feels it feels like a great privilege yeah honestly and that probably helps salve a lot of the things because there are the stressors that everybody has yeah you say balance that’s a gracious word yeah well in you know i went and gave a talk at uh university of colorado colorado springs a couple months ago i was invited in an email kind of didn’t know what i was stepping into i think i was in the social work department when i stepped in i think i thought it was going to inspire a bunch of clinicians to come work for you know peaks recovery at the end of the day and i walked in and i thought okay there’s a hundred students in this room and they’re actually looking for something to be said thoughtfully about their direction their growth their opportunities and i thought okay i need to change from my puffy chest coming in here disrupt pull in clinical people got to change my whole narrative and the best thing i thought to give them in that moment because i felt it in the room they were asking the panel really like how do i obtain my job what is the next steps to this and this sort of thing and the heartfelt thing that i thought was valuable to bring to them in that moment was you know you guys were about to step into a world and ask for your first job you’re about to step into an interview process and what does that look like and i want to let you all know that my best interviews are when somebody comes in and interviews us we’re on the table for the job we’re the ones who have to represent that this is going to be valuable and worthwhile for your effort eight hours a day five days a week 40 hours plus a week all that sort of stuff and if you guys can find what you’re passionate about and bring that in and be the interviewer in that process i i almost guaranteed to them that they would find like fulfillment in their work life and opportunities and see right away where the work life didn’t fit i share all of that because i got two fathers in front of me and i myself am not a father uh in this lifetime and for that i think that thing that i wanted to ask just through your experiences and certainly would love to hear your feedback jason is like you know uh what what advice are we given to the kids in this regard about how to approach these opportunities about how to find this gracious balance in life between work family and these sort of things out of these lived experiences that you’ve been involved with i mean i appreciate the question and and really um you know this this crazy journey of being a father is uh it is a challenge and um you know just always putting attuning to the kids seems so important attuning to whatever they need attuning to the conversations they need to have and helping them find their interests and helping them find not just their interest but like themselves seems what’s most important at least when i look at that and so um and being willing to have hard conversations and and lean into um just difficult situations and making sure that all topics lead to discussion rather than developing taboo subjects within the family system and i think um i’m certainly not going to give myself an a plus on that in any sort of way either but i do think kind of conceptually and i’m sure that does come from my clinical background as well but that is just conceptually how i think of being a father what about you kev i i had the fortunate opportunity of having some kids we had three and thought we were done and then realized we weren’t and had a bunch more and so i could see the mistakes i made with the older ones and go oh yeah that didn’t work let’s do this different over here and yeah that going from the you know in essence the the preaching to the just joining in a discussion and having questions and then what you said about you know looking at work has has continued to come up as i have older kids we look at the job we look at the opportunity we look at the pay we look at the title we look at that we don’t look at in 60 days who am i going to have been sitting next to all day long and in what environment is there a window what’s the noise like what’s the what’s the the ethos of the company what’s the atmosphere like man we don’t look at that and yet so often what drove or what attracted us there 60 90 days later it doesn’t matter if some of those core minute to minute things are in disarray and so getting to talk to the kids there and look at their quality of life and doing oh my gosh my dad wrote the book 48 days to the work you love you know and so working at something that you care about again i was given that on a silver platter and so talking with my kids uh about that now is so powerful even as you know i have a 17 year old who’s working at the local barbecue place cleaning out the grill and whatever he knows but it’s something he can do right now and others at farmer’s market you know doing things that they may or may not enjoy but they’re learning business which all the kids have done and kind of uh seeing that pattern out into as they get older to doing things that they that really again they don’t see such a separation between work and life if what they’re working at is a part of who they are and that’s that’s what i would wish for anyone it grieves me to see you mentioned you know the office and some of the things that we poke fun at the dilbert stuff and we were talking about retirement early and and the people i’m so privileged to know people who love what they do they the retirement’s not even they’re just looking at how they can elongate their lives so they keep doing it right and we have such a sea of people over here who do not enjoy their nature looking to retire which and when they do it’s generally not a good picture and man what a paradigm shift yeah absolutely we were talking before the episode that sometimes you know and the viewers know i get pretty puffy chests about disrupting this industry and uh you know brute force moving through it and highlighting problems with it without pointing at particular companies we could have some grace about this we’ve come our own journey you know as well too jason you know this we have been anything but perfect at times trying to figure out how to do this right how to provide better care and so forth and so as i shared with you guys in the beginning there’s ways in which i come in and i and i believe wholeheartedly on both ends of the spectrum that we can get this right and we can do this and on this side of it it’s like nothing’s in our way of doing it on this side of it it’s kind of a fear like maybe i’m making bigger statements than i can actually do like it starts to feel impossible the more and more i you know move out from the picture in that regard and um kind of you know bringing that or inviting that back into this discussion um are there times in which like maybe you felt like you’re a bit over your ski tips or a bit over the bicycle in this regard from your bicycling uh journey and adventures in life you know where you felt like maybe this is bigger than what i set out to do and if that’s true at all then you know how did you move through that or move past that or how did you you know uh who did you bring close to you to you know pull you through those moments yeah most the things were a little overwhelming but that’s what motivated me and again i was given such a gift to see my my parents my dad especially try so many things there’s a guy joe hansen he wrote the book the medici effect and he talked about entrepreneurs in there and it’s such a pithy little thing but it always stuck with me he says we find that they’re not great risk takers they’re not so brilliant whatever they just are willing to try more things than the average person and it stuck out to me and so i i’ve i’ve gone forward trying so many different things a lot of them that felt like i have no business doing this but i had faith that you know it’ll it’ll work out and if it doesn’t work out i’m not going to die and so would go after things but what you’re talking about i mean i i love the word disruption i’ve always thought of myself as a as a rebel but i’ve also hurt myself going that direction thinking what man what’s happening out there is it’s totally stupid that’s the dumbest thing we’re going to do it totally different and we’re just going to kill it and and in retrospect realizing that there’s some balance of being disruptive and there’s also a benefit of holding on to some of the tenants that we do know work um even like with you know in the online sales industry there’s some things that you want to disrupt but man if you get into a shopping cart in essence people are used to amazon if you go really left field and it doesn’t look kind of like amazon they’re just not going to buy they don’t trust it so just look like amazon in that part of it now maybe do something different over here and sell an actual quality product and whatnot so what’s that balance between disruption and some of the the norms that people are comfortable with and kind of kind of back to the old marketing thing of giving people what they want so you can give them what they need and you know it’s it’s a process and i haven’t always been so great in my efforts to disrupt in honoring some of the process and i can come in chest puffed out bull in a china shop and um and and just nobody has any footing so i’ve done that and so now what do i do i’m a little more patient i i tried i used to be so proud of the you know aim fire we’ll get ready later yeah and i still like that i still like crafting my life around that but like with my recent podcast revision it was a big decision i mean there’s a lot of money riding on it and so i was patient i didn’t pull the trigger and i and i sought more counsel than i probably ever have from from peers from you know beyond peers and even from my own audience and uh really tried to be wise and a little more patient i still love being impatient but in some ways at least for me relative to me yeah be a little more a little more patient and seek a little more counsel has been a big part of my growth as of late yeah yeah i love that because i and jason you know on my my uh linkedin page i’ve i’ve fired off a couple yeah you do like to be disruptive on that couple you know puffy chest moments but i’ve since doing that you know and also in reviewing you know a couple of your podcast episodes really recently as well too i thought i’m really coming new into linkedin as a market you know peaks recovery going back four years ago abandoned foot marketing principles we went all online which i’m super grateful for as a decision i think it’s powerful i think it gives us a you know a greater reach i think it has in a great way uh being in a studio like this led to a lot of our success along the way but in that way we’ve been silently growing and doing our thing and discovering ourselves and our processes in the background and the industry doesn’t really know a lot about us it particularly here in the state of colorado in a way that they really knew about us 2017 in prior because we were actively engaged with him in a big way and through that time experience i feel like you know in a way i’ve been you know some people told peaks to live the the ethics of the industry so we went and did that and then what happened i saw those people turn around and not live those ethics and it’s hard not to be you know resentful in hindsight of that as well too so again i got my linkedin page open and now i’m just finding myself staring at it i got a ton of things i just want to type in there and send and eat that world and take that and here’s your disruption you know and all those sort of things but um you know i’m just learning in the process through you know books and podcasts and other people who’ve done it you know before us that there is some important sensitivity to just kind of staring at the page thinking how do i want this message to come out how do i want people to receive this uh because it’s important that they receive it well if i’m going to do anything of the disruptive you know type in that regard and um you know i guess maybe that’s kind of in a way recapitulating i think a lot of what i received and what you just said but um is that kind of familiar to you as kind of like in your growth um and journey just kind of finding those moments to be more still and patient when you say or taking that step back when you talk about being patient daily honestly daily i’m so

recently i saw i’m in the middle of a book deal and you know there’s there’s timelines and whatnot and and i found myself a couple weeks ago looking in my focus i could get up in the morning i’ve got to finish this book or you know finish this chapter and had a i had a friend it was actually a class uh like a membership group that i have and but we do it’s kind of almost like a round table type discussion and i don’t know that they brought this to me but through what they were saying i extrapolated and it was you know who who am i serving who it’s again so pithy in elementary but who am i serving and so often i get my panties on the wad to go get this thing done pull the trigger and make it you know figured out and and don’t sit back who what was the point of this right i mean this book the point was a saturday morning i know the date and i was sitting there and it was just something on my heart to share with my older kids that i realized some things that i had not done well in in uh regretted being aware of some of my values and directions that i was going and i wanted this for them that’s where it started and to sit back thoughtfully and being present and kind of i just think i get my spirit right you know within it what am i doing this for whom am i doing this for why am i doing this take a deep breath and and that’s daunting to me honestly because i can realize how many hours days whatever i can just be plowing ahead and it’s not that i’m disassociated from my values at all but i can still go at it a different way and it’s really great having a highbrow editor who goes dude this doesn’t make sense you’re right i don’t know where i was when i wrote that thing and kill that and write something new and it’s brilliant i know i just but i that’s daunting to know that i can go i can go astray again not off of values morals and ethics but just in my communication and the heart of of what i’m doing so being drawn back to that yeah is to be the word that’s so

common now for me is just to be contemplative can i just and seek counsel those those two instead of just going ahead which is great if you’re a pro cyclist man it doesn’t matter what’s happening no excuses no limits man it’s just pedal to the metal that works there it doesn’t it’s it’s not what i have it’s not what i’ve benefited most from in my life and in my work as far as what’s most meaningful again i love i love disruption and and being a rebel and pulling the trigger and making things happen and some of that’s just fun yeah um but for what has been most sustaining it’s been through a more contemplative caring getting my heart right yeah aspect yeah you know i shared with uh you know jason you know this journey with you know my brother chris burns who’s also a uh an important host on uh these episodes uh also again team check him out on the tick tock follow his pounding of the heart and all that energy and just want to honor my brother there uh and we talked a little bit how i before the episode how i obtained this role you know and um of you know chief executive officer in june of 2020 around that time and i’ve been in this now for two years as a seat the company is eight years old chris was the six years before that and i take so much of his now he had i think a better heart about it in a way when i think about rebellion and that sort of thing i don’t want to say he was straight rebel he had a big heart for the process and the journey we were on but man he smashed through some walls you know and just blew things out of the water things like i would look at and be like oh we’re going to lose it all you know it’s moving way too fast we got to slow down but at the same time i can within this role i’m in alignment with what you’re stating about what is more sustainable you know having this balance this uh charitable balance between you know rebellion and taking a step back being patient yeah knowing your heart your journey but it was so important i think that chris was the beginning of this journey because i don’t think we would be here or we would look a lot different if i were in this if i were in the role for those first six years so yeah out of that just curious where sort of that rebellious feature you know you’ve seen in kind of reflection of it had had greatly worked for you because it is important i think to have that you know just point at the barrel and shoot you know and go for it and just curious about you know before you found or worked yourself into that balance where um you saw that rebellion really working for you or where it’s important to deploy that rebellion in hindsight you know maybe for the viewers or people thinking about how do i how do i bring this beast down but at the same time like i know i got to contain it at some point but where do i deploy it you know something around there yeah i i like the concept of that and i think i look more so now at seasons and cycles for things and there’s a season for the rebellion and the disruption to break things up and to create the opportunity and then there’s a season for okay now let’s figure out how to run this well and maintain this well and that’s not a skill of mine and i’ve had to employ other people there’s a guy i had on the show i’ve had him a couple of times jonathan fields his first book um i don’t remember the name of uh it was a really good book though uh but his second one is called sparked and he created this it’s kind of like another personality profile type thing but his is really just focused on work and what sparks you with work and i really like it it’s so simple and it was just so significant it didn’t surprise me but it was neat for me to see that i am they call it a maker i like a blank sheet of paper and an idea and let’s create a framework then i’m done that’s kind of all i want to do and so if that’s the case then i’ve got to have some other people with me to help balance that out again it’s elementary stuff but as as whether it’s entrepreneurs or just people even creatives you know to realize that i’ve got so many friends who are artists and they’re great at that breaking through and creating something like that and then they don’t know how to do another one or to keep their life going in the meantime or their family going or they don’t know how to sell it or run a business and these things sometimes i think we don’t see the most brilliant people ever come to fruition because they don’t they can’t get their crap together so we get so i’m a second-tier guy who maybe not the most brilliant but just enough to keep stuff together to bring it to market and yeah so looking at that i love the having to break through um the rebellion or or use the rebellion to break through we jason knows we built up a crazy house i almost was gonna bring this up actually it’s just a good example of this so we built a a straw a house out of straw bale so it’s a okay and you hear about that and you see these little homes ours is not a little home it’s a big it’s a big house it’s a 4 800 square foot box of first floor and second floor post and beam but then it’s infilled with straw bales and it’s totally weird it worked it’s really good insulation but it’s really weird i remember thinking like have you ever heard of the three little pigs yeah i know everybody everybody everybody says that but in doing this thing i mean i just thought man i bought the land i’m just going to build whatever i want to i was that naive and i realized no you don’t just go build whatever you want to in whatever city or county you’re in they’re going to tell you and we literally came to points where they said you cannot do that uh they wanted to make us put a a a like the weather shield kind of stuff around it you can’t do that these things have to be that’ll ruin it you can’t well you can’t do that it’s against code and so many times i’ve found myself in business since different places where it’s just it’s a hard no it but you can’t it can’t be it you can’t accept that and to realize that you can generally work through that and it’s and what a faith builder yeah i want people on the rebel side and the disruption side to realize man there’s really not anything that can’t be to some degree or to a great degree it can’t it it can be but it’s you’re gonna pay a cost you’re gonna i mean can you are you the type of person that can withstand that and that doesn’t need to be all people either i think i’ve gone through a time thinking everybody needs to be in that way thank god everybody is not that way because i’m good to get through to that point like to disrupt to get through but if we’re gonna maintain this thing we’re it’s gonna dive and i’ve done that again i’ve got i’ve i think for my book thing they you know doing the bio and i’ve started 19 businesses i’ve killed we didn’t do the number of how many i killed i mean i killed them because i didn’t do i didn’t i did i just did the disruption and rebel and got the opportunity going and it went boom and boom and there’s my trajectory with a lot of things yeah and uh yeah i’m i’m hopefully this podcast will be here in a year yeah you know but i i think it will be yeah absolutely and and uh you know pardon me again for you know listening uh being inspired by listening through but trying to collect the authors and so forth on the episodes that have um have come through your podcast and one of them again i was trying to before the episode talk about him uh he wrote a book success of something uh or a book around success but um what caught me in the episode is he said staff the liabilities and it seemed to really catch your attention yes that was a recent one yeah it was really recent yeah one of the one of the recent ones uh in that regard but it seems to be it seems to be a big part of kind of what you just communicated that yeah maybe i’m up here at times as the leader and maybe i’m just down in the flow but at the same time i’ve recognized through my rebellions that i can’t possibly do all of the things i wish to disrupt or without the inclusion of this team environment and so um just curious about how in that moment in the podcast you know kind of as a language um it seems like a lived experience for you and what makes sense for you around staff in the library oh my gosh yeah you’re totally right i’m i just am so regretful i can’t pull up who it was that looking at personality profiles uh a lot of people know that any of them dis meyersburg whatever but you look at your strengths and you know from a vocational standpoint especially you know i was i was really brought up and i’m grateful for and you you want to live in your strengths i mean i want to live as a kind of that maker thing i want to create something and i want to live in there as much as i can and i don’t really want to screw around with my weaknesses i just but i didn’t really look at staffing them and taking care i just didn’t want to deal with them i’m just going to go here and live in my strengths and that’s where we see my trajectory of you know a big win and then a big heck i was like that as a cyclist i was an incredibly mediocre pro cyclist and it would be on the podium one week and the next week i can’t even hold on to the weakest guy and uh and so this is a common common thing but you know looking at the at the strengths and i was just so focused on that and not so much on staffing the liability as this wise guy who i can’t call up his name um said and that has been i think a lot of regret honestly i’m uh i just had dan pink on the show he has the power of regret i had him on the show immediately well i know who dan is but because i’ve always felt like i’m not a no regrets person i’ve got a lot of them i’m grateful for the wisdom i have from them that’s redemptive and stuff but i look back man i hurt people i wouldn’t i’m not okay with that and there was a lot of that of not uh staffing the yeah the the weakness or whatnot and i uh and i have regrets there so when he said that it’s it stuck out to me as that’s where i am now and i’m literally at a point of employ i have more people i say employ not that i’m paying independent contractors primarily even from the you know the big publishing deal i’ve actually employed another big name editor because i want it to be great and they hold me accountable i got to show up for the deadline which is good for a guy like me and they help me see what i’m i’m missing and i haven’t been there before and i’m having more success now than ever it’s a consummate story but i look back and i’m i have some regrets of how long it took me to staff the liability in my life and i would say that’s past work that’s even into my parenting and marriage and yeah we can go across the board with that one okay well i appreciate that feedback and um i’m glad that uh or i’m i’m glad to see in a way that i got the same uh you know sort of uprising of excitement or um focus on in the way that i heard in that podcast moment as well too it’s cool to be a part of this with you and experience that passion and you know one of the things that’s coming up for me as well too and i think inevitably i want to take this home and talk more about uh the self-helpful podcast a little bit before taking it out for an exit but um so much within a work environment what i’ve learned over time and i think it’s a common learning experience for a lot of folks is you know the first things i dealt with in our work environment the negativity i received was like at a conference talking about an ethics or something and the negativity as an or the negative experience would be like oh man we’re not doing that i think we got i got to get that right i’m going to write that down to take it back right and now like within this role as a ceo and certainly as a chief clinical officer probably taking more negativity from the patient demographic not because they are intending to be negative with us but because they are suffering as individuals and for that reason their strategies become external rather than internal they pointed all the things in front of us and with each and every passing year i think i’ve got resilience you know we can have a patient a few weeks ago like oh i’m gonna you know sue peaks or something of this nature right they have aggression they have discomfort they want control and power and ways in which they don’t have it you know when we walk through those moments and i can hear those things well now and i can walk through those moments with patient journeys you know at the same time this week all of a sudden we’ve deployed so much effort into quality programming around saving lives disrupting industry deploying our core values and what came up this week jason the landscaping of all things i have never in eight years i have never heard somebody say you know what’s wrong with this place you know what i can’t stand here the landscaping and i think and i’m like awesome partly devastated by it because we’re putting so much energy into these projects to empower them and now it’s like this new sort of negative feature and so for all of the things that i’m learning and for all the ways i i think i’m building resilience like these little tiny frustrations that you know we receive from our patient demographic become really big things and i find myself like did we arrive eight years into this to lose everything over landscaping you know here at peaks recovery centers and curious from your experiences because no doubt in different ways you’ve been poked at or prodded at you know um you know maybe negativity is a strong word here but you know probably in your experiences you experienced what felt like negativity and then over the course of this journey that you’ve been on you know how do you find yourself building the resilience moving through it are you are you seeing somebody like jason on the side you know is it is it a spiritual journey you know what is it about your path that allows you to show up even in moments of which like wow this is seemingly fairly negative and i didn’t know this was going to happen today goodness that’s a big question

i have not been in tune to the negativity as much as i i wish i had more there’s a you know story told of you know earthquakes and hurricanes and tornadoes get all the press but there’s a lot more damage done throughout the year by by by termites it those little little things and i’ve seen that like being resilient i think i’m resilient until i’m not till the day comes and i’m not man coming to my own end i mean yeah if you want to get personal do i yeah i i have counselors and that i’ve come to because i thought i was x and i was capable and resilient whatever until the day came or the moment came and all of a sudden i realized i’m not man i’m at my end this is new and you know you don’t experience it until it gets acute enough to experience it i mean this is your business and looking at that you know now i i am much more i’m learning to be much more attentive to those little things that they build up i mean i’m i’m involved a lot in the health and wellness industry and you know again you’re usually going you don’t all right today we go man i’m smoking you know 10 packs a day and i haven’t had cancer yet i’m not going to until all sudden i do and then you know game over possibly i don’t want to be i don’t want to be there so what am i so again back to being you know present what are the things that are what are the rubs today what are the things that are stressing my resilience am i okay with that or am i just enduring through the day and getting past it but it’s gonna build up and man that accumulation we just had a show on age and ageism and not dispelling the craw the the the relevance of chronological daily aging but it’s not really the age it’s the wear and tear it’s the same thing we see with the cars it doesn’t matter if it’s got a hundred thousand miles on it it matters on how it was driven over those hundred thousand miles it may have another 300 mile thousand miles or maybe toast and and there we are whether it’s our health and wellness whether it’s our emotional uh capacity whether it’s our business health and i have not stayed attuned to those little things again i’ve done well in my role but i have you know and in that i would say in that am i going to be the guy that notices those small things probably not okay so that’s why i employ and i can you know give the list of people who are contacting me you know today and and even have the thought i recently just you know tasked somebody i go look at the stats what’s happening we made the name change where is everything going i can’t even figure it out i don’t want to figure it out i did have the thought to have it figured out i’ll pay you to go figure it out and let’s make sure a termite’s not eaten away at that so you know the wisdom that comes with i some of it i i get i’ll take credit for wisely maturely coming to but man so much of it i came to when it got acute dang it

