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We break down what family blame and shame may look like, and how both the individual struggling with addiction and the family can begin to heal.

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welcome back to another episode of
finding peaks
excited to have friend clinton jason
back joining us for
what are we on now our 34th episode yeah
it’s always a pleasure it’s your friend
clinton
and then jason and then jason yeah got
it kind of a friend i think that checks
out so
yeah yeah thanks for having us
absolutely
good to have you guys back thanks for
the coffee yeah we’re trying to humor it
up a little bit based on some reviews
that
we’re a little too serious in the first
few episodes so
so that’s the socks socks there we go
all right whimsical not comedians
counselors
host okay thank you all right thanks for
the clarification
all right diving into this today um one
of the things that
came to mind over the past week and just
thinking about you know kind of what we
do each and every day
is putting a little bit of focus uh back
on the families
uh oftentimes when i’m talking to
families and certainly
i’m sure it’s the case when you guys are
as well too that um
they often describe situations
you know about their loved one going
into treatment and so forth as
if they could have done better as
parents uh
if i had just done things a little bit
differently um things could have
been better you know i didn’t have the
playbook to parenthood you know that
sort of stuff and
um with that i think before we you know
dive fully into the topic
you know let’s introduce what shame is
from a therapeutic lens
um find it go
go all right so typically the best way
to
probably just talk about it is the
difference between guilt and shame and
sort of there’s a
subtle difference there so guilt would
be defined as
the idea that i did something bad right
it’s identifying that i
i as an individual um had
did a behavior that i perceive as bad
versus shame
is the basically internalizing guilt and
saying that because i did something bad
i
am bad right so guilt i did something
bad shame
i am bad so that would be the probably
the best way to differentiate it unless
jason has years of experience on me so
given his age and everything so yeah
thanks for that yeah absolutely
years and years decades really yeah um i
the only thing i would add to what you
said is guilt’s a pretty important
emotion that we feel because like
it’s helpful it’s like corrective says
you’ve done something outside of your
values
and stopped doing it shame on the other
hand
usually leads to an ongoing narrative
and self-fulfilling prophecy
uh and a spiral down yeah i would say so
absolutely that’s what i’d add yeah
grief motivates growth and shame
uh is a barrier to growth yeah there you
go
gotcha absolutely so when a family then
and so
you’re you’re talking to them and
they’re describing the situation as
um not in the sense that they did the
bad thing but that they
are experiencing that i am a bad family
member that i sort of caused
what’s happening to you know my loved
one who’s in care right now what do we
what would you say to that family member
in that moment
i’ve had some of those conversations not
surprisingly
certainly what i what i have said
honestly is
um particularly when people are first
coming into treatment like i i
recognize that they’re i’ll say to them
i recognize you’re feeling that way
and really now is not the time to like
stop and like reflect on your entire
parenting history because really we’re
in this crisis and
and now you’ve done the right thing by
reaching out and calling us and i’m
grateful that you did that
and likely you got here as soon as you
could so we’re glad you’re here
and that’s usually how i start that call
just just trying to say
listen i think everybody’s probably
doing the best they can and making the
best decisions they can
and it can be hard to make a phone call
about a loved one
particularly who’s struggling with
addiction or other mental health things
oftentimes from the best and most
genuine intent parents try to solve
their their loved ones problems on their
own or so do spouses
all through genuine intent and so i
work really hard not to pile on shame at
all people tend to walk around with
plenty of it all the time anyway and so
really just normalizing that experience
that kind of you got here as quick as
you could
yeah yeah i think um
also to really ex you know when i hear
families really express this amount of
shame it to me it kind of speaks to the
idea that
addiction is somehow based in morality
or a lack thereof
so being able to inform families what
addiction really is and where it comes
from that it isn’t a lack of
morality or anything that could have
been necessarily that you could have
done
differently or is it in somehow a
reflection of who you are as a parent or
who you are as a spouse
but um you know giving them the
education on
addiction being really a biopsychosocial
disease
that is um motivated by so many factors
that just that trying to identify that
one specific thing or
to own that behavior of your family
