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Don't Stop Before You Even Start! · 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.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: How's going on with you?
• 0:16
  Speaker A: Lots. How about you, Carol? How you doing?
• 0:19
  Speaker C: Lots going on here. I'm dialing in from the motel starting week nine. In a motel?
• 0:27
  Speaker B: You own that motel. You own the motel by now, I would imagine, right?
• 0:32
  Speaker C: I do. And I'm going to be here probably another six weeks, and that's okay.
• 0:40
  Speaker B: Well, you're getting. Obviously you're getting stuff done now that
• 0:44
  Speaker C: I found my prefrontal cortex.
• 0:45
  Speaker B: I am. We all misplace it. I mean, it's like. It's really a lot like our car keys.
• 0:53
  Speaker C: It's just a love fest every day. It really is.
• 0:57
  Speaker B: Well, you sort of are love fest magnet. See, I'm. I'm. Now, see, that's why when we talk about being good people, it's like. Like I'm not a bad person, but basically, I don't want people to talk to me. And it's like, like, I mean, see, I mean, you, you. You're. You're so wide open to people like that. And I probably would never have even known that that would. That was even a possibility. So I think that's impressive.
• 1:21
  Speaker A: You're in a hotel or you've been on the. On the road for a while. Well, so what are the circumstances?
• 1:26
  Speaker C: I had a house flood, a pipe burst, a little water line burst and flooded four rooms.
• 1:36
  Speaker A: Wow. I'm sorry. That's intense.
• 1:39
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's been extremely intense, and it's one of the greatest teachers of my life. It's been a really remarkable experience. Excruciating at first, right? Yeah, kind of.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: No. But. Yeah. No, you're the. You're the. You're the poster child for positive opportunism. It's like, like, let's figure what we can do with this. And. And you've done it. It's like it's. And obviously today, to this day, you're still holding on to that, that attitude
• 2:09
  Speaker C: and I think learn so much. I've just been open for grace and I've gotten it in spades.
• 2:16
  Speaker A: One of your nutshells. I thought you sent a couple nutshells. Tom and I thought there was one that could be our appetizer and one that could be our main course. So the appetizer. Very tasty. When you want something, do you begin with a commitment to make it happen or a list of reasons that it probably won't? Obstacles will stop us sometimes, but don't be stopped before you even start.
• 2:39
  Speaker C: Well, that's beautiful.
• 2:40
  Speaker B: Spent my life doing that.
• 2:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I. Well, what brought. What brought you to that, Tom?
• 2:45
  Speaker B: Among other things, just a story of my early attempts at publishing. You know, it's like, you know, you know, here's what I want. This is what I'm going to get. It's like. But, you know, it's proud, you know, and just. And looking back with. With hindsight, you just look. Go like, oh, well, who was. Who is the major obstacle there? You know, it's like it wasn't that there weren't other obstacles, but it's. What. You just compare myself to Carol and the present tense. It's like. It's like she's got lots of obstacles there, but what has she done with them? Well, she's. She's just telling us that she's turned it into. After she had to do the hard work of getting slapped around, you know, by reality, then she goes, okay, well, I'll actually apply myself and learn from this challenge.
• 3:32
  Speaker A: It galvanizes some people, you know, really motivates them. And then others, it just paralyzes. And I think that it paralyzed me for a while and still does to an extent. But there, you know, there has been a shift over time, but certainly I resented the people that, like, saw challenges as motivation at one point in my life because that just wasn't happening for me.
• 3:56
  Speaker C: I froze for three days over this flood. I was completely shut down, had no access to executive function. I could not think my way through a conversation with the people that came to help remediate this flood. I did some work with Tom and I did some work with Carol, and I was able to move some of the obstacles out of the way so I could find my brain again. So freeze may be my natural go to for the rest of my life. I don't know if it is or not. I'll observe it and find out. I'd say the turnaround time is better. I know I have tools today that's better. But I think my natural state, what in. In a 911 is going to be freeze first.
• 4:47
  Speaker B: I don't think. I don't think our reflexes change that much. I mean, you know, it's. It's like I've got that. I've also got a reflex that just goes immediately to. To feeling. Feeling unfairly treated and pissed off. But see, the idea that we measure. Measure progress in response time, like you
• 5:06
  Speaker C: said, so it does get better, but we're still the same people.