yeah well thank you for that i you know but so much of it’s it’s uh it’s been such a journey and jason has been just as much a part of the growth of our organization as anything with an ownership title these sorts of things um just been a tremendous asset so i know it resonates too yeah for the room in general to walk through our growth experiences our rebellion moments you know all of those sort of things and i think you know i got into this business and i think okay yeah we’re going to save lives we’re going to do this and then it becomes about you know the landscaping on you know one day and i would just a great story and the reason i appreciate your your shared journey with it as well too is so many young entrepreneurs so many people who experience that rebellion and wanting to disrupt and there’s so many things we can disrupt in this world positively speaking in that regard that aren’t aware of the potential you know lacunas and tripwires and things along the way that they’re going to experience whether it’s the balancing of you know employee relationships at work while also being attuned to the responsibility maybe we share as an organization for individuals livelihoods at home maybe it’s the landscaping these small little things you can’t see along the way that people are going to throw at you that you can’t experience but in a way lived experiences and showing them that these opportunities can be obtained and to just be aware of these things because we have the experiences of learning them in real time through our you know uh our rebellion you know type attitudes and so i think these these shared stories are just so important for people looking to inspire their own growth journeys whether within a company or being their own entrepreneurs and uh you know kind of bringing it full circuit i said how i desire to kind of you know take this out with you today i wanted to talk a little bit about you know self helpful from your perspective and what you’re trying to because i know you brought several podcasts together into this one what was what were you seeing in these uh alternative podcasts that were like you know what these are good but i think they go together you know better as a blend or what what inspired and brought this journey together ultimately for this podcast that you’re working on now and also with that shared experience what are you hopeful that people are receiving from your podcast what do you want them to walk away inspired of or attuned to or what is that experience you’re that that ethos you’re really trying to deliver yeah some of the questions are just the response is looking at the podcast industry talk about a place of disruption it’s still such the wild west of things changing and me looking at it and i started a while ago and things were kind of static and um i mean my i was fortunate to have some success early on with it but you know i had this show called the ziggler show it was based on zig ziglar’s teachings and there’s a story behind how that happened but so i took that on and it did really well and then i co-founded a functional medicine practice with a friend of ours yeah yeah with a friend of ours and he and i are constantly talking about and we were talking about health and wellness but the same thing he’s on the other side of the wall talking to one patient about how to change the trajectory of their life and change their health and wellness and i’m on a microphone tens of thousands of people talking somewhat similar but they’re both subject to our ability to inspire the person to do anything all the all the information he can give that person is still dependent on them walking out the door and them doing it same thing with me on their microphone but we’re talk having these conversations man that’d be a great podcast so we started this separate podcast because it was a little outside and that was a true live podcast and then i get this inspiration for a book and a book deal and thought okay let’s let’s do one there and i’m doing three podcasts and it’s just it’s still me it’s still me it all overlap so some of it was that and just the the structure of of that but also looking at podcasting and what do people want kind of back to that thing what are they if i want here’s what i i want to give them what they need i want them to do this but what do i give them what they want and you just mentioned story and that is not my natural i’m not a storyteller okay i just don’t i’m a bullet point guy okay i don’t have a whole lot of patience for stories i mean i like a good movie yeah you know but um and that’s that’s not what people want on a podcast they want to hear the stories and i’m getting irritated at somebody deviating off here and i’m like let’s get back to the point that’s not what people want they want to hear the story they want to hear the rabbit trail they want to hear the context because that’s what they relate to i mean it’s stereotypical stuff but i wasn’t doing that well so it was me stepping back again and going now what do people want asking them looking at the things that are working well talking to peers who are in the industry right now and saying how can i best so i have this thing that i want to deliver how can i best do it and that was looking at best business practices in some sense that was not a disruptive thing you know now on the disruptive side though so with self-helpful which was i mean even from the name to the graphics to everything we’re out there playing the game how can we do well to get people to see this notice that download the show but now in the show what can i do so i it’s interesting i i did a stand-up desk i had a custom natural wood stand-up desk for my studio so i’m i’m up well it won’t be in a minute okay hold on because i got an awesome he just got one no i like the i have that at my regular desk and so but i had at the podcast i thought man it’ll help the energy man i’ll be i’ll be on it i now have a stupid tall stool at my podcast so that i’ll just calm down we had a guy said it sounds like kevin is just like the adhd poster child because i’m just i i get i get going so i need to drink a glass of wine if i could think clearly just to give calm down take a vine and and chill out because people don’t want the fast pa they want us more slow contemplative and i’m getting better feedback from that so it’s even changing you know my style and and getting more into the story now i do have my points though i mean i i spend a lot of time and i and i pull out i had a guy on today and his uh tyler merritt he has a video if you look it up it’s called before you call the cops so he’s a six foot two dreadlocked black guy and it’s it’s talking on racism but i didn’t want to really just focus on racism we’ve kind of we’ve done that so i really wanted to talk about marginalization and stereotyping that is relevant to pretty much anybody but white american men for the most part you know everybody’s experienced that and so i get to take it down that path and so even as we veer whatever i i know i have the avatar of the people that i’m talking to that i knew that i want to serve with this message so i can bring it back and weave that and that’s something that’s important to me because it’s not just a willy-nilly show to go off and end up talking about landscaping or greenville or couches or something i do have a point here and that’s my responsibility and my joy and opportunity you know in the show so that’s one piece of it and then a new piece of the show that’s a little bit of a disrupter it’s different is looking at them is not just a one-shot deal so tyler i had him on today we recorded and you’re gonna hear a part one and it’s talking about that main message of marginalization and stereotyping and then there’s going to be a part two where they hear behind the scenes what are his values in these key areas of life what are his habits amongst those it’s really a personal thing people i’ve actually tried to discontinue it and people really like hearing it they love hearing the they resonate with that and it almost always brings in aspects of their person’s core message because that’s what they’re about and then i do a third part on this on that person with someone else though with a peer in essence a co-host and we’ll talk about that and hear it so if it’s especially if it’s on health and wellness i’ll talk to randy james dr randy james and he’ll say yeah this is how this is working out or what i’m dealing with my literal patients and so the people get a three-part series because i think we need more than just a one shot of this great message and then we go on to the next one and we’re in such a consumption society i do it too i want the next book the next show the next whatever instead of realizing no that’s actually so significant i should probably not read or listen to anything but that for the next year so that i actually make some kind of a change so i’m trying to address that by giving people a bit of a series so it’s again playing with that give them what they want but then i think that they would be served best we know statistically repetition helps and engagement and whatnot so there’s the tension the balance however you want to call it yeah no i appreciate that because i’m gonna walk away with a lot of that you know when i when i sit in this host sheet host seat one of the things that i think is so important is there are so many there’s so many uh illnesses within our industry that just don’t work that are profoundly inappropriate at times and i want to empower the family systems you know that are you know gonna sit down for an hour 20 minutes however long these episodes go for to go okay that’s good information my loved one’s suffering colorado’s too far from me but i’m going to call this facility and i’m going to give them what brandon burns just told me to ask in that regard but at the same time you know i always joke with jason like i’m a better host jason’s kind of a host you know and chris and we we challenge each other in those ways but you know to the point you know these two guys are getting a lot more love and appreciation and following i don’t take that personally but what i take away from this as well too is just how do i bring the story closer like these illnesses i talk about it’s one thing to throw the rock at it and break the mirror right it’s another thing to say let me describe what a patient journey looks like up until this moment and why it’s inappropriate and you know for me that’s just positive feedback and another way that i can nurture this seat you know that i’m sitting in so i greatly appreciate that uh to take this out uh on uh in a way is to kind of steal an outro that i can’t remember the name of the podcast forgive me out there if this is like your shtick uh at the end but what i thought was cool about the end of it and why i’m compelled to do it here is you seem like a uh you don’t seem like a person you are the person who i experience is reading many books meeting many people and be inspired by many things and so one of the outros of this podcast uh is that he asked the person to recommend three books uh in that regard and uh before we plug your show at the end of this i’m curious about which three books you would recommend to maybe the audience here at finding peaks that’s led to where you’re at that you know maybe in time has worked for you or that is more working for you today but maybe three books you can give us to kind of go peruse in the background that inspires you it’s the worst question ever okay i’ll try to do that i get that i i i do i get the privilege of so many books and every book to me is pretty much a nugget something that just resonated rocked my world and i’ll remember that and not remember the book but you know historically there are there are a couple you mentioned donald miller and now i’ll never forget reading his book a million miles in a thousand years about what makes a good story he goes through he actually went to uh a script writer famous scriptwriter yeah and okay okay yeah yeah and what makes a good story a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it dude that is a philosophy of life right there we look at what matters to us what matters to other people uh was so significant and just what is living a good story i i literally bought cases i had a business at the time and i gave those books uh away and i still appreciate that and again it was it was a nugget he has a whole book and i a couple things stuck out to me that have been uh that have really been anchors um i’m on the i say the spiritual side but it’s really a life side is uh dallas willard i’m a big fan of and his you know spirit of the disciplines is one i tend to go back with honestly one that i have probably referenced uh more than others and it’s a it’s a little outside of left field for even my audience somewhat is anthony demello he has a book called it’s either aware or awareness and he’s uh i think he’s a jesuit race dead now but jesuit priest and philosopher and might have been a psycho i think you know he’s a psychologist too and um it is one of the most blatant call you out books that i have ever read a matter of fact i heard about it from tim ferriss the four-hour workweek guy i don’t know i don’t even listen to the guy but somehow i heard i i heard it from him and it caught my eye and that is one that i continue to go back to yeah it’s a hard question because it’s such a disservice because i read so many books and i get so many life-changing pieces for me that i relate to you know over and over and over that to say one book is so difficult that i don’t recommend books a whole lot unless somebody has something and i have something that’s really acute yeah i have a hard time um recommending books but the ones that i go back to um i’m really into a guy named terry real right now psychologist and his books he really specializes in guys and he’s kind of rocking my world i love the ones that disrupt me back to your term i love the ones that disrupt me i mean we all like to be confirmed and i like to read confirming things but the ones that disrupt something and i see something hasn’t been working and you just called it out i just there’s nothing more exciting than i get that in these shows i mean working today with you know talking today with tyler merritt he’s talking about you know race and i’m in the privilege privileged white guy and i have a lot of ignorance and lack of confidence i think in that realm and he really helped me see some different things i’m writing notes i’m right again it’s free therapy yeah what a great job i appreciate that and before i do our little uh outro piece here i think into the camera sell us on self helpful when is it out when is it one of the episodes come about all of those sort of features maybe the book when it’s coming out uh self-help i mean if you go into apple or wherever and type in self-help or kevin miller uh it’ll you’ll you’ll come up with it self-helpful i think self-helpful.co just goes to the apple page but you can find it you can find it anywhere we post on mondays wednesdays and friday is functional friday you may talk with my buddy randy james when we talk really to health and wellness specifically but the mondays and wednesdays and it’s always a serious you’re gonna see a part one part two part three with each guest with each topic it it’s something that i wish that i had in some of the other podcasts that i listened to where i hear this incredible message it’s just one and gone and i want i want more so i get to go and just find the person and get them on my show which is what i’m doing now yeah um but that’s where we are social media same thing i think everything’s at kevinmiller.co or kevin miller ceo on instagram and all that kind of stuff okay title for a book or things do you want to lead to the future thanks i forgot about that it’s called what drives you okay and it’s really looking at honestly drive and we’re talking about marketing it’s a good hook uh people want to be driven and we’re looking at that but it’s ultimately bringing people to question what are their values in these key areas of life and it will probably be out in the spring of next year 2023 okay yeah very cool well kevin miller so nice to meet you in person to go from the audio version of you to the in person same voice it’s true jason thank you so much for making this possible bringing kevin miller your friend on with us today and for all the viewers at home we hope that this was uh impactful in some way if anything i think through the lens of you know folks who’ve gone through some trials and tribulations within businesses and hopefully at the end of the day as well too we can inspire a bit of your journey on the other side of this and also maybe leaving you with some tones of you know things that we have to work through to you know kind of be in a room like this and have this shared experience together so let’s keep hope alive out there thoughts questions ideas opportunities finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com love everybody’s feedback continue to find us on the twitters the facebooks the instagrams all the things the kids are doing the tick tocks above all as i mentioned chris burns our founder pounding his you know recovery heart each and every day on that journey and inviting you all to continue that journey alongside him um and i think that’s good brandon burns signing off here from finding peeks and we’ll see you next time

How do you heal the family within addiction treatment? In this episode, we connect with Pema White, MSE, CAS, LPC, one of our primary therapists about recovery and how she is continuously building our family program to provide the best support for the surrounded family members of the individuals in our care.

hello and welcome to another episode of finding peeks i’m jason friesma chief clinical officer at peaks recovery joining me today i have a very special guest pema white um primary therapist moving into a in a a family role with peeks actually she’s been in a family role for quite a while uh running our family education support group on monday evenings and then recently uh pema has uh agreed to take on uh providing family workshops for our clients in person now that uh covet is over but uh before we talk uh about that i did just wanna kind of introduce you in a different way i know you’ve been on the show before but you haven’t been on here with me so i get to to kind of talk about you for a second

i remember pema getting your resume because you have such a unique name and uh actually pema shodren is a favorite author of mine and so uh immediately your name stood out um for that reason because those are the only two pemas that i’ve ever known and um immediately i was i appreciated your calm and your and your just your spirit immediately and and and you brought to our clinical team um uh a great presence and then with that um a great deal of uh background in working with families and working with families in pretty significant crisis uh through a variety of modalities like we were talking about before the show and i think um and somewhere i i can’t remember it was probably about a year ago i think alan cook and i started the family meeting but once ellen had to move on to hawaii poor guy but you were willing to step into that role and really take that family program and begin to elevate it and and and so i wanted to thank you for that but also uh that is pretty naturally now folded into um doing some family workshops in person uh so with all that being said um as you came on to peaks and and it’s been a little while so i’m asking you to kind of reflect back a little bit but what did you begin to notice about families and what families needed um as their as their loved one was coming into the peaks program um i think the the first thing that i noticed was that they very much needed to be heard um that you know i i don’t think i realized and understood what component they they played i was moving out of like the family as a unit the family as a relationship like the family as my sole focus and so i had to be very attentive to everybody and then moving into individual um you know it was almost like oh this is i got this i went from you know sometimes five people in a room to one person in a room um you know and it was so new and overwhelming and i think it was just really easy to focus on the individual and say oh we just have a client here um and we just need to get our client to this place and then you know someone else will take over i guess in some magical way um and then immediately started working with the families and realizing that my background um just really doesn’t allow me to forget that there’s a family that there’s a system um a wife a daughter a you know a mom you know a dad uncles even um and so you know and sometimes just brothers it’s really cool when you know a brother shows up and he’s like i’m not gonna let this one go um and uh and so um yeah like i think initially it was it was definitely like i they had a lot of pain um that it was really wasn’t so much about the client it was about their pain it was their relief that they were there and a need to be heard and a need to be acknowledged for the pain they were carrying the trauma of addiction the trauma of mental illness on a family and um you know and that in turn looks very different you know in some families it looks like a lot of blame and a lot of shame and a lot of criticism um and i you know often try to redirect from that of like this is just what we’re focusing on this actually comes from a place of hurt and fear um and then some families would just you know want to give information like can you do you got an hour because i have all the information you need to know so that you can you know see my person um and so you know and again still fear and hurt i think they all came from that place and and and then i can imagine um that it’s really difficult to meet someone new and have to like lay out all of the family history to this new clinician who has likely 15 minutes to to listen to you before they move on to the next um thing i think i think that’s a huge challenge and and you know to put it pretty succinctly i’ve certainly you know there’s a phrase going around for a while and i don’t even know who coined it but that addiction is a family disease and i would i would say mental health is a family uh disease as well and you know you and i have a very similar background we’ve worked for the same company prior to peaks different time frame but um we had plenty of opportunity at least i did and i’m sure you did as well of seeing you know a person an identified patient if you will taken out of a family taking a treatment do their work and then plugged back into an unchanged family that isn’t a great system for sustainable change for anyone in that process and so

beginning to wrap around families what what strategies have you used uh in peak so you mentioned family sessions yeah how do we how do you incorporate those into into how you work with clients um well i um i first i gather information you know so i’m listening to families and i’m working with the client um and a lot of times they want that to happen immediately but we generally put that on hold um just because it takes a minute um for clients to sort of you know disconnect and they’ve arrived in a state that they likely need to disconnect um and so you know usually within the first few weeks we’ve gathered enough information to get an idea about um what the at least from the client’s point of view what their struggle is and and maybe from the family’s point of view what they feel like the struggle is um and so then we can come together and say okay we all agree right on this one thing maybe a few things um or if we don’t agree then let’s let’s start that process right like let’s get some goals um because in in residential care there’s at best like three family sessions like that’s in the best case scenario we probably you’re doing three sessions um sometimes a little more sometimes a little less and um and so i you know have to i feel like i always have to strategize of like we have this much time and then we lose them like they’re gone yeah um and we just cross our fingers and um and so that that first session is about you know identifying progress i want to build some hope for the family that seems to be like one of the most necessary processes of walking into that family station and saying hey i want you to talk to your progress i want to talk about you know what you’ve learned here so far and what you’re working on and you know what you plan on addressing while you’re still here so the family gets this idea of like okay my my person is safe and my person is addressing some of these things that you know they are here for um hopefully these underlying issues so we’re not just talking about you know i need to stop doing what i’m doing um it’s i need to look at these things that keep me from you know walking into a healthy life and um and then we um hopefully have some um time to talk about um the family’s struggles just to kind of hash out some of like the whatever they’re carrying as resentments or concerns or fears to be addressed because it’s not it’s not a great system that if you walk out of treatment and feel very hopeful and feel very healed in a lot of ways to step into um you know what i call darts i think uh i tell people all the time like they have some reasonable darts you know it’s fair that they feel this way it’s fair that they have these resentments and um you know and it may not be so about you but they’re probably going to come at you because it feels very raw for the family and you know and i’m and i try to help our clients you know my clients see that they’ve had this runway so to speak that they have had this time and treatment and this surrounding of support but their families generally haven’t um and so they are often you know a couple steps ahead um and they expect their families to just sort of magically arrive there with them and that’s not what happens it’s not even you know reasonable to think that they’re going to be there um usually the families are put on pause and then you know they see their their people way ahead but they they’re still holding these darts they’re still holding these resentments and um so i want to try to at least get one session in to be able to talk about that and why that needs to be resolved or have a process of resolved and then hopefully by that you know kind of third session we’re talking about relapse prevention and so i’m given some information on what relapse looks like um you know affirming that everybody relapses they don’t all look like this kind of end result of relapse but that they’re going to experience anger or triggers in some kind of way and they’re going to feel activated and that’s when the family can do something and so hoping to get a client to talk about like what they need from their family um in those moments how it’s been different than you know we used to do this now let’s do this so we’re talking to like kind of family patterns and um and then once we look at that family pattern and how the the client themselves can shift that either by communicating or um you know taking some time whatever that looks like um then it’s you know kind of the family’s opportunity to say this is what we need um and so hopefully we’re now having this conversation that is um moving forward you know building this skill of i’m feeling a kind of way and i need something from this and how can we come to an agreement now and in the future um when you are in you know at risk where we don’t all fall back into our old patterns well i think you bring up you bring up such a good point too that in a residential setting of you know 30 to 45 days we don’t have a tremendous amount of time uh or hours to really navigate systems that have been in place for often times decades and even if it hasn’t been decades like it’s difficult to unwind some of that which which kind of led to us kind of starting this family support meeting on on monday evenings and we also have one on thursday evenings as well um

what has surprised you about that meeting let me start there that so many people are coming yeah like i think i i knew that people needed support and um and i think that i just it was surprising that um without that before we had that in place um sometimes it was hard to connect with families sometimes they didn’t have time sometimes they you know we’re just feeling so much um you’re feeling so overwhelmed that you know it’s really it’s a good surprise it’s a really pleasant surprise to see so many people coming and returning yeah um yeah and then what do you

there’s obviously this educational component and so can you maybe just do an overview of what you talk about in there i know it’s you put on a six-week rotating uh curriculum i think that um you know so we we try to address things that we have seen have come up as themes um you know and and that’s oftentimes like uh you know i’ll make little notes along the way in the curriculum be like this needs to be changed or you know oh that was a good question let me add that in so i try to keep it you know kind of a living document and at least in the back of my mind sometimes in my notes to like remember to address these things that that come up but generally we talk about how to set boundaries in healthy ways you know how to really take care of yourself as a family support person i think that that’s a oftentimes surprising aspect of the family support group that you know when families show up i think they kind of have this expectation of i’m going to learn some magic about my person and what my person needs to do and then they find out that it’s actually about you and what you need to do um you know and and and then another surprising aspect is people are like oh okay yeah oh that makes sense and note to self um that my person’s recovery is about my recovery um and that the family recovery and you know and how to integrate some of those things and um we talk about you know i think just giving that education of like what relapse looks down looks like breaking down and you know in intense steps sometimes and what addiction and dependence looks like and and really breaking down you know depression and anxiety and how it’s this underlying um you know factor that drives you know these dysfunctional patterns and um and then i think a lot of it is really just support for each other i think i i see a lot of people really just sign when they hear other people and saying yeah same what she said what he said um and i’m not alone and this is common and you know and that i think it does two things at once helps them feel connected with people that they had no idea existed um and then two i think it kind of reduces some of the shame that a lot of family members feel because they know things have not been great and they might not have acted great and no one really wants to talk about it when we’re not acting great um but then when they hear it like oh this isn’t me not acting great this is a very typical response to trauma and addiction and and i just fell into a pattern that is natural and normal um for most people well i mean i was going to ask you about the communal aspect of it and you touched on it there i certainly find um you know we talk often about how addiction and even mental health are very lonely uh in uh diseases or uh when people are in active addiction or actively depressed or actively anxious it creates this isolation even even if there are people around or even if it seems like they aren’t necessarily isolating like it does create this great loneliness and great feeling of like um well i’m just by my i’m on my own and in this parallel process families feel much the same way often times due to shame and and um maybe not wanting to talk to people or not knowing who to talk to or or having friends or family who don’t understand what’s going on in the family and so they continue to shrink their world down and i was always amazed when i’ve when i’ve helped facilitate those uh meetings with the families is almost like you said a lot of people are saying yeah me too and i get it and same with me um it’s it’s always struck me how surprising that is for people that they aren’t alone yeah and and by definition that’s kind of shame right that if i think i’m the only person who feels this way i think i’m the only one that feels this desperately about my loved one or i think i’m the only one that um has been lied to over and over and i can’t give up on my person or i think i’m the only one that um has paid off a drug dealer or i’m the only one who’s gone to my kid’s house and pulled them out of bed but really or i’m the only one that kicked my kid out because they were using and that makes you know like yeah whatever that response is is there must be something wrong with me because i’m all alone here yeah and we know we know just from talking about shane that that is exactly what exacerbates it and then and the solution for it of course is just being able to talk about it and what i think are what our evening programming and it is just for families like that group our clients don’t attend it’s just it’s just a place for families to kind of come together get some education and also uh offer one another some support and it is a powerful space for sure and then so then we had this other realization well you did and and you came and talked to me about it and it is that um the families are engaging in this program our clients are engaging uh in our inpatient program and then uh we have an iop program in colorado springs and in denver and uh clients are transitioning to that and and the families are just kind of

uh left to go use community supports how about that and um and then you’ve designed uh kind of this uh kind of a workshop to help uh families integrate with one another again and i’m wondering if you can kind of give us a preview of what that’s gonna look like yeah i think um you know one realization that was happening over and over so it was a pattern um i you know i see things from a system so i don’t no one exists all alone we all exist in our system and um and so when i kept seeing over and over you know people were coming back they’re like can i keep coming um which is beautiful um it makes it bigger again you know i’m like oh they’re still coming and they’re repeating things you know and um and so which is beautiful but also i think it implied at least to me that they need more um they’re not ready to drop off they’re not ready to be let go and you know and that i think is very powerful when um family members can ask for help when anyone can ask for help in whatever way they do and so um to say like and then also this like fear so there was like people that were returning um because their people went into iop and then i would hear this fear we’d watch people um and listen to people coming through the program the first you know few weeks there was just my person is safe and they were feeling that and expressing that um but then as you know the discharge neared there was just this increase in fear you could hear it me too right connecting on that i think one time they even formed their own group afterwards because they want to support each other and um and so that it just seemed so clear that our families needed a um a step down as well um they needed not to be you know left to figure this out on their own and um and the practical aspects i know you know just from learning i worked in schools and i was a teacher and i knew that you couldn’t just you can’t just teach a skill you can’t just present something and say good luck like there has to be some some integration of it and you know and that i think is where the magic happens um because this is where our clients are most at risk for relapse that’s why we have iop is because there needs to be that extra support um but there’s also a relapse for families and um you know and so you know families who are learning this new skill of i’m having a feeling and i have a need and can we talk about it um is great in the safety of a family session um but then when you get in it and they’re back home for dinner and they don’t like what they made for dinner right um all of a sudden things go back to the default pattern and there isn’t anyone to coach him in those moments and so um to me like the workshops are about the the practical aspects putting it into action families hopefully have had some experience um if not through inpatient you know family sessions and online you know certainly the clients are in it and feeling it and getting supported and so it’s about putting those two um you know kind of concepts back together so the family comes the client comes and um and they’re able to talk about the real things that are happening um in the moment so you know we’re starting with same concepts it’s just sort of a you know higher level it feels like right like they’re now moving into this more practical aspect of it and so setting those boundaries in the moment talking about real things that are happening today um going back to talk about some of those you know resentments that families are still carrying and they don’t want to throw at their family member they they want to see them in recovery but they don’t know what to do with these sort of hard topics um you know examining the family patterns and and what that looks like and what what it might look like if we continue on this path and how to undo all of that

i think one of the things i wanted to touch on as you were talking there is i um there is this process i think families go through or some families go through not all where the where their person comes to peaks and they begin to get better and communication within the family is improved um and there’s there’s a lot of excitement and there’s oftentimes relief on the part of the family and they kind of have some separation from their loved one and they’re like i’m sleeping at night i know my person is safe and and um is making progress and then um after some period of time that that wears off and and old patterns reestablish but i think also uh what i’ve what i’ve told some clients is like you you’ve created a kind of a reservoir of pain and hurt in your family and they probably haven’t you as well but like you’ve created a reservoir of pain and hurt and and it’s likely going to come out at some point and actually uh that would be a good thing if it came out um it would that’s the path kind of toward healing and and so often times uh you know i’ve seen it with clients toward the end of their treatment stay and their family members are finally like you know what actually really hurt us in these ways are we really we’re afraid or we’re really tired of this or we really can’t go back to this and and i’ve watched our clients come back and be like what has happened like things are getting worse and i’m actually this is actually the process of them getting better because they’re actually trusting you enough and it shows that they’re still invested and then i often quote the lumineers and i say that the opposite of love is indifference so their anger and their frustration and all that is actually just a form of their love um and certainly i think uh family members being willing to come and attend a workshop that’s an act of love too to say this is this relationship is worth healing um i did want to ask like do you can you share like maybe one practical thing you’re going to help families integrate with one another whether yeah i’ll let you uh um yeah well i mean i we made the first session boundaries for a reason uh so um you know i think it a lot of times it’s unspoken right like you just you go to someone’s house and you just assume that they were raised the same way that you were raised and um you know and so we’re not used to speaking to very specific boundaries and and it feels awkward and um you know and it’s unusual and you know and and it’s been introduced hopefully certainly to our clients because it’s something we talk about almost every week not every day um you know and it’s certainly something that happens in family programming um but then what does that look like do i have to write a list of rules and post it in the kitchen or um you know and that’s going to be different for each family so i think it’s just giving them a space to be able to talk about what their fears are what their concerns are because for me like if you have a fear then we need to set a boundary we need to address that by saying what’s your fear well i’m afraid he’s going to steal my car in the middle of night you know and go get high whatever you know um all right that’s the fear what’s the boundary there right like and can you respect that boundary for for now um you know your family member says that you can’t have access to their car because they’re afraid of that that has to be the boundary today and it doesn’t have to be the boundary forever boundaries are flexible they can be um but it’s just today’s boundary and you know and i think when it’s when it’s spoken and agreed upon and respected and understood of like this is why i have to set this um then it doesn’t turn into like over dinner going hey can i get the car no you can’t have the car right now we’re ugly now things are um you know um just and there’s no there’s nobody nowhere to go from there because we’ve already turned it into a place of anger so hopefully that’s what you know families will be bringing to the workshop is this um i mean they may not know that yet but you know they carry it in their pocket i know i do uh and so um i can tell you what my fears are in most situations and so i that’s what we’ll kind of talk through and work through and um you know the exciting part about you know building programs is that you know i get to hear from the clients i hope that every time we do the boundaries discussion it looks different i hope every time we work through you know this four-week curriculum it’s a it’s a whole different conversation because it’s a whole new set of fears it’s a whole new set of families that um are bringing their own you know needs and concerns and yeah yeah absolutely well pam i i i appreciate um as we kind of wrap up here i i appreciate your vision um for uh families uh coming through peaks and i appreciate uh your you championing championing them uh and the process and i really think this is a way uh we talk a lot about disrupting this industry and i think this is a way we get to do it to provide not only care and our peaks touch if you will to our clients but we also get to provide that to the family and help kind of you know help the families integrate what occurs in our program so i want to thank you for coming on the show today i want to wish everyone a happy have a safe independence day tomorrow please follow us on facebook instagram also on tiktok chris burns continues to churn out wacky videos that i think are mostly fun and anyway thank you all for viewing and feel free to email us any questions that you may have or comments and with that take care

