Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Feelings Were Not A Thing In My House with Dr. Adi Jaffe

Transcript

Feelings Were Not A Thing In My House with Dr. Adi Jaffe · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have us my
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Speaker 1: guest today, Doctor Ad Jaffey a d welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on, Guy So.
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Speaker 1: Doctor Ad is a number one best selling author of
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Speaker 1: the book The Abstin and Smith, and his new book
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Speaker 1: is titled Unhooked for Yourself From Addiction Forever. Doctor Jeffe's
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Speaker 1: workspans work, career, mental health, addiction, and relationship crisis. He
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Speaker 1: was a lecturer in the UCLA Psychology Department for the
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Speaker 1: better part of a decade and the executive director and
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Speaker 1: co founder one of the most progressive mental health treatment
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Speaker 1: facilities in the country until he started Ignited. So Ignited,
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Speaker 1: Doctor Jeffey is changing the way people think about and
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Speaker 1: deal with mental health. His passion lies in helping his
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Speaker 1: clients move through shame, discover their deepest sense of purpose
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Speaker 1: and joy, and forge a new path in life that
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Speaker 1: brings them and those around them fulfillment and happiness. Ardid
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Speaker 1: obviously just a little bit about you share with the
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Speaker 1: listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I'm from Israel, which up until a year ago, most people.
1:25
Speaker 2: Two years ago, I guess nobody could have pointed on
1:27
Speaker 2: the map for the vast majority of Americans, but is
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Speaker 2: now a very controversial statement by itself. Second generation born
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Speaker 2: in Israel after the Holocaust, moved from Israel into high
1:39
Speaker 2: school in the States, and I moved around quite a bit.
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Speaker 2: Well for somebody who lived in the same apartment for
1:45
Speaker 2: the first fourteen years of their life, I moved around
1:47
Speaker 2: quite a bit once we got to the state. So
1:49
Speaker 2: we moved around Chicago, northern suburbs of Chicago. Then we
1:54
Speaker 2: moved to upstate New York, Rochester, New York specifically, so
1:57
Speaker 2: kind of western almost Canada and New York. Ended up
2:00
Speaker 2: going to school in Sunni Buffalo for a couple of
2:04
Speaker 2: years and then transferring to UCLA. And I'm still in
2:08
Speaker 2: LA today. So that was ninety seven that I moved
2:11
Speaker 2: to LA and I'm still here.
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Speaker 1: Okay, around about how does all this start for you?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a good question. As somebody in
2:27
Speaker 2: the work, you know, I feel like those of us
2:29
Speaker 2: who help others, it's our duty to work on ourselves
2:34
Speaker 2: internally in order to be able to not just learn
2:36
Speaker 2: new tools and have an embodied experience of what it
2:40
Speaker 2: feels like to do the work. But also, you know,
2:41
Speaker 2: if you believe, and I do, that there's internal knowledge
2:48
Speaker 2: and wisdom to explore, then I don't think it ever happs,
2:51
Speaker 2: you just keep exploring it. And so I've been going
2:54
Speaker 2: through that journey of figuring out where it all started,
2:57
Speaker 2: to be honest, for twenty twenty five years. I'll end
3:00
Speaker 2: up getting to where it ended, which is what made
3:03
Speaker 2: me even look inside, because I think most of us
3:05
Speaker 2: have had to go through some challenges and pain to
3:09
Speaker 2: realize that we should look inside, that there's something to
3:11
Speaker 2: be discovered. I don't think that's true for everybody.
3:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
3:16
Speaker 2: So I was born, like I said, in Israel, Holocaust
3:20
Speaker 2: survivor family, which I didn't know what that meant when
3:22
Speaker 2: I was a kid, obviously, but very pragmatic, very fear
3:28
Speaker 2: based in a way, right, A lot of anxiety about
3:30
Speaker 2: the potential for the future, very scarcity based, right, I
3:33
Speaker 2: mean I can't fathom this, but my grandmother was about
3:37
Speaker 2: my daughter's age, so seven or eight when and this
3:41
Speaker 2: is the only story I really know about this, by
3:43
Speaker 2: the way, but seven or eight when the Nazis took
3:46
Speaker 2: over Poland, she one sister and I believe three brothers.
3:54
Speaker 2: It's two or three brothers. I think it was five
3:55
Speaker 2: of them total, were put on a train into the
4:00
Speaker 2: rest of Europe in order to escape Mom, dad, oldest brother,
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Speaker 2: and his kid kids two kids stayed behind, and they
4:11
Speaker 2: were supposed to follow through a bunch of different countries trains,
4:15
Speaker 2: you know, planes and automobiles. You could imagine this is
4:17
Speaker 2: a early forties, late thirties rights life doesn't look like
4:22
Speaker 2: it did today. There's no there's no email, there's no TV.
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Speaker 2: You can't you listened to radio trying to get updates. Eventually,
4:29
Speaker 2: through all these countries in Europe, they make it to Israel.
