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Learning to Live and Love Differently · Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

• 0:07
  Speaker A: Welcome to Emotional Sobriety, the next step in Recovery, with Dr. Alan Berger and Tom Rutledge. I'm always lightly agitated. Yeah, my agitation level goes from light to moderate to. It doesn't get too severe, usually because I just kind of adjust the circumstances to prevent it from getting to that. I'm here this morning with Alan, and today we're going to talk about emotional sobriety, teaching us to live and love differently. We've missed you, man.
• 0:40
  Speaker B: Thanks, man. It's nice to be back. This has been a really busy summer for me, exceptionally so. And September is going to be an incredibly. The rest of. Once we get into September, September is going to be really crazy. I've got so many lectures and workshops and stuff scheduled. I'm not complaining. I'm really excited about it, to tell you the truth. But there's just a lot on my plate at this point. But it's great to be back. We hear all the time how people are really looking forward to hearing our discussion. A lot of people will start their day with our podcast, Patrick, and really try to kick it off in the right direction. So that really warms my heart to hear that, you know, we're making a difference, man, as maybe just a little difference, but we're contributing to this world being a better place. So thank you for your. Your commitment to this podcast. You've been steadfast in terms of doing it, and I'm so happy about what we've created. So thank you.
• 1:52
  Speaker A: Well, you're welcome, Alan. You know what that tells me when you say how busy you've been is these times need emotional sobriety.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: That's part of what happens, man, is that I really believe that you can tell the value of what somebody's doing, whether it's a therapist or someone else that's. That's presenting and advocating a certain philosophy or position by whether or not they're living that philosophy themselves. Are they an example of it? And I hope more than anything, if somebody followed me through my life, you've had a chance to do that. I'm Alan Berger, and it's pretty seamless. My life, who I am is. And when I work with people is who I am when I show up with my kids. And although they yell and say, dad, I don't want to do therapy right now.
• 2:47
  Speaker A: No, you know, it's what I. Allen, it's what I aspire to as a man, as a person. You know, it's you. It's a couple key people in my life, but I look to their lives as examples and they are, they have that sense that you're describing of like an undividedness, like an uncompartmentalized, like authenticity. You know, it's a one to one relationship across the board.
• 3:16
  Speaker B: You're not, you know, the word that describes that for me and what I've seen In people like Dr. Kempler was my mentor is congruence.
• 3:25
  Speaker A: That, congruence.
• 3:27
  Speaker B: What they say is what they do and their life is congruent. That you know, that they, they really, you know where they stand. They represent where they stand. There's no games being played. They're very authentic. They're very real. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it is a result of a lot of work. There's no question about it. And look, the nutshell wisdom for today is emotional sobriety is learning to live and love differently. That's what we're talking about today. And you know, what we're going to focus on today is acceptance. Because we cannot transform something that we refuse to see. And that becomes such an important issue here is that, you know, one of the things that's true for all of us is that there are things that we call it selective inattention. There are things that we don't want to look at and so we will not pay attention to it. And what we won't look at are those things that would make us see how incongruent we are. So we're going to tie it to what we talked about just a minute ago, the way our minds work is. I won't see things that don't fit with my idea of myself. And this is where being open minded becomes so important in our recovery, is being open to I might not be who I think I am. And see, that's a big pill to swallow is to be willing to look at the way I like to say it is, who we're not. And I say this all the time, that only the best in us can see the worst in us. Right? But it really does take that commitment. I am committed to being honest and authentic not only with you, but with myself. Because it's got to begin with me. Because I can't be honest and authentic with you if I'm not doing that with myself. So like for me, it took a long time for me to see my emotional dependency. I did not want to look at that. It did not fit my idea of what it meant to be a man. Men were independent. I was a U.S. marine. It just did not fit the picture of who I wanted to be. And so when I first got exposed to Bill's letter, he was talking about dependency. I rejected it. I didn't like the letter at all. How things change, right? And now it's like that letter is. Is like my Bible in some way. Yeah.