Join us in the intriguing conversation about how education and experience can play a role in providing effective counseling and the difficult dynamics Peaks faces trying to break the glass ceiling on the standards of care.

well hello again everybody welcome back to our favorite time of the week it is finding peaks episode number one million because i’m an excellent counter yeah brandon burns chief executive officer for peaks recovery centers joined today again by my faithful team and counterparts jason friesma chief clinical officer lpclac all things all the things all the things clinical clint nicholson lpclac all things kind of but more operations yeah chief operating officer absolutely welcome back to the shtick yeah yeah stick that’s what we do i think that one of these days you’re just going to forget my name yeah you look at me dead in the eye like you look like i do panic sometimes you know do i do i call you when i normally call you in passing so this guy so what we’re
what we’re going to talk about today is because we know everything about everything that’s what makes us great in our jobs yeah it’s a big statement but a true statement yeah absolutely we only live at that level of a high bar certain circles it’s very is what it takes to be a great therapist and what does that even mean because you go to every addiction treatment website every psychiatric clinical psychologist website everybody can do all the things that’s why we go to school that’s why we get master’s degree but it turns out you have say let’s let’s use it like a benign example sometimes you just get bad physicists they’re good in their academics and they step outside and they’re not great engineers i don’t know but some of them are better there’s albert einstein and then there’s other people only he would use physicists stick with me i didn’t i actually didn’t prepare for this metaphor it’s just top of mind but the way that i think we should start with this is uh because you guys know i’ve been talking about this book for like three weeks now the boy who was raised as a dog uh dr perry is the author md of that book and i think what’s really important about the book and its timeline is that dr perry starts with like i’m a doctor awesome i’m a psychiatrist and now i’m in front of my first patient and i have no idea what i’m doing like it doesn’t matter everything i’ve learned now i’m looking at this child who’s really suffering from neglect and abuse and trauma and all this stuff and i literally don’t know what i’m doing and i think that’s a good you know kind of starting point to this as well as you know we can pull in some dr yolum stuff as well too wrote i think more famously the gift of therapy he’s written a lot of things says he’s not doing philosophy but he is uh just want to get that in case you’re watching dr young in case you’re there on the the facebook watching us right now uh but in the gift of therapy in the beginning of it says i’m treating mid to high functioning individuals and what i love about that is it’s so easy for in my experience of clinicians to quote that book six ways to sunday at the same time when you read that book he spent like the first 30 years of his career in research geriatric care psych wards substance abuse he did all the things and then he arrives at this moment to meet with men to high functioning individuals and delivers these awesome therapeutic interventions the takeaway from both those books is there was an incredible time period to get into a position where they were like i think i kind of got this yet at the same time one of the universities down the road from us here in the springs releases people into the world going right into private practice and that seems like a fundamental error of the systems because what the books and all these great writers are telling us is time matters to deliver good care because the experiences matter and those experiences inform how to make right diagnoses and not to make wrong diagnoses and not to look at somebody and think of their behaviors as adhd when it might just be behaviors resulting from a traumatic episode resolve the traumatic the trauma the neglect through therapeutic interventions and maybe the adhd looking stuff kind of goes away in that regard so um i think that’s that’s a big deal to me uh because i think there’s this other language of gosh what does our friend michael say about this uh we with uh we’re kind of like feeding new professionals like to the wolves when they come out yeah you got a degree yeah we eat our young within this industry we say okay you’re pumped you’re 26 years old got your master’s degree your lpcc working on your hours here’s some patience there’s only five of them you’re gonna do great and then at the end of it they’re like i don’t know what i’m doing i’m getting burned out all of this sort of stuff right so we have this tendency as an industry to eat our young and i think that speaks to a couple of things right the lack of you know maybe professionals actually available to treat this so we require all of the youngins to come in and really perform this work and so you know just painting a picture of how our systems are kind of disruptive of this process and not allowing time to really arrive at what might be a dr perry md psychiatrist
um knowing what they’re doing and a doctor yalum in those sort of ways so um with that introduction long-winded thorough but thorough yeah where are we at with this like how much of that in your guys’s view matters because jason i think you’ve been doing this since like 1906 you know since 1972. absolutely absurd those numbers again great with numbers good physicists bad physicists good mathematician bad mathematician yeah i think you know i think you said i mean you said a lot brandon but uh one of the first things you talked about was dr perry going to his first session and being like i have no idea what i’m doing and to me that alone uh is fundamentally a great start to his career for sure having that awareness that like i don’t know what i’m doing um so you know when we were talking about um doing this topic uh today or after you told me this is what we were talking about um the first thing is that ability to know yourself um because if you don’t know yourself in in the therapeutic relationship then you can’t tell where the client is like you can’t see where their prop where your problems end and theirs begin or whatever like it it creates this baffling mess so at least dr perry knew that okay i don’t know what i’m doing but i in you know having read uh some of dr perry’s work like this guy’s deeply empathetic and uh very knowledgeable um about psychiatry particularly but he seems to hold tremendous space for people that are really suffering and so uh you know that that piece isn’t as trainable so i’m confident that when he sat down with his first patient and uh he at least had that piece with him like he knew how to like meet a human where they were and understand that he didn’t know what he was doing no i i think yes oh thanks well said yeah uh the nicest thing you’ve ever said on this show i’d like to market to show my empathy and display my therapeutic skills yeah good job uh thank you um i think humility is to kind of piggyback piggyback off of that like if you are not humble in uh your awareness of how little you know then you’re not gonna go very far i think that the master’s degrees and to be fair to you know all of the the universities and colleges in the springs like i i think most master’s level programs do not train counselors to go into agency work they don’t train them to go into the trenches they train them to go again into these sort of private practice like worried well kind of fields and um it’s it doesn’t do the student any favors you know like if you need to kind of be prepared to go to battle when you leave because i mean my i mean i went to a small a small college down in uh you know the san luis valley and my professors were very clear that you will leave here learning just enough to be dangerous and that was sort of the mantra so it was kind of instilled in me like you have to leave here knowing you know nothing or else you’ll never be okay you’ll never be good enough at this job and to move uh and to speak to what you’d kind of mentioned earlier brandon like if you move straight into private practice or even a small practice you’re what you’re missing are those opportunities to cut your teeth as a therapist and really learn what it means to to be in the trenches of the kind of clinical world which is where you just get you get good out of necessity yeah because in the end you would you get real you find yourself and you learn how to bring your genuine person into the room with you so that you don’t show up as a counselor you just show up as a human being yeah and the this i would i would encourage all viewers to uh with a companion i think it’s also a lot to download i spent as i’ve shared with both of you at least a half hour crying with my wife about all of the stories i felt like i was holding on to uh within the book and not being able to describe them or share them with other people it is deeply intense but the takeaway from it is like the the folks that we’re treating at peaks recovery centers at any given time are we look at it through the lens of just these people are suffering and it’s our job to figure out where that suffering comes from and deploy interventions that lead to uh you know a renewal of themselves their energy their relationships um you know their jobs their careers everything along the way uh but at the same time as well too um you know we have things that i think are like in the way of this you know and i’m curious from your guys’s perspective when people launch out how reliant you know maybe you think that individuals are on say like the dsm-5 i heard from somebody in this industry that this is an objective book it gives us all the objectivity so that’s great so we can resolve all things through the dsm-5 uh sarcasm to that person these are descriptors not objective views of subjective individuals but that said to bring the audience a little closer to it and move my sarcasm aside it’s like well if you have to there are there are 12 11 or 12 pieces right that would define a major depressive disorder descriptors right so you could have an individual with one through six and an individual who identifies with the descriptors of seven through twelve you could have a one two three five six and an individual with a four seven eight nine ten eleven twelve i’ve just described three individuals with a major depressive disorder who shared no symptoms um or no uh no you know one symptom equals this two three four five six or whatever and that’s what makes it not objective so it seems like we could rely on something like the dsm-5 and those descriptors and make a ton of fundamental errors when we’re looking at the individual maybe because we lack curiosity i’m curious i guess for the newbie coming out of school how reliant they end up becoming on these types of things to deliver care and if there’s a tripwire there that we should be you know kind of acknowledging within you know counselors coming out of schools in that way of things because they don’t have the experiences so they’re looking at an experience and then what informs them about that is it that or are we doing something even more harmful than just making things up i’m curious like how you were trained on the dsm when you went to school because when i went to school it was actually when we were writing this yeah when you the first esm dsm .05 yeah uh yeah when i went to school like we were actually almost encouraged to not diagnose which to me is the other end of the danger zone it was not about there wasn’t a whole lot of training on how to accurately diagnose somebody or even what that meant it was mostly um i mean that that was my experience i don’t know yeah no it didn’t i think my my diagnosis class felt pretty perfunctory like they had to do it to be careful credited or whatever but um you know like there’s this intersectionality of like you know yolum i think does a great job kind of capturing the art of therapy in so many ways of like you know just talking about these beautiful interactions with people and and and his empathy and his interventions uh are just so uniquely yalum and it’s just him being him and um and then we have kind of the medical and the science part of it and and i do think you know like the dsm i think it can be helpful to describe constellations of symptoms if you will um because it helps us make sense of things like words matter we’ve talked about that on here before um but then you know like clinically like when i’m sitting in front of everybody i’m not like thinking through like i’m just dealing with depression here anxiety like i’m dealing with a human yeah but i also think that we kind of have a tendency to jump to yalum before going through the all of the the medical stuff like you need those guidelines i think it’s i i have a victory about this yeah i do i think our field really glamorizes the whole like i’m going to bring my genuine self and i’m going to have all these cool interventions and i’m going to be really special and unique and and you miss the point where you actually have to know how to do your job like you actually have to know what the dsm is you have to know what the criteria are you know how to use them appropriately like it’s not that is not the answer i mean i could describe people that can get really nuanced in their diagnosis too absolutely it had every modifier on there and this really beautiful constellation of diagnosis that are also are very informed just nothing yeah really yeah exactly i know i i get you i think i think we talk i think we just live on the extremes of those yeah living on the extremes of either of that of that spectrum is is kind of nonsensical it’s really there’s this middle ground where everything kind of coalesces together yeah and and i think for the new therapist in particular the new counselor just making sure that there’s a solid foundation and again like that’s what you’re talking about right it’s about those years in the field those years in the trenches where you really learn how to bring all of these different pieces together so that you can be unique so that you can be creative so that you can be nuanced in a way that is really efficacious for the client in the end when i think you know i came to peaks from a private practice right i had a i mean literally four blocks from here i had an office about it yeah i don’t mean to flex but like and it worked and i saw clients and i paid my bills and it was a good gig um but really uh it even then and i was you know i was a seasoned therapist even then and but like um
there’s a growth process that’s just exponentially steeper in agency work even still even being in this field you know for quite a while as you pointed out over 20 years like the i’m still on a tremendous growth curve i would say because of the agency work because of my interactions with you guys and my interactions with other clinicians and other modalities and the presentation of clients and how much time we get to spend with them and you sit in private practice and you see client after client for an hour a week you know uh seeing the worried well is what i called it um it my professional growth kind of arrested for a while i would say and i mean and i went to conferences and trainings and all that but it isn’t the same as as being in this community of multi-disciplinary teams and being around our physicians and and that sort of thing so i’m i’m hitting something with you i can well no i’m yeah you guys know me i just love disrupting things and so just let that ambulance pass probably going right on time take care of the worried well the when we say worried well what are we stating like what is it about that patient demographic that is worried well in a way that we would not say that in agency work so honestly you know that it’s kind of derogatory yeah a little bit derogatory like really when i when i would have to like do medical billing or like do my billing stuff like literally sometimes there’s this diagnosis called adjustment disorder and that was oftentimes the only one i could find for them and basically that diagnosis just meant like you had some sort of change occur in your life and uh your ability to deal with that change is maybe not as uh robust as other people’s yeah and but it was kind of this throwaway diagnosis that just meant like it i mean life got a little hard you’re struggling and you haven’t been able to figure out on your own oh your husband isn’t talking to you so you you want to come talk to me for an hour a week and talk about that you’re making the same meals and you do the laundry and it’s boring and you’re not finding much meaning in life okay but you’re not going to really respond to my interventions you’re not going to do the things i ask you just want to come tell me that once a week okay yeah and you’ll pay me for that and it and um i just didn’t find it super fulfilling don’t get me wrong i had i also had great interactions with clients like there were times when it was um phenomenal but i’ll be honest with you it took a lot of like those were it i had to be pretty experienced and i pulled a ton of experience from from the other things i had done before to be able to engage people with that because i do think um i i want to circle back around our overall question i think what makes a good counselor too in in these i don’t mean these i’m going to say some words that are going to sound like platitudes but it’s real like to be genuine like i think somebody has to be genuine um i think our clients and i think even at any setting people sniff out disingenuousness uh so easily um and uh and that’s that takes time nurturing to learn and and i think it takes really good supervision um to make sure that people are being genuine i had a supervision uh meeting today with one of the clinicians where i just had to keep probing and probing until kind of i found a genuine response to this clinician’s response to one of our clients and like um but then once it was there was like oh my god yeah i was out of out of my genuineness in that moment for sure and um but like that takes time and that takes time to nurture that and and to figure out how to hold that space um i think that is so important um and obviously other things would be uh empathy is so critically important and i and i love to quote uh pema chodron who says that empathy is knowing our own darkness well enough to sit in the dark with another and i think that that that makes a great clinician that can just hold that space i know i keep saying it but like hold some sacred space with somebody as they are uh going through something um and that is difficult because it’s way easier to just say things fill their time or interrupt that process um i think that seems so key for me as well i think we have you know what comes up for me here too is that we have again every ever you guys heard me 100 times say this every addiction treatment website promises the dual diagnosis stuff we treat the major depressive disorder we do the anxiety we do the substances we do all the thing
that can only be true if the team underneath actually has the capacity to do that and at the same time there are always going to be in an industry with 14 000 addiction treatment centers in it not everybody under that hood is going to be in a position to treat these things but back to the language of like this industry has a tendency to eat its young it’s because it’s exploded so quickly but we haven’t really had the assets in place to deploy this and so a couple of things right that would make a great clinician wouldn’t be just being thrown to the wolves but would be to have an infrastructure within uh agency work that can actually mold support and help grow those individuals at the same time also delivering the demands and the needs of the individual uh within programming and so out of this just want to highlight that we can be a down a stream here of many nuances and at the same time this is quite complex and you know one of the things that comes to mind is i hear families you know colin peaks and so forth it’s like oh well the last psychiatrist like didn’t get it um you guys have a psychiatrist it seems like your guys are going to get it unless we’re going to do this right we’re just going to manage but like there are limitations to what a psychiatrist can do at any given time there are limitations to what medications can do dr ilardi’s episodes uh dr ryan being on our episodes dr ashley johnson i mean we’ve been very transparent about these limiting features and clinicians themselves though master’s degrees don’t just walk out with all of the experiences in the world yet at the same time admissions teams are tasked with yes we can treat that yes we have the lpc that can challenge the mental health and you know deliver the intervention but back to the books it seems like the only way to really fundamentally get this is to have these experiences in place and not just experiences but experiences that were challenged and informed in real time because you can have all the experiences in the world but if your only supervision was somebody who kept thumping your head with the 12 steps right as a model of care then you can have all the experiences but all you know how to deliver is 12-step through those experiences and you miss all the other opportunities of interventions i think it’s a great caveat right like it’s not just about being thrown to the wolves it’s about being thrown to the wolves with like a really great mentor or a really great supervisor yeah to help you navigate that because you and it’s a pretty well known kind of almost trope in our industry that clinical supervision is always uh it’s almost like a myth to some degree and i mean again this goes to the nuance like there are agencies where it is not great and you do not get good supervision and it and you will not grow and you will be stuck kind of where you even if you come out of school you’re thrown into the wolves and you’re just left there to sort of fend for yourself and you actually don’t grow in that environment either just like there are private practice organizations that i’m sure are phenomenal have great supervision have really have really passionate really dedicated people that can help help you grow in an environment that is maybe less challenging but still nonetheless will allow you to grow as a clinician i think it’s it’s about not being alone right like you have to have guidance through that process it’s nobody knows how to do this right away you know it’s um it just takes time and if you have people that can i mean it’s people helping people it’s broken helping broken it’s kind of absurd to a certain degree and i that’s my own rag on my on my actual you know like career basically but it there’s a certain sort of absurdity to it and because the the clinician has to be is still human right and we have to a lot of what we learn is a really about self-awareness like jason spoke to earlier and how do we show up in certain ways when with certain people in certain situations and how do we navigate that in a way that allows us to actually develop empathy and create emotional connection and and provide good clear feedback for that individual so that they can kind of move on in their life from wherever they are it’s to do that by yourself after two years of college or two years of a master’s program is not a thing like it just that’s not real you know you have to have help you have to have support yeah it has me thinking of uh you know here in colorado we have ceus continued education units right the whole goal behind those i i believe correct me if i’m wrong is certainly that hey you’re in a private practice maybe you don’t have supervision but so many hours out of the year you’ve got to go and be educated on a topic and then you sign off on that well the real problem with that feels like that just like reading dr yolum’s book it provides a lot of opportunities in it but if you don’t have anybody to engage with it to work on it with to be witness to your improvement and your growth as an opportunity you can walk into a ceu event take as much notes as you want to do but if you don’t have anybody to bounce those ideas off of probably not going to arrive at being successful at least in what we were being educated on and probably more to the point as well too i think clinicians probably a good amount of them are just checking ceu boxes and not actually delivering the interventions that in a in a in a real informed and meaningful way is my major statement come at me industry well the ceu is also designed for that clinician who’s been in the field for decades and to keep them fresh to keep them up to date to make sure that um we don’t get stagnant you know because this is our field has any field that isn’t dynamic isn’t a field it’s it’s a it’s a theory right you know and so um but to your point like but if i but if i’m a clinician right and i am i’m for 20 years because maybe out of self-awareness and growth i’m in recovery myself i did it through the 12-step model and 12-step is abstinence regardless and now i’m in front of somebody who’s requiring medication-assisted treatment and there’s a ceu event for medication-assisted treatment and i ignore that because it’s not sitting within my philosophy then i’m just going to the ceu events that talk about you know 12-step programming within programs or interventions around that right then i mean this i think is one of the fundamental problems of our industry we adopt this is the only industry it’s not the only it’s one of a handful of healthcare size healthcare settings in which we can develop our own philosophies about what we think the individual needs in front of us and deploy those and that seems
i mean it seems like an extraordinary liability but that is what is happening on all of our sites we have these philosophies that we take with us that we think the other individual should have because it worked for me it worked for the last 10 people i saw in this row and then that limits our potential for growth and limits us within ceu settings or where we’re going to go receive continued education whatsoever
i mean it’s a statement you know maybe it’s a statement it was a statement i don’t know what the question is i i do am i wrong some people are stupid am i wrong
i just want to slip into like reflect back what you said and have you keep talking that’s just like my counselor and me who wants to do that i think that you know even peaks though to a certain degree like we have our own philosophy right like we’re one of those agencies our philosophy just happens to be that our philosophy is flux you know like we’ll take as many different philosophies as we possibly can and learn from all of them we’re not gonna just pick one and hold on to it for dear life we’re gonna we’re gonna take the best of everything that we’ve found and try to come come up with something cohesive but in the end like you said just like when you’re diagnosing uh major depressive disorder you know you’ve got 12 criteria but no two individuals have meet this the same criteria in the same way right so to have to try to have one philosophy to to to treat this um what is a very dynamic diagnosis makes no sense you know unless your philosophy is to have i will use whatever philosophy is necessary that that’s probably the best philosophy i have right yeah well and for us our vision has been to disrupt an industry through quality of care and so you know in that regards we are big at peaks of like and we’ve talked about it with i’ve talked about it with joanna conte and vista research and outcome data for the last 30 years our industry is 30 or lower or just flat as regards to outcomes in that regard so our philosophy at peaks is like just throw everything out with the kitchen sink in that regard and let’s pull anything and everything in as possible to make this as big as possible for the individual that we’re in front of to move outcomes in a direction that you know is viable and i think the power behind that is that it feels like the old philosophies the ingrained things we’re gonna do six hours of group one individual session and we’re gonna sprinkle meds on them and somehow that’s gonna lead to the outcome at the bottom of every algorithmic page that we treat depression if you get to the bottom of it it’ll say something about depression like we throw them at it and we do some counseling along the way and we’re hopeful at that point that is an old way of doing things going back to dr ilardy’s model that is not a spiderweb concept you know let’s throw the tms ketamine if it’s necessary you know let’s throw the calcium let’s get some exercises get probiotics let’s get nutrition in there let’s do all of those things and see if something sticks if not multiple things but we what we know for the outcomes is not sticking is a med and therapy delivered with one individual session a week and six hours of group per day in a room where people are also not there for major depression but therefore substance use disorder primaries and out of that philosophy i think our industry has gotten really hopeful about a co-occurring disorder and a guessing game that okay you say you have depression but you smoke two pot two days ago i think the pot is causing the depression right and i think that is where i just want to acknowledge what i mean when i talk about these select philosophies versus just having this all sort of in approach because at this point we know we can always do one individual session and six hours group you know a day and we know what those outcomes are and so it feels like we have nothing to lose by adding more absolutely yeah well i guess i don’t this only feels like it loosely ties to what you’re saying like i do feel like fundamentally so much of our philosophy is so intangible because it is about building community with our clients and having our clients build community and that connection and it’s hard to measure that and so it’s hard to standardize it right like we could try to take this philosophy and drop it into a different program but like you have to have the right people doing it because like that’s a genuine thing like i think people being genuine that extends beyond our clinical team i think i think our best employees are those that are truly showing up doing what they love and if you talk to our medical and housing and admissions in all of our departments they’re doing what they love from their being genuinely themselves in their role that’s hard to measure and it’s hard to to to i don’t know put out there yeah it’s hard to put in the book it’s hard to put in a book it’s hard to step by step and science needs it to be replicable right like they need to say this is how you plug this in and go do this and maybe we need to figure out how to write that down but like that’s difficult to do because it’s so intangible yeah well and we work in a managed care setting yeah absolutely clear we have all these downward pressures and requirements from insurance companies some of them are good because they protect against things like liabilities and ensure that there’s actually services being rendered and it’s not just all hocus pocus for the individual you know but at the same time i feel like the defeating aspect of agency work is the schooling systems are doing a terrible job at conveying the value of the dsm-5 there’s no documentation standard requirements for most schools uh throughout the country i’ve rarely except out of like the hazelton network i think they’re big on documentation but as an example to be charitable to institutions but you know at the same time so you pull these people out who you guys are describing to me come out of school with this like authenticity and i need to meet the client where they’re at i need to build rapport and those things have an incredible amount of value okay now i need you to document all that well how do i document those intangibles because that’s really what we’re experiencing in the room and they get defeated real quick in the process because it’s like well you have to put the medical intervention in there like nobody realistically i think call me out if i’m wrong is sitting in an individual therapy session like oh i’m about to smash this person with some dbt some dialectical behavioral therapy here comes like fast pitch right you would be surprised yeah we some of but like to your point though it isn’t 60 minutes of it right right like here’s how you do wise binding let’s practice that like i think or like taking it out of the tool belt like i got a dbt here i got some cbt i got some of this and like okay here we go okay you’re talking i’m thinking i’m gonna use this tool like yeah you know i think at the beginning yes actually there’s some very if there’s like a sort of attachment to your your favorite intervention and people like oh i’m a cbt therapist it’s like no you’re not if you are then you should stop like you don’t do that anymore it’s i think this is the i mean this is the thing about our field right like it is we live in a world of gray like it is a messy thing that we do and if you can’t get comfortable being messy then you’re probably not going to be very successful we want things to be very clean and very organized and very easy to sort of encapsulate and replicate and this is mental health like this is behavioral health this is people people are not those things like we are very very dynamic and it’s um it’s why our philosophy has to be dynamic right like and that’s really as a company what we are like we we recognize the importance of allowing ourselves to to explore as many options as are as absolutely necessary because no two treatments that no two patients that come to our uh that come to our facility while they will have a standard level of care like a fundamental level of care that ensures that they’re again not getting the hocus pocus they will individually have their own experience in their own treatment trajectory but we have to create an environment in which that happens which is again another intangible space like how do you you have to create a culture in which that allows that to happen how do you encapsulate a culture you know like how do you do that how do you replicate that there are um it’s once you you the smaller you try to get the bigger the picture becomes and um i don’t know i just think it’s one of those if you can embrace the messy then you’re okay you know then i i think that you’re going to be fine but if you’re looking for something very clear and very clean it’s it’s not going to happen then you should probably go to private practice
treat the world worried yeah well i i know that i’ve got like a hundred different things to say like you know how do you find for example right the right clinician in a geographically limited location like vale colorado what do you think the population of vale colorado is like like four like four or five people living in million dollar homes yeah there’s 110 bed you know facility out there somewhere uh in colorado and like how do you get talent in such a small town that is so unaffordable to live in to treat the individuals that you say you can serve at the end of the day yes i’m coming at you industry uh in this regard but at the same time i always dedicated to giving families the information to challenge this industry so that we shape up and we show up in the way that we say we do on each and every one of our websites at the end of the day so tangent aside take us out gentlemen maybe like top five bullet points what do you think how do we arrive at becoming the best possible therapist and maybe it is your journey that describes those bullet points rather than you know pointing at others
i man that’s off the top of my head i i’ve listed a fair amount of them and and having my own genuineness feels like such a key part like you’re asking about my personal journey to be here like i think uh and i think it’s all these it’s all these things that we yeah embrace yourself it’s all these words that we say like this holding space and and creating a culture and a community it’s all these intangible things and i even like to say that like you know like uh the people who wrote came up with cognitive therapy ellis i think and and fritz pearls with gestalt and all these guys created um these theories of counseling but it was them being themselves and yalum and all of his work that’s truly just y’all and being himself and then we try to like figure out how to incorporate it in and so to your point like i don’t think our job is to create little lyolums or little friesmas as we have liked to say is to empower our clinicians at peaks to find like to be genuinely themselves because you know and this is something that i did appreciate about the grad school i went to we talked about how like the clinician is actually the agent of change like all these interventions are really important and helpful but like we have to be the ones that can figure out the intervention and also just hold the space and find the problem yeah uh we can have all the best interventions in the world but if we can’t sit with a person and really begin to track down what the issue is it doesn’t matter what our interventions are um that’s my first thought would there wasn’t five bullet points but that’s my thought clinton uh i think sense of humor too by the way let’s throw that in yeah lob that in there yeah you gotta be able to tell jokes yeah really funny ones really funny jokes do you know me yeah i got a joke uh um i think 90 of being a good therapist is just being a decent person yeah like being able to sit down and listen and just like you said hold space like just be there with an individual and actually not try to do anything just allow people to be themselves we don’t do that enough for each other in this world yeah we don’t sit and just be with each other there’s always an agenda and if you can go into even though there is like an actual literal purpose and um place you’re trying to go from point a to point b when as soon as you walk into a counseling session if you can walk in there without an agenda you’re in a great space because it’s gonna become organic and it’s gonna um and then you’re gonna allow you will start to show up in a way that is very real and that and will start to develop that therapeutic bond in relationship um and if you can make that connection man like all of this i think when you talked about interventions and like you don’t go in there think i’m going to use this i’m going to use that i’m going to use that and the truth is you i think in the beginning you do but after a while you what ends up happening is you just sort of organically use these intervention strategies they just become a part of your they become a part of the way in which you communicate with people and it’s in upon reflection that you’re like you think back you’re like oh yeah i used some cbt there when i was talking to him about that oh yeah that was i threw in a dbt skill just kind of a little underhand right there just kind of in the middle when they started to disregulate a little bit you know all of these little things become very organic and they become very much a part of the process so there’s this very difficult act of letting go of being a counselor and i think once you let go of this idea that i’m a counselor you’ve become one kind of weird that’s paradox that was good yeah so the answer is a paradox and i think what these uh guys in my experience are illuminating here today as well too is that the world has been hard on the individuals that we serve at peak’s recovery center sometimes that’s not obvious to the family systems right it’s like oh we gave them everything i don’t understand what the problem is here but in some way shape or form it could be and that’s the i think when you for the viewers out there they’re going to go download audiobook whatever the boy was raised as a dog when you read that book there’s a couple really uh sensitive pieces of you know material in there that convey like real physical abuse um in a profound way but also at the same time what’s challenging about the book is the abuses are just these moments of neglect these missed opportunities to be a human with a baby human you know an individual is two to four years old and it creates all of these problems for the individual and so the individuals that come to peaks i think are used to being on their heels used to be in defensive use to feeling like the world is throwing everything at them and then they’re they’re depleted so they come in with a sense of distrust and so showing up in that way that you guys are describing those intangibles like the first thing i’m going to do in this room with you here’s my tool belt i’m going to put on so i’m just going to be a human with you because if we can’t be relational together you’re never going to give me any insights you’re never going to tell me where you’ve come from i’m going to be just like the world is as you came into peaks fair absolutely all right well played well said and experience matters for sure meaningful experience meaningful experiences right being on a team knowing you know being able to pat you get better in team environments right i think overall that’s true in sports it’s true in professional settings as well too the idea to bounce ideas off each other um and i know like our team is probably you know going to watch this in the background and be like there brandon is hitting on the private practices again but private practices are of absolute value but there is greater value in them when individuals i think who arrive at them go through these experiences and get all of these individuals with different backgrounds diagnoses and so forth in front of them and it gives them an opportunity to better serve future individuals through this collaborative effort so um i guess i’ll just take us out here because maybe that was a mic drop moment i don’t know you tell us was it a mic drop moment finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com coover that’s for you to do the the digital stuff we’ll see if we can make it happen otherwise thank you all so much for being a part of this to gate with us again today it’s always a pleasure to bring these things forward hopefully you can hear our passion hopefully we’re not trying to discourage people from pursuing these things but give insights into what you might be thinking about as a family system when you go to find an addiction treatment setting a behavioral hosting of any sort like what is the actual capacity for a treatment program to deliver these services that their website says they can do um and just to be equipped with those tools at the end of the day because you your loved one friend of spouse otherwise life is in a state of suffering in that moment and it’s just so important that the services are real and that we have the capacity to deliver on those promises that we make to you all each and every day when you call our admissions line so thank you for being here with us again today uh find us on the facebook the tick tocks chris burns doing the heart pounding stuff all that sort of stuff a lot of energy love him uh grateful for him i believe jason friesma is host next week i am finding peaks so tune in next week for the freeze and we will see you all then