4:31
Speaker 2: There is no Israel yet, right, so it's there there,
4:33
Speaker 2: there in this British enclave. Long story short, Dad, brother,
4:41
Speaker 2: wife never make it and I start there. I've never
4:46
Speaker 2: started an interview with this guy. But as I look
4:49
Speaker 2: at where it all started, I try to imagine my grandmother,
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Speaker 2: who is my mom's mom obviously at seven eight years old,
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Speaker 2: trying to process that mom and dad, who are supposed
5:01
Speaker 2: to follow her didn't show up. They don't know if
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Speaker 2: they're going to show up. And my notion is it
5:07
Speaker 2: was years before she realized they weren't showing up, right,
5:11
Speaker 2: because news was sparse and it took five six, seven
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Speaker 2: years later for the war to really end and everybody
5:17
Speaker 2: to get out of it. They didn't know about the ghettos,
5:20
Speaker 2: they didn't know about the gas chambers, they didn't know
5:22
Speaker 2: about the war camps, because they got out right when
5:25
Speaker 2: the Nazis first took on. So that is the woman
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Speaker 2: who ended up having my mom and then marrying another
5:33
Speaker 2: her partner, Leonard, who was also a Holocaust Drivor. So
5:39
Speaker 2: my mom was born into that a lot of fear,
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Speaker 2: a ton of scarcity. You know, you don't know if
5:44
Speaker 2: tomorrow your world might end, right, imagine this eight year
5:47
Speaker 2: old girl. So my mom was really pragmatic, as long
5:49
Speaker 2: as you got the checklist done, if the house was clean,
5:52
Speaker 2: if you have food and clothes, and just be happy.
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Speaker 2: My dad was Scandinavian, also, very very cold, very stoic.
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Speaker 2: You know, just survival is what matters. Get your work done.
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Speaker 2: Hard worker, hard worker, and very successful. What he did.
6:11
Speaker 2: I'm telling you this now as a forty nine year
6:13
Speaker 2: old man. When I was three, five, eight, fifteen years old,
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Speaker 2: all I knew was we lived in a house that
6:19
Speaker 2: didn't express feelings. Feelings were not discussed. If you were angry,
6:23
Speaker 2: if my mom was angry, either'd be yelling or something
6:25
Speaker 2: like that. But other than that, if you got done
6:27
Speaker 2: what needed to get done, you just played outside and
6:30
Speaker 2: life was good. I was a latch key kid, came
6:34
Speaker 2: home every day. I was talking to my wife about
6:36
Speaker 2: this yesterday every day from school, dropped my bag off
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Speaker 2: at home. There was nobody at home. There'd be nobody
6:41
Speaker 2: at home till five or six pm. A couple of
6:43
Speaker 2: years later, it was my job to go pick up
6:46
Speaker 2: my sister from her bus. So I became very independent,
6:49
Speaker 2: and I grew up with this mindset that as long
6:51
Speaker 2: as you handled what needed to be handled, and as
6:54
Speaker 2: long as you did the work that was required, then
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Speaker 2: you were succeeding in life. And the reason I went
7:01
Speaker 2: through all that is it made me really resilient, really pragmatic,
7:05
Speaker 2: incredibly full of great and self reliance. And it wasn't
7:11
Speaker 2: until my mid twenties, late twenties, that the chip started
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Speaker 2: falling and explaining to me why that may not be enough,
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Speaker 2: And so moved to the States. When I was fourteen,
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Speaker 2: I thrived in Israel. I mean, I know now, I
7:27
Speaker 2: had anxiety, I had all these other things. But I thrived.
7:29
Speaker 2: I had friends, I lived in the same apartment, I
7:32
Speaker 2: knew the neighborhood. It was great. I mean, I don't
7:35
Speaker 2: know if anybody listening right now grew up in the
7:36
Speaker 2: same neighborhood. Did you move around a lot when you
7:39
Speaker 2: were a kid.
7:40
Speaker 1: I did from the East Coast. Yeah, we moved on
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Speaker 1: a lot.
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Speaker 2: So if you moved a lot, which I've done now
7:47
Speaker 2: since fourteen, it's really hard to nowhere home is right.
7:53
Speaker 2: I lived in the same room for fourteen years. When
7:58
Speaker 2: I go back to Israel now nine years old, right,
8:00
Speaker 2: that was thirty years ago. I go to Israel. Now
8:04
Speaker 2: I go to my neighborhood, it feels like home. There's
8:06
Speaker 2: this somatic felt experience. And if anybody's listening right now,
8:11
Speaker 2: and you do have a place that you grew up
8:12
Speaker 2: in the vast majority of your early life, you probably
8:15
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about. There's this your whole system
8:18
Speaker 2: relaxes your whole nervous and relaxes. Well, I didn't know that.
8:21
Speaker 2: At fourteen, we moved to the States, and I was
8:24
Speaker 2: up ended and uprooted and really man a ton of
8:27
Speaker 2: social anxiety. I already didn't feel like I was enough
8:30
Speaker 2: in Israel even and we can dive into how that happened.
8:33
Speaker 2: But now it was really untethered and I had no safety.
8:37
Speaker 2: I had none of my old friends. I spoke English,
8:40
Speaker 2: but not well. I started screwing up in school. I'm
8:44
Speaker 2: also a teenager. My dad and I had some difficulties
8:47
Speaker 2: and before we moved, and he was never really around
8:49
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, and so now I'm starting
8:51
Speaker 2: to rebel around him. And that's when things just blew
8:55
Speaker 2: up in my life.
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Speaker 1: What does that mean? What did that look like? He
9:00
Speaker 1: stops right there at the cliffhanger, What does that look like?