• 6:13
  Speaker A: All right. Well, it's like, you know, this is a much more primitive example, but it's like how much I disliked AA meetings when I first started attending them because I. I felt. I felt. I. It's because I did relate to what they were talking about, and I. And I wanted to disavow that. And now I love. Now I love them. Now I love them.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: So that's the same thing that happened to me, is, see as I got some humility, which meant that I was willing to see the gaps in my existence, right? Able to look at myself more honestly. I was able to own some of the things that I rejected about myself before. And that's when I started to grow up, is when I could own that, hey, I am emotionally dependent. I am looking to other people for validation. I respond when people don't do what I want them to do, I get angry and upset about it. I mean, when I started to really take a look at that and inventory it, I realized how much my life was riddled with it. So when we come to learning to live differently, acceptance becomes such a key part of it, Patrick. And acceptance is not approval. It's not that I'm approving of what I'm doing. It's not giving up. It's not passivity. Acceptance is seeing reality clearly enough to respond wisely. Let me say that again. Acceptance is seeing reality clearly enough to respond wisely. Wow. What a difference. Right now I want to respond wisely. I'm not responding to protect my, quote, ego, right? And to protect my false pride. I'm responding to become what I can be. What a difference, man. And that's learning to live and love differently is now, in terms of my relationship with myself, it changes. I'm more committed to today, to being honest with myself, to owning my mistakes, seeing my gaps in knowledge, seeing where I'm still emotionally immature, taking responsibility for how I'm behaving. All of that stuff is much more available to me today than it's ever been.
• 8:35
  Speaker A: Well, right. Well, you know, defending an idea of who we are, you know, or rather than standing behind who you actually are, you know, it's a. It's like building on quicksand, you know, it's. It's not a sustainable model.
• 8:51
  Speaker B: It's well said. It's well said. I use an analogy in 12 essential insights. It's like building your home on somebody else's land. Right? It's like, why would you do that? I mean, it's not yours. You know, it's not yours at the foundation is somebody else's.
• 9:11
  Speaker A: You know, Tom, Tom has talked about. He brought up an example that really resonated with me about when he was arguing with his, like, I think maybe his ex wife or like his partners in the past. And he would just be so terrified of, like, feeling that his point, that his point was not understood or kind of like if he didn't get the agreement of the, you know, woman he was fighting with, you know, then he would just flip out and, you know,
• 9:35
  Speaker B: he didn't validate it.
• 9:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, right, Right. And I, and I had the same thing. And, you know, what I was really doing was, you know, needing that idea of who I was to myself to be validated. And if it was not, you know, then I felt like my entire person was under threat. And that's something that's, you know, I've made a lot of progress on over the years. Thank God.
• 10:01
  Speaker B: Thank God. Yeah. So this, you know, I, I, I'm so excited because, you know, understanding, like, the role that acceptance plays in living, you know, and, and a practice of emotional sobriety, you know, are, are the things that get revealed to us as we start to really dig into what is emotional sobriety? How do I live differently? What does it look like? And acceptance is such a key to the practice of emotional sobriety. You know, like I said, we can't transform something we refuse to see something we refuse to take responsibility for. And it's back to this whole idea of the understanding of that change is paradoxical. As soon as I own what the truth is now change becomes possible. But when I try to be something I'm not, I spin my wheels. I don't go anywhere. I stay stuck.
• 11:02
  Speaker A: It's just such a paradox. It's like, you know, how to get over that hill? You, you begin with that you can't do the hill or, you know, or that you're, you're. How do you deal with your fear about something? You know, is it you first have to, like, fully accept and own just how afraid you are.
• 11:20
  Speaker B: And that's the first step, right? We take that. I'm really, I don't want to admit how afraid I am. See, that's the first step. People try to jump over that one. But what you do is you own your Resistance. And that becomes a really important part of this whole thing that we're talking about in terms of recovery, is owning our resistance. And that becomes very, very important.
• 11:43
  Speaker A: It was like it was years of being told before that the gears started to move inside me. And I guess people call that a spiritual experience or some kind of, you know, some spiritual change. Maybe that's what it was for me. I don't know. But it took a while. But then when it did, I started to see everything differently.
• 12:02
  Speaker B: I hear you, man. That's. That's the. That is. That is the process that we go through, isn't it, as we grow in recovery?