Chris and Madelyn endeavor down a great conversation about trauma and the deep core concepts that we navigate in order to truly help individuals overcome these hurdles.

hey everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of finding peaks your grateful recovering president and founder also known as the motivational specialist company cheerleader you name it whatever you’d like to call me i’m open to i am gracefully joined by my co-host counterpart guest here madeline padilla one of our great admissions specialists but even greater humans you know what time it is so i’m really grateful to jump in here we’re going to be talking about barriers to treatment as it pertains to trauma most certainly the microcosm of trauma which is shame but i want to start out our episode madeline had the opportunity to share with our alumni group as well as our inpatient clients last friday her personal journey and recovery and she sent me her story i was unable to make it unfortunately but she sent me her story and i just wanted to open the show with the last section of her story and kind of start that as a topic here and it was just absolutely framed beautifully coherent and trauma informed and it says in conclusion this is not a story about heroin or drugs this is a story about compassion grace and mercy i don’t feel grateful i feel redeemed and i feel free and i feel connected some days i wake up and wonder how this happened and then i see a familiar smile at the office someone asked how the week was i feel like i have come home and i get to work so i wanna i wanna start with that and you had a awesome opportunity i’ve heard a lot of feedback from clients and staff and just your story spoke to a lot of people um and the way that you framed it i just thought was so eloquent so trauma-informed and very intentional and in a way that just about everybody could hear it um what was that like for you to share it and write it writing it was kind of a panic i got asked the day before i’m like i’ll just type up a couple notes you know and then and then it became a process and i’m like whoa what what really did happen and i’m walking through my own process you know and that was awesome um sharing it was it was just cool to see how many people it was a little interactive like how many people have experienced this or what was this like and everyone raised their hand and and i was nervous going into that because i thought i’ve been to a lot of speaker meetings i kind of know what the setup is and i’m supposed to talk about 50 or 30 how it was and how it is now and all this like this context kind of came flooding in about what i’m supposed to do and i thought that doesn’t feel like me at all that’s not what happened i i have a story i know what the story is and i’m just gonna go with it and um do it a little bit differently no one had read theirs either off a piece of paper but i needed some notes i wanted some feedback from other people and um i felt accepted that people heard what i had to say and they did feel connected to it and it was so it was just really cool yeah that’s a beautiful thing it was very emotional yeah i can remember thinking i remember i um stood up and spoke at an aaa meeting in prescott arizona it was a salvation army i was like 14 months sober and i remember thinking to myself there is no way i’m ever going to be able to talk about anything other than what happened right and really what happened in my uh mind’s eye at the time what happened was drug addiction and you explained something much more intentional and much more robust and and i think your story and our story um speak very clearly to the cart coming before the horse yeah absolutely no and that’s what it is i couldn’t even see that at the time when i first got into treatment i was on the same track as you if i quit heroin i’m good and then i can move forward with my life and now i like don’t even see those parts of the story i see the core wounding i see the shame i see the abandonment what you know what that led to um i see the cycle perpetuating over and over because i’ve been graying this belief that this is my narrative i can see that yeah the drugs are not really a part of that then that helps blunt it right a little bit and that was more of a tool for what was really going on the coping mechanism for sure yeah and we were speaking before the show too and you brought up something very just something that i want to touch on here too and i’ve been guilty of saying this to folks who have come into treatment it’s actually a term and a concept we’ve used in behavioral health for many years and it’s this idea of treatment resistance right treatment resistance treatment resistance is trauma resilience trauma responsibility resilience yeah and i hate that term that someone’s resistant because one that you’re right it speaks to us actually what’s going on and people should be resistant they’ve had experiences if any of our clients are like me and i know a lot of them are they have had they’ve had their trauma re-escalated and they’ve been re-traumatized in a place that was supposed to keep them safe and treat them with respect and treat them with integrity you know and all that stuff um and that’s not always the case at all so to come in resistant maybe a little bit cynical that that behavior makes sense right absolutely yeah absolutely and that that’s not a diagnostic code despite what people may think um it tells the story that something else has happened right what has happened right let’s talk about what has happened and and it makes sense that you’re feeling this way yeah and quite frankly if if somebody’s not coming in treat members what really scares me is the folks that come in and they’re like this is amazing this is great and we’re just not a tune we’re not present for the experience because even if we don’t have trauma we’re coming into an environment full of strangers who i’ve never met before and to your point a lot of people like we were talking about before i was down on campus meeting with a guy earlier he’s been to 20 treatments and 19 of those treated him poorly right and so that’s why when he comes into our program he’s looking around he’s scanning he’s not comfortable he’s kind of like give me some space until we do what we do in true peaks fashion and build that safety for the people that need it the most and your story just spoke to that so well it wasn’t anything that was wrong with you it was certainly something wrong with a provider not being trauma-informed not creating safety and not creating a space in which you could sink into your recovery oh absolutely i mean you gotta understand too like to to trust peaks was to kind of like gaslight my oaths right i will never allow myself to get put in this situation ever again if the little love i had for myself just to shred said never again never again i’m hitchhiking back to treatment center in california you know in a gown in socks you know i don’t know where i am they forgot me they forgot i was a client i swore to god i said never again and then i find myself doing it again but of course i’m a little guarded yeah i’m waiting for the other shoe to draw you know and that this kind of bleeds into even like the admission side of things where i talk to a lot of families that say i got so many questions but i i understand i just need to trust the process what does that mean trust the process leave no stone unturned ask every question let’s talk about it till you can’t talk about it anymore because this is how we’re weeding out what’s going to work and what’s not you know and if we can’t answer a question that should just be a big red flag just waving around and if someone tells you to just they use this terminology you know trust the process you’ve got to go with the flow you’re going to like to trust us whatever it is yeah to an extent once you feel safe you can do that right but we need to answer all the questions yeah yeah and really build that trust and safety and if you’re a family out there it’s like we do it with our clients i think one of one of our core values is be curious always right be curious be curious ask better questions and i would say the same for families when you’re looking for a treatment program ask all the questions and you’re right if they can’t answer it next phone call next yeah and we love that because we get we get time too to train people that can’t come here let’s check out a few places they’ll throw a few options out there right what are some questions to ask how many lpcs are there how many are there what’s the clinical staff member to client ratio that that gives me a good idea you know what’s going on there um do they do they abide by a 12-step model true are they willing to make that a billable service great question yeah figure it out yeah yeah and and then it’s it’s so cool because walking through that now we got a map going this place is all right yeah hey that place i see you right over there and then we actually have something to offer because our referrals are dead serious yeah they’re dead serious yeah and i love i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again that’s what i love about the admissions team is every single one of those referrals is very serious and very intentional we expect that client to be in good hands yeah even if it’s not with us that’s correct and that is so i’ve never been a part of a team certainly an admissions team that does that it’s literally like hey i gotta get up the phone hey i gotta get off the phone you know in the time and space that you all spend man listen first solve later yeah

yeah it never gets old but i gotta get that tattooed so yeah i want to chat about some of the barriers that presented themselves with you and why um just for the audience and especially specifically young adults mature adults that are coming up against this process and are becoming weary fearful disconnected um scared anxious that’s really informed and the barriers are consistent in your story and i just wanted to kind of elaborate a little bit on those barriers and why they were there in the first place and how you moved through them yeah okay well i want to start with again starts way way back way way back before i’m a legal adult before i’ve tried drugs before anything else and i i was in a lot of pain i was a difficult kid um difficult kid i was just in a lot of pain i’m gonna leave it at that yeah and my family they they just didn’t know what to do they did not know what to do and they talked to like a educational consultant which is a broker it’s a body broker for kids like something like that and they they got a referral from a clinician that never saw me right now so weird it’s educational consultants yeah you know what i’m talking about and they were convinced they were sure and they did this out of love they really did yeah they were preyed upon they believed that this unregulated teen treatment center in utah was like the answer to their prayers and they were they were so hooked on this idea that this was going to save my life that they had people come kidnap me right out of my home yeah um and zip tie you they they tie your hands even if you’re willing oh yeah they say we could do this the easy way or the hard way i chose the hardware yeah yeah i’m like let’s go hard that’s right that’s right and yeah they i got some knee injuries from that and so yeah and um they whisked me off to utah well now i have no rights and this learned helplessness kicks in there’s nothing i can do to change my circumstances there’s nothing i can do to have my voice heard okay so the core wound which was i’m not enough oh it’s integrating now it’s really like the stakes going in right and then later on i’m using drugs to cope with the trauma of what happened there right i trust another place that speaks to human resilience i asked for help again you know that that really is powerful yeah it really is once again the same experience and this just keeps repeating itself to a point where i’m like god i i can’t do this anymore and i’ll i’ll never trust again and um that is an act of god that peaks was at that um juncture yeah that’s a that’s unexplainable to your point though i i absolutely agree with your mom and your family really out of love because i’ve had i’ve been on the phone with your mom and she’s very coachable and she will do what the professionals suggest always sounds like you just had some tough professionals in front of that situation right but i do believe it was out of luck it was right and that that’s the you know talk about dialectics i’m gonna i’m gonna choose to hold both i i’m so i am so loved but i’m so hurt to this day i’ve done a lot of therapy i’m not over that i’m not over that you know and i need to work on that every day what’s the lesson there how could i help people um how could i educate people cause god

treatment in general this is an industry that has the potential to prey on the most vulnerable people ever yep they’re the most clay in your hand exactly and that kind that comes with great responsibility and i think it’s an incredible privilege too to be part of that process yeah it gives some meaning to my experiences too yeah i love that and it’s clear too and with with the barriers for change and those being so deeply rooted it’s it’s like as a as a developing human in this world there’s nothing more important than positive influential beneficial child adult relationships that’s right and there’s nothing more horrendous than negative ones right and we continue to foster those in a way in our early adulthood as well and bring those people close only to be hurt and hurt again i think you mentioned in your story but what was it that got you to a point to trust again because it wasn’t when you got to peaks no no it was most certainly some time in that milieu and i was probably closer to the time when you graduated yeah actually i think it started before i graduated but but there was a moment after i left and i knew that the insurance checks had stopped coming right this is a great test yeah right let’s see we’ll see now yeah like let’s see we’ll see what happens here oh people kept meeting with me kept talking to me you kept talking to me you know lots of people did um that’s the ultimate test in my book what happens after this like what’s the plan you know and that solidified just kind of put the put the clothes on that the doubts that i had and i felt that love a long time ago but that’s just what did me certainly yeah yeah and i’m grateful for the team around me because i’m just like oh you need help you need help let’s go come on yeah which create a lot of barriers for their progress right exactly as well don’t be that barrier yeah and i love that one of our our core values which i love we finally put these to paper right yeah do no harm do no harm not do harm if it justifies in the end or if it’ll help them out later it’s just it’s simple it’s just do no harm yeah and i love that it’s beautiful it’s great it absolutely is and it’s a it’s a real trauma-informed perspective if you can get there like it’s not tell somebody they did it wrong it’s not use use statements and i just love the way that we’re adopting really this compassionate lens and you can see people madeline much different than you know when we started or when i started in 12 step i was sitting down with a guy he’s getting ready to graduate actually tomorrow and i’m sitting down with a guy and he’d been to multiple treatment centers and i’m sitting there having a smoothie with him and about halfway through he looks at me and he goes it really doesn’t matter because i’m going to get high again anyway and i’m like buddy just but not today right but just not today and and i’m wondering that if you take care of your underlying causes and conditions maybe you have the openness to explore things in the future but just not today it’s been my experience if you take care of the underlying causes and conditions specifically the overwhelming intensity that’s running your life in the name of trauma you won’t have those intense behaviors no i sat there and told them i said but i go have a glass of wine today if i want but i’m choosing to sit with you madeline he came alive he was like oh my gosh you just gave me so much hope he clicked yeah cause he’s like i think that’s the trauma to be like i have this special allergy on this unique thing that only i have and i have to succumb to this hard edge this traumatized hard edge for the rest of my life and i love that we’re allowing people space and grace to be like it doesn’t have to be like that absolutely more people are recovering since we’ve started this approach over the last two or three years this holistic approach is to treat people well and guide them into their individual recovery process we talked about that the the last episode but you’re here so i’m just going to share because i’m so excited about it right that that this belief that people’s behaviors make sense right and that i am statements are powerful they hold power um like neuro science power right like real power and you you take someone to a meeting every day that’s their culture and they show up and they say i’m an addict i’m an alcoholic every day right they do that for 90 days what does an alcoholic do chris right they drink what is that what stays top of mind right exactly so it’s just so it’s it’s we have to go farther than that we have to offer the most vulnerable people more than that that’s not good enough no that’s not even close not at all no way yeah and this idea too is incurable i have an incurable disease i’m going to challenge that i’m going to challenge that um i believe in a full recovery i believe in a foreign i believe in a full recovery i’m not gripping on praying to god i don’t slip off this narrow path the world is wide open for me and if it was any more limited it’s just not enough yeah so i love it because i feel like just like you it’s like we’re driving down a five lane highway today and i got room to move over i can get in the hov lane i get in a slow lane i have a lot of options and it did feel like and we’ve talked about this on other episodes and i’m coming up on 14 years so we’ll visit it in another episode as well it’s just like i don’t want to succumb to being that small today nope and if somebody chooses to engage in a 12 subway life that’s great but let’s take care of the business first that’s right so that you can not survive in 12 steps right and that’s the difference that i’ve seen with a lot of people that are taking care of themselves what i mean by that is getting with a master’s level clinician getting a doctor getting a good group of recovery people around you and working on yourself that’s right get to work yeah and a sponsor is great a mentor is great but that is in our experience it’s adjunct to the people these are all right right we need to distinguish between what is foundational and what is ancillary if we cannot do that we don’t have a we don’t have a real program you know what’s the foundation what’s the extra stuff yeah we love the extra stuff absolutely we do all the exercises exactly right but um is that going to carry us through trauma right oh no yeah that acute detox is not going to change for you it’s going to get you take a nap and i love that too because it used to be i mean up until not too many years ago i mean the primary foundational process was the 12-step way of life and so it’s not it’s not to sit in here and say this is wrong a.a has been a beautiful thing for many many years it’s just taking what we have the advancements and the progressiveness and every all the information that we have and utilizing it and aaa and 12-step can still be a really great value proposition we just got to take care of the meat and potatoes first because you get a lot in my experience in the alcoholics anonymous or 12-step way of life you get a lot of people surviving and happy to do it that’s right i was happy to do it as well but if you give yourself some space and grace and explore some of that underlying stuff in a safe place i think what people will find out that life will open up beyond their wildest dreams yes you know oh yeah and that’s like uh and that’s where i was telling madeline before the show it’s like you look like you’re thriving oh yeah and she was like yeah yes because i’m no i’m no longer okay with you know the eight and a half the 8.2 the 7.8 out of 10 in my recovery you know so it’s always just enough though it’s different than that that that void i need more no it’s always enough but it’s always getting better yeah yeah how does that work that’s right it’s so interesting i love it and it’s this ability to navigate and have choices and be heard and be seen and feel safe in my body and go hey i’ll go to a dharma meeting with you today absolutely i’ll check out a 12-step with you yeah or we can just hang out here and eat some dinner i love it and the connection’s happening mm-hmm all the way through yep yeah i love it that’s the meat and potatoes that’s the meat potatoes that’s the meat potatoes well that went really quick um that is all we have today our show is wrapping up i am so grateful to be back on with you i was telling madeline before the show she’s one of the guests co-hosts um regulars here that really gets me thinking about trauma gets me thinking about recovery in a different way and i’m just so grateful to have you on absolute miracles here so find us on all of your stuff instagram podcast tick tock tick tock i’m the brand ambassador madeline threw down a great tick tock the other day an amazing meditation check it out we got like 70-something likes on that bad boy until next time thank you all peace

Discover and gain an understanding of the underlying factors that contribute to and help cause substance use, with podcast leaders Brandon, Jason, and Clinton.