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Speaker 2: Well it went so First of all, I went from
9:08
Speaker 2: my mom always telling me I was just a perfect kid.
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Speaker 2: I never cried, I never complained, I never did anything too.
9:14
Speaker 2: I was the kid that all of a sudden became
9:16
Speaker 2: the main topic of conversation at home. I had a
9:18
Speaker 2: younger sister, and all of a sudden. Every day people
9:21
Speaker 2: were worried about what I was doing. I was skipping school.
9:24
Speaker 2: I was getting c's and d's and not a's and b's,
9:29
Speaker 2: And then I found alcohol. I was fourteen years old
9:32
Speaker 2: in Chicago. There was a sleep away camp with a
9:33
Speaker 2: bunch of other Israeli kids. I talk about it in
9:36
Speaker 2: the book, and I'll do a little I'll do one
9:37
Speaker 2: of these in the new book, Unhooked. There's this story
9:41
Speaker 2: that I'm about to tell. But I was at a
9:43
Speaker 2: sleep away camp. I'm a nervous kid. I never feel
9:47
Speaker 2: like I fit in. This kid hands me a plastic
9:50
Speaker 2: handle of vodka. You know those gallon jugs of vodka.
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Speaker 2: It's warm, it's disgusting. I didn't know that. I never
9:58
Speaker 2: really drank before, but he hands it to me, and
10:01
Speaker 2: I just wanted to be cool. Were gonna say sorry,
10:04
Speaker 2: I don't want to No, I just.
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Speaker 1: Was you said, warm and disgusting, very vivid.
10:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so I take this thing. I'm already feeling
10:14
Speaker 2: uncol so I don't want to look more and cool.
10:16
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say no. I don't even know
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Speaker 2: what he's really handing me. Open the bottle, take a swig.
10:21
Speaker 2: It is discuss. I mean warm vodka, cheap Vodca is
10:24
Speaker 2: like burning down my throat as it's going down, but
10:27
Speaker 2: then to look extra cool, I take one other sip.
10:29
Speaker 2: So I took like two big swigs of this vodka.
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Speaker 2: I close it up, I act all cool. I pass
10:33
Speaker 2: it off, honestly, guy, I thought nothing of it. I
10:37
Speaker 2: just I didn't know. And then fifteen minutes later, my
10:44
Speaker 2: whole system just it calmed down. Then noise in my
10:49
Speaker 2: head got quieter. I felt like I fit in, I
10:54
Speaker 2: could talk to girls. I actually ended up kissing and
10:57
Speaker 2: fooling around with a girl that night, and it was
10:59
Speaker 2: like for fourteen year old boy who felt like he
11:02
Speaker 2: doesn't belong anywhere, it was a peak experience.
11:05
Speaker 1: You know.
11:06
Speaker 2: And from that night I drank every weekend the parties
11:11
Speaker 2: that I got invited to with friends. Two years later,
11:15
Speaker 2: a girl I liked handing me some weed and I
11:17
Speaker 2: smoked that outside of a Perkins here an East Coast guy,
11:21
Speaker 2: so you know what I'm talking about, two am, drinking
11:24
Speaker 2: coffee with a bunch of friends. It would go outside
11:26
Speaker 2: the smoke. I didn't smoke cigarettes. She hands me a joint.
11:29
Speaker 2: I smoked the joint didn't really feel much at night.
11:32
Speaker 2: But now I'm smoking weed and drinking. And by the
11:34
Speaker 2: time I got to college, so eighteen, So over four years,
11:37
Speaker 2: this went from never did anything to I was a
11:39
Speaker 2: daily smoker and drinker and went through a breakup. And
11:48
Speaker 2: you know, I saw had a girlfriend in high school.
11:50
Speaker 2: She broke up with me. It was kind of like,
11:52
Speaker 2: it's funny, right, I now tell my clients and I
11:55
Speaker 2: tell my friends. I feel like life is one big improvact.
12:00
Speaker 2: You make plans, you think you know what the scene is.
12:03
Speaker 2: You think you figure out how today is going to
12:05
Speaker 2: go and what this month is going to be all about,
12:07
Speaker 2: and then life happens. And if you're the wait, but
12:11
Speaker 2: that was my plan, You're gonna get kicked off the
12:14
Speaker 2: scene and nobody really cares and goodbye. We don't. We
12:16
Speaker 2: can't deal with you. You've got to be the yes
12:19
Speaker 2: and person. You've got all you got to This is
12:23
Speaker 2: this is the world. Nobody asks for your permission, this
12:26
Speaker 2: is what's happening. Yes, and so put to censure. You know,
12:31
Speaker 2: girlfriend in high school, we go to college, We're gonna
12:34
Speaker 2: stay together. First semester she meets a senior, breaks up
12:37
Speaker 2: with me, and I'm devastated. It's like every cliche you know,
12:41
Speaker 2: first year of college movie you've ever seen. But what
12:44
Speaker 2: I did is I leaned. I didn't know how to
12:46
Speaker 2: deal with my anxiety. I didn't know how to deal
12:48
Speaker 2: with feelings, right, That's why I was telling the story
12:49
Speaker 2: about my mom and my dad. Like feelings were not
12:52
Speaker 2: a thing in my house. I'm sure we all had them.