• 12:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Speaker B: And I like to think of it that way. I think of recovery as a people grower. It really helps us grow up, man. Functional sobriety really is about growing up. It's really about, you know, re engaging, reigniting our developmental process and getting back on that track right up of our development. Because I really do believe that our problems are created when we decide that. Well, not when we decide when we grow to the level that that is possible given the circumstances that we're in. And which means, to me, that we are stuck at a certain level. And, you know, we're stuck at this level of emotional dependency. It's this level of still depending on our environment for support. And with that comes all kinds of things like making it all about us, our personal importance. Right. Focusing on what we have, materialism. All of these things conspire to create a real impasse in our development. What a journey this has been, man. How long? You've got. How many years now?
• 13:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, eight years. Eight years of sobriety.
• 13:19
  Speaker B: I've known you for eight years.
• 13:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, that whole thing about how smell is connected to our sense of smell? It passes through the hippocampus in our brain, which is where our memories live. And so, like, our smell, smell awakens memories. I went to an old client's house, somebody I used to work for when I was, like, deep in my addiction. And I. We're kind of coming back into each other's orbit to do some work together at this point in time. But I drove all the way down to San Pedro to her house, and walked through the door. And I hadn't been there in 10 years. So if you do the math, I've been sober for eight years. I haven't been to her house in 10. So I walk through the door, and there's, like, an incense or there's, like, a smell in that house that immediately takes me back to, like, addict Times I'm just like, oh, yeah, I remember I would often be just quaking because I was recovering off of a binge or whatever, you know, when I was walking through the door. And. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's. You can. I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate to this is like. There is like a. A palpable sensation, you know, there's a difference, you know, like our. The way we were back then and the way we are today. There's like a real. There's a real difference, you know, you could feel it. And anyway, I just got a little bit of a. I got a real, I guess, like, visceral memory of, like, what it was like to walk in those shoes. And I didn't like it, you know, but at the same time, I. Because of the kind of work we do together, you know, I was able to kind of process that later and look at, like, wow. Look at that as a positive. Like, look at how far I've come, you know, like, I get to walk through those doors now in my right mind. And, you know. Oh, and. And I made it. I. In the intervening years, by the way, I made an. Amends to her for, you know, not doing my work well because I was, you know, like that. And that's good.
• 15:19
  Speaker B: That's cool.
• 15:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker B: You know, this show segues nuts into next week's show, which is going to be. We're going to be talking to Dan Furlough, who just published a book. We just wrote a book, and it's been recently published called Sincerely Delusional. And it's about waking up and acceptance. Right. And starting to be honest with yourself. So, you know, please tune in next week and listen to Dan's discussion of what happened to him when he was going into Divided sky and the experience he had because it really was a. Was a spiritual experience for him.
• 16:03
  Speaker C: Working Night to Fly,
• 16:07
  Speaker A: we were all. It's funny. Yeah. Like, when Dolly passed away, I mean, we're all remembering our favorite moments and songs and everything like that. But, yeah, like, for working people, you know, that's a. Just a jolly anthem.
• 16:20
  Speaker C: That death hit me, like, really hit me hard.
• 16:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think the only. The only, like, celebrity death I can even compare it to is maybe like, Robin Williams and that.
• 16:32
  Speaker C: Me too.
• 16:33
  Speaker A: That I think they're these avatars for, like, benevolence. That. Yeah. That there's just something kind of, like, essential about the human spirit that they embodied. And for her, it was charity and, you know, decency. And I get I get the sense that she was like, she would hang with everybody and that she was very like, you know, non judgmental and.
• 17:01
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 17:02
  Speaker A: And also kind of like with American politics and everything and you know, in culture war and like that. She's kind of one of the last who like everybody, you know, can still, could still hang with that like, you know, what didn't really. Wasn't really claimed exclusively by one tribe or the other in the two Americas.
• 17:26
  Speaker C: She has inspired me. I'm launching after this. I'm going to send the announcement out. I'm going to do a weekly book study on nonviolent communication and say it was inspired by Dolly Parton, Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Marshall Rosenberg and others who learned to communicate well without judgment. If we can all agree we love Dolly, we have more.
• 17:59
  Speaker A: That's the. Yeah, that's like the poll. It's the one question poll to get into the group.