empathy is knowing your own darkness
without that connection you don’t have
anything what’s the opposite of
addiction just freedom
well
hello everyone
uh welcome to another episode of finding
peaks i am your host the best of hosts
chief executive officer for peaks
recovery centers brandon burns
joined
again today
by
jason friesma chief clinical officer
clint nicholson chief operating officer
nailed the titles i messed that up a few
episodes ago with uh dr ryan actually i
called him the chief clinical officer he
loved that
[Laughter]
approving in any way so
uh welcome back everybody though i’m
excited to be here one of the things
we’ve been talking about you know across
finding peaks episodes we’ve kind of
just been dropping it in there a few
minutes at a time is this notion of
addiction and removing it as language
from our industry and the benefits that
would follow from that we want to hunker
down a little bit more into that concept
today
and focus in on why we are
trying to
push that language aside and really make
a claim that this is a mental health
issue and it is not about the drugs in
that way and
i’ve been talking about it with our
leadership team trying to throw this i’m
gonna i’m gonna hit the kids at home
have any of you seen the movie a scanner
darkly
yes or no
it’s one of keanu reeves best monologue
movies ever made anyways i’m not
recommending the movie because it is
deep and it is dark and it is about
drugs and addiction and a variety of
these things but there’s this scene when
they pull over to the side of the road
and wynonna writers in the movie woody
harrelson um keanu reeves all the best
people and they’re pulled over and the
car is broken down and counter reeves
gets out of the car and he goes
we got to stop doing the drugs it’s
messing with our brains and woody
harrelson walks over and says man it’s
not about the drugs don’t blame the
drugs and
so i want to use that clip as the sort
of transition here that
i feel strongly about what we talk about
when we say push this word addiction to
the side and let’s talk about it as
mental health because the drugs is this
external thing it’s a feature of the of
our internal condition and why some
people use it more than others and why
people become
addicted to it
um you know differentiates across the
public in our culture and for those
reasons it feels like it’s not about
that there’s some condition i think even
when we go to you know dr elardy’s tapes
a few weeks ago and the work we were
able to do with him you know that
dopaminergic effect
is lacking in individuals at times
compared so one person can have less
less of that effect than another person
so this person experiences the world in
sort of a more mundane less excited way
when i look at the mountains i get a
dopamine kick when that person looks at
the mountains they don’t we both arrived
to a party that night we both do drugs
and yeah i get excited about the drugs
but i put it down and for this person
and the way that i look at the mountains
uh for that episode they’re now excited
about it uh in that way and now they
have that effect and what we gathered
from that is that this person over here
is more vulnerable uh than the other
individuals who are you know or and more
susceptible in that way so
again it feels like there’s a prior
condition it could be trauma emotional
dysregulation a variety of different
fancy words in the clinical world that
you will have better access to to
explain than i do but
um
let’s keep moving that needle in that
direction because it feels important and
i think it feels important for what we
do as a treatment
center so i know clinton you are
most prepared at any given time to want
to dislodge that word from the culture
and so i think let’s just do some
foundational stuff
catch all the kids and the families up
to speed on why we’re talking about this
and um so why
do we need to get rid of this word okay
so getting
rid of the word addiction
uh
well let’s start with the stigma right
so there’s a huge stigma around
addiction and the way in which we’ve
talked about addiction and treated
addiction culturally for really the last
hundred years is that it is this sort of
um
it’s a treatable disease but is terminal
and it’s in the sense that once an
addict always an addict
um also that it is
about um
there’s a there’s a sense of
um
willpower that is sort of talked about
in the sense that there’s a lack of that
willpower or
a lack of um real agency for if you do
have an addiction or are an addict uh
there are moral implications as well
that there is a lack of sort of
uh i don’t know moral
um a moral solid moral foundation that
allows you to become susceptible and
that’s the reason why you become an
addict um
there are so many
misunderstandings and misinterpretations
that are
that have really just sort of muddied
the waters and at the very least made
the field of um substance use treatment
extremely convoluted
and very disengaged from the rest of the
behavioral health
treatment community and treatment world
we’ve really when even in when you go to
graduate school you can be a clinical
mental health counselor or you can be an
addiction counselor like there’s all
there’s two separate tracks even within
even though
both of these are all mental they’re
still mental health under the big
umbrella but they actually separate them
out and you go down a different track if
you go to grad school
and because of that we have
a lot of disparity i believe in the way
in which addicts are or addiction is
treated and again
the
when we when we bring up this word
addiction
we’re bringing up so much baggage with
it that it i think what we usually end
up doing is spending almost all of our
time just going through the baggage and
never actually getting to the root
um
if you think about
substance use
the reality of substance use is it is
first and foremost a coping strategy
right it’s a way of coping with the
world
and it’s just a very maladaptive one
right yeah also
very effective right it’s it’s immediate
it’s consistent and it works
also it destroys your life in the
process but it’s a coping strategy you
know just like anything else in the in
the world is
uh just like hiking is a coping strategy
right deep breathing is a coping
strategy drinking is a coping strategy
they’re all along the same lines but
because we have this concept of
addiction we treat this coping strategy
differently and all of the sudden
the use of that coping strategy becomes
the individual’s identity and i think
that’s
where we again run into another huge
barrier yeah and in a couple inserts
there you know for folks at home that uh
don’t see it as a coping strategy or a
reasonable coping strategy i think
there’s
um
i’m just gonna call it half of americans
sitting in their offices their cubicles
whatever at home today thinking i’m
going to get that drink tomorrow on
friday night i’ve been working my butt
off all week i’m deserving of it i’m
going to go home and chill i’m going to
have a six pack i’m going to lay i’m
going to watch the game got a lot of
playoff things going on in those sort of
ways
we don’t talk about it as a society but
we are literally using that opportunity
at the end of the week that happy hour
session or whatever to cope with the
things and we almost create a narrative
that we’re deserving of it absolutely on
top of that right
as well too and then a you know another
pivot in two i always talk with you know
you know patients at work you know at
least you know make it to my office and
you know i i love running but i think
for anybody who would see a common
runner down the road i think we look
okay run or they’re healthy they’re
doing a healthy thing i think we’ve
looked at runners in society and said
that’s really unhealthy at some point
you we become sickly because we run so
much and there’s consequences associated
with that i think we look at people who
are you know muscular and we see that as
a healthy thing in a coping magazine but
then we look at some people are muscular
like i think we’ve exceeded this as a
coping as a reasonable coping mechanism
uh in that way and so just wanted to
i think highlight just some examples for
the those who might disengage already
from the episode and thinking that it’s
not a comment well it’s your earlier
point right this idea of vulnerability i
mean there are people that can have a
glass of wine at night as part of a
coping strategy right it’s a way to sort
of release kind of come down from the
day to just sort of relax
uh help enhance your meal what have you
um and that is a perfectly adaptive
coping strategy right however there are
those with susceptibilities and
vulnerabilities that do not have that
same adaptive approach to substance use
so the coping strategy becomes
maladaptive right but they’re both
regardless still coping strategies right
it’s still a way of processing engaging
or
sort of coming to terms with the day or
with your life uh sort of through
external means
essentially and
i don’t know how much you want to
piggyback on this or state more about it
but i think you know in the past
episodes we’ve done together you know
you’ve parsed out how jason as well too
how we’ve gone from
not just addiction of drugs and alcohol
but then there’s sex addiction and
there’s gambling addiction and all of
these other addictions that are starting
to take place
um
and and really at the end of the day i
think it it it seems more reasonable to
draw it back down to these are all
potentially coping strategies and the
way that we’re actually looking at their
maladaptive coping
strategies and when we start using other
language it feels more reasonable and
sensible to stop
stating addiction that is the case
yeah and i think
the coping strategy implies that
something needs to be coped with which
is i think what you were talking about
as well
and you know you listed the kind of
process addictions if you will and then
you know substance addiction
uh
when we begin to look at it as a
maladaptive maladaptive coping mechanism
then we then we can see that those
behaviors aren’t function a person isn’t
functioning very well with those
behaviors
we get to dig deeper and figure out what
um what is driving that and then also uh
install kind of healthy coping
mechanisms rather than
um
viewing the addiction or that behavior
itself as the primary issue
and then that oh and i identifying that
individual as an addict right as i was
going to mention that too
because that word addict um which
it’s such a shaming word
and that’s you know that’s me getting
into the counselor piece but um it’s a
pejorative like it is meant
uh to look down on somebody and it is
meant to look at um
some sort of moral failing or something
like that that someone hasn’t has
occurred incurred rather than just kind
of recognizing uh that the coping
mechanism somebody went to uh just
turned out not to work very well for
them even if it did help them to deal
with whatever was driving the issue
absolutely and i mean there’s complexity
to substance use to substance use as a
coping mechanism or an added complexity
because there is a physiological impact
yeah right yeah and so then all of a
sudden so it does become more complex to
a certain degree rather than something
like um i don’t know deep breathing
right because you do have these
physiological components where you start
to develop things like dependence you
suffer from things like withdrawals i
mean so there are complexities to it at
the same time i think when we talk about
adaptive and maladaptive coping
strategies again we choose to look at
the behaviors and then the underlying
reasons or motivations towards movement
towards those behaviors and that allows
us to again really dig deep and really
get to the core of the issue rather than
getting stuck on these sort of like
moral failings or these labels or
kind of pejorative identities yeah in
the i mean to the physiological you know
brain aspect and point of it too i mean
one thank god for neuroplasticity at
least in this moment there is an
opportunity to create new neural
frameworks around um what is already
formed in that regard but
you know the
the thing that i think i want to say
about it and the challenge around it is
that even though that’s there and it’s
maladaptive as a coping mechanism the
person is suffering and so they want to
deploy skill sets into the world that
will alleviate that in some sort of way
and to me that nagging physiological
brain state is just a strong tug in that
direction because we’ve been so we’ve
we’ve told the brain every single time i
brought it up several times on this
episode you know i got a trigger i
insert a drug i got a trigger answer to
drug well you take away the drugs you’re
still being triggered at all times and
then where are you putting that energy
to over time you know helping heal the
brain in that sort of way so
i certainly don’t want to take away i
don’t think any of us do that there’s
this nagging brain state now left over
from the event of
the events over time that have caused
what we call addiction today
but to be clear it’s a pull in a
direction of maladaptive behaviors right
rather than um it being the core issue
it starts with the core issue the thing
that needs to be supportive um
the trigger
and then the tug in that direction so
without putting too many words on it
like that is correct right that is the
what i think
as you were talking brandon i was just
thinking about how
um if we kind of
look at depression
i find there to be a significant
parallel how when somebody is depressed
it is really hard to get out of bed and
sometimes they don’t get out of bed
and we can judge that all we want um
and i and i think that’s where we begin
to find some correlation that like
depression other
anxiety other mental health issues have
behavioral components that make us feel
like hey if you just stop get out of bed
and you’ll be okay or
stop pacing or just go to sleep at night
or whatever
and when people are really wrestling
with with um other mental health issues
other than uh substance use
there can still be that um these
underlying behaviors that still need to
be addressed and then the the underlying
issues underneath them and and for some
reason it’s really easy i think for us
to be like okay somebody’s depressed
let’s find the thing in the items that
are kind of driving that depression
and the behaviors of not getting out of
bed but we we’ve lost some of that
curiosity um with addiction although i i
think it’s coming back or with uh
substance use yeah sorry absolutely yeah
great correct thank you thank you good
sound yeah good save i was shaming you
yeah
we
have to do away with the word yeah yeah
at some point in this episode
can we just start bleeping it yeah like
it’s a bad word yeah so you know when we
when we
trauma and somatic experience and all of
the um it could be a whole nother
episode and of itself but it seems like
there is a major bend
toward
trauma as integrated care within
treatment episodes uh in that regard and
i think that’s telling you know we get a
lot of phone calls to peaks and people
say oh well they didn’t deal with the
trauma in the past episode that’s why
these things continue to occur if we’re
translating that right it’s person
experience is something trauma caused
you know emotional dysregulation under
certain conditions
they experience that moment and then
that strong tug in this direction uh
pulls them you know back into that
addictive cycle uh in that way of things
but
if if that’s true again then we’re
working on the mental health issue that
is trauma um the dimensional three asam
criteria not the drugs in and of itself
right there’s no
there’s no therapeutic intervention of
like
let’s create you know kind of like what
emdr does maybe a backward dive into an
awareness around the trauma like we
don’t bring the drugs front and center
in that regard i guess some treatment
protocols might call for that in some
environments but again it just seems
like it takes it it always reverts back
to a causal
you know
rudimentary
mental health issue and then the drugs
are an external maladaptive strategy to
that internal issue it never feels like
in all of the times that i’ve met
patient care and family systems that the
thing we’re working on is that
physiological brain state
um
and we work on coping strategies around
those cravings because they do exist
at the end of the day but
even that seems to get away from it
being about the drug itself
yeah
well i’m sorry i was just going to say
i mean i can think of
people very very recently at peaks you
know who literally
it seems to occur with some of the
our younger clients who um
maybe haven’t developed some of the
other coping mechanisms that we’ve
talked about but they come in and their
substance is removed and then they’re
like i can’t
stop thinking about my trauma i’m just
getting these flashbacks or i don’t
like the correlation is blatantly
obvious uh with some people
um that maybe are a little less defended
or don’t have other uh kind of
strategies for dealing with it or for
masking their trauma like
there’s some people that just literally
are like i quit using or i quit drinking
and all i have is trauma and this
doesn’t make life worth living right we
look at those people in the eye all the
time and they then those people
oftentimes this
i mean once once once you’ve taken away
that coping strategy
uh and you sort of exposed the the wound
underneath whatever that whatever that
wound may be
um that’s also a really high risk time
for people to run right like for for
leaving against medical advice or
against clinical advice because all of
the sudden there’s exposure right and
they
and because the there are no coping
strategies that are adaptive mechanisms
that have been added to sort of help
soothe um the per and help the person
sort of cope with those uh
with those really highly acute and um
and and really overwhelming emotions
people
well the brain
literally tells you to go and do drugs
because that’s what will make me feel
better and
that’s that’s the really tricky thing
about substance use as a coping
mechanism there is that physiological
tug that takes months
years sometimes to actually
to mitigate to the point of where you
don’t
where the risk of relapse is actually
significantly lowered
it it makes it it’s also what makes
substance use and um
one of the most highly acute mental
health diagnoses because there is this
physiological component to the coping
strategy that has to be dealt with
alongside the clinical or
behavioral health emotional compo
psychological component and trying to do
those two things at the same time
becomes very complex it’s it’s very
difficult and it’s one of the reasons i
think
that um
the treatment in general for substance
use
if they’re not
treated at the same time together is so
unsuccessful yeah
and
maybe you guys can help me out with this
analogy it’s been a while before i
thought about it but it’s coming up for
me here in this like a dia diabetes is
often like a
sort of side-by-side analogy of
addiction and we have um
two individuals in need of stopping one
using drugs and one eating and you know
a certain way or
needing to
readdress their lifestyles to maintain a
healthy life you know moving forward
and curious uh from your guy’s
perspective how accurate that is because
i believe i’ve heard in some conferences
in special settings before but also as
well too
that
it what what i hope to do is diffuse
this notion of like it’s the drugs over
here because for the diabetic over here
it’s this poor eating habits and it’s
these foods well
for both these individuals the diabetic
has to figure out a way to move away
from those behaviors of the foods that
are causing the in you know disrupting
the insulin levels and all that sort of
thing within the body
but for that individual as well too
there’s a reason in which like those
food
eating habits have become maladaptive
and they need to find those
um better suited ways especially with
this new condition for going about their
world that’s in front of them
so i bring it up because again as as a
mechanism of diffusion of these external
things when really you have this
internal suffering in the individual and
just as difficult as it is to ignore
that tug the diabetic still has to
ignore that tug towards the unhealthy
eating habits
yeah i think um to be clear it’s type 2
diabetes you’re referring to okay not
type one yeah type one let’s get that in
there uh
yeah
just be clear and i’ve heard the same
metaphor and um
you know because i think
the metaphor comes from uh you know that
type two diabetes uh there’s a component
that is behaviorally driven right like
um and that can be that it can be
behaviorally controlled
uh
earlier in my career i worked for um the
pharmaceutical company eli lilly
um who actually i believe is the company
that developed insulin
first and so they out of indianapolis
and they
um
still are a leading researcher on uh
diabetes medication and so part of our
training
we had just tons of patient
information and behavioral interventions
and all this mental health stuff that we
would uh provide to endocrinologists and
in primary
care physicians because compliance with
a healthy diet or even just taking
insulin or measuring uh blood sugar uh
was quite low
and oftentimes people would change their
behaviors as soon as they started to
feel better or started rather than
realizing that it was the meds that were
helping them and so i think the the
metaphor
makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways um
and then i think uh in other ways it
doesn’t make sense but i’ll follow it
over to you
yeah that was more of a slide it doesn’t
make sense go yeah
i
i guess um
where the hole in the metaphor for me is
at what point do you ask the diabetic
why why are you eating like this right
like why is why have you developed a
diet that has led to
what is noticeably um negative
consequences and continue to engage in
that diet regardless of the fact that
you know that you’re hurting yourself
right that’s to me at that point
um
unless you ask that question you lose
the metaphor but i think once you ask
that question all of a sudden you’ve
started to align with somebody who
struggles with substance use because
you’re looking at maladaptive coping
strategies right but you don’t get to a
maladaptive coding coping strategy until
you ask for the question why and get to
motivation right that’s if you don’t
know what you’re
coping with then
then you’re not really talking about
coping strategies anymore and you it
comes more towards again uh it’s a moral
deficit it’s a lack of self-control it’s
a lack of will power uh lack of
self-respect you know that’s all of
these very shamey
um narratives that start to pop up and
um
and so i think that
when you
get rid of going back to the original
question right when you get rid of the
word addiction and or when you get rid
of these sort of very uh in the word
addict um
you
eliminate the shame
shadow right and all of a sudden you can
start to
see things much much more clearly
because it’s just about seeking out
why is the behavior what need is that
behavior meeting right
really building insight into that
motivation
and then slowly over time developing
alternative coping strategies that are
much more adaptive and that more align
with the person’s well-being and their
desire to get better right
things get very clear at that point
right and all of a sudden we’re not
caught up we’re not caught up in this
hundred plus year
narrative of oh well you know i have uh
i’ve lost all control in my life and now
i need to hand myself over to a higher
power in order to regain it it’s like
uh you know the higher power component
is actually meeting a different need as
well that is really getting to that is
probably to some degree when it works
answering part of that why are you doing
this question right
um but again i think that we
we complicate things right right and
addiction in the an addict as concepts
are
more than anything just complicators
yeah yeah and we’ve done uh
uh you know kind of trailing down to the
end of the episode here we’ve talked
about it um not that it this should be
word language that’s continually
deployed in the world it’s certainly
shame based but out of the rooms comes
this language of the dry drunk
and the individual who’s been absent
from drugs and alcohol for some time
period but has this
sort of
my reel from it is that there’s
significant emotional dysregulation
still there’s still anger there’s still
you know shame there’s still sadness
there’s still all these other sort of
things and
i think um the language should not be
used but for the sake of the
conversation it’s it’s pointing at the
real problem absolutely you know in the
absence of alcohol i still have to live
with this i still have to live within
this world
and
people are looking at me in a way to get
this terrible language dry drunk because
i may be without alcohol but i seemed
just as miserable as if i were on
alcohol it’s white knuckling right
another term right or the the coping
mechanism just shifted from alcohol
to a a without any addressing any of the
actual root cause right and then not to
discredit the 12-step world and it’s in
the 12-step process because you know
that can be part of the coping
strategies that replace
um this the maladaptive ones it can be
very adaptive and also help to really
develop insight um but it doesn’t
necessarily get to the very heart of the
matter right like it there are
layers upon layers that need to be
addressed um with any mental health
diagnoses right and
um
stopping at sort of the mid the like
high mid layer is is for some people
it’s just not enough for some
maybe you know for some people it’s they
are very successful in 12-step world and
um
are able to utilize that platform to
develop to both gain insight and develop
more adaptive coping strategies
i think we would be remiss too if we
didn’t mention
that there’s a stigma with mental health
in general yeah absolutely
we’re trying to get
addiction just to get to be on par with
mental health but that’s there’s already
a stigma on top of that
um because there is a stigma about being
weak if you’re depressed or
weak-minded around your trauma and all
of that and
that part just feels really important as
part of this discussion is that we’re
we’re fighting an uphill battle with
this word addiction but there’s also an
uphill battle kind of in general with
the culture with mental health uh
stigmatization yeah it’s like we’re just
trying to work deal with one stigma
instead of two right right because we
just get to the one yeah let’s drop it
down and the
and that’s that’s important and
certainly we could talk about that uh
for at length as well too but i i on on
the way out here i think that the thing
that i want to talk about as well too is
because we run into individuals say who
come to us with opioid use disorder
opioid addiction in the language of it
right and then we say something like
well what does drinking look like for
you i actually drink very low i care
very little for it right they’re
explaining whether or not it’s adaptive
or healthy over here that it’s a
non-issue right and that the issue is
this but it’s it’s a maladaptive
behavior for some you know other core
issue and in that way of things it feels
like
what we also want to eliminate
i want to be very careful about this but
addiction in that regard isn’t
abstinence forever and it doesn’t
necessarily have to be that way and i
think this is
wildly new territory especially within a
stabilization phase we’re probably not
going to talk about this side of stuff
this is aftercare you know sort of
therapeutic approaches to this but
um to be addicted to all things just
because of this in this way even though
this thing isn’t actually a maladaptive
feature in one’s life
it seems like it helps us move away from
these abstinence-based concepts as well
too and i think
you know that the light tone i want to
put on it is if i’m 21 years old and i
have this opioid use disorder issue and
i walk into a treatment center and they
say addicted to this
and abstinence forever there’s an
unreasonableness that um if i’m putting
myself in their shoes that comes with
that way i just turned 21 it’s actually
not a thing i can’t remember the last
time i drink i’m just really stuck in
this thing right now
and it starts to
change the potential for the individual
that’s in that chair and provide greater
opportunities under those healthy
coping mechanisms that
if it is the drink in the individual
situation in the future i’ve dealt with
this emotional dysregulation instead of
going to the bar for happy hour because
i’m angry at work i dealt with that
anger about work before i got to the bar
as an experience
and it i think is more supportive of
individuals especially young adults who
are just in vulnerable positions and
have to live the rest of their lives uh
in that way and can’t really foresee
themselves way out in the future not
doing other things that their friends
are doing and the other things that
their friends are doing aren’t opioids
at this time well and again i think that
that just highlights the
the
the issue with saying that well you have
an addiction so now you’re an addict
right like now you have this terminal
thing that becomes part of your identity
that you never get rid of and you’ll
forever have to deal with and no matter
how old you are whether you’re 21 or
you’re 75
you will wear this scarlet letter
forever it’s
really
disheartening right it’s extremely
overwhelming and it too is and again
like this is
there’s a lot of nuance here but it’s
it’s inaccurate in a lot of ways um
for some people that
concept of
uh abstinence is just absolutely
necessary and it’s what they need and
it’s what works for them
and we are in a lot of our programming
has is
rooted in abstinence right like
especially at the stabilization period
because we do have the brain does have
to heal right and it is
and there again we talk about
vulnerability that you are still
vulnerable to replace one with another
like one maladaptive coping strategy
with another maladaptive coping strategy
and that could be substance replacing
one substance with another so all of
these risks are very real and of course
again a very nuanced conversation
very um
yeah it could be pretty volatile i think
to a certain degree depending on who
you’re talking to
um but it does highlight this idea of
of one of the the major problems with
this idea of addiction is that i have an
addiction now i’m an addict and i’m an
addict forever
and i think one of the you know the the
charitable takeaways from a conversation
like this as well too is that i think
the goal in early treatment is not to
discourage people about their future
opportunities but to engage them in the
suffering that brought them to a program
like ours in the first place
and somebody comes in and says i have
this opioid use disorder and we label
them as an addict right away that can be
language that will immediately they’ll
pull the eject button the ama it’s
language in the way of the opportunity
uh at times and that feels full circle
to me unless jason you want to drop the
mic on something here on your way out or
just another layup
really uncomfortable and volleyball
spike yeah
yeah
i don’t the only thing i want to follow
up with uh
about for
was just with the young people the
heroin addict drinking again to me
if we look underneath that you know what
drives a lot of addiction or at least a
symptom of it is certainly this
isolation and this hidden life and so
you know to me my new my language that
i’ve wanted to develop over the last you
know a few years of my career too is
just
if you’re open with people you trust and
uh it isn’t hidden and then you’re
honest with yourself about whatever
comes up for you along your path
that feels like kind of a way to
progressively have those conversations
instead of
um because what unfortunately what i
watch in the abstinence culture is like
if somebody
begins to dabble or they want to try an
edible or something we’re in colorado
after all you know three years into
their recovery journey
they have to like disappear or hide it
and to me that is
that’s where i think
you know significant relapse can be
fostered is in that secrecy and silence
and all that i think
but being open and transparent uh to me
feels like the answer to a lot of that
yeah
dig it yeah and i think
just for me i
while i’m really passionate about this
topic obviously like i
and at the same time i recognize that
it is um it’s a tough conversation to
have and i think
uh it can be just having this
conversation a lot of people are gonna
disagree with me and again this is a
very nuanced topic um and i’m speaking
uh with maybe a tone of certainty but
obviously there there’s no
right answer in this situation i think
that
for me what i hope for is that we have
better conversations that are more open
that have more room for curiosity
as opposed to the sort of certainty that
i think we’ve approached um substance
use and this concept of addiction with
in the past yeah and in
because of these nuances and i’ve stated
in multiple episodes as well too we have
the concept of trigger and we do drugs
and trigger and do drugs the initial
mistake at least in my belief around
early recovery concepts within treatment
is somebody thinks okay trigger it’s not
going to be opioids but i can have a
drink right you know that’s the pro it’s
you’re just inserting the new
maladaptive features trigger
emotional dysregulation go to a
therapist go to a spot you know go to
somebody to talk to that about to work
through that issue on and then over time
gives us a new opportunity as the brain
heals around the opioid originally to go
okay i was triggered
i
did the deep breathing got emotionally
regulated i feel good in this moment now
i’m gonna go have a drink and i’m gonna
do it in a public space and i’m not
going to hide from it i’m going to have
support and then i’m going to take that
experience maybe back to a therapist and
somebody of accountability right so
just parsing that out a little bit so we
don’t leave the viewers with like yeah
this has to be done intelligently and we
have to take it quite seriously because
people die
resulting from
maybe miscommunicating some of these
features along the way
at the same time there’s a it’s
worthwhile it feels like to figure out a
way to kind of push this language aside
and focus on what is the real issue and
for us at peaks that’s mental health
so
with that everybody on the other side of
the screen here thank you for going
through this with us if you’ve got
questions thoughts
heated concerns about what we just spoke
about in this episode uh finding peaks
at peaksrecovery.com
we love hearing your feedback uh we love
even hearing frustrated feedback at
times so send us all of that
check us out on the facebooks the
instagrams the twitters all of those
special things follow chris burns and
peak’s recovery and his journey
uh as he goes about that a lot of energy
but a lot of um great energy around
recovery it’s fun to follow in that
regard uh join him i think he’s on next
week uh as the host and then friezma
will be like two weeks from now but
he’s kind of the mediocre host
there it is anyways we’re taking jabs
here on peaks we’re trying to have a
good time love you all very much thanks
for joining us until next time
signing off

In this episode, we are joined by recurring guest Madelyn Padilla UN, and Samantha Archuleta MA, LPCC to talk about shame, resilience, and self-forgiveness.