• 5:10
  Speaker B: Oh, I love my neurosis. That's Why? I tell them. I told the client that yesterday. You know, don't be too quick to change too much about yourself. I said, I love my little neurotic self.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: No, I love that about you, Tom, is you allow amusement to come in. You know, it's not. And the amusement treats the bitterness. One of the most helpful things that I heard early in my recovery was about the 12 steps. And it's, do them. Do the steps first and then decide whether or not they work for you. I had issues with the God stuff. This was really great for me in not trying to do the steps early on that, oh, well, the steps aren't for everyone. And I'm like, oh, great. I can be part of the tranche of people that it doesn't work for. That means I don't have to do it. And, and, yeah, like, But I, I, I love this principle generally of just try it, fail it at first. That will be the barometer of whether or not it's working. Rather than this kind of speculative, I could just, I could just tell it's not going to work.
• 6:10
  Speaker B: Another way of saying it is just try it on. Don't just look at it on the rack. You know, just, you know, you may be surprised. Put that on, See, Wear it around for a little while. See what it feels like.
• 6:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. And about the publishing, Tom, because by now you've published several books. You know, I mean, you've done a lot of writing and that. And then what you're referring to, right, is like, there was a time in your life when you thought you weren't doing any of that. Right. And you just thought it wasn't going to happen for you.
• 6:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, I thought. Well, I thought initially, off and on, I would think it was never going to happen, but initially I just was waiting for it to happen. I was waiting. The way Everett described it, I was waiting to be discovered.
• 6:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I just wanted to throw in an example, and I think we may have talked about it a little bit on an earlier podcast, but just, I'm in this writer's group now, and so I'm doing 5,000 words a month. The project that I submitted last month, it's like a story idea I've had for years, maybe like as many as 10 years. It predates my sobriety date. And I'd always been holding off writing it because I thought, well, you know, for this idea, I just really need to be a better writer. Like, I just, I'm not a good enough writer to write this idea. I mean, like, because I would I don't know if you've ever had that, but you think of an idea and you're like, wow, I need, like, I need somebody really exceptional to do this because I'm just not smart enough and I don't have, like, the word, the vocabulary to be able to express this thing that's really complicated and like, and difficult. I know it could be cool, but I just don't know. I don't have the language for it. And I still. I think looking back at this draft, I have, like. I still don't quite have it, you know, but, like, I got a hell of a lot closer than I thought I would before I was even doing it. And I got a lot. I've gotten a lot of amazing support. That's one thing. Great thing about the writers group is, like, it's a very constructive, supportive group of other writers and we read each other's stuff and I've gotten a lot of really encouraging notes and compliments from people. But, yeah, now I've done it. Now I've gotten it down. Now maybe not the ideal writer has written this idea, but. But it's been written. And that's a hell of a lot more workable than just this. This completely unrealized potential that just lives in my brain that nobody will ever know about. Well, for as long as it's.
• 8:35
  Speaker B: I mean, I had a. I had a painter, an artist in my office yesterday, and, you know, talking about all the crazy, neurotic stuff that we do as artists, it's like. But one of the things that. That, you know, because he was going to get it just right, you know, it's a little bit like what you're talking about. I got to get this thing right. And, you know, and one of the things that we were talking about or I was suggesting to him is that what I. One of the things. And just sharing what I've learned is we, none of us, who. Who create this stuff are the judge. Need we. We. We need to disqualify ourselves as the judge of. Of how it is. I mean, we don't. Who. Who the hell. First of all, it may be shitty to me, and you may read it and think, this is very helpful. Thank you. If you're going to write a great book, you have to be right. You have to be willing to write a piece of shit. You know, by the way, I've said this to you before. It takes a lot of guts to do those writers group.