12:57
Speaker 2: Nobody talked about them. My dad left my mom in
13:00
Speaker 2: US for a week, cheated on my mom with another woman,
13:03
Speaker 2: was going to move in with her, came back home,
13:06
Speaker 2: no discussion. Nobody ever said a word about it. It
13:09
Speaker 2: was just like, oh, dad left us, dad came back.
13:11
Speaker 2: Just feelings were not acknowledged, certainly not discussed and analyzed.
13:17
Speaker 2: I just didn't know what to do with them. So
13:20
Speaker 2: I drank and I smoked weed, and I did other
13:22
Speaker 2: drugs to make the uncomfortable feelings go away. And I
13:25
Speaker 2: think that's probably a pretty familiar world for many of us.
13:29
Speaker 2: But I took it farther and farther and farther after
13:33
Speaker 2: that depression, because of the breakup, I didn't really care
13:37
Speaker 2: about what drug it was. I would just try whatever
13:38
Speaker 2: I could. Ended up transferring to UCLA moved to Los Angeles,
13:44
Speaker 2: which I liked much better than Buffalo. No offense to
13:46
Speaker 2: anybody listening right now, who's from Buffalo. I come from
13:49
Speaker 2: the desert. I know hot and sand I don't understand cold.
13:55
Speaker 2: I moved to LA obviously a pretty thriving drug scene
13:59
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, but I was broke, so I started
14:02
Speaker 2: selling drugs in order to be able to use my drugs.
14:06
Speaker 1: How old are you at this point?
14:09
Speaker 2: No? Nineteen? I was nineteen twenty, Yeah, nineteen twenty. I
14:13
Speaker 2: got introduced to exit, well, not introduced, but a girlfriend
14:16
Speaker 2: and I did some ecstasy. We started doing it more
14:18
Speaker 2: and more frequently, and then I didn't have the money
14:21
Speaker 2: to do it, and I, you know, being entrepreneurial, I'll
14:24
Speaker 2: say my first business, I realized that if I just
14:27
Speaker 2: collect everybody's money and go buy twenty pills instead of
14:30
Speaker 2: buying my own two, I'll get my two for free.
14:33
Speaker 2: Kind of just you know. It went from twenty five
14:35
Speaker 2: a pill to twenty a pill if you bought more
14:36
Speaker 2: than ten, so the extra five bucks. If I bought
14:39
Speaker 2: ten other people's pills, I got two pills for free.
14:42
Speaker 2: So I got to party that weekend for free. Did
14:44
Speaker 2: that a couple of times, and I said, wait, what
14:47
Speaker 2: if I buy more? If this is what happens if
14:49
Speaker 2: I buy twenty, what if I could buy fifty? Well,
14:51
Speaker 2: buying fifty required seven hundred and fifty bucks. I didn't
14:53
Speaker 2: have seven hundred fifty. I was broke, right, I mean
14:55
Speaker 2: I worked on campus to be able to have money
14:58
Speaker 2: for food. So I borrowed money from a friend seven
15:02
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars that allowed me to buy fifty pills.
15:05
Speaker 2: Now each pill was fifteen bucks instead of twenty five,
15:08
Speaker 2: I mean ten dollars per pill. Now I got to
15:11
Speaker 2: party for free and save fifty to one hundred bucks.
15:15
Speaker 2: So I borrowed the money from my friend about three
15:17
Speaker 2: or four times, and at the end of that I
15:19
Speaker 2: also had my own seven hundred and fifty dollars. And
15:22
Speaker 2: so I started buying fifty pills at a time, making money,
15:27
Speaker 2: saving at least seven hundred and fifty dollars to buy it again,
15:29
Speaker 2: and kind of doing that on a rotation. And I
15:31
Speaker 2: found out I was pretty good at drug dealing. And
15:33
Speaker 2: it's in really easy business. If you have drugs, people
15:37
Speaker 2: will come to you. So it grew and it grew.
15:39
Speaker 2: Next thing, you know, I'm buying one hundred pills, and
15:41
Speaker 2: two hundred pills and three hundred pills. And within six
15:45
Speaker 2: to nine months, I found myself in college making seven
15:49
Speaker 2: eight grand a month, selling drugs and partying, and pretty
15:56
Speaker 2: much from eighteen to twenty six I wasn't sober for
15:59
Speaker 2: one day. I just just partied as much as I could.
16:04
Speaker 2: I found meth towards the end of nineteen years old,
16:10
Speaker 2: really because of studying. A friend recommended it. It was
16:14
Speaker 2: a word of mouth sort of a thing. And because
16:16
Speaker 2: I was selling drugs that had access to whatever I wanted,
16:18
Speaker 2: so pride meth. It helped me get through finals. And
16:24
Speaker 2: meth also did another thing for me. Right. I don't
16:27
Speaker 2: know about you, but even though feelings were compartmentalized and sublimated,
16:32
Speaker 2: they were not acknowledged. I had a lot of feelings
16:35
Speaker 2: that I was trying to repress with these other drugs. Man,
16:37
Speaker 2: I did meth, and feelings just disappeared. And so I
16:42
Speaker 2: really liked meth for that, and so I used every
16:44
Speaker 2: day after I started using it for about five or
16:47
Speaker 2: six years. I won't bore everybody with the rest of
16:50
Speaker 2: the story, but the drug dealing got very, very tenuous
16:53
Speaker 2: and big and dangerous, right, guns, cartel deals, all that stuff.
