The Unbreakable Boundaries Podcast

Dr. Rhoberta Shaler, PhD, The Relationship Help Doctor, provides urgent and ongoing care for relationships in crisis. She helps people on the journey from recognizing to recovering and rebuilding after toxic relationships. Even the United States Marines have sought her help!
Dr. Shaler empowers the partners, exes, adult children, and co-workers of the relentlessly difficult, toxic people she calls Hijackals® to recognize emotional abuse, realize the effects, heal, and transform. 

She helps them see clearly, stop the crazy-making, and save their sanity.
Widely published and author of sixteen books including Escaping the Hijackal Trap and Stop! That’s Crazy-Making, she is the host of the internationally popular podcast: Save Your Sanity: Help for Toxic Relationships. Her YouTube channel, ForRelationshipHelp, has reached over a half million views.

WEBSITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA:

Website and Blog: ForRelationshipHelp.com
Podcast: SaveYourSanityPodcast.com
Facebook: @RelationshipHelpDoctor

Twitter: @RhobertaShaler

LinkedIn: @RhobertaShaler

Pinterest: @RhobertaShaler

Instagram: @DrRhobertaShaler

Clubhouse: @DrShaler

James Brown, struggled with sobriety his whole life He came from a partying family, he was abused as a child, traveled quite a bit. He had numerous DWIs, lost a home due to a fire, was stabbed by ex wife, which is the story we dive into right away. He spent 19 months in Alaskan prison for DWI and got sober and active in recovery for nearly 12 years.

He had a relapse due to pain and surgeries, got 2 more DWIs and finally made his way back to sobriety. When we are in active addiction, crazy things seem to follow us. In this episode we talk a lot about this crazy and you can go read more in his autobiography "The Lines On My Face"

You can get his book on Amazon Here "The Lines On My Face"

Recovery is messy, it can be awkward, weird, and totally worth it. It doesn't look the same for everyone and every family will have a different experience. In this episode, Brittany and I discuss, and not in a straight line, a lot of challenges and triumphs recovery has. Passion and finding joy for ourselves as part of our recovery is incredibly important and Brittany has found hers in podcasting and specifically her podcast called NiteCap: A podcast about true crime. I invite you to def check out her podcast.

Brittany Brown is a thirty-something single mom, trying her best in Portland, OR. When she isn't watching The Office, wrangling her two children, or rescuing cats, she’s chatting on her weekly podcast Nitecap True Crime. Brittany also continues to help fight the stigma of addiction and mental health by sharing her struggles and triumphs.

Enjoy this fantastic episode. 

Podcast: linktr.ee/nitecaptruecrime
Instagram: @brittanywontshutup

Jared Diehl is from La Verne, California and has been dealing with mental illness his whole life but has spent the last 15 years managing bipolar depression and anxiety. He also has been a suicide survivor. Out of the suffering has come a message. A message of hope for those that feel like they are alone. Jared works with the National Alliance of Mental Illness as a speaker. He helps reduce stigma by sharing his own story and how he copes with mental illness. He also has a podcast on mental health called Louder Now. For fun, he likes movies, hockey, and writing poetry.
 
 Additional Links
 https://linktr.ee/loudernowmhjareddiehl

Podcast website:
https://www.podpage.com/jared-diehl-the-louder-now-podcast/

In this next episode I am interviewing a gentleman named Sean Owens. He currently has almost 7 years clean and he loves his recovery lifestyle. In this episode, we discuss how he got to where he is at today. 

Sean had a rough childhood growing up with a father who was addicted to drugs. His mom worked 3 jobs to raise three kids and moved around 21 times before he was 18.  

I moved around a lot myself and I know the impacts it had on me as a kid but I can’t imagine 21 moves.  

Sean also had a brother who was verbally and physically abusive to him and sean did the only thing he knew to do, turn to drugs at the young age of 11. By the time he turned 21 he was drinking daily, using cocaine and spent his time in bars. 

He was whoever you wanted him to be, the chameleon effect we do so well that leaves us empty and disconnected. SO the deeper he went into his drug addiction and he evolved into opiates and was completely addicted by 22. 

Beaten and desperate at 25 he turned himself into jail and from there, he went to a state funded called the men’s extension for homeless men that suffer with addiction. He stayed there for a year, he did everything they asked of him and he stayed clean. 

Once he got out of there, he started his own journey of becoming and addiction counselor, worked at several facilities and found a mentor he learned a great deal from. After a while, he  began to receive promotions and better job opportunities and even found himself in business development for a big treatment center. 