• 9:27
  Speaker A: It's a very sweet group of guys. I was. I met with One of them, yesterday we saw a movie. We saw a movie about art. We saw a movie called the Christophers. It's. Ian McKellen is in it and I haven't seen him in a film for a few years, but he plays like a cantankerous old painter who, you know, he hasn't like painted anything in like 20 years. And, and it's about him and his relationship with like a younger artist who, you know, they poke at each other to kind of like motivate each other to get things done. And, and anyway, it was like, I didn't really plan. There was no like secret meaning to us going to see this movie about like struggling painters. But it was, I realized there was a lot of resonance with the group that we're in. You know, on screen art is interactive
• 10:13
  Speaker C: and I'm having a relationship. When I'm reading a book, I'm having a relationship with the content. When I'm watching a movie, I'm having a relation, I'm talking to it mentally. There's a sublingual dialogue constantly going on. When I see art, I'm interacting with it myself. So you're right, Tom. It doesn't matter exactly how it's expressed. I bring myself. That's half the experience here. I'd like to put this back to you if you were the one to conceive of the idea. Don't you already contain everything you need? This is you.
• 10:50
  Speaker A: That's great insight, Carol. I. I got the most heart rending call from my friend yesterday who he's writing and he's writing his first screenplay and he read this book just randomly. He's like, he's an accountant and he's like an ex military guy. And you know, he's, he hasn't really primarily been a writer for much of his life, but he's just like, this will happen to like anybody at a certain season of their life where like he read this book and he was just like, it lit a fire in him and he's like, oh my God, I'm so inspired. This is, this would make such an amazing screenplay. And so he started, right, writing like obsessively, kind of like reading this thing and developing it and adapting it. And he would send me and I've been really busy so I haven't had as much face time to spend with him. But he just keeps emailing me, emailing me, emailing me like all this work he's been doing on. And positively manic on like this, this project. And then he called me late Last night, because he started reading a screenplay book or like a how. How to screenplay book that was like, depressing him because it had all this stuff in there, basically, like demotivating advice about, like, well, in the business, you've got to make sure that, you know, you do it this way and that way and, you know, you're never going to get it sold and whatnot. And, you know, essentially it's like kind of. It's a type of negative self talk that I. That I have done to myself that we've touched on a little bit so far, this conversation. And I basically. I told him a version of what you're telling me, Carol, which is that, like. No, that thing, that drive that you had, that. That's what's real. That's what's real. That's the thing. That's the only thing that will light a project.
• 12:36
  Speaker B: Right.
• 12:36
  Speaker C: And labels restrict the mind.
• 12:41
  Speaker A: The main course I was thinking we could talk about is. It's a big one. It's integrity matters most. Just bedrock. Right? And what came. What came up for me when I read this, Tom, is telling people what they don't want to hear or what I assume they don't want to hear. That's integrity, too. And I mean that differently. And I struggle with that. And I. But I. And I mean that differently than like, Dennis Leary, you know, like, I'm an asshole. You know, Tell it out. Tell it like it is. Yeah, yeah, because that's not what I'm. That's not what I'm getting at.
• 13:13
  Speaker B: But no, because that's still part of ego, by the way, because those of us who have assholism, if we're really honest about it, we're quite proud of ourselves. You know, I'm serious to this day. I mean, I'm not the. I'm not the I used to be, but. But if. If I tell stories about myself from the past, or I can still do it today, but especially stories in the past, I mean, I'm an. My ego gets really big, I go. Because I really said some clever things that really caused power problems and pissed people off and hurt people's feelings, you know, so it's like. Like, you know, that's not a good thing, but it's. It's like my ego is totally attached to it, right?
• 13:53
  Speaker A: And I think, like, I'm a people pleaser or codependent. There's different words for what I am, but, like, there are different words for what you are. There are different words. There are different words, but. But in the Long. If I, in the long view of history, if I could just find a way to be straight up with myself, with other people, that kind of foundation of integrity, even if it makes for some difficult conversations or it kind of creates like some complication early on that like it takes some work to extricate from it always ends up in a better place. If I can kind of like lead with integrity and hold to integrity. And this has become a lot easier. It's never easy, but it's become a lot easier. And so brought with sobriety, you know, because my brain isn't just soaked in chemicals. But yeah, that integrity.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Well we also, we change, we change our sources of self esteem. You know, I mean I use myself and what I just said as an example. So I'm telling you that basically still can happen. It's still happening inside of me somewhere. But there was a time in my life where I took a tremendous amount of self esteem from, from how I, how clever my assholism could be. Okay, that, that you know, and I, and I. But today the integrity is the self esteem that I choose and you know, and it's not. And I'll wander off to, to. It wasn't that, wasn't that funny how I said that to that guy and, and made him look like a fool. But you know, maybe I could feel something about that. But ultimately it's. Well that's what we always talk about with emotional sobriety. It's congruence. Do I know what my value system is and am I living as congruently with that as possible on a day to day basis? And anytime somebody says they're completely congruent with their value system, they need to go take a look again.