17:00
Speaker 2: God the classic Like, I would drive an Lincoln Navigator,
17:05
Speaker 2: meet some contact at a strip bar in Orange County.
17:11
Speaker 2: They would give me a next telephone for those of
17:13
Speaker 2: us who remember the walkie talking next telephones, and a're
17:16
Speaker 2: old enough for that. I would go into the desert,
17:18
Speaker 2: meet their suburban and we're like, you know, one next
17:21
Speaker 2: to the other. I would walk out with the bag
17:23
Speaker 2: of money. They would walk out with the bag of drugs.
17:25
Speaker 2: Meet in the middle that whole thing, and I'll, you know,
17:31
Speaker 2: I'll end with the way the book starts, which is
17:35
Speaker 2: on a Saturday morning in my apartment in Brentwood, the
17:40
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills Police Department came to pay me a visit
17:42
Speaker 2: with their swat team and that was the end of
17:48
Speaker 2: my drug dealing career and a very rude awakening to
17:54
Speaker 2: how far down I had taken my life. And I
17:57
Speaker 2: was twenty five at the time. Fought that case, went
18:03
Speaker 2: to rehab clean myself up, went to jail for a year,
18:09
Speaker 2: and when I got I got eight years in jail,
18:11
Speaker 2: but they kind of split it up into seven plus
18:13
Speaker 2: one and they said, as long as you finish this
18:14
Speaker 2: one year clear and you don't violate, you don't do
18:17
Speaker 2: anything stupid, and then you finish your five years of probation.
18:20
Speaker 2: Will never give you the seven years. And so I
18:22
Speaker 2: stayed clear and never got the other seven years. And yeah,
18:27
Speaker 2: and then I had to restart my life when I
18:30
Speaker 2: got out Jesus, oh my god, I got twenty six
18:33
Speaker 2: twenty seven years.
18:37
Speaker 1: So safe to say you were you were addicted. You
18:41
Speaker 1: were in your addiction. Any sense of what the hell
18:45
Speaker 1: am I doing? Or I feel like crap? I can't
18:51
Speaker 1: was there any awareness of what was going on.
18:56
Speaker 2: Sporadically? Sporadically there would be these little windows. So at
19:01
Speaker 2: a recording studio, I came to La technically do music
19:04
Speaker 2: and go to school. It just that music turned into
19:06
Speaker 2: drugs more than music. But I was always surrounded by people. Guy,
19:10
Speaker 2: and you know, again, I'm socially anxious and weirded out
19:13
Speaker 2: by people. Mostly I'm still an introvert today, which is
19:16
Speaker 2: kind of funny given what my job is. But there
19:21
Speaker 2: were always people around. There were but four or five
19:23
Speaker 2: guys who sold for me. There were girls that would
19:25
Speaker 2: come from the strip clubs and from you know, who'd
19:27
Speaker 2: buy drugs from us, and so there were always people around,
19:30
Speaker 2: and so it was hard to think, and the drugs
19:33
Speaker 2: made it easier to not feel. But every once in
19:37
Speaker 2: a while I remember, I have this very vivid memory.
19:39
Speaker 2: So I had a recording studio. I had three rooms
19:41
Speaker 2: in it. It had the main mixing room where the
19:43
Speaker 2: mixer was and all the equipment to analyze the music
19:47
Speaker 2: and process it. Then there was a room next door
19:50
Speaker 2: they had the instruments where you could play but were
19:52
Speaker 2: you know, they were separated, and then there was a
19:54
Speaker 2: vocal booth right and then I had a DJ room
19:57
Speaker 2: as well. But I remember in the mixed room there
20:01
Speaker 2: were two couches on the It was a rectangle. On
20:04
Speaker 2: the both of the narrow sides of the rectangle, there
20:07
Speaker 2: were two couches, and I purposely I put a two
20:10
Speaker 2: floods above them. One was a red light, one was
20:12
Speaker 2: a blue light, and I think inadvertently I would literally
20:17
Speaker 2: sit under the one that kind of reflected my mood
20:19
Speaker 2: at the time, And so when I was under the
20:22
Speaker 2: blue one, it wasn't sad that the blue one was
20:24
Speaker 2: actually the one where I felt lighter. The red one
20:26
Speaker 2: was the darker one, the one that kind of resonated
20:29
Speaker 2: for me. With when I wasn't feeling as well. And
20:31
Speaker 2: I remember this one time, sitting on the couch under
20:35
Speaker 2: the red light and it was three four o'clock in
20:37
Speaker 2: the morning. Everybody was out, and I had this thought
20:41
Speaker 2: and I just went, how the hell did I get here?
20:44
Speaker 2: Like what is I don't even understand what's happening right now?
20:50
Speaker 2: And you know, my dad was a doctor, my mom
20:53
Speaker 2: was an HR manager in a bank. This was not
20:56
Speaker 2: in my script when somebody wrote the original script what
21:00
Speaker 2: my life was supposed to look like, drug dealing with guns,
21:04
Speaker 2: scarface style in la It was just not. It wasn't
21:07
Speaker 2: even on the menu. And somehow I ended up in
21:09
Speaker 2: that place. So it would be these little moments. I
21:12
Speaker 2: had friends from UCLA for college that tried to rescue me.
21:15
Speaker 2: They came in and said, hey, just come live with us.