empathy is knowing your own darkness

without that connection you don’t have

anything what’s the opposite of

addiction just freedom

hello and welcome to finding peaks i’m

jason friesma

chief clinical officer of peaks recovery

centers here in colorado springs and

denver

joining me today

madeline padilla admissions specialist

slash test driving co-host here with me

today guest co-host maybe yeah

and um

and samantha archuleta primary therapist

uh for

our iop program as well as uh doing some

work for our in residential program as

well

um thank you guys for uh joining me

today on finding peeks

um

you know i’m following up the last

couple times i’ve hosted uh we’ve talked

about grief

and so i wanted to keep it light today

and bring up

shame

if we could and resilience

and uh and even self-forgiveness if we

could but uh obviously i say that in

some just but

i’ll start with kind of talking about

what shame is um

and i learned a lot about shame in all

fairness from brene brown i actually had

the privilege of

uh being trained by her specifically in

and um it was a phenomenal conference

that she put on um

and i’m like

whoever this is i like what she’s

talking about but i don’t like the topic

um

and so

shame is pretty much defined as uh

feeling bad about who you are

and um

usually shame statements start with the

words i am um and then

uh and the thing about shame is we all

have it it’s ubiquitous every single

person on the planet pretty much with a

few exceptions probably

carry around shame we all have it

and um the tricky thing about shame is

it tells us uh that if we talk about it

if we expose it to the light

people want to flee from us they won’t

want to be in relationship with us

anymore um

and so we tend to hide it and then it is

that very hiding of the shame that

causes it to get worse

and it reinforces itself

and then frankly uh the reason i think

it’s such an important topic for us to

talk about is that i think it’s one of

the huge leading factors that lead

people into relapse either on substances

or with their mental health issues is

that they just are calling themselves a

piece of garbage all the time and when

and when that is the message that

somebody is telling themself all the

time then that is

uh how they’re going to begin to act and

behave

um

and so that’s just kind of my little uh

overview of what shame is uh and it sets

the tone for this

um and the other thing that i do want to

point out we all have it and then

usually when we talk about it we usually

feel even more of it for a minute and so

i just want to acknowledge that if if

people are watching at home or whatever

and we talk about shame well you might

experience a little bit of it but stay

till the end because we have a solution

for it um make friends with it make

friends with your shame uh invite it on

the couch take a seat but it’s sid chad

um it’s already talking to you so you

might as well invite it in

um anyway so there’s my intro

um samantha i’m gonna go to you first

and and my question about shame is

how do you see it showing up uh for you

and your clinical work with clients

often times with our clients i think

shame shows up as

any other emotion they’ll deflect anger

sadness frustration um

wanting to leave wanting to get out of

the situation because their shame is so

powerful telling them not to talk about

it yeah we’re gonna talk about

everything but this piece and then as

soon as you get to the shame with our

clients it’s almost like they melt into

recovery and treatment and

wanting to get better now because they

realize that

they we see them and that they’re not

worse worse off for being seen they’re

better off for being seen

yeah that’s that’s good no and you’re

right though if

there are there are there is data to

suggest that if you ask people a group

of people what are the most destructive

emotions that there are they will always

answer anger and fear every single time

and that is not the case at all

but no one ever that didn’t even make

the top five right but

shame by as far as the most destructive

absolutely yeah yeah but anger

close second would be fear so it makes

sense that that’s what you see the most

yeah

and i think you know i think you make a

good point that people do often mislabel

it and you said it i think right before

we came on the show here but people

often

say things are embarrassing but they’re

actually quite shameful

right like embarrassment um

[Music]

is uh

is an emotion that we experience it

feels the same like you flush you might

turn red or whatever but but really

embarrassment is categorized by it’s an

emotion

um that is fleeting like it goes away

very quickly with time and usually

you’re gonna laugh about it later you

know what i mean like if it turns out i

do this whole show and i’ve got a booger

in my nose

um i’m gonna have a i’m gonna feel

embarrassed i got a big one bat in the

cave

um

but i’m gonna feel embarrassed but it

could happen to anybody and honestly at

some point i’m gonna laugh and think

it’s actually kind of funny right if i

experience it as shame i’m just gonna be

like i am such an idiot uh because i

can’t even take care of my hygiene that

makes total sense you look at um

embarrassment guilt is is the amygdala

in the brain right and then you you you

look at someone that’s experiencing a

lot of shame it kind of is in the right

and it’s up in the front yeah

where does our sense of self come from

or our projection of ourself in the

future uh oh

we’re up there in the front so yeah it

totally makes sense that those would be

very different um consequences yeah to

both of those things

yes

guilt

guilt guilt’s what yeah you know it

comes and goes

you know what gil keeps us in the

parameters of society and it is very

good i think it’s constructive i don’t

i’m not gonna steal this it’s all good

because i know that that’s wrong and

then

with the shame piece it’s like this is

me i’m like the my core this is me a me

problem and it’s it’s not something that

comes and goes and that’s it’s like you

are that thing you know i get that on

the phone a lot from people too or they

say he has no shame he is shameless

he’s using drugs in my house he’s doing

this he’s doing that it’s like

he doesn’t have it he is it yeah that’s

what it is you know it’s not something

that he has it’s something that he is

and

when you put it like that people take a

step back

it’s not that’s not an accountability

issue that’s a

a place of being issue yes yeah when i

and i you are exactly right and i’ve

shared this on finding peace before but

you know i i’ve done a group on shame

and i love to ask like who in here feels

like they’re the worst person on the

planet and at least half the group

raises their hand

and i think you’re exactly right yes

they’re using drugs in your house not

because they don’t feel it but it’s

literally because oftentimes the very

things they’re telling themselves

they’re just reinforcing like if you if

i’m the worst person on the planet of

course i use drugs in my parents house

makes sense

right i’m the worst person on the planet

that’s what i’m calling myself and that

is a very shameful statement

and and not feeling shame is about

would be about like i’m trying to cause

harm to other people like i have malice

in my intent

and and i honest i’ve done this work for

single person

that i felt like has true malice that

they really are trying to be that

destructive you said something

in one of our um

in one of our trainings with admissions

you said people’s behaviors make sense

yeah and you say this to me all the time

people’s behaviors make sense

if you if you take that lens and you

look at everything through that lens the

behavior makes sense you can access way

more compassion for people

you

people do what they feel that they are

right and so

him hiding out in your basement you know

that totally makes sense yeah because

he’s because he’s the pos right because

he’s whatever yeah

people’s behaviors make sense that has

really helped me in a lot of situations

absolutely

so how do we build resilience with

people because that’s the opposite of

shame right is to to work on building

resilience

um within them and sam i’m going to

throw that question to you of course

i think it’s

compassion and empathy is the biggest

one which is so bernie brown of us

to say empathy is the it’s the light

that heals the dark part that we don’t

want people to see

empty for self empathy for others

sometimes when you can sit with another

person and you’re ashamed and they can

share their shame and you can have a

moment of you’re both in your shame and

it’s okay and you still value each other

care about each other and can

love each other after the fact

then there’s that empathy that we need

that we can heal and move forward with

love

yeah yeah

literally

compassion is it sit and suffering

that’s the breakdown you sit and you’re

suffering and you’re sitting together

together and that’s it right so

community i guess two powerful words me

too

me too that’s a big deal yeah that’s a

powerful statement there

that’s the double whammy you can sit and

do the me too

that’s it that’s your moment

man i’m gonna i’m gonna ask you maybe a

little bit more of a personal question

like have you built resilience for

yourself

in your journey

okay

i’ll tell you a story about a

shame storm

okay okay yeah usually there’s another

four-letter word on this i’ll tell you

something crazy um

so

early on when i was in treatment

i had a couple housemates that i was

feeling kind of close to you start kind

of dipping your toe in checking people

out maybe maybe they’re cool with me

maybe people want to be friends with me

you know you start

trying different things out and i will

never ever ever forget this

until the day that i die i was sitting

with someone that i really felt like we

were getting close and she said we’re

talking about family and i told her that

my brother was currently addicted to my

drug of choice and she goes what are the

odds of that that he would be he would

find the same thing that you’re on and i

said well no it makes sense because i

introduced him to it and and she stopped

and she looked disgusting she said i

have a brother i would never do that

and it still makes me a little emotional

because i’m still working too i’m still

human but all i needed to hear was like

oh me too or i’ve done something like

that

i have a brother i can’t imagine doing

that and it was just like a storm i mean

i was like this is no matter how much

progress i make this will always control

me

it doesn’t matter what i do how far i go

i will always carry this around with me

for the rest of my life

um

so in that moment i was able to just

think about

what other people had been telling me

that was working which was you are

enough i mean this was constant you’re

enough you’ve always been enough you’re

enough then you’ll always be enough so

i went into that mode and i had um

maybe it was you they said one of the

clinicians telling me that in that

moment and that’s what because i can’t

access that that self-compassion piece

we’re not there yet that’s light years

away at this point and that’s something

that was really helpful and now i can do

it for me some of the time

yeah

that’s it

well actually you just honestly modeled

resilience too by just kind of talking

through that story and

getting kind of caught up in it and i

think that takes a tremendous amount of

courage

but

that’s what weakens shame i think is

when we own our story the good the bad

the ugly i think that’s what

helps build our resilience always i

don’t know what do you what do you think

sam i think

it’s hard to speak to

resilience and things when we just

witnessed it and got to see

that you have compassion for yourself

that you trust two people

that you and i don’t know each other

well you and jason know each other for

years that

to sit down and sit in that with us i

just it’s an honor and i think talking

about it being an honor is important and

being able to say like thank you

for doing that is important in these

moments

past the educational piece

go grab a coffee later

that was fun we’ll let you guys have a

moment but um

sam i do feel i do feel like it’s

important like how how do you see our

curriculum kind of meeting people with

their shame and and how do we address it

kind of as an organization

yeah i think

the way that i’ve seen it done in groups

and i think you actually taught me how

to do it in these groups is kind of

facing it head-on is let’s bring it to

the surface

and then let’s remind you that you’re

good enough that you’re going to be

enough you have been and you will be

and i think we also implement this

beautiful thing of inner child work that

lets us um let your inner child know

that you were enough then too and lets

the grown-up version of you go back to

that inner child and bring it on this

journey of self-compassion and

self-acceptance i think is before

self-compassion we have to accept who we

are what we’ve done the child version of

ourselves what’s happened to us in order

to then move into that compassion piece

and i think our curriculum brings all of

that to surface

and then lets us sit with our clients

and say like you’re enough you’ve been

enough you’re always you know right

always this intrinsic value piece is so

hard

it’s a hard

if someone doesn’t have that intrinsic

value where do we even start like how to

treat other people how to treat yourself

forget it that that’s ground zero that

is like

the foundation of anything is are people

worth something not because of what they

do but because they exist yeah

i think all good treatment needs to

start right there right there that’s the

the core of this thing

yeah and

shane tells you

right everyone else has value like i can

see it in everybody else

it’s exactly right exactly except for

you it’s beautiful when we run the

groups and clients can look at each

other and say like i feel shame about

this and then we’re like can you say

that to anyone else in the room can you

say that to an inner child of yours

they’re like absolutely not no one else

deserves to hear that except for me

and that brings it to light when they

can be like oh

i also don’t deserve to hear that and

hearing those moments in groups and in

sessions when clients can say oh i also

don’t deserve that that’s when the light

switch changes for them and they can

start building that compassion and that

intrinsic value mm-hmm

[Music]

what i i have found it is amazing

um

it probably was me who told you you are

enough it is amazing just

um

making those efforts to um

begin to replace some of those messages

right because

ultimately the other thing that’s kind

of at the core of shame is that what we

really want is to be fully known and

fully accepted

and to have people be in relationship

with us anyway right like they accept us

even if they see all those things

and the other thing that i think um

we hold true and i actually was talking

about this with our with our leadership

on monday

um this last monday um

[Music]

they’re like

everybody we are all doing the best we

can when clients walk into our door that

hard story you just told about your

brother even in that moment

you were doing the best you could with

what you had

and um

[Music]

and when we can find that in people like

not only does people does all behavior

make sense in context

but people are really doing the best

they can even if it even if they’re

using and they’re in the basement of the

parents house and they’re going against

the rules and they’re violating their

probation or whatever might be happening

likely at the core they’re just

trying to do the best they can right and

that was a bid that was the bid there

maybe maybe we could be closer or i’d

have someone in this with me yeah that

behavior makes

sense yeah and then it’s easier to segue

into the forgiveness thing oh that

behavior makes sense i understand why i

did that at that time

when i hear you guys talking about this

i think of

moments in

individual sessions and in groups when

clients can say

that they

don’t blame their

younger self anymore that they blamed

themselves for this pain that they

are feeling and this when they can turn

around and say like i don’t blame myself

anymore like of course i was a 17 year

old kid struggling because of everything

around me like that makes sense to me

and it’s

i can’t talk about i tear up most of the

time talking about this but how

beautiful it is to watch a client

realize that sit in that and say like i

don’t i’m not mad at myself for that

anymore i can forgive my younger self

which inherently leads to forgiving

themselves now

touch and go as it comes up yeah as it

comes up because i’ve done that i’m like

i’m enough

and i believe it and it’s real and it’s

and i’m in it and it’s like it feels

great it feels great and then something

else might come up right something else

might come up oh my gosh we’re back

we’re back to square one that’s okay

that’s the deal i don’t know if there’s

ever a total resolution on

some of that we don’t need resolution we

see recovery that’s it and that feels a

little bit like the human condition of

right this is going to keep coming up

and there’s going to be tension between

like i feel bad about myself i feel bad

about this thing i feel poorly

and there’s tension there totally and

then leaning into that tension which is

the shame and then we can move on it

move on again and grow and have empathy

for ourselves again

that’s why i think we can throw out the

relapse prevention piece okay

what are you gonna do in your board or

what are you gonna do you know it’s like

people will actually get through those

things people will get through boredom

people will get through there’s

people are resilient

the whole relapse prevention could just

be like how do we how do we cope with

how do we wrestle with shame yeah

and that would be good enough that would

be actually the whole enchilada right

there yeah i think it’d be way more

successful than than the other thing you

talked about and i think it is what i

think we work pretty diligently to do

it it’s my it’s our focus i think as a

clinical team to say

we want to create the confidence to say

that when i bump into shame i know what

to do right

it doesn’t make it feel better in the

moment it doesn’t mean that like when

you are in the midst of

this or when you have an interaction

with somebody and

they hit your shame gremlin right where

you didn’t think it could be hit anymore

and you plunge into it um

we want to build a path a process an

understanding like okay i know i need to

reach out to people i can’t do this

alone i need to find my me too people

that can just sit with me and say i get

it i’ve been here too

full stop like there isn’t a solution

there’s just like

just having that empathy that that

person that can just sit in the dark

with you

um

and that’s what i think we are trying to

do is to say that right and i think

can can people walk out of peaks

and hopefully walk into a lower level of

care that’s older discussion and find a

way

to build have enough resilience to say

okay i know how to do this i can walk

this path i know because the other thing

shame lies all to me about anyway is

that i feel like i’m going to feel that

way forever this the moment the shame

gremlins come in i’m like this is it

i’m gonna i’m gonna feel like this

forever

um

and just finding that hope and that

process of being like okay i actually do

know

how to walk through this now i have a

path i have a process right

i think we as like the first people that

interact with our clients get to be the

people that show them that it’s there is

a me too there is

sitting with someone in the darkness

it’s not lonely and it’s not that which

then gives them the

courage

they build the courage to go out and

find other mewtwo people and find those

people for themselves and they get that

empowerment to be able to find it

because we’ve shown it to them yeah

so i think that’s part of that first

steps of it all is showing them that

they’re not alone in that

right

that’s why i love disclosure

i think

let’s go there like that’s why i think

it it’s so so important that

we are able to carefully and

thoughtfully disclose our experiences

there are times where it’s not helpful

for sure but like that’s an opportunity

to to help reduce or minimize or at

least just simmer down a little bit of

shame

worthwhile

absolutely worthwhile you know and

you also said something interesting

jason you said i am statements

are powerful and they are they have a

lot of power i am what

and that’s why i love the direction that

we’re moving because

i remember this too distinctly before

talking about shame walking into an old

school traditional meeting and they said

i said i’m a person in recovery and i

was really

just delighted yeah say that right and

they said we don’t say that here

i am what

i’m a person i am what oh i’m an

alcoholic i’m a drug addict our clients

are so much more than yeah yes

they are so much more than that and

that’s so reductive

and even that statement i am an addict

or an alcoholic if behaviors make sense

yeah

what does an addict do

use

what does an alcoholic do drug

there’s so much more than that i’m so

much more than that so

that’s my benefit and you are right from

the beginning like you you don’t become

more right

you are if you’re struggling with

addiction right now you’re still more

than your addiction it’s just really

masking it

so i think you know we’re kind of coming

up against the clock here but now you

shared kind of before

i want to take us out with with the

meditation you shared and this is the

type of thing we do like kind of a

little mindfulness to kind of walk

through all the time this sort of thing

um

so if you wouldn’t mind doing your

meditation and this is how we’ll kind of

end our episode love it okay

close your eyes

oh we’re doing it all right

we’re gonna go back to a time in your

mind

that you felt overwhelmed or totally

enveloped by shame

and then i want you to think about what

you needed to hear

after that moment

what you would have liked to hear after

that moment

and then

we’ll sit on that for a second

what you needed to hear in that moment

okay

now i want you to think about a person

or two people or three if it’s a real

bad shame spiral you were in

three people that you deeply respect

and admire

and then you can imagine them saying

that thing to you that you needed to

hear over

and over

and over

i’m enough that’s it i’m enough i’ve

always been enough i’ll always be enough

i’m enough

that’s it thank you for doing that

thank you what a what a great way to end

i do appreciate you both coming on the

show again i thank you for that

um

i’m jason friesman i’m signing off uh

like us on facebook instagram

the other ones

and tick tock

and we’ll do this again in a couple

weeks thank you all and have a good one

In this exciting episode, we are joined by acclaimed Dr. Ilardi, to discuss his knowledge on how modern-day depression is caused and remedies to help.

‘The Depression Cure’ by Stephen S. Ilardi, PhD

Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (TLC)