• 15:49
  Speaker A: Because not congruency takes work. Because we're always, I feel like there's always.
• 15:53
  Speaker B: It's a constant, we're never right on it. It's like it's, it's a constant where it's like I always, I use the example of like unicycle writing or, or tight wire walking. If you look at a tight wire walker, you know, they move in pretty straight ahead but if you look closely they're not, they're never standing still. They're going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Or we can even go to the example of our driving a car. You know, we think we, we don't just if we, you know, first of all, when we're little kids, when we play driving the car, we do this, you know, and it's like, like but, but, but the real thing is not just this. It's. We are blocked. Our unconscious mind is making adjustments constantly. And it's like, that's the way we want to be. Living with congruence. It's a dynamic process.
• 16:45
  Speaker A: Movie driving with rear projection. I'd love how they're just constantly. Cary Grant.
• 16:52
  Speaker B: Well, talk about. Talk about talking to the screen. It's like Danny and I both, you know, if somebody. Somebody is in a conversation in a car and they look away too long, we're going, look at the road.
• 17:06
  Speaker C: It's like, exactly. You know, that's interesting about integrity. That's part of what helped pull me out of freeze, because, golly, the emotional sobriety foundation that I've gotten has been wonderful. And so you can know when you're in alignment with yourself and when you're not. And you can start grabbing tools whether you know what it's going to look like or not. Just start grabbing tools and just do the deal one step at a time. And suddenly the clouds start parting and the sun starts coming back out. And it's just such a gift. I'm so grateful for, you know, well, over five years of emotional sobriety meetings, the group has just really given me some much stronger legs than I've ever had.
• 17:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, it difficult for me to ask for what I want. It's difficult for me to tell somebody I don't like what they're doing different. Difficult for me to establish a boundary. All these things flow from integrity. And with all three things, there's a way to do it with kindness. You know, there's a way to do it with compassion.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: Yes. My wife has a. Has a term she uses, positive guilt. And her definition of that is guilt that you feel when you're breaking rules that need to be broken. And so in order to change to what we were choosing, now we have to break a lot of rules. You know, it's like most of us have some version of a rule. Whatever you do, do not hurt somebody's feelings. In my rule changes is don't. Whatever you do, don't treat people disrespectfully. But I can be taking care of myself, doing what I need to do, and I can be being respectful and kind. And it might still hurt your feelings. The way we learned it or did, and I think probably all three of us did, is if somebody says they're hurt in response to us, then we have two choices. We can either get very defensive or we can feel very guilty because we've hurt them. But just because you say, see If Carol tells me that she. She's hurt in our connection, first, what I've learned is I'll say, well, tell me what that is. Tell me what happened. Because there's always a part, there's always a possibility, very real possibility that she's going to tell me a story about something we talked about recently. And I go like, oh, my. Go not. I didn't even realize I. How that sounded, or I apologize. That was. That that is not what I intended. And that, you know, or, you know, I really did step on you with that. But more often than not, these days, her feelings are hurt, and that's legitimate. But it's really just because I made a choice that, that, that, you know, doesn't. Doesn't jive for her. And then my, My choice is always not to go into ultra explanation. It's such a relief and such a weird thing to be still when I, If I, If I cancel something, for instance, just to say I'm not gonna be able to make it, little guy in my head is going, well, let's. Let's tell him how. What's wrong? You know, and the truth is somebody helped me with that because I said, if somebody canceled something on you, do you want to know everything about why they did that? They're like, no, I don't necessarily. I mean, maybe there's a circumstance I might go like, I'm worried about this person. I want to know what's happening that. But most of the time it's just like. And, And I'll just say this. I think I've. I finally discovered in therapy that that part of that is rooted in the fact that I'm telling the truth. If I sell you, I can't make it, and I'm not doing anything wrong. But for years and years in my addiction, I was always lying. I was, you know, I made excuses, I made up stuff, never felt guilty about it. And then for some reason after I got sober, you know, when I did that, I started to feel guilty even when I wasn't doing something wrong. So it's like, that's a lot. It's a complex mess in there.