member is just
it really doesn’t serve them or serve
the family
so and for in in
in my conversations with families it’s
the there’s a
rooted tension in there that i sort of
want to bring forward here it you know
it sounds like when the addict is
behaving in the way that they do to seek
their drugs and alcohol and all the
behaviors that fall out from that the
lying the stealing
all the potential of it oftentimes
families are in a position to point at
all of that
sort of negatively because it is as you
said outside of
a value system maybe it’s the family’s
values maybe it’s at the individual
level but
that constant sort of pointing and that
negativity and that experience on be you
know on that on the addiction side
the the individual who is addicted at
that time
probably starts to really start seeing
it not as guilt but shame like i’m just
a terrible person
only a terrible person could hear all
this negativity with such fluency
and so they start to point back at the
family you’re the problem
you didn’t do that for me this is why i
act and behave and so how do we start to
you know dissolve that tension because
it’s
neither person should be experiencing
shame
but shame is resulting from it and i and
i guess what i’m
really getting at here is just how do we
dissolve that tension that existing how
do we stop the finger pointing at the
family members so that we can appreciate
that hey nobody had a playbook to do
this right
nobody had a playbook for how to do
addiction right and nobody had a
playbook for how to be
a parent or to be the best possible
parent that would
create a situation in which it didn’t
lead to addiction so
um i think it’s important to dissolve
that experience and
remove it because it seems to be a
fighting match by the time they arrive
at
our doorstep yeah fair
and i’ll just continue to reference
brene brown
well which is good because she’s a shame
expert it turns out
and and certainly what what brene brown
says is that the
the solution for shame is empathy
and and that’s kind of what it requires
on a variety of
on multiple layers of what you just
described like
a loved one needs empathy for their
family the family requires some empathy
for their loved one but a lot of times
the
the empathy starts with the with the
relationship with
clinicians and other staff and other
clients just
really being able to sit in the dark
with another person just sit with them
in in the spot where they are struggling
and usually that helps resolve some of
the empathy and really
can can help a person distinguish
between
their guilt and uh the shame
that’s a big question so
i guess my approach would be something
[Music]
you know when families have that tension
there’s you know that finger pointing is
serving some sort
of purpose within the family right like
it actually is serving a function
and typically it’s um to some degree
part of it’s holding that family up and
becoming part of that family’s identity
so
being able to sort of i one highlight
the fact that hey by the way there’s
finger pointing going on and that’s
that’s not serving anybody but also what
is that finger
pointing actually doing for you guys as
a family how is it
serving your or helping your family
function even though in or
dysfunction basically so i guess that
would be
my approach and then i think building
empathy into that
and you know families are
such a complex organism and
i mean they’re certainly not a specialty
of mine but
um i think being able to unpack that and
unwind that
just takes a tremendous amount of time
and um
being able to give families even that
information that hey this is going to be
a process and
as one person changes in the family
everybody else in the family is going to
have to change as well like to
to say that just the i’m sending my kid
off and so
change them and make them better that’s
actually not how it works like they’re
going to go and start their work and
process of change and as they come back
everybody’s going to also have to change
around them to a stat to re-establish
some sort of homeostasis
so let’s say that i’ve experienced
trauma in my family or
discomfort surrounding my family and in
some way
that discomfort led to me wanting to
numb that a bit
with drugs and alcohol or whatever the
situation might be
how do we guide the person in treatment
or or what can we tell families about
that guidance that
because i what we don’t want at the end
of the day is some excusatory lens right
for stating well i was traumatized or
mom didn’t do the right thing or you
know brother did
x y and z and that’s why i do drugs and
alcohol how do we
get away from seeing the tension for
what it is and then move away from it to
the degree that
we stop excusing bad behaviors or poor
behavior is probably a better word there
um in relationship to that that makes
sense so i can restate that if that’s
well so it sounds like excusing and
justifying at the same time yeah i feel
like sometimes people get into addiction
treatment centers and they’re not fully
aware of what is trauma and they’re not
fully aware of how they were shamed and
they’re not fully aware of what