• 18:04
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So
• 18:08
  Speaker A: I love it, by the way. I love it.
• 18:10
  Speaker C: Thank you. The thing is, I learned in my profession how to listen with non judgment because I observed that when I held judgment, because 93% of communication is non verbal. I told on myself one way or the other. Whether it came out of my mouth or it was in my body language or in my tone, some way people could still read how I felt. And I had to really empty my consciousness of as much bias and judgment as I could to be effective. So I learned how to do that really well and I became very safe for my dealers and consumers. But when it comes to politics, not so much. So I've got some growing to do. That doesn't mean I have to agree with everyone, but I do know how to hold space with unconditional positive regard. I do know that I make assumptions and have biases without finding out why someone feels like they do or what's going on with them. And I'm not suggesting that every time someone's different, I need to go find out why different from me. Go find out why. That's none of my business really. But it's also none of my business to assume that I know their position without inquiring. So I see room to grow in me and kind of tidy that up. If I can do it in one place, I better figure out how to do it in other places to live my values. But anyway, that's just where my head's been at the last few days.
• 19:55
  Speaker A: Well, I love it. I mean, because you've already. You're already doing it, you know, and you're doing it pretty Effectively. Alan's theme for this week is learning to live and love differently. And I thought that each of us could just kind of answer. I mean, the demarcation point for me in emotional sobriety is really just my, my physical sobriety because I was already working with Alan at that point and reading his book. So from like the moment I went into rehab and I kind of like started to force feed myself 12 steps and, you know, all these, you know, new principles filling the vacuum where my old horrible life was. I was already kind of starting to wrap my head around these, you know, ideas that I was addicted to dependence and that I had these unenforceable rules and unreasonable expectations that I was placing on people, places and things, and that, you know, was underlying a lot of my other addictions. But, you know, it's been a process of waking up and then waking up and then waking up, you know, like levels of kind of understanding these principles more and more intimately. And so there's just so many differences. And I can throw out some examples of kind of like some things I've walked through recently, living and loving that are just like a 180 degree difference from, you know, my, I'll just put in air quotes, emotionally unsober period of life. You know, as well as I, that there's no like, you know, reaching the mountaintop and then just hanging there. You know, like, we've got to work for it, we've got to fight for it every day. You know, I. There's. I'm always running the risk of slipping back down and kind of like, you know, getting pretty damn emotionally unsober. But, but it's. There's a difference. Life is different. And I do live in love differently today. But I'm gonna make you go first.
• 22:02
  Speaker C: Okay. Well, actually, I wanted to ask you. And I can do it now or save it for. In a minute, but I'm. I'm curious about how you feel living and loving differently. How does that feel?
• 22:17
  Speaker A: I feel. I feel like I'm able to conduct myself with a lot more integrity. I feel. I feel like I'm a lot kinder to myself and. And as a result, I'm able to be a lot more truthful to other people. And then by virtue of being more truthful, I'm a lot kinder to others. And I think. And that feels good. You know, that makes me feel right with myself and right with the universe. I'm involved with things now that have a real kind of spiritual value to me. And you just can't put a Price on that.
• 22:58
  Speaker C: I really am glad you're one of my friends.
• 23:01
  Speaker A: Oh, I'm so glad you're one of my friends. I gotta thank you for hanging on over all these years. I could be a little bit of a prickly pear sometimes, so thank you.
• 23:09
  Speaker C: Who can't? Great. Thank you for hanging in with me.
• 23:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. How about you?