• 20:56
  Speaker A: I had to cancel something just this upcoming weekend. There's a guy, a really sweet guy from my HBMs or sorry, from my AA group, who's always asking me to go on bike rides with him. And I would love to go on bike rides with him because we were talking one time and I was saying how the biking has been really good for my rehab on my leg, and, and we're gonna actually. We do, like, a retreat. My home group does a retreat every December in Malibu. And we were actually gonna. I've already. I made the resolution, so I'm gonna be doing this, but we're gonna ride a bike actually up to the retreat up Pacific Coast Highway. And so the idea, I think, was, you know, that we were gonna kind of, like, you know, prepare for this, or we're gonna, like, ease into that longer bike ride by taking a shorter one. Anyway, I just can't make it this upcoming weekend. And so I was wrestling over just telling him, like, I can't make it this weekend for, like, days. And then it just ended up being what you said, Tom. I just said, I can't make it. And he was like, oh, that's fine. We'll try it for the next time.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: But. And of course.
• 21:57
  Speaker A: Of course I will agonize over this.
• 21:58
  Speaker B: Well, there's a lot of stuff about emotional sobriety that goes with this as people are listening and plugging into it, because they're simple things, but they're powerful. Get over the fact that it's not okay for somebody to be upset with us. You can be upset with me, and I'm okay. Like I said before, I want to check if you're upset with me. I want to. I want to know. I may want to know more about that, because I know there is every. There's all kinds of possibilities that I did something that I want to make amends for. I want to change. But. But the idea that. That I. That I assume I've done something wrong is no longer. That's what used to be that it's like. And it wasn't even that I really think I did something wrong. I thought that it's doing something wrong. For I'm do. If somebody is hurt in response to me or if somebody's mad at me, then I, by definition, have done something wrong. Sometimes I have, and sometimes I haven't.
• 22:51
  Speaker C: Right.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: There's always the possibility that the outcome you fear, you know, will be the outcome you get, but that our relationship to that, you know, that's also something that we're. Emotional sobriety.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: And that's a good way to say it, because of course, we. We. Most of us can tell stories where the. The odds are with our little paranoid minds. You know, it's. It's. The odds are it's not going to be that outcome.
• 23:15
  Speaker C: That's right.
• 23:16
  Speaker B: It's like. But if it. But we do need to get that part. But if it is, it's Fine. Okay. In either way, I have old friends. Have a friend, dad. For years and years, that was. That was the best she could do for an apology. If you, if you were. If you. If you were upset with her and I mean, you would think. You almost think you were getting an apology. And she was. I'm really, really sorry that you feel that way. You know, that's sort of like me saying, here, here's that. No, it's like, you know, I'm going to take it away. How we address these and how we perceive this, how we perceive ourselves in that just make. Makes a world of difference.
• 23:53
  Speaker C: It does. And I want to encourage that we practice those things with people we trust. I have an organizer at my house that I've hired, and we are going through every single thing I own, and I am making a decision. Keep it, donate it, trash it. And yesterday she picked up some things and put them together. And suddenly I was having this really somatic experience of that she could see it in my face. And I. And I was trying to utter some words. I am not accustomed to asking what I need. I was trying to ask for what I want. Yeah, I was trying. I really.
• 24:36
  Speaker B: I love that sentence.
• 24:38
  Speaker C: But it was like.
• 24:39
  Speaker B: I was trying to speak.
• 24:41
  Speaker C: It was like. And she said, use your words. And I said, don't do that.
• 24:47
  Speaker B: Use your words.