discomfort they’re carrying and then
you know we’ll sit in a in a group
individual session all of a sudden
they’re like oh my gosh
yeah that happened in my life and then
it sort of has a
um an energy to it where they turn and
say
your fault you know sort of as an
experience and but even if somebody
caused something to the individual that
caused discomfort that led to the desire
for numbiness
it can’t continue forward in an
excusatory sort of fashion so how how as
clinicians
do we help the individual see okay we’ve
identified issues and problems
but we can’t live in those problems and
we can’t change the past
and we can’t use the past as a mechanism
for excusing
the behaviors that are outside of our
value system currently
i think in some ways
to me in some ways it comes down to um
boundaries like i like to bring clients
back around to boundaries because
oftentimes when
an individual has gone through a trauma
or whatever their boundaries are either
really diffuse or really rigid in
various places
and helping somebody understand how to
set boundaries to protect themselves
which to me isn’t the same as blame like
you know
if if a family member has a loved one
that is actively harming them or will
likely lead them back out to
drug use or uh will affect their their
mental health
then that person it doesn’t matter the
blame or
attributing blame to it it just matters
setting up the healthy boundary and what
where that boundary needs to be in order
for this in order to sustain the
recovery process
and whatever that might look like that
because that’s what i look look at like
that because i do think trauma distorts
boundaries often times for people
wow right clinton yeah i think that you
get again we talk about this sort of
like shame cycle right
and that um you know on one hand you
have the
the person who’s struggling with
addiction pointing the finger at the
family saying because you were because
of my family
was like this or my experiences were
like this that i do this now
and then the family points and says well
if you weren’t doing what you were doing
then our family wouldn’t be like this
right so you get in sort of this
you get caught into this um this sort of
like
big thinking error where everybody
starts to blame everyone and
being able to pull people apart from
that and actually just sort of
own the fact that look everything the
system has been
sick you know like we actually have a
family that is ill
and within that we have all developed um
habits that are part of this family
disease
and being able to sort of go in then as
for as individuals and start to work on
their on that kind of finding that cure
and then looping that family back
together over time
is i’m i think that that’s uh it’s a
really simple way of explaining it
again a complex process but in order to
get out of that cycle of blame
and justification uh you really have to
pull things apart and then acknowledge
that look
we’re all sick you know and it’s not one
person’s fault
you know but the way that we exist
together is actually the sickness
so when i think to add to what you’re
saying too i think
oftentimes family members in our program
are then looking
to their family to heal the wounds right
with that blame comes the so then you
need with that blame comes
the need for let’s say a angry parent
to acknowledge the pain they caused for
the healing to occur that’s the drive
inside of people but
you know what i focus on in therapy is
that like
whether or not let’s say your angry
father acknowledges the damage they
cause like you get to heal from it
he’s not your healer you’re your healer
and because i do think that that
definitely happens particularly in
um child to parent relationships is
the children often are looking to their
parents for that healing or that
affirmation or whatever
and and teaching clients again not to
blame and not
but also not to try to get healing from
from the source of the problem
yeah doesn’t mean healing can’t come in
those areas but
they’re not the healer yeah
yeah absolutely yeah i think the it’s
it’s a it’s a challenge for families uh
going through this and by the time they
arrive at peaks it’s
it’s a fairly broken family system
in general especially those who’ve gone
you know through the ringer and i think
um just want to pass our love and
appreciation of families
who are all you know going through uh
addiction right now within their own
family system whether
there’s mental health association with
it and so forth and just remind them
that care is directional and that at the
beginning of
you know somebody coming into a program
like ours
it there’s a tenacity to it an attention
about it that
is certainly our jobs you know each and
every day to resolve and support them
on and just to know that you’re loved at
the end of the day
and that we care for you collectively as
much as we care for the individual who’s
in our program
um and um on behalf of our team here at
peaks
uh signing off i think again for our
fourth episode here
and uh just ecstatic to be here and
appreciate the opportunity to continue
to deliver this education and
information and hope you all enjoy it
until next time