• 23:15
  Speaker C: Yeah. Living and loving. I have one of my little lines of before and after would be 1987. I was profoundly depressed and I went to treatment at the Meadows in Arizona for six weeks for depression and codependency. And while I was there, I learned a new language. I can't say, as you mentioned, there is no mountaintop. We get to. And it's like one and done. We climbed it. Okay, next. If that doesn't happen. But I achieved a certain level of growth that surprised me in a short period of time that I found very helpful. Because when I came home, I was using different language. At first. My daughter, who was 12 at the time, was angry and was saying, where is my mother? What did you do with my mother? You're talking to me differently. She didn't trust it. I don't blame her. She didn't trust peaceful language, clearer language, more owned language, a calmer mother. But it didn't take very long for us to learn that new language together. And I often consider my relationship with my daughter to be the most successful relationship I've had in my life. And it was very consciously chosen to give her space to be. To give me space to be. We respect and trust each other today. And I could not have done that without the experience of learning a new way of being at the Meadows and then continuing to dedicate myself to my own personal growth, which includes the last six years at emotional sobriety. I, too, feel more authentic. I am less afraid to be me in the world. I am moving. I have made a huge shift in the last few months into self support from looking for others to define me and tell me. I don't know. Look. Look outside me to see how the day was going to be. I actually said in a workshop Saturday that I recently fell in love with myself. And that's true. I had a flood in my house this spring, and it was very traumatic and kind of knocked me off kilter. But I had the gift of facing a collection of clutter that represented a lot of different things I had not addressed in my life. And I had the opportunity with this crisis to face them and make decisions. Okay, is this going to stay in my life? Am I going To. I mean, I was processing in the garage as I touched each item where I was deciding, am I going to keep it, donate or trash it? And I. I feel like I processed 75 years worth of junk internally. And I could see as I collected all these deferred engagements, finished wrapping up subjects, how hard I had been on myself and how poorly I was treating myself to carry all of this stuff. And in letting it go, I'm. I'm finding I. I'm having an abnormal amount of joy every day. I mean, it's just cracking me up because I wake up happy. I find purpose. I have found my sense of industry again. I have little things I want to do around the house that I. I didn't give myself emotional room to move and before. So right now, I'm hearing from the big book, happy, joyous, and free. That's how I'm feeling right now.
• 27:37
  Speaker A: How much stuff was it? I just want to get a sense of the physical dimension that you were able to let go of after the flood.
• 27:44
  Speaker C: Okay. I hired a big truck to get the biggest. One of those big, great, great. I don't know how many yards, but it was their. It was a pretty big hauler that got filled with furniture. I was saying goodbye to so much there. I got rid of. I'm sitting in my new library. This is my.
• 28:09
  Speaker A: I was going to say it looks really cool. I love how. Or, you know, I mean, I've got a shelf behind me. I've got. I'm in the process of moving, but yours looks really beautiful and tidy.
• 28:18
  Speaker C: Well, it's. I haven't decorated it yet, but books are up, and I probably gave this many away. So I had. I had a lot of books. I probably am down to about, I don't know, a tenth of the clothing that I had. Just years and years of clothes. My daughter told me before the flood, she called me one day and said, mom, I just read the coolest book. It's called I Don't Want your. And I said, really? She said, yeah, it's a real book. It's really cool. I said, message received. Well, then when I went through this process stuff, she called me and she said, but I do want your kitchen. You've got some really cool kitchen.
• 29:10
  Speaker A: Like, oh, okay. Just to complicate things a little bit.
• 29:12
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So I got rid of a lot of things that are not realistic for supporting a household of one. I got rid of the thing I used to cook Thanksgiving turkey in. And, you know, I gave a lot of things to Becky and My granddaughter to set up their kitchens with super cubes. I had more super cubes than I need.
• 29:36
  Speaker A: That kind of stuff from Shark Tank, the super cubes.
• 29:39
  Speaker C: I love super cubes.
• 29:40
  Speaker A: Oh, super cubes. Yeah, those. That's a good product.
• 29:43
  Speaker C: You're wonderful. And one of the things.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Shout out to Mark Cuban.
• 29:48
  Speaker C: Exactly. And so one of the things that I'm learning too is, okay, I got rid of it. Fight the urge to replace it, whatever it is.
• 29:59
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 30:00
  Speaker C: And so I have the information. I have some sort of objective information about what I was doing. So when I see the desire to do that again, I can sort of go, oh, check engine lights on. Let's take a look at this. Okay. I've been there, done that. How else could I manage this moment without buying something new? And I'm working through stuff. I had gotten rid of a great big coffee table dolly book that I was gifted by my step, great step granddaughter, Dolly Parton. Yeah. Before she passed. Of course. When she passed, I started grieving the book.
• 30:45
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I've been through things like that.