Now, he started his own coaching and consulting business called all heart consulting and coaching which you can find at allheartconsultingandcoaching.com

In this episode, you can hear how much Sean loves recovery and loves what he is doing with his life now.

Contact Information:
Website: https://allheartconsultingandcoaching.com/
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/AllHeartRecovery/
Instagram- @seanowen8
Phone Number: 770-912-4699

Polly Jessen is a person in long term recovery. She was born and raised in Kingsport, TN and currently works in Johnson City, TN at Frontier Health as a Recovery Navigator for Crisis Services. She struggled through active addiction for 8 years of her life and Is  grateful to say that today she has over 8 years of consecutive recovery time. She was one of the first Tennessee Recovery Navigators since the program began in 2018 and her day consists of meeting with and assessing overdose victims in area hospitals and those who are seeking substance use and mental health resources. She enjoys actively finding ways to help decrease the stigma of addiction in her community and helping others to meet their individual goals and define what recovery means for themselves. She is blessed to also have an amazing wife and 2 wonderful children who always keep her motivated and humble. If you are looking for resources for your loved one, check out Frontier Health.

Stacy is a 37 year old person in long term recovery. In this episode we talk about how she was born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia where she fumbled through life the best way she knew how. Her family was along for the ride. After many years of doing everything they could to try to curb the behaviors and the substance use, they were left with no other option but to let go and live their lives waiting for the day that the phone would ring or someone one would come to the door to let them know that Stacy had lost her battle with the disease. 

Today Stacy is a person in long term recovery, a wife, and a mother to two incredible, yet challenging, children. She is still perfectly capable of living an unmanageable life, but those moments of unmanageability are much fewer and farther between as we discuss.

Andrew  found out his mom was an alcoholic when he was around 12.  In this episode we talked about how he has been affected by his mom's addiction, and some of the resources he uses to cope. 

He has some great coping strategies and resources he shared with us in this episode that will benefit a lot of other families out there that are experiencing having loved ones with substance abuse issues. 

But he is more than just an adult child of an alcoholic. He is also a mechanical engineer working in the medical device industry. He leads a sober lifestyle, and attends weekly Al-Anon support groups for family members of alcoholics. He is also an avid rock climber and ice hockey player

In her late 20’s, Bekah could not stand to look in the mirror. She couldn’t stand to look her loved ones in the eye and see their disappointment. After nearly ten years of being broken with addiction, she had the sudden revelation that if she continued the way she was going, her life would surely end.  She had destroyed her relationships with her family, and  shamefully avoided all her friends that mattered most.

She went into a wilderness therapeutic program for just shy of 90 days. At around two weeks in, she began to love the things that once brought her joy. These things were hard to discover, because they had been gone for so long. Her sober living aftercare protected all that she learned in treatment. 

Since 2010, she has been sober and getting back what addiction took away from her. She has worked in the recovery field in many areas, including direct care at multiple primary treatment programs, bedside in a psychiatric unit as a certified nursing assistant, and more recently working with clients and families as an admissions counselor for a young adult program.

Her life now is something she would have only dreamed of having years ago. The rewards of her recovery keep coming daily. She now shares her wisdom and supports young women finding their own path of recovery through  Ember Lodge.

Learn more about Ember Lodge Here

Dr. Meadows is an Honors graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and studied at Duke University. He later held faculty positions at both institutions. He was recognized internationally for his work in cancer research, receiving both grants and awards; he authored numerous scientific articles. He was designated a Clinical Investigator of the National Cancer Institute.

His recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol began May 7, 1997. Since then, he has counseled a large number of addicts and alcoholics striving to get clean and sober. His observations and study over the last 20+ years form the basis for A SPIRITUAL PATHWAY TO RECOVERY FROM ADDICTION, A PHYSICIAN'S JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY.

“I woke up on my 49th birthday and realized that I was addicted to drugs and alcohol and that my life was spinning wildly out of control. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop. Some days I wanted passionately to quit and some days I just didn't care. I had reached a point where I could no longer use and live. It was either quit or die, and then something happened.  I found recovery.”

He and his wife live on a hobby farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  In the barnyard, you will find 2 sheep, 3 alpacas, 1 donkey, and numerous birds including turkeys, ducks, geese, and a bunch of chickens.  An organic garden sits nearby.  He is an avid photographer and plays bluegrass guitar. 

Website devoted to Lin's book

https://www.spiritualpathwaytorecovery.com/

Lin's blog

https://www.spiritualpathwaytorecovery.com/lins-recovery-blog

Lin's website devoted to addiction and its treatment 

https://www.theanswerisrecovery.com/ 

SOCIAL

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https://twitter.com/meadowslin

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