21:18
Speaker 2: We know this how you make your money, we know
21:20
Speaker 2: this how you live. Just come live with us. I didn't.
21:26
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was shame or opaqueness literally
21:30
Speaker 2: internal opakeness, like I just couldn't look inside at the time.
21:33
Speaker 2: But I told them, a fine, don't worry about me.
21:35
Speaker 1: I'm good.
21:36
Speaker 2: And as I'm saying I'm good, I'm being held up
21:38
Speaker 2: at gunpoint. I'm being robbed, right. I'm constantly worried about
21:42
Speaker 2: the police. I had four arrests other than that Swatin
21:44
Speaker 2: that was just a big one. Nothing was really good.
21:48
Speaker 2: I was one hundred and twenty four pounds as I'm
21:50
Speaker 2: talking to you right now. I'm one hundred and sixty five.
21:52
Speaker 2: I was forty pounds lighter than I am right now.
21:54
Speaker 2: I look like a skeleton. There was really nothing going well,
21:57
Speaker 2: but I couldn't. Most of the time, I couldn't it.
22:01
Speaker 1: Let me just remind everyone. I'm speaking with doctor Ade Jeffy.
22:05
Speaker 1: His new book is called Unhooked for Yourself from Addiction Forever. Okay, crazy,
22:13
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no other way to say it. It is.
22:16
Speaker 1: I mean, but you're here. How do things turn around?
22:23
Speaker 1: Let's obviously things did.
22:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they turned around. I'll say a couple of things.
22:29
Speaker 2: First of all, they turn around slowly. One of the
22:31
Speaker 2: things I recommend for people to think is they go
22:33
Speaker 2: into transformation and you know, look, I tell my story
22:37
Speaker 2: and it is it's it's pretty crazy. But everybody has
22:45
Speaker 2: a moment of all crap. Right. It could be your
22:51
Speaker 2: wife walked out of you because you screamed of her
22:54
Speaker 2: one last time. Or you you cheated, or you gamble
22:57
Speaker 2: too much and you know you start dipping into your case,
23:02
Speaker 2: you know, college fund, or you lose it. It could be
23:05
Speaker 2: that you you know, you've been eating a tub of
23:08
Speaker 2: ice cream late at night because work is in life
23:12
Speaker 2: is really hard. Because it is life is hard, and
23:16
Speaker 2: next thing you know, your doctor says, hey, if you
23:18
Speaker 2: don't stop this, you're going to get a heart attack. Right.
23:21
Speaker 2: I mean, there are a million versions of what this
23:22
Speaker 2: looks like. I work with people now. I work with
23:24
Speaker 2: uber successful people who've lost one, two, three, four marriages
23:28
Speaker 2: because of work. Because when they obsessed, when their mind
23:32
Speaker 2: goes hey wire, they buckle down and go to work,
23:34
Speaker 2: and then they work till eleven twelve one am, wake
23:37
Speaker 2: up in the morning, do it again. Their health suffers,
23:40
Speaker 2: their relationships suffer, their kids don't talk to them. Anybody
23:44
Speaker 2: listening right now has either gone through or sat right
23:47
Speaker 2: next to somebody who's gone through massive struggles of transformation,
23:53
Speaker 2: and so you ask kind of how did the transformation happen.
23:56
Speaker 2: I'll start going into it, but I just want everybody
23:58
Speaker 2: to know to me, those are the biggest opportunities when
24:06
Speaker 2: you do wake up, right, you asked if I realize it.
24:08
Speaker 2: Most of the time I didn't realize it, and then
24:10
Speaker 2: I did, and it took a lot for me to
24:12
Speaker 2: realize it, but I did, and then I went, oh shit,
24:17
Speaker 2: most of what I did before won't work moving forward.
24:20
Speaker 2: But I don't know how to do anything else. I
24:24
Speaker 2: barely graduated college, and so, you know, guy, what I
24:28
Speaker 2: had to do is I had to start putting one
24:29
Speaker 2: foot in front of the other. And the reason I
24:32
Speaker 2: think that matters is people ask me, right now, you know,
24:36
Speaker 2: how did you do it? And I said, well, first
24:37
Speaker 2: of all, I wanted to stay out of prison. So
24:39
Speaker 2: in order to stay out of prison for long term,
24:42
Speaker 2: my lawyer said, we got to clean you up. So
24:44
Speaker 2: I went to rehab. That was the first thing I did.
24:47
Speaker 2: But I didn't know how to do rehab, so I
24:48
Speaker 2: used in rehab and I got kicked out of rehab
24:51
Speaker 2: and I had to find another rehab to go to.
24:54
Speaker 2: And then I had to go, Okay, if I don't
24:56
Speaker 2: want to go to prison for fifteen years, I've got
24:58
Speaker 2: to figure out how to stay here for a ten
25:00
Speaker 2: months until my case is done and clean my act up.
25:03
Speaker 2: So I had to learn. There was no long term future.
25:06
Speaker 2: There was no job, there was no school, there was
25:09
Speaker 2: no career, there was no family. Just like, stay out
25:11
Speaker 2: of prison. Just what's the next thing I've got to do. Well,
25:15
Speaker 2: it worked. I got Instead of eight to ten to
25:17
Speaker 2: fifteen years, which is what I was looking at, I
25:19
Speaker 2: ended up getting eight, but really one right, and so
25:22
Speaker 2: as long as I did that one well, so then
25:24
Speaker 2: the next step was just okay, go to jail, right,
25:27
Speaker 2: check yourself into jail, which sucked. It was a nightmare.