• 30:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So. But I had to look at a lot of the stuff I had. So I'm back to, back to your question about dimension. It's this sort of stuff I got rid of. I had so much stuff, it was hard to see a sense of organization.
• 31:09
  Speaker A: It really was surplus. I mean, you could recognize.
• 31:13
  Speaker C: Yeah, I donated so much good stuff to people who can use it. Let's say that a lot of really good stuff that I don't need, one person does not need. How many beds can I make when one person is sleeping here? I don't need, you know, lots of different sheet sets. And I actually shut down. I don't have a guest room here now. If someone wants to come and visit from out of town, I'm going to pay for their room at the Best Western because I now have an office, a bedroom and a library. And I'm enjoying it for me. But I got rid of a lot, a lot. My kitchen cupboards. You open them and it's not wondering what's going to jump out and hit you first. You see a lot of empty space and a few things and I've never seen a kitchen like that before.
• 32:11
  Speaker A: Happy, joyous and free.
• 32:13
  Speaker C: Yes, yes. And there were stories, there were traumatic stories with all of it that I had. So a lot of it was deferred feeling. It was like alcohol or drugs or the overworking I used to do. Alcohol and drugs were not a challenge for me, but overworking was. I was always Running from, finishing up, tidying up, trauma. And again, that's. There's no mountaintop in that either. It's not you. Okay. I've managed this trauma, but bringing it along with my growth. I, I had parked it and, and anchored it to objects and I cried a river letting this stuff go. And it wasn't about the stuff. It was about the stories that were attached.
• 33:09
  Speaker A: I, I just. A couple, A couple little, you know, chestnuts, nutshells come to mind. Just thinking about your story here. It's. It's what? It's Alan and Tom always talking about how we're inexorably moving towards wholeness.
• 33:23
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 33:24
  Speaker A: And then, of course, sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I just feel like when the flood happened, did the. And you were managing that. On the other side of that, did the thought that, like, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to jettison all this stuff, did it come to you kind of like a lightning bolt? Was it all at once or was it just kind of something that you, like, arrived at practically?
• 33:48
  Speaker C: No. I was in freeze for three days, shaking and sobbing. Once I moved from freeze to. I mean, there. You have to have action in an emergency like that. Once I moved into action. My practice has been, in many ways converting whatever was going on into something positive. I just had a pile up of so many things in the 2000s, from caregiving to an assault to some troubling people living in my home. A couple of times, so many things had stacked up that I hadn't finished. But I'd say once I got out of freeze after three days, I realized this was an opportunity. And I went into it sobbing and kicking and screaming, but knowing this was where I was supposed to be and that it was a gift. And I have. There's one thing about being old that's helpful, too. I have the experience that things will work out, things will eventually be okay, that I have the resources to make this what I need it to be. I'm not going to waste my. This trauma and stress just for grins. It's gonna wring every drop of meaning out of it. I can.
• 35:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm gonna put it to work. Right. It's like make, make, make lemonade out of it.
• 35:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 35:15
  Speaker C: And I. And I was blessed to find a trauma informed organizer whose mother had had the same behavior. And she understands intimately what's going on. So she would hear me say something, and she could hear that I was making an assumption that I hadn't challenged. And she would say, do you Mind clarifying what you just said? I'm confused. And she'd make me think about it. And so I had to get really honest with myself every step of the way. I'm forever thankful to her for her gift. And there aren't many people like her in the world.
• 35:58
  Speaker A: I was going to say that's a really. I love that specialization because I'll just divulge a little bit like my mom's. She holds on to a lot of things. You know, that's something she struggles with. And I think I could see somebody like that being, you know, an asset to her at some point when she's ready.
• 36:14
  Speaker C: It's incredible because all I do now is tidy up and organize and because it's fun.
• 36:23
  Speaker A: But I. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yesterday was so. I, I like cleaned my, my Air Jordans and I, you know, very therapeutically just scrubbed my.
• 36:32
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 36:33
  Speaker A: You know.
• 36:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker C: Oh, man, I did. I'm. I'm. After we're off the podcast, I'll send you a picture of my spices. I had so much fun alphabetizing and organizing them. I had them on carousels, but now they're in little boxes with A to F and G to G to O. And then, I mean, I, I'm just having fun. I'm having fun.