empathy is knowing your own darkness

don’t have power without that connection

you don’t have any what’s the opposite

of addiction just freedom

all right

team

fans of finding peaks welcome back to

another special episode

uh with a special guest today

part two of this journey as you’ll

notice i’m wearing the same clothes

because i was asked by the production

crew to keep it simple keep it straight

come back look the same so it doesn’t

look like you did this on the same day

which we would never do here at finding

peaks ever uh in that regard time is of

the essence brandon burns chief

executive officer for peaks recovery

centers joined today apparently we’re

co-hosting jason freeze exciting lpclac

chief clinical officer we are also

joined by chief operating officer clint

nicholson lpclic

chief of all things as we learned in the

last episode

and again our special guest dr stephen

elardy clinical psychologist researcher

professor university of kansas also

author of the depression cure join us

again here to do

another deep dive into the book and

welcome back uh you know what i’m so

excited except for the part that i’m

just now realizing i’m wearing the same

exact clothes and now everybody’s gonna

be like oh that dude has like one outfit

yeah um it it is actually the same yeah

yeah it’s understandable or traveling

yeah

yeah yeah it’s it’s it’s the humble

midwesterner in you it is a

good refrain yeah

i i’m i’m delighted to be here

yeah always a pleasure um haven’t seen

you in four years the viewers might not

know this but that was our initial time

together in uh washington where we where

we originally met but without going down

that rabbit hole

of how we became good friends

in the process

i feel like there should be some special

music for this little monster to be a

little montage clayton and i can leave

yeah like we can step out yeah

we’ll ignite the candle yeah that’s what

i’m talking about right yeah ritualistic

important aspect

of the depression cure

i think anyways on the last step is so

we didn’t get an opportunity to explore

we’re calling it the schtick the the

thing that’s important the the narrative

for why the tlc model makes sense the

thing that we can

um gravitate towards and appreciate

about why we’re exploring these things

in the first place and so

um

without giving the whole introduction of

your book away because we want the

readers out there amazon.com uh order

the book local library all those things

find it read it it’s excellent but

without giving it all away what is this

for the setup well so there really is a

story behind it so

i i’ve been a clinical researcher for 32

years now

and

about 15 years ago

i was getting so frustrated

with the fact that

yeah we know a lot about clinical

depression but we’ve barely moved the

needle in terms of patient outcomes this

is 15 years ago i was like okay you know

we’ve got

a whole armamentarium of medications and

psychotherapies and evidence-based

practice and all the things

more things actually now than we had

then but

um

we weren’t getting great outcomes and

particularly what was vexing for me

is the societal burden of depressive

illness was growing so depressive

illness went from 30 years ago it was

like the seventh cause of work-related

disability in the u.s

now it’s number one it is the single

leading cause of work-related disability

it’s a major cause of death

through depression-related suicide it’s

a major cause of

relationship dissolving

unemployment it’s i mean it’s it’s

exacting this huge toll

and i stumbled on the work of an

anthropologist somebody in a completely

different field this anthropologist

named edward schieffelin

who was studying aboriginal groups and

he spent 10 years with a group in

the highlands of papua new guinea

they’re called the kaluli people

and one of his questions was

okay well

how like when the kaluli gets sick what

does that look like and how does it

compare to when we get sick and then he

was like

what about mental illness so we got

himself a dsm for viewers who may not

know that’s like our diagnostic

psychiatric bible our bible of diagnosis

takes a dsm

people and he’s like okay well like what

kinds of mental illness did they get

and one of his findings when i saw it it

smacked me in the face it was like

somebody like splash cold water on me

and it was like oh out of 2000 members

of the columbia people he’s found one

case of marginal depression

i’m like

wait that’s like

one percent of what we have

and their lives are arguably harder than

ours they don’t have any modern medicine

they don’t have any of our technology

they have a high rate of infant

mortality they have a high rate of

parasitic infection like all kinds of

really tough things and yet they don’t

get clinically depressed

what the hell’s going on

and then i started thinking wait a

minute

depression is following a pattern that

we see with other diseases called

diseases of civilization

where these diseases are really really

endemic and highly prevalent in the west

not very prevalent among aboriginal

groups like what like atherosclerosis

heart disease like many forms of cancer

like oh here’s one hemorrhoids did you

know aboriginal groups do not get

hemorrhoids why because they don’t spend

their day sitting down

they’re active they’re up they’re moving

tooth decay i mean they have it but not

the way we do why because they’re eating

not processed foods right they’re eating

whole foods

it’s like oh depression fits that

pattern wait a minute that sparks

another

association

the human species lived primarily we our

ancestors until 10 000 years ago

everybody lived as hunter-gatherers so

all of our ancestors spent their entire

lives in this group of 30 50 people

on a lifelong camping trip with their

closest friends and relatives

and that’s the way the kaluli are living

today so

oh okay so our ancestors

didn’t get depressed very often probably

just like the kaluli don’t why because

presumably they had all kinds of

protective things woven into the fabric

of their day-to-day lives

likewise

they probably did not have to fend with

lots of the things in our lives that are

toxic

so even though we love in many i think

we do love lots of the things that we

um take advantage of in 21st century

american life i mean i love my laptop i

love mocha lattes i love i mean there

are all kinds of things that like i am

not

i’m not a luddite i don’t want to get

rid of technology i love technology

but many of the things like social media

which we’ll talk about later many of the

things

that we experience day-to-day traffic

and you know fast food and i mean i

could go on

are psychologically toxic so

here’s the sound i’m finally now at a

moment of sound bite here we go

everybody brace yourselves

our ancestors were protected

by several things that were woven into

the fabric of their day-to-day lives and

we can reclaim them

bring them into the present

and

have the best of both possible worlds

have the best of modernity

jettison the toxic things that are

present to modernity and embrace or

reconnect with the healing habits of the

past

it may sound like a tall order

but

i don’t think we have any choice because

the societal burden of depressive

illness now

it’s one out of three americans are

going to be cut down by this massively

disabling painful illness at some point

and

that rate of depression is going up with

every generation so gen z

kids that are college age or below

they’re already at like 20 25

their lifetime burden if we don’t do

something to turn this around it’s

probably going to be 50

and um

so that was the genesis of this idea of

oh

what are the things that the kaluli are

doing that are protecting them what are

the things that our ancestors benefited

from by the way quick side point of the

shtick you ready for this

here’s the shtick

if our hunter-gatherer ancestors were as

depression prone as we are if they were

as vulnerable as we are given how much

harder their life objectively harder

their lives we

we would have been obliterated as a

species yeah

tens of thousands of years ago we never

would have made it we never would have

lasted this long so we know

given how debilitating depressive

illnesses we know that our ancestors had

to be way less vulnerable than we are

why why do we not have

genetic protection there should have

been massive selection pressure

to give us antidepressant circuitry

to mimic the antidepressant effect of

all of our best meds and other best

practices

why don’t we have it we didn’t need it

why because the antidepressant was woven

into the fabric of our lifestyle

just like by the way interesting maybe

maybe interesting side note

did you know

that

primates that subsist on fruit

you’re injured going this is really

random steve i hope you’ve got a pointer

there are primates

relatives of ours who only live on fruit

they’re called frugivores

the genetic machinery

that they would normally use to make

vitamin c did you know that most

primates

have genetic machinery that their bodies

can make their own vitamin c awesome

but when they became frugivores

now they were getting so much vitamin c

in their lifestyle

that there was genetic drift and all the

the genetic machinery to make vitamin c

was allowed to basically drift and turn

off there are all these mutations that

accrued and it doesn’t work anymore but

it’s still there

it’s a genetic fossil

it’s in our dna right now every one of

us sitting around the circle have

basically vestigial vitamin c machinery

in our dna

doesn’t work anymore

even though our ancestors long since

went away from being frugivores

they don’t have the genetic machinery

anymore so now we have to get the

vitamin c from our diet right

it’s kind of like that with us with

depression

our ancestors had they were like frugals

they had all the protection everything

built in

and now our environment has radically

changed why because technology because

we learned to become agrarians and then

finally we had the industrial revolution

and the life that our kids lead today

would have been unrecognizable to our

ancestors they would look at it and they

would be like this might as well be on

mars it’s so different

so what do you take as the most taxing

feature in the in the change right i i i

you’ve talked at least in and while i’m

present with you’ve talked a lot about

uh the fight or flight response yeah as

the most taxing feature and we have it

in the tribal culture certainly there

they have it we also have it as a

genetic code set right and then we are

living in the industrial world

and what is the

what is the tension there what’s

creating the most

yeah i love that yeah so i mean it turns

out we talked about this a little bit

earlier

that the single most important driver

in terms of the neuroscience of

depression is not

a deficit of serotonin the single most

important driver is the brain’s runaway

fight or flight stress response that

just will not shut down

and then all these downstream reactions

because when the brain is in runaway

stress response mode for weeks anyone

who has any genetic vulnerability or any

other acquired vulnerability their brain

shuts down and it’s just like okay dude

you are sick

like literally physically ill like

fighting the flu fighting covet you shut

down you want to crawl into a cave

and so our ancestors and if we look at

modern day aboriginal groups if we look

at modern day hunter-gatherers

when they go into fight-or-flight mode

it’s for a few minutes it’s for an hour

it’s oh i have to escape that predator

oh i have to uh

get down below treeline while there’s a

lightning storm oh i have to run back to

safety there’s this other hostile group

over there they sent a scout out i need

to scurry back to my

my people right does that make sense so

in other words

our fight fight-or-flight reaction is

designed to get us moving vigorously in

the face of physical threat in the

ancestral world that was very

short-lived in the modern world

we have that fight-or-flight reaction

going off all the time we’re sitting in

traffic and it’s going off well we’re

not physically endangered hopefully most

of the time but our brain thinks we are

right and so we’re all revved up

um we’re going to brain think we are

what what’s

started to activate it what keeps you so

activated

because symbolically

we’re our our

our apis brain

is not it’s unprecedented for an ape to

be traveling in the steel can

going down the road at 70 miles an hour

with all these other steel cans and all

these other people and and people are

being mean to us and they’re like

cutting us off and they’re flipping us

the bird i mean not that they would ever

do that in colorado but you know

in kansas they might um

and

and

our our brain is trying to make sense of

this and it’s like this seems stressful

it seems threatening this is like

bad things could happen

here this is unprecedented it looks

dangerous it feels dangerous and

especially the oh no it’s now it’s

congested oh i’m running late oh i’m

gonna miss my thing oh i’m gonna you

know

and by the way we you know we’re

constantly plugged in to a news medium

that’s that’s telling us constantly

your world is dangerous you know bad is

stronger than good and and and news

purveyors know that if they want to grab

our attention with the news if it bleeds

it leads right if it’s if it’s bad well

guess what in a global village of 8

billion people there’s always something

horrible happening there’s always

something scary there’s always something

outrageous always something dangerous so

we’re bombarded with all the outrage we

go on social media and it amplifies it

and pretty soon you have a group of

people walking around constantly in

fight or flight mode

for a million and one reasons

and all of the natural braking systems

the things that would put the brakes on

that in the ancestral environment

they’re missing

so it’s like we have if i can use

another car analogy it’s like we have

many things in the modern world pressing

the accelerator

of our

fighter flight system and the brake

lines have been cut

and our ancestors had lots of

woven in braking systems like what like

time immersed in nature

like

time immersed in the tribe where you’re

surrounded by the people who care about

you

like physical activity which is

profoundly

it’s like um

okay you know how thermostat like when

you when you turn up the heat in the

thermostat in your house it’s getting

cold

and it’s checking constantly for the

feedback like oh did this work did this

work did this work and then when it’s

finally hot enough the thing shuts off

that’s our fight or flight response

system what’s it designed to do what’s

the thermostat it’s get moving get

moving get moving get moving what’s the

feedback it needs to shut off oh yeah

you’ve been moving

you’ve been really really really active

why does exercise turn off or turn down

our stress response circuits in part

because it’s the negative feedback

the the the sort of corrective

sampled experience that says okay yeah

mission accomplished you can calm down

now

um

so many of the protective things that

our ancestors benefited from they’re

just not there anymore so we’re living

the sedentary indoor socially isolated

frenzied media addicted sleep deprived

fast food laden life and we’re just

bombarded with things that are

psychologically toxic

yeah one of the that resonates with me

so much because

i’m trying in my personal life to

not tone it down to get rid of it

because social media is such a great

part of our world podcasts and otherwise

but i find myself

feeling outraged at so many things could

be the slightest of sentence you know

that that ticks me off and that’s the

part that

i don’t enjoy about it i want to

experience it in a more positive way but

uh in tracking that outrage i find

myself not present distracted out in the

future angry at something angry at a

party a political thing an environmental

thing you know whatever’s going on

and

an hour later you know when we find

ourselves consumed by it i’m sure it

happens to a lot of the viewers out

there on social media you’re just

tricking through and you’re pissed off

at the end of it and you feel stuck in

something and

fog headed in this and all this sort of

stuff you know sort of follows at the

end of it um and i think it’s worth

talking about worth having a discussion

about because when we talk about our you

know poor little eight brains

we can’t it feels as a real natural

experience that this is something that

is very disruptive for us yeah and and

and so there’s something that goes with

it that i know you wanted to talk about

today

which is

this really really toxic habit

that a lot of us probably can resonate

with that you know technically we call

it rumination

dwelling brooding

just rehashing over and over again

negative thoughts they could be worry

thoughts things that you know that we

fear that might happen in the future

usually anxiety rumination is future

oriented like things threats that are

looming

and depressive rumination is stuff in in

the rearview mirror that we regret or

that we’re grieving because it feels

like a loss or a setback or an

embarrassment or you know something

painful a failure

and

when do people ruminate

we know that rumination is super toxic

we know that rumination will rev up

those stress circuits so another thing

back to your question of what keeps them

wrapped up we ruminate all the time when

we study

aboriginal groups they don’t tend to

ruminate

why not well in part because they have

very little alone time

and the single biggest risk factor for

rumination is when we’re alone it

doesn’t mean that being alone is always

toxic being alone can be a great a

beautiful opportunity to meditate or to

do something that we really love and

enjoy but for a lot of us especially

when we’re depleted when we’re

psychologically not

at our best when we’re alone we dwell

and we brood either about things that

threats on the horizon

pain in the past

and when people are clinically depressed

they spend hours ruminating when do they

do it when they’re alone

or when they’re disengaged

so they can ruminate when they’re binge

watching yeah they think they’re

watching or they can ruminate when

they’re surfing the net when they’re on

their phone they can ruminate when

they’ve been on social media they can

ruminate

when they are

um

talking with somebody and they zone out

and a lot of my depressed patients i’m

sure your patients as well

have you know when we bring this up

they’re like oh yeah yeah i do that like

i i can’t stay locked in because as soon

as we start talking i just i’m off to

the races

occasionally people will ruminate

together out loud co-ruminate and that’s

also toxic is there a way to like

narrowly define rumination yeah it’s

just so the word rumination comes from

it’s a it’s it’s a farming word believe

it or not

cows are ruminant

animals rumination refers to chewing the

cud

they have a ruminant pouch why because

they get a lot of their nutrition from

grasses which are very

nutritious for them but very hard to

process and so

they they they eat it and then it goes

to the ruminant sack and and there it

gets kind of pre-processed and made into

this pellet that they then

regurgitate and they they can’t they

can’t stomach it so they got a chew on

it well that’s a great metaphor for what

happens when stuff happens to us that we

can’t stomach we chew on it and it’s a

natural

adaptive reaction whenever something

happens that’s upsetting

it’s natural to ruminate about it for a

while why well you know we want to

figure out what happened why did it

happen what can i do to fix it and if i

can’t fix it well how can i make sure it

doesn’t happen again can i at least

understand it so so i don’t get like a

learning mechanism yeah

it’s natural we want to validate for

people like yeah rumination is totally

fine until it’s not

so it’s fine for how long

until we stop extracting fresh nuggets

of wisdom and learning and you know and

how long does that take depends on the

thing but usually half hour hour

and i tell my patients like look if

you’ve been ruminating on this thing for

days you’re probably way past the point

of diminishing returns right

so then you know it’s like well how do

we stop it lots of different techniques

but one of them is to say hey let’s lean

into it

they never see this coming let’s lean

into it

every time you get the urge to ruminate

get out a pad of paper or get you know

on your computer set a timer and knock

yourself out for 10 minutes ruminate as

much as you can for 10 minutes when the

buzzer goes off walk away

you have total permission

and they’re like

wait i only get 10 it’s like well do you

think in 10 minutes if you really knock

yourself out that you can extract

anything new that you can actually learn

from this session room and they’re like

yeah probably within five or ten minutes

and there’s something powerful about you

write something down and then you can

just walk away

um so i don’t know did i define

rumination it’s dwelling at length on

something either that that we fear in

the future or that we regret in the past

or that we’re grieving in the past yeah

no i think that was

far better than i could have defined

absolutely absolutely perfect tonight

and i know i can’t remember the name of

your speech and talks you used to give

in the past conferences but uh you know

the rumination i want to get into the

psychotherapy aspect of that and how we

can approach that and maybe some quick

interventions that can get us there

faster while we’re waiting for you know

per the prior episode for medications to

ramp up in the background and so forth

but

um

we’ve had a lot of experiences i think

in our industry in general as well too

the first thing we do is we take cell

phones i think the first initial take of

that is liabilities you know ordering

drugs onto a campus you know those sort

of things there’s there’s good reasons

for its absence

and then i think we started learning a

lot more about it in the clinical

setting and just hopeful that you can

feel this thing kind of about your

passion around that which yeah

well clinically

hundred years ago when peaks was a new

company uh and when i started um wasn’t

quite 100 but seven years ago

our program was six to nine months in

length and we would um

take people’s phone at the beginning

and then when we decided to give it back

it was usually about four and a half

months into a treatment episode and so

pretty much

our clients would live in this contained

environment with people they were

spending months and months with

while very disconnected from much of the

outside world in fact

sometimes i would start groups with just

kind of going over current events

because they were so disconnected from

the world like hey you may want to know

that like you know there was a tsunami

or something you know what i mean but

like

um

there’s that level of disconnection um

from

uh

from current events but also just like

from

the scroll of facebook or or twitter or

tick tock i’m not sure tick tock was

around seven years ago but um

there was so much of that and then

um i i mean i’ll never forget when we

when when i went to give a client her

phone back uh our first graduate of our

women’s program and she’s just like

i don’t i don’t want that

um and i think uh

and then we would watch our clients kind

of go through a process of beginning to

kind of

put their guard up again and kind of

beginning to escalate and just being

increasingly anxious and activated even

in

anticipation of getting their phone back

and then oftentimes the first thing they

would do would be to delete their social

media apps clinton i know you’ll love

that but like i think

um

it was a pretty fascinating process

um to watch and be a part of and i know

even some of those

uh graduates of peaks have actually

never gotten back on social media just

because they were disconnected from it

and felt such a great relief during that

time

and i do

it’s just mindful for me just thinking

considering this rumination concept how

much

sometimes our regret or rumination isn’t

even about big things it’s about some

some of the most mundane

comparisons that we’re drawing or

whatever it is it doesn’t have to be

you know the grieving of a parent like

it can be just like

somebody looks like they got a promotion

that i didn’t get at a job and i feel

terrible about that yeah i mean some of

my worst bouts of rumination honestly

have been

oh i was just in a faculty meeting

and one of my colleagues said something

mean

you know yeah i might have responded in

real time or maybe not you know maybe i

just i’m like no i’m gonna just bite my

tongue but then i’m driving home and i’m

sitting at the red light and i’m playing

it over and i’m playing it over and i’m

the more i play it over the more upset

i’m getting

and it’s it’ll take your breath away

yeah and and i don’t care

how

like

robust your mental health is i don’t

care what kind of a place of well-being

you’re in

if you have one negative event and you

start brooding about it within five ten

minutes you’re not in a good place

and um

it’s always an opportunity for me to to

put into practice what i preach right to

be like all right

you know like

you got to walk a walk right so what are

you going to do

what are you going to do

how are you going to do yeah what do you

do with the red light then

so

this particular example that i’m

thinking of somebody really really

pushed my buttons at a meeting and i did

bite my tongue very wisely because i was

going to say something that was not

going to be helpful

and i’m sitting at the red light

well i’m by the way i’m brooding all the

way the walk down to you know i have

about a 10 minute walk to my car and

then the drive to that point so it’s

been like a 20 25 minute bout of

rumination so i’m good and worked out

i’m sitting at the red light and i’m

like

and i had just let a therapeutic

lifestyle group the week before we were

talking about rumination one of the

techniques

that we had asked patients to see if

they could put into practice when

they’re ruminating that week

was

gratitude

i knew you’re going to see it in the

moment

in the moment

um and this ideally would be something

if you’re keeping a gratitude journal if

you’re doing a gratitude practice where

every day

ideally three

like little things like you’re talking

about we don’t ruminate necessarily

about the big things

gratitude is i think best

practiced with the little things i mean

obviously the big things we’re grateful

for as well but

um

so i’m sitting at the red light

and i’m like

okay gratitude gratitude

and this is so amazing the the the um i

think we often fail to appreciate just

how much our memory access is guided by

our mood state

if you are in an angry mood most of the

easiest memories to pull up are going to

be other times you are angry

i kid you not

especially other times you’re angry at

that same person

if you’re in a anxious fearful mood

state your memories are way easier if

they’re other worry related sort of does

that make sense yeah absolutely so i’m

sitting there and i’m angry

and i’m i’m like i got nothing

and i’m embarrassed there’s nobody

around and i’m just embarrassed i’m like

i cannot believe i’m freaking

you know

teaching preaching this and i’m i got

nothing

and i’m like

steve you have so much to be grateful

for i’m having a talk with myself

and and the answer is yeah but i can’t

think of anything right now

and and i and i’m like this is i will

never forget this moment

because

i’m getting way deeper insight into what

my patients are telling me because

they’re like you know what in the moment

this is hard it sounds really

reasonable and easy but in the moment

it’s hard

stay with it what do i tell my face stay

with it stay with it it’ll come

stay with it what what about earlier

today

was and and in a flash puppy

puppy jumped in my lap while i was

having my coffee this morning puppy

licked my face

puppy cuddled with me and then i just

melted and the damn broke and now i can

think of a million things i was grateful

for

i don’t know if that makes any sense at

all but yeah but it it um

once i was able to connect with anything

i was grateful for the anger melted the

rumination spell was broken

and i was able to just enjoy the rest of

my drive come home in a much better

space to greet my wife to greet my puppy

to you know is your dog’s name puppy

his name is teddy the wonder dog

even better yeah

that’s your question though yeah yeah so

so we called in puppy yeah this this has

me uh you know brene brown’s dare to

lead book is coming up for me in this

regard because uh and the you the

viewers are just going to have to excuse

my language because it’s in the book

sfds shitty first drafts as she

describes it in her book that we have

she actually gets that from the writer

anne lamotte okay anne lamott and her

extraordinary

us for beginning writers or aspiring

writers called bird by bird

and she has an entire chapter called

shitty first drafts okay yes were we

talking about her on our walk yesterday

no okay

that name sounds familiar but

but in that regard she talks about the

experience of the shitty first draft is

the build up the reason we do it one we

we want to we’re curious we want to

figure out what took place what the

problem was what the solution is those

sort of things

but whether we arrive at a conclusion

that’s accurate or not we per the book

at least if i remember it correctly we

get a dopamine kick and so there’s an

advantage to doing it but for the

depressed patient the trade-off for that

dopamine kick

sounds

uh

massively

off where we get stuck in a

fight-or-flight phase and so maybe i

guess the question here is

from your experiences in research and so

forth is that dopamine kick true

for the depressed patient as they’re

ruminating do they get something even if

the trade-off is significant yeah that’s

i i really like this question so

there’s something incredibly

addictive

and seductive about rumination

it’s tantalizing it offers the promise

and i cannot tell you the number of

patients that i’ve worked with

that when they’re just being very real

and very honest they’re like

yeah i i know it sounds stupid but i i

every time i ruminate about this breakup

i i think like

this time i’m going to figure out why he

left me or this time i’m going to figure

out why he cheated on me or this time

i’m going to figure out why everything

went south or this time i’m going to

figure out why why that job didn’t work

out or why i didn’t get that offer i

thought i was going to get or why didn’t

get into that grad school or

what i’m saying it’s like

rationally i know this makes no sense

because the last 500 times i’ve

ruminated about i got no further into

but it feels like this time it’s it’s

like lucy in the football

you know charlie brown’s like no this

time she’s going to hold this time i’m

really going to kick it

you know

and that’s what rumination does it holds

out this promise of yeah this time it’s

really going to connect and you’re going

to figure it out

so it has this seductive alluring

addictive quality it is dopaminergic

but then at this horrible cost

of ramping up our stress circuits making

us more depressed more anxious more

angry

more disconnected by the way the

opportunity cost

i know that’s an economist term right

but the the like what are we giving up

when we ruin it you know we’re giving up

the world of other people and activity

that we’re designed for we’re not

designed to be living in our heads but

when we ruminate we’re stuck in our

heads

and most americans spend way too much

time lost in their head we give up our

here and now we give up the moment yeah

we’re sleepwalking we’re you know the

zen

meisters throughout history have always

said

be here be now you know right now be

fully awake sure but rumination is so

deceptive right because it it’s almost

uh dressed up as a solution right it’s

like it’s

it presents itself like oh i’m going to

come to a solution i’m actually i’m

coming to resolution at this point but

it’s not it’s completely usual

and the reason it’s like a trojan horse

in a way because it it presents itself

and it says well no look everybody

ruminates and and by the way rumination

not only is it normal and natural but

it’s it’s helped you before yeah like

remember that one time when the thing

didn’t go well and you started thinking

about and you figured out why and then

you made a course correction and it’s

like bro you should be ruminating more

absolutely right because this is the

best thing you can yeah yeah yeah don’t

go to your friend’s house you need to

stay here and figure this out you need

to just stay here

hunker down

absolutely uh

yeah it i mean

it

what’s that unpredictable reward that is

actually the most rewarding right would

people yes receive that but it’s

unpredictable when they’ll receive it

that’s the knowledge that pushes the

lever the most right that’s a condition

yeah can i use that in mind that’s my

next version of the depression career

yeah actually

jason friesman yeah

remind me i gotta give him the credit

for that um seriously that’s that’s

phenomenal so yeah there is this sense

of um it’s like the did you guys ever

study this in in psyc101 whatever you

know the pigeon on the variable yeah

the slot machine it’s like

as long as it’s delivering the reward at

some point you don’t know when

then you’re going to keep at it and yes

rumination even for the addict yeah the

ruminative

ruminative addict it will still pay off

sometimes yeah so they’re going to stay

at it right yeah that’s that’s so good

yeah

genius

yeah

who’s mentoring who here just i don’t

know

i’m gonna steal my thunder we’re done

but we should talk a little bit more

about how to break the rumination habit

maybe yeah yes

you know and i

and i think uh just to kind of set that

up from the prior episode that we were

on you know we were talking about before

our friend friesma arrived here that you

know there are two general approaches

that are taken a lot of medication

pushing for 60 you know 76 percent of

the population major depression

population they go into a setting they

get the medication they walk away

not a great outcome generally usually

their primary care doc yeah they’re

they’re doing all the heavy much of the

heavy lifting

not because they should

they know that

but because they’re they’re standing in

the breach they’re they’re filling the

gap because so many depressed patients

are getting nothing

and they show up at their you know

primary care doctor’s office and they’re

they’re hurting and the doc is like well

i don’t have a lot of time or anything

else but like hey i got some lexapro

like maybe that’ll help i got some

effects or maybe you know

so they’re

they’re getting minimal care

but the doc is thinking correctly this

is better than nothing yeah and maybe

the public is sold in that moment as

well too because they just saw the

commercial like you’re depressed yes i

am we have this pill perfect perfect

yeah i’m suffering so right you know and

then

it uh then you get into those settings

stress environments or otherwise with

the family doc and it matches right it

tells the story that this is going to

provide that relief but we know in from

the prior episode that that

monotherapeutic approach this is not

going to have

the validity that we believe it’s going

to so insert the next possible thing

within a setting like peaks is we can do

psychotherapy well if if the medication

is going to work

we need time for it to work at the same

time the person wants relief right now

so generally speaking the next thing is

you know psychotherapy but so much of it

is group activity as well too but i’m

not ready for that environment so before

we get into the psychotherapy and how we