• 24:50
  Speaker C: She did, because let me tell you who I've got. This is a miracle. This is another. Attracting the right people. I've stepped off a cliff and the right one showed up. This woman is trauma, informed on purpose, by choice. She has gone into this business of helping people organize, understanding how you come to need, organization, what you're going to walk through, through as you process getting organized and letting go of things you might have been hauling around forever. I went through, golly, seven, six and a half hours of paperwork yesterday, piece by piece with a relationship. With each piece, you know, papers. I've written all this stuff, but memories and all sorts of things, anyway, I finally spit out. I don't want those two things in the same bag. That represents one thing. This represents another. She said, okay, so next time you're trying to say something to me and it's very emotional and you're searching for words, just say pause, and we'll take a break and we'll start talking about it. But it's okay for you to tell me what you want, but I'm practicing with her.
• 26:05
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, that's. I mean, that's. I mean, that's a safe environment to do it. That's Serious therapy. That's. That's amazing. That's great.
• 26:12
  Speaker C: It is amazing. And so at the end of the day, I can say, jenny, I thank you so much for the space for me to be me with you, because I haven't experienced that a lot. I really have. Not. Not talking about the environment, my willingness to risk being me with you. And so we need to practice these things until they get comfortable. But they're so uncomfortable at the beginning. But this is another part of integrity. I've decided in my final quarter of my life, I'm going to grow the hell up. And this is part of it. Saying what I want is part of it.
• 26:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, and the other thing you're thinking, right, this goes to our perfectionism. That's underlying everything else is the idea is understanding that when we really are working on being good with who we are in the moment, what that means is when something is new and uncomfortable, that's. That's not. We're not an unfinished product at that point. That's just what we are now. You know, I am better. What's. I. I prefer this. Doing, doing, saying this for myself and being uncomfortable and kind of, you know. You know, kind of nuts about it. But that, But I. But I'm. I'm right here with me and I don't have any shame about that. That's where I am. Yes, I'll be, you know, because. Because I have examples of things where I'm. I'm actually comfortable with that now that I wouldn't have ever been before. But if we're. If we're really doing this work, there's always going to be the growing edge. So there's always going to be a place where we're going to be defining ourselves as uncomfortable or. Because if we're not, then we're fucking lying to ourselves.
• 28:00
  Speaker C: And while you were giggling about uttering words, trying to utter words, my throat was closed off. Yeah, my throat choked up. I could barely speak physically, too. And I even said out loud, my throat is closing. I'm going to say this anyway because I'm not going to let old body stuff keep me from being today. I'm just not.
• 28:22
  Speaker A: If I can hold to my integrity in the moment where I need to and really stick to my guns and just say the thing that I needed to say, then I get to look forward to an untroubled car ride home, where it's usually if I do, or being swapped right, where I don't do the. I don't hold to my integrity. I don't have the difficult conversation, and then the entire car ride home, I'm just tortured because, you know, I didn't do things the way that I ought to.
• 28:49
  Speaker B: Do the damn dishes. You're going to be grateful that you did when you come into the kitchen the next time, you know it's going to be a nice, clean kitchen.
• 28:56
  Speaker A: So, Carol, are you out of the woods with the flood yet? Are you getting there?
• 29:00
  Speaker C: I talked. I signed with a contractor yesterday, so we're having the insurance. The insurance company, thankfully, is paying for the repairs. I did take a mold. There was some mold, but they're covering, putting things back together. My stay in a motel, and I'm paying the contractor to fix what was broken, and then look at the rest of the house, and let's just fix anything that needs fixing, and then I'll be ready. When I decide to sell and move closer to my daughter, I'll be more ready for that and also just have a nice, pleasant place to live. And I'm saying yes to this opportunity to go through every uncomfortable thing that pops up right now.
• 29:52
  Speaker B: So you're enjoying yourself in the woods?
• 29:54
  Speaker C: I am enjoying myself in the woods. Robert Frost and I.
• 29:58
  Speaker B: Well, you know, I never thought about that. We use that phrase all the time. But just when I'm watching you guys have that conversation, I'm going like, why is that used as a. As a negative? We all. I know all three of us enjoy being in the woods. It's where we go to relax.
• 30:16
  Speaker C: That's right, Sam. Sa.