• 36:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, right on. And, and you know, what you said about like the cumulative effect of age and like, you know, just, you know, that's. You just like got more tricks and tools to bring to, you know, bring to the stage since you've been around for longer. I saw Dazed and Confused for the first time over the weekend, which is about amazing masterpiece. Like, I, I loved it so much. It's my first time seeing it about just like high school kids preparing for the transition to adulthood. And watching them, like, I was feeling like two things acutely is just like seeing how like resilient their bodies are and just how much they were like punishing themselves and just kind of, you know, those knees, you know, like, I, I look at knees a lot now because my knee is just like annihilated from the injury I had like a few years ago. And I just like, you know, wow, what it must be like to just run, to bound across the grass on those knees. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm always running that calculation. It's like, you know, would I trade if I could go back, right. If I could relive my youth, you know, but then I would lose all the, the hard fought experience. I've, I've gotten And, you know, all the things that have kind of, like, really helped me to survive and thrive today, you know, like, that's. That's the thing that you get with age. And I'm 40 and. And, you know, I feel like I'm just starting to kind of get the grass, get a grasp on all this.
• 38:33
  Speaker C: You just reminded me of an experience I had with my parents. We went on a little road trip maybe 25 years ago. We went to Biosphere 2 in Tucson. And one of the experiences we had was we were on a tour in the dome, and the guide said that the experiment was successful except for one thing. They had not factored in. And they observed that the trees would grow tall and then start bending over. They had not factored in wind. And wind pushes against an inner part of the bark that strengthens in the presence of wind. And without it, it won't grow tall. And my parents and I left with this sense of wonder that all of the challenges we have in our lives are growing our trunk strength. And it happens in nature. It's not just in us. And it was really kind of moving.
• 39:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think one way that I look at my drinking and using for so many years is I was trying to maintain this amniotic sac around myself where, like, I wouldn't. I was not growing because I wasn't allowing myself to meet that distress. And then to let the distress kind of strengthen me in moving through it and kind of. And learning, you know, from. It's when you're just pouring alcohol over everything, you know, you're not really, like, taking any lessons. You know, you're not really, like, coming into contact with, you know, the stuff of life.
• 40:25
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's scary.
• 40:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a. There's a practical aspect to it, but it's. It's. It's just that one of those, like, life paradoxes, you know, it's like, to grow, to heal, you know, you actually have to. You have to agitate yourself. You have to kind of, like, be in contact with the things that are unpleasant or challenging.
• 40:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's like reading a book about running won't help me be a runner. Putting my feet on the pavement. Well, yeah, and I'm not a runner, so I'm not. I'm not aspiring to be that or representing that I am. But that's an example. And that's one thing I came out of after treatment, too, recognizing I was very protective as a mom and recognizing that my daughter needed room to skin her knees. And that while I didn't want her to ever skin or knees, that was part of growth. And I could not stand between her and life. And so I really changed in giving her plenty of room to breathe and trusting her process of growth. So that's another sort of before and after for me in emotional sobriety was. That was actually part of my codependency recovery. And one of the jokes we heard at the Meadows was, how do you know if you're codependent, if you're dying and somebody else's life flashes before your eyes?
• 42:00
  Speaker A: That's amazing. Yeah, because I'm.
• 42:03
  Speaker B: I'm.
• 42:03
  Speaker A: I'm a codependent, too. What's it? Melanie Beatty.
• 42:07
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 42:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. My sponsor got me that book, and I was trying to extricate myself from a bad relationship a few years ago. And, you know, that's just. It's so funny. It's like, oh, oh, great. Another addiction. There's just so many.
• 42:24
  Speaker C: Well, I think that's part of our emotional sobriety. I think they're hand in hand because it underlies, to me, just from my observation, most addictions. I think there's an element of codependency. And as I hear this out loud, I'm even thinking codependency with myself because I was keeping myself in that bubble you talked about, that protective bubble, sort of enabling and over caretaking myself to insulate myself from the reality of this happened. It's okay to feel it now and get rid of the shrine to that event. And this happened, and it's okay to feel it now and get rid of that shrine to that event. I had to really prick the bubble, and I'd say I got rid of at least a third of what I had in my house. Honestly, that's.