can get into anti-ruminating you know

features of this what are some of those

quick setups that maybe we can do as a

treatment center or folks can be

thinking about as home to really you

know push this forward in a more

meaningful way so somebody is suffering

which everyone with clinical depression

is suffering and by the way depression

for a lot of patients actually lights up

not just their emotional pain circuits

but those are cross-wired with our

physical pain circuit so a lot of

depressed patients will if they’re

severely depressed they’ll be like

i can’t even describe it but i’m just

hurting

and it’s like yeah it’s emotional but

like it sort of feels physical too

so they’re in agony they’re in torment

and they want relief and they deserve

relief

and so what do we have in our toolkit

that’s like well if we just throw meds

at it

that helps a lot of people but the

average

patient’s gonna take like three four

weeks before that’s kicking in sometimes

up to six weeks

what do we have is faster

the first thing is surprising

bright light therapy photo therapy using

a therapeutic light box or getting

outside for a half hour

typically ideally within the first hour

of the day

for a half hour

that dose of light the

light is measured in units called lux 10

like this in colorado springs is

probably a hundred thousand lux out

there

abroad indoor space is maybe a

be outside or use a therapeutic light

box

effects kick in five to seven days on

average

it’s fast it’s amazing

and we don’t use it nearly enough why

it just doesn’t feel like it’s not very

sexy it’s not very exciting i was going

to say that

i’m glad you did it’s not very sexy it’s

like a light box really a clunky little

or you know getting outside and it’s

like no

light is a drug light hits receptors in

the retina that have a broadband

connection to the center of the brain

and it’s fast okay so there’s number one

we can start using a therapeutic light

box

number two

there is a nutrient

called acetyl l carnitine

that supercharges the mitochondria the

power plants inside our brain cells

and we get depleted when we’re depressed

and as we age we get really depleted so

older or middle-aged depressed

individuals

respond to acetyl-l-carnitine like an

antidepressant drug

it can be purchased over the counter

it’s a nutrient it has minimal side

effects most people have no side effects

it has

therapeutic efficacy on par with

antidepressant meds typically

and it kicks in often within a week

so some listeners viewers might be like

well wait a minute acetyl carnitine

first of all what’s the dose 2 000

milligrams is the best study dose 2000

milligrams a day divided dose 1000

milligrams twice a day wait a minute

acetyl-l-carnitine you can buy it over

the counter

by the way i’m not giving medical advice

talk to your healthcare provider

but i can buy it over the counter

it’s pretty cheap

it’s fast it has minimal side effects it

seems to be about as effective as

anti-depressant meds why the hell is

this stuff not being widely used

there’s no money to be made

pushing acetyl l-carnitine

i have no financial vested interest in

it i just want people to get better and

we can leverage that we can use that

right it’s it’s a really cool little

hack

it’s super charging brain cells

okay number three we talked a little bit

about

chronotherapy

which is a fancy term for basically

we’re going to do a couple things the

first thing we’re going to do this

sounds nuts but it works

if you keep somebody with depression if

you keep them up all night and into the

next day

then

bizarrely miraculously their mood will

brighten after 24 to 36 hours of sleep

deprivation we don’t understand why i

know we talked about this earlier like

doing it we have no idea

there’s a theory that maybe by keeping

somebody up for for 36 hours

we’re basically putting the brain into

emergency brake glass in case of

emergency stimulant mode it’s like oh

this must be life threatening because

why the hell else would somebody stay up

for 24 36 hours

so it seems to recruit stimulant

circuits dopamine they stimulate

circuits in the brain that are bypassing

all the depressive shutdown

and this sounds great it works until it

doesn’t when does it stop working as

soon as a person goes to bed

but

what if we layer that

antidepressant fast rapid acting effect

of sleep deprivation

with shifting the person’s body clock

so instead of keeping them up 24 hours

what if we keep them up 28 hours so

we’re gonna phase

shift their body clock by four hours

lather rinse repeat do that six times

so we’re gonna be phase shifting them

and we’re gonna hit them

with therapeutic doses of light which we

already know is rapid acting

this triple whammy is called

chronotherapy there’s a protocol that’s

been developed and it’s very fast acting

and

it’s probably the fastest thing that

that that i know of that’s also

very physically benign it doesn’t have

lots of side effects it’s not dangerous

unlike say ketamine it doesn’t have like

abuse potential it’s like no we’re just

keeping you up and we’re shifting your

body clock and we’re giving you some

bright light

and

it’s extraordinary

love it so we have to go back to the

clinical team tomorrow and say yeah

we’re working 24-hour shifts

you’re going to feel really good for a

few hours till you fall asleep yeah yeah

yeah

everybody’s experience have you guys

experienced this though when you’ve been

up too long you start to get kind of

punchy oh yeah you know and you get kind

of giddy and you’re kind of you know

it’s the only time that i’m actually

enjoyable

so yeah um so do you want to circle back

to the the anti-ruminative thing

yeah absolutely and that’s going to be

the that’s going to be the heavy-hitting

part of this episode and i you know in

in repeating that though it sounds sort

of drastic i think i want to make the

claim too that

living in the suffering of major

depressive disorder when you’re feeling

that way drastic measures can make sense

and so these are things not to be

ignored but to be explored and

be curious about these sort of

opportunities because if these solutions

are that swift then why not right as an

experience versus the denial of the

effort of it i think that’s common

at least my felt experience within this

industry is like we don’t have time for

that or those sort of things but now

more than ever because we have more

antidepressant medications but

depression anxiety and so forth is

higher than it’s ever been now more than

ever it feels like

we should be thinking about these things

critically and whether we deploy them we

should at least be curious about how it

might work and develop absolutely you

know there’s one other thing we didn’t

mention in the other episode that i

probably should give a shout out

although you may want to edit this out

so we’ll see

there are

psychedelic agents that are

non-addictive they do not target the

addictive reward dopamine-based pathways

in the brain so we’re talking about

psilocybin

um

we’re talking about mdma we’re talking

although mdma has a little bit of reward

activity but

psilocybin lsd

ayahuasca there are others

there is increasing evidence that

taking on their own not particularly

helpful can be dangerous

taken

under the aegis under the guidance of a

skilled therapeutic guide

because the the the psychedelic effect

lasts for several hours

under the direction of a skilled

therapeutic guide the psychedelic has

antidepressant potential that is very

rapid

and so there’s

massive amounts of research

ongoing on this topic

i think there’s been a lot of hype

but i think there’s a there there i

think

i think within five to ten years this

kind of treatment could possibly be

quite mainstream

and even in an addiction center

once we’re very clear to validate with

patients like

this is not an addictive substance

patients who do

psilocybin the active ingredient in

mushrooms

do not become addicted to it

they don’t crave it when they’re done

they don’t want to do it every day for

the next 50 years

typically

i think there’s some real potential

there

again because it’s so fast yeah

we’re in colorado so we can totally talk

about it yeah yeah totally this is uh we

just garnered a whole news i think

denver was the first time

right yeah denver with the suicide then

yeah

it just went up by thousands yeah well

the thing i love about the the idea i

again the proof is in the pudding

i’m like show me you know i’m a

researcher but the thing i love about

the idea of it

is this is a drug that supercharges

psychotherapy

this is not a replacement for therapy

right this is not a replacement

for gaining insight and gaining

better connections with the people that

matter to you gaining a greater sense of

purpose in your life this is a

supercharged catalyst for getting to

that place that we all want to be for

living our best life

and

i’m like hey if this can actually

deliver the goods

this could be a game changer yeah and i

think it’s i like though that i mean the

cure to depression is not to go use

mushrooms like that’s exactly yeah

for sure that’s that’s the opposite

that’s the that’s the take-home message

don’t try this at home boys and girls

right um but it’s a tool it’s a tool

but it’s it like any tool it has it has

great potential for good or not sure it

can be harmful right there are people

that go on mushroom trips that get very

disoriented very dissociated they get to

a very scary place they freak out they

have pan and it’s that’s the start of

their panic disorder right now they’re

freaking out and panicking a lot

that was the genesis of it

um so it’s like we gotta we gotta

respect it it’s powerful

but in the hands of a skilled guide i

think maybe

there’s potential for some real

breakthrough for some patients it’s not

going to work for everyone it’s not

going to be for everyone but maybe for

some yeah and it’s just one tool right

just one

you can’t build a house with just a

hammer you can’t and um

you and i are both big advocates of

let’s do all the things yeah right let’s

let’s take down the web of depression

with all kinds of pebbles and stones and

rocks and

hammers and you know whatever

but occasionally we get lucky

with somebody and it’s like you know

some people with winter onset depression

we can cure it with light only

some patients who are like their

rumination is just so centered around

this one painful thing and we can cure

the rumination we can bring down the

whole web

just

some patients they start exercising

and that’s curative for them it’s not

many but it i mean it does happen you

know what i mean so it’s like we don’t

want to invalidate like

some people it’s like we hit that one

connective thread on the whole web comes

down

but the thing that hits it will be it’s

like 20 different possibilities

most of us are going to require like

multiple things we’ve got to do all the

things to really bring it down yeah and

that’s what peaks is all about yeah and

especially for long-term remission

exactly that’s right too and so

all right so now we have these beautiful

potential things like psilocybin that

can really increase or speed this up uh

we have some sleep deformation along

with some other things that might be

able to really speed up carnitine yeah

and bright light and now we’re in this

moment where the individual okay i’m

starting to experience some relief and

then we’re back to this ruminating sort

of feature right and this is where i

think psychotherapy comes in a big way i

think cognitive behavioral therapy

is one of the things that at least i’ve

read a lot in my googling of the world

but i’m a very poor googler at times so

is that the only thing or no what else

cbt you know that i like it’s a great

insight cbt the core think about what is

the core of cognitive behavior therapy

it’s i’m going to

change my reaction to things

by

basically learning in real time to

notice how i’m interpreting the flow of

experience what are my interpretations

what are my automatic thoughts

and then how can i challenge them how

can i gather evidence how can i have a

different interpretation how can i see

how i’m biased and maybe very negatively

biased right so that’s that’s the

technology of cbt it is anti-ruminative

for sure

patients who get really good at that

cognitive reframing

they utilize it when they’re ruminating

and so it becomes functionally an

anti-ruminative technology

but there are lots of other things that

are anti-ruminative

i think for most patients just learning

to notice mindfully to be very mindful

meta attentionally aware like what am i

aware of right now what am i paying

attention to

oh i’m ruminating huh i caught it in

real time most patients who ruminate

don’t even notice it’s like when you

drive a very familiar route and you pull

into the driveway you know how the hell

did i just like i don’t even remember

were there stop signs were there other

did i were there pedestrians did i hit

anything did i just it’s not just me

i do that in very unfamiliar routes

your mileage may vary but but most of us

like when was over learned you know

you tie your shoes and you’re like i

don’t know what the steps were but when

you’re learning you do it very you know

mindfully right

a lot of our life is lived on autopilot

unmindfully we ruminate unmindfully on

autopilot when we when we learn to slow

it down

and be mindful

throughout the day oh god i’m doing it

again i’m ruminating

so now i’ve caught it

and i’m going to decide to stop it

that’s

more than half the battle but it’s like

okay now i’m going to stop it what am i

going to do

all it takes is something absorbing to

redirect your attention to

it could be good absorbing or bad

absorbing right it could be

a behavioral addiction right it could be

oh i’m gonna play video games for the

next eight hours well that’s

anti-ruminative

not particularly instructive but it

might be better than depressive

rumination

right it might be if we’re in a harm

harm reduction model yeah right it’s

like oh

okay somebody’s depressed because

they’re ruminating

well if they go play video games for an

hour to break the bout of rumination

it’s not great but it’s probably pretty

benign right oh i’m gonna binge watch

netflix for two hours

it’s not great but it’s pretty benign

you with me

but then

maybe you know better anti-ruminative

absorbing things like what well

shared activity with a friend shared

activity with a loved one

taking my dog for a walk

um

you know something where i’m connecting

and belonging something where i feel

purpose something where i feel

you know like like a part of the tribe

and then finally i would say something

generative

that’s like apex level i would say for i

have to be in a good space for this but

like oh i’m gonna go noodle around on

the piano or the guitar and try to write

a song like i’ve had this like four

ideas for it’s like i got this song but

like there’s no bridge

like i’ll noodle on that for a while you

know

and that’s really anti-ruminative for me

it’s like i get so caught up in it like

but i have to be in a pretty good head

space for that right like some

anti-ruminant anti-ruminative activity

is like break glass in case of emergency

like oh i’m just gonna go for the big

gun i’m gonna go for the video game i’m

gonna go for the the binge watch

right

and some is more like oh if i’m in a

better place like i can enjoy my

friend’s company if i’m in a better

place oh i can

um just be alone in nature and that’s

anti-root i can get absorbed and lost in

nature but if i’m not in a good space i

might ruminate while i’m lost in nature

you see it so we got to be nimble we got

to be nuanced but that’s really fun

clinical work and i hope patients i hope

prospective patients their families as

they hear this they can think about oh

wait there’s like detective work there’s

like trial and error there’s like yeah

we’re going to fine-tune

if we’re going to help break the

rumination habit

the rumination addiction as it were

we’re going to have to be doing

personalized medicine we’re going to

have to be

fine-tuning what’s going to work for

this individual at this point in their

journey

because early on in the journey they’re

going to need lots of really really

really high high high engagement stuff

and as they get further along

they’ll be able to do higher level

you know like oh i’m going to you know

just get absorbed in nature i’m gonna do

some mindful meditation i’m gonna

you know just connect with my friend

that makes sense yeah absolutely i you

know for me it makes

especially i can think of an individual

session with a patient like that and

being able to roll through these things

in real time one-on-one let’s think

about this so you’re dissociating are

you ruining it you know we can capture

things the the challenge of our industry

is that to provide this acute level of

care and promise is that the downward

pressure from the insurance lens is to

do this for four to six hours in a group

setting depending on the level of care

and

which doesn’t seem like a great tea up

for a depressed patient also it seems

like an environment where rumination can

just go wildly out of control because

once it’s done once we’re done talking

about the topic in relation to ship to

me it feels like i can be wildly

distracted within the room and so

there’s a way to manage that though okay

i so so i where i’m going absolutely

yeah so i’ve done depression groups okay

with typically eight depressed often

severely depressed patients

that all have this rumination habit and

we’re now like having a session where

we’re going to focus on rumination

so the first session it’s a lot of

psycho-education it’s a lot of like

equipping here are the tools here’s

here’s what it is here are the steps

here’s how you you know here’s some

strategies now let’s brainstorm not

let’s ruminate out loud together let’s

brainstorm

what has worked for you

in your whole life whenever you found

yourself ruminating what had what have

been some of the things that have worked

to stop it

or and or

what would you imagine

could be a big enough gun that you could

pull out

break glass in case of emergency that

would allow you to interrupt an episode

of rumination about a rumination

let’s compare notes let’s brainstorm

together that’s fine that’s creative and

that’s not sparking rumination we’re not

co-ruminating

we’re collaborating we’re you know we’re

we’re just brainstorming together then

we come back

we have an assignment

start tracking

start noticing when you’re what are your

high risk rumination times let’s compare

notes on that when are you likely to

ruminate when are you more protected

and then

what did you practice did you are you

are you having trouble noticing when

you’re ruminating in real time what

would help with that

ooh maybe some mindful training ooh

maybe use an app that will just

periodically just interrupt you

randomly and ask you hey what are you

doing what are you doing right now are

you ruminating you know what’s the

setting and so

it’s like this can be a really

collaborative process where patients

validate each other

and strategize together

and

all the whole time not co-ruminating not

sparking each other

on the relationship because we really

want to avoid that you’re absolutely

right yeah we don’t want to let that

spiral out of control yeah but it

doesn’t have to in my experience it

doesn’t yeah

yeah it takes a good clinician because

it it

it doesn’t necessarily go toward health

like yola might tell us like sometimes

you have to provide some of that spark

and direction i think oh absolutely yeah

and and you know you have to be willing

to be directive as a therapist to say

wait i’m just i’m gonna stop right now i

hope you know i just

you know i in fact i wanna i want us to

have a chance to talk about this

after

but remember you know our goal was that

we’re not going to be ruminating out

loud together and this feels like it

could go down that that path would it be

okay with you if we just you know and so

gently validate but like redirect and

just be like no we’re pumping the brakes

right now like we’re just not going to

let it go because why because as a

clinician in a group i have a

responsibility to everybody else present

i need to keep them safe

you know and it’s not going to be safe

for them to hear about this person

ruminating about their trauma that you

know it’s like

no i’m going to protect them right right

now

but that’s not hard i mean no

it’s not rocket science really

no it i mean it’s

especially describe it it’s just fairly

obvious exactly

and just brainstorming ways to interrupt

that i think it makes sense yeah and and

i feel like most patients really enjoy

that process

inviting them into the process of

discovery like hey this is fun this is

creative like we’re gonna

and it’s it’s it’s personal it’s like

right we’re gonna fine-tune it we’re

gonna discover what works for you and

what works for you is not gonna be what

works for me and vice versa

it’s like

it’s anti-ruminative for me to pour over

a sheet of nba box scores

because i’m a basketball junkie

yeah

my name is steve i’m a hoopaholic

[Laughter]

um

my wife passes by me on my ipad and

she’s like it’s just numbers

what the hell are you i’m like

oh honey no you have no idea this is

like so exciting

it’s like it’s numbers

i’m like yeah i know isn’t it so anyway

it’s so it would not work for her right

but works for me

interesting i like that there’s that

that moment of discovery that very it’s

individualized it’s unique it’s

it feels special and it feels active

right like there’s um

this component of

being a part of your own

answer right like exactly part of your

own cure

absolutely and actually being able to

just by

um becoming more aware of what you

actually do like to engage in is is part

of the process of taking you out of the

things that keep you away from them so i

like that and then so what the next step

then would

would be what to to practice that to

actually put that into action

yeah and just to treat it as a kind of

and i use i i have to be careful with

addiction as a as a metaphor rather than

a real thing i mean there are real

behavioral addictions yeah obviously

gambling addiction is

by far the most

probably treacherous but there are lots

of other rivals

i think rumination is a kind of soft

addiction it’s it’s it’s a it’s a very

toxic habit how about that

and it’s seductive and alluring as a

habit which makes it kind of

adjacent to addiction

and i think when patients are willing to

be vulnerable with each other and share

their journeys but cheerlead for each

other it’s beautiful because now they

feel like

they’re useful they’re providing support

to you know and

my favorite moments as a clinician have

always been

watching patients

step up for other patients

and be part of the healing journey for

their fellow travelers

and i’m just there soaking it in maybe

facilitating a little bit sure but

honestly just feeling privileged to be a

part of that like you know

um so much of the magic of a group when

it when it goes well

is patients are able to discover that

they have their own latent healing sure

talents that they can share with each

other yeah the less you talk the better

yes yeah as a clinician and you get the

magic of the millions absolutely

yeah and and

it it it’s really humbling absolutely to

watch

patients have insight into each other’s

journey that i don’t have

and

it’s like oh yeah this is the way it’s

supposed to but but see that’s why i

love doing depression groups

because when people are depressed they

don’t want to be in a group when people

are depressed they want to just crawl

into a cave crawl into a hole

and they feel like nobody gets me

nobody and i’m gonna be a bummer and i’m

gonna be a downer and you know and

people are just gonna tell me stupid

[ __ ] like just cheer up or snap out of

it or you know but then they’re in a

group with other depressed patients and

they’re like oh these people get it like

they get i don’t have to explain myself

to them

and then it’s like well but i’m afraid

they’re going to bring me down and i’m

going to bring them down and then it’s

like

no there’s enough structure here to like

there’s there’s safety here

and then

they tap into their own ability to like

encourage each other and and

i don’t know it’s just it’s really

magical when it works

so

well

i love this and i know we could go on

and on and we could break out some

chalmers philosophy problems of

consciousness i’m here for it

on the next episode

idealism

viable solutions to the conundrum of the

mind body problem tune in next time

is every

particle of the universe

conscious yeah tune in next the

hand psychism on the scrabble board here

we go yeah you will steal the night yeah

oh the scrabble board yeah between pan

psychism and zyprexa you’ve got it

covered

well on our way out last time i nearly

stole some of your thunder and would

like to hear what you’re doing in the

background and what you would like to

promote here with us at this time your

podcast okay yeah so super super quick

um i’ve dipped my toes in the water with

this brilliant irish writer his name is

hugh james

he’s my like polar opposite in all the

best ways so i’m old he’s young he’s 27.

i’m a scientist he’s a poet

i’m an american he’s irish he’s cool

he’s got a great accent and we’re doing

this show together called

mental health what what a creative title

mental health wow with steve allardy and

hugh james and so we we’ve we’ve got

great chemistry somehow we and it’s

weird because we’re so

such an odd couple but like so different

that it works

and we we both like to laugh and we make

each other laugh which is really so

we’re tackling

like these crazy dark

like dark sober difficult challenging

topics with humor with humility with

curiosity and um

we have a lot of fun so that’s our show

it’s called mental health with so you

can find it mental by the way if you

just type mental health into your

podcast search thing no you’re not going

to find it because they’re a million

million you’re like mental health and

type illardie i la rdi you’re golden

you’ll find it

um

we have a youtube channel that goes

along with it we have a oh website

mental health dot fm and if you go to

mental health that’s our url mental

health dot fm

you will find all the things and we’re

growing it and we’re excited about it

and you know it’s a long shot but but

we’ve already got a little

uh faithful band of you know audience

that seemed to really value it i think

it’s my mom and like

like

q’s mom and maybe like three former

students or something but that’s how it

starts yeah you know great demographic

yeah create the movement yeah the

monster the mom and your reviews are

always a hundred percent with money so

we we have a patreon

my mom because our first patron is

awesome

is there uh on on top of that uh work

that you’re doing there uh can we dangle

a carrot around the depression cure and

update oh yeah yeah so so my publisher

has contacted me there is going to be a

revised and expanded uh second edition

of the depression cure which i’m really

excited about because

a lot’s happened um in the last decade

and lots of cool stuff i want to share

scientific stuff as well as just

clinical stuff as well so

yeah awesome

beautiful

thank you so grateful for your work um

such an important topic uh to be

discussing overall to share with the

public and the viewers of finding peaks

in your podcast and all through the

depression care and everything that

we’re doing

uh just greatly appreciate your time for

coming

listen man this is an honor it’s a

privilege i

i feel so lucky to be so old

and so

i’m 58 okay

and to be able to hang out with young

talented folks like you guys that are

like

keeping me in the game keeping me

excited and passionate and youthful and

god my hope is like we’ll be doing this

not this but you know still doing cool

stuff

in a decade and a decade beyond that and

um

i feel like the key to healthy aging

more than anything else successful aging

is staying in the game yeah

staying in the game staying challenged

physically staying challenged mentally

feeling like you matter feeling like

you’re making a contribution no matter

and there’s no contribution that’s too

small like we talked about earlier today

like you could be flipping burgers but

if you’re bringing some little bit of

joy and light and and and compassion and

humanity it’s like that can change the

world somebody’s world so and we need

you in the game yeah oh yeah absolutely

thank you well i i i’m

i’m loving the ride so much i just you

know just with gratitude

um

it’s just all about the gratitude yeah

so as we were doing this morning can i

get an amen

brother yeah totally all right well

beautiful awesome finding peaks at

peaksrecovery.com

clint’s looking at me like i do the box

thing yeah we’re just gonna put that out

yeah i know we got the talents yeah

we got chris burns president founder on

the tick tock follow us on tick tock the

other social medias uh the twitter the

facebook the instagram

all of that and jason’s gonna be like in

the hosting chair at some point and

jason is next in the hosting seat so he

will be tuned in he will be improved

from his pride

a lot of learning here yeah a lot of

[ __ ] going on love you guys love all the

viewers out there thanks for

In this exciting episode, we are joined by renowned Dr. Ilardi, to discuss his knowledge on treating Major Depressive Disorder with therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes.

‘The Depression Cure’ by Stephen S. Ilardi, PhD

Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (TLC)

empathy is knowing your own darkness

without that connection you don’t have

anything what’s the opposite of

addiction just freedom

hello everyone

welcome to

another special episode of finding peaks

this is a special episode we got a

special guest with us today and i’m

excited

to be a part of this group dynamic uh

today and we’re gonna also have an

additional episode uh coming soon as

well too or thereafter however it works

out in the time frame of things but

again welcome my name is brandon burns

chief executive officer for peaks

recovery centers you all know me your

favorite host trying to disrupt an

industry provide quality of care vision

insights for family systems

seeking treatment so that we can empower

you all to make best possible decisions

for your loved one for yourself and so

forth joined today as always by the

great clinton nicholson chief operating

officer great lpclic

all things clinical

to join us today the heavy-hitting dr

ryan md board-certified addictionologist

with us today uh at peaks recovery

centers and then our

what’s that chief medical officer i am

so sorry chief medical officer wow that

wouldn’t make any sense

we’ll rewind the tape we’ll fix it

special guest today dr stephen elardy

clinical psychologist researcher

professor university of kansas and

author of the depression cure the book

and joining us here today to talk about

depression major depressive disorders

all of its variations some anxiety maybe

we’ll tackle some sud along the way

welcome

hey thank you so much for having me it’s

a pleasure to be here um

i i’m in such a gas company i didn’t

realize the great yeah the great the

chief medical officer yeah

favorite podcast host or whatever you

know it’s like

i this is like some pretty pretty high

cotton that is pretty impressive i i so

i’m honored to be yeah trying to give

you some highlights too because you run

your own podcast as well too you know

that’s a new thing okay it’s it’s i

dabble i don’t know maybe some folks out

there could identify with this i get

bored really easily

so like you know i’ve done nba

consulting i’ve

i’ve written blogs for espn i’ve

done a podcast now youtube channel

um

you know it it this is new train for me

though so being on camera it’s like

not nervous at all

well now you know you can come on and

say you were the greatest host and mean

it when you say it and just really give

yourself all the credit i’m taking notes

they’re the mental notes right now but

yeah absolutely absolutely the viewers

at home are like yeah i think he is the

best host

that’s gonna be in my bag

so yeah thank you for being here excited

about this group and this bunch that we

have to really talk about

major depressive disorder

the symptomology of it and so forth and

the potential for the cure for it and

the remission of symptoms and so forth

and

as the viewers know we’ve done some

episodes with you know for example uh dr

ashley johnson a do psychiatrist with

colorado recovery services

here in town doing tms services and a

lot of great psychiatric work and what

the reason for highlighting that is

because in those episodes we talked

about medication um the benefits of it

also its limitations and the excitement

around new opportunities like tms and

sitting here with uh you know dr o’lardy

and certainly uh dr ryan johnson here we

want to uh i think reintroduce that as a

topic and highlight it through a

different lens

and have a really good conversation

about it the pros of it the cons of it

uh in that regard and a little bit more

of a backdrop and we were talking about

this earlier as well too you know when

you go to each and every single

addiction treatment center’s website it

says we treat dual diagnosis we can

treat this thing called major depressive

disorder

and generally out of that i think it’s

something like here’s depression and six

months ago you know the pot smoking was

taking place or the drug use and so

forth and somehow our industry keeps

trying to make it about this thing over

here and i think what that’s led to from

an industry standard is uh limitations

about how we treat major depression

major depression so certainly here at

peaks we’re trying to you know work

alongside you know individuals like you

to really advance new insights education

and

ultimately see

as an outcome a reduction in symptoms

around major depressive disorder and do

more than just med management certainly

meds are important but you have a

great deal of analogies and insights

into this so i’m just going to let you

fire away and then we’re just going to

wrap around and talk about it with you

okay well thanks yeah so the first thing

i want to say is somebody earlier this

morning when i was getting to know the

staff at peaks

mentioned you know the common thread

that runs through

everything that takes place at peaks

is you’re dealing first and foremost

with human suffering

whether or not somebody is battling

clinical depression whether they’re

battling a substance use disorder

whether they’re battling

associated anxiety or any of the other

so-called dual diagnoses

they’re suffering

and there’s a through line that really

connects substance use disorders and

depression and that is reduced

activity in the brain’s reward circuits

and probably a lot of the audience have

heard of brain chemical dopamine which

is the go-to signaling molecule in those

reward circuits

when we’re depressed

there’s a syndrome that goes along with

it our fancy we got a fancy word you

ready you know it the audience may not

and had anhedonia from the latin

no hedonic no no pleasure right

um

the dopamine-based reward circuits in

clinical depression don’t fire so the

person now doesn’t enjoy their normal

activities the way they used to they

don’t have sex drive anymore they don’t

enjoy food anymore

and

the person who is battling substance use

disorder

when they stop using what we typically

find is their dopamine reward circuits

are very blunted

they they’ve been kind of kicked into

artificially high modes of activity with

whatever they were using

and now they’re

in this state maybe they’ve gotten

through withdrawal

but they’re they’re in recovery and they

often have a lot of craving

and the reward circuits are throbbing in