25:29
Speaker 2: It was horrible, but I have a year there, so
25:33
Speaker 2: I had to do it. I got out, I couldn't
25:35
Speaker 2: get hired for anything. I had nine felonies. Nobody would
25:37
Speaker 2: defer my calls. I mean literally, like a pizza delivery
25:40
Speaker 2: job wouldn't hire me. So I had to figure out
25:42
Speaker 2: what to do next, and that was school, guy, and
25:44
Speaker 2: I hated school. When I graduated college, I said I'm
25:47
Speaker 2: never going back. But it didn't matter what I said before.
25:51
Speaker 2: I had no options in front of me, so I
25:53
Speaker 2: had to do the thing. There's a quote. I actually
25:54
Speaker 2: just used this yesterday, but there's a quote in this
25:58
Speaker 2: Joseph Campbell book The Cave. This is the hero with
26:05
Speaker 2: a thousand faces, and there's a quote in it that says,
26:09
Speaker 2: the cave you fear the most is the one that
26:11
Speaker 2: holds your treasure. And so it's not a coincidence. But
26:15
Speaker 2: you know, I obviously want to do everything. I could
26:18
Speaker 2: just stay out of rehab and get clean, but that's
26:19
Speaker 2: what I had to do. I didn't want to serve
26:22
Speaker 2: jail time, but that's what I had to do. I
26:23
Speaker 2: got out, couldn't get a job. I always swore I
26:25
Speaker 2: would never walk back into school once I finished my
26:28
Speaker 2: undergrad Well guess what the only thing I could do
26:31
Speaker 2: was go back to school. Life has a funny way
26:35
Speaker 2: of putting opportunities for learning in front of you, and
26:39
Speaker 2: you can say no, full free will. You can say no.
26:42
Speaker 2: But what I found over time is you're going to
26:46
Speaker 2: get that opportunity again. It's going to come right back,
26:49
Speaker 2: and it's gonna say you sure you sure? I know
26:52
Speaker 2: I asked you this six months ago, but are you
26:53
Speaker 2: sure you don't want to learn this lesson now? And
26:56
Speaker 2: So what I learned through repetition Guy is not to
27:01
Speaker 2: avoid the challenges anymore. Right when I see a new challenge,
27:07
Speaker 2: something that I don't know what to do about, I
27:09
Speaker 2: try as quickly as I can to realize it's a
27:13
Speaker 2: new challenge, recognize it as an opportunity to learn something
27:17
Speaker 2: I haven't learned before, and then double down. And I'll
27:21
Speaker 2: give a couple of examples. Right, feelings were not a
27:24
Speaker 2: thing in my house. Okay, Well, I can walk around
27:27
Speaker 2: the rest of my life and say, hey, look, I
27:29
Speaker 2: come from a you know this is a trauma therapist. Right.
27:31
Speaker 2: I can come back and say, look, I'm avoiding. I'm
27:34
Speaker 2: an avoidant personality because I didn't learn how to deal
27:37
Speaker 2: with feelings. So I was uncomfortable and that's who I am.
27:40
Speaker 2: I can say that, right, but then I'm stuck as
27:44
Speaker 2: that person for the rest of my life. Instead, what
27:47
Speaker 2: I choose to say is, look, I come from a
27:49
Speaker 2: background where I didn't know how to process feelings. So
27:51
Speaker 2: guess what, it's now my job to learn how to
27:54
Speaker 2: do it, and so somatic therapy and my own work.
27:58
Speaker 2: You know, I went to the Hoffmann process to do
28:00
Speaker 2: some of my own work. Like, I just tested whatever
28:03
Speaker 2: I could to learn what are these feelings everybody talks
28:08
Speaker 2: about and I didn't learn how to process? Right, I
28:10
Speaker 2: have them, I know they're inside, What do they feel? Like,
28:12
Speaker 2: what do I disconnect with. I'm a parent, I've got
28:15
Speaker 2: three kids. What I focus on right now in my
28:17
Speaker 2: life is how to be a better parent. My dad
28:19
Speaker 2: was not home when I grew up at all. He
28:23
Speaker 2: worked three jobs, worked his butt off, very successful. I
28:26
Speaker 2: didn't see him.
28:27
Speaker 1: Well.
28:27
Speaker 2: I don't want to be that kind of dad for
28:29
Speaker 2: my kids. But I don't know how to be a
28:30
Speaker 2: better dad because I didn't have one. So it's my
28:32
Speaker 2: job to go learn. And that's really over the last
28:36
Speaker 2: I mean, it was two thousand and six when I
28:38
Speaker 2: got out of jail.
28:39
Speaker 1: No.
28:39
Speaker 2: Two thousand and four when I got out of jail,
28:41
Speaker 2: so twenty one years. Year by year, month by month,
28:46
Speaker 2: day by day. My job is to figure out how
28:49
Speaker 2: to get a little bit better than I was yesterday.
28:52
Speaker 2: It's something that means a lot to me or the
28:55
Speaker 2: people around me.
28:56
Speaker 1: The way the way you not just share your story
29:03
Speaker 1: and talk about your story, but the way you talk
29:08
Speaker 1: about your journey into what recovery or healing is very
29:17
Speaker 1: interesting and it sounds very logical. But I'm sure it's
29:23
Speaker 1: not that simple. But you obviously there's something about you.
29:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a resilience or some
29:34
Speaker 1: kind of a strength where you were able to utilize
29:39
Speaker 1: that to reach into your brain, reach into your soul,
29:42
Speaker 1: and kind of shift your perspective.
29:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's probably true. I can
29:52
Speaker 2: definitely connect to one moment where I know that happened
29:55
Speaker 2: in a surprising way. But you know, again, I talked
29:59
Speaker 2: about my mom, I talked about my grandmother. I talked
30:01
Speaker 2: about the origin of where these things came from. We're
30:04
Speaker 2: all pained, We've all been through suffering. The question is
30:12
Speaker 2: when when is the pain enough for us to decide?
30:17
Speaker 2: I just I don't want to just put up with it.
30:18
Speaker 2: I want to do something about it. So when I
30:20
Speaker 2: got kicked out of that first rehab, I got kicked out.
30:24
Speaker 2: You know, I won't tell the story, but I was
30:26
Speaker 2: using math for two months in rehab and I got
30:28
Speaker 2: kicked out. They tested me and I was in my car.
30:31
Speaker 2: I was essentially homeless. My parents helped me buy a
30:33
Speaker 2: car because all the money was gone. So I had
30:35
Speaker 2: a Honda Civic. All my stuff was in the car
30:37
Speaker 2: and I'm driving away. My dad called me. He's past sense,
30:39
Speaker 2: but he used to call me every day to check
30:41
Speaker 2: in on me. Once I got arrested, everything work, our
30:44
Speaker 2: relationship actually improved substantially. So he called, and I had
30:48
Speaker 2: this whole story. You know, those of us who were
30:49
Speaker 2: used to lying and hiding, we were really good at
30:53
Speaker 2: weaving tales. And so I was telling him, you know,
30:55
Speaker 2: work is really far from rehab. I need to move
30:57
Speaker 2: somewhere closer. So I'm going to look something for another
31:00
Speaker 2: sober living house or rehab. And I felt this pit
31:03
Speaker 2: in my stomach, the bowling ball feeling when you know
31:05
Speaker 2: you're lying to somebody that you care about and you
31:07
Speaker 2: don't want to do it. I forgot what that felt
31:09
Speaker 2: like because I did it for so many years before.
31:11
Speaker 2: But I now had this clear period where I wasn't
31:15
Speaker 2: lying constantly, and so I had that feeling. I remembered it,
31:19
Speaker 2: and I just made this decision. Guy, and I stopped
31:22
Speaker 2: and I said, hey, you know what, hold on, I'm
31:24
Speaker 2: lying to you. I'm not picking a new rehab. It's
31:27
Speaker 2: not because i'm far. I got kicked out of rehab.
31:29
Speaker 2: I've been using. And I was a the first moment
31:33
Speaker 2: in my life that I chose to speak the truth
31:35
Speaker 2: when it wasn't necessary. I could have lied. My dad
31:38
Speaker 2: would have believed me. And secondly, what happened was my
31:41
Speaker 2: dad started screaming at me because he rightfully was pissed
31:44
Speaker 2: that I just threw away three months of rehab money
31:47
Speaker 2: but also my chances at staying out of jail. And
31:50
Speaker 2: he ended it with a question, what the hell do
31:52
Speaker 2: you expect us to do now? And I had to
31:56
Speaker 2: think about it. And as I thought about it, I
31:59
Speaker 2: realized there's nothing it can do. I have to do it,
32:04
Speaker 2: but I didn't know what to do, and so I
32:06
Speaker 2: said that to him. I said, look, you can't do anything.
32:10
Speaker 2: I have to fix this. I screwed this up. I
32:13
Speaker 2: don't know what that is yet, but let me get
32:14
Speaker 2: back to you. I'm going to figure it out. I'm
32:17
Speaker 2: going to figure out how to fix this. And it
32:19
Speaker 2: was accountability. It was transparency. My wife and I talk
32:22
Speaker 2: about radical transparency all the time. Stop lying, be honest
32:26
Speaker 2: with yourself and the people around you. Your life will
32:28
Speaker 2: change faster than you can imagine if you can just
32:31
Speaker 2: follow that one rule. It's freaking hard, though, but if
32:34
Speaker 2: you can follow that one rule, a lot will change
32:36
Speaker 2: in your life. So you know you were talking about
32:40
Speaker 2: the logical and that is that's the resilient, gritty, independent kid,
32:45
Speaker 2: right who just look I talk again. I was literally
32:48
Speaker 2: just talking to my wife about this yesterday. I have
32:50
Speaker 2: a seven year old daughter. I can't imagine sending her
32:54
Speaker 2: to school, having her walk to school by herself, and
32:58
Speaker 2: then when she comes home there being nobody here to
33:01
Speaker 2: welcome her and greet her. That has never happened in
33:05
Speaker 2: her seven years. That was my daily existence alone, other
33:10
Speaker 2: than my friends, alone all day my parents were not around. Again,
33:14
Speaker 2: I've studied detachment theory, right, I've studied trauma by now,
33:18
Speaker 2: so now I understand logically that felt like abandonment at
33:22
Speaker 2: some age. Maybe I was two weeks old, maybe I