• 43:21
  Speaker A: I mean, just clapping here, you know, that's fantastic. Yeah.
• 43:25
  Speaker C: I mean, I watched good furniture go out the door because I couldn't deal with having more stuff in my house. That's why there's no guest room. I just got rid of perfectly good bedroom furniture because stuff had to go. Stuff just had to go. And so I did it.
• 43:42
  Speaker A: Well, your example just slays. That's a good one for today. All I'll say is about living and loving. I mean, my relationship with my sister has repaired quite a bit from the way that it was. And I think my ability to be present and to be, as I said, you know, conduct myself with a lot more integrity than I used to. And, like, I think, you know, just going into the presence part, like, I was Always disappearing in the before times and that. And that, you know, is in my intimate relationships, and it was in my professional relationships, and I was just always kind of, like, sneaking out a back door because I just wasn't able to kind of, like, be with people. And as a result, I wasn't able to build anything with them. And I think, you know, my sister probably felt unsafe, and she felt that I was unreliable and. And I feel like I've addressed those over these. The past eight years. I've addressed that. And over time, just little by little, she lives in a different state. Um, so it's been. I've had. I haven't had the opportunity to really kind of like, work on that in person, but just through, you know, all. All the different ways that you kind of, like, try to stay close to people, you know, when they're not in town. And it's just over time, it's. You know, our relationship has come back to life, if it ever had life. Honestly. She's. We're kind of close in age, and I think we, like, fought a lot when we were growing up, and we never. We. I think we're closer now than we've ever been. And I'm going to visit her in a couple of weeks, Nashville, for her birthday weekend. And I'm really looking forward to it. And I think, like, you know, just the capacity to identify my part and her part and. And to really, like, see her as somebody that I love, that I'm not trying to get anything out of. Including. And this is a big, big. This is a big one. Including, like, how, you know, loving me or kind of, like, you know, showering me with any kind of adulation, approval, reinforcement of my stuff. It's like, no, it's. This is about as. Just hanging with my sister, who I love a lot, you know, and just appreciating her and all her differences and similarities for me. And, you know, I. I've always responded a lot, really powerfully to, like, when Alan and, you know, when. When the group talks about how in emotional sobriety, you actually are, like, it's the most genuine form of love, because it's like everything's given freely. You know, it's. It's not about what they can do for us. It's just about kind of, like, experiencing them. We're differentiated from each other. We're not codependent with each other. And so, you know, when we choose to kind of, like, really experience this other person and be with this other person, you know, it's just about Loving them for who they are, not for what they do for us.
• 47:09
  Speaker C: I keep hearing this is a gift we give ourselves and other people. What a gift you're giving your sister and what a gift you're giving you. It's wonderful.
• 47:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's a huge pain in the ass with work, with work, with work. Not nothing about her, but to find the time on the weekend to go see her. I. I've got to be a little bit of a ninja to, like, dude, make this trip happen, but I'm so happy to. To be able to do it. And, like. And I'm. I found myself saying last week when I was booking the ticket, I was just like, it, you know, if he fires me, if my boss fires me, if he needs me that weekend, you know, then I'm just. I guess I'm not doing that job anymore because I'm gonna go see her. And that's. And I kind of had a little charge to say that I was just like, you know, because that's what I believe in. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm doing this.
• 48:07
  Speaker C: You definitely matter. And when you're there, if you like hot chicken, Hattie B's is pretty darn good.
• 48:13
  Speaker A: It's called Hattie B's.
• 48:15
  Speaker C: Hattie B's. H, A T T I E, apostrophe, S, bees. Hot chicken.
• 48:22
  Speaker A: I love hot chicken.
• 48:23
  Speaker B: So.
• 48:23
  Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. I'd never had it till I was there and something said, go. And I did, and it was happen.
• 48:29
  Speaker A: Thank you, Carol, for making this happen.
• 48:32
  Speaker C: Thank you, Patrick.
• 48:33
  Speaker A: Hang. Hang with me a moment. Oh, I love you too. I love you too,
• 48:54
  Speaker B: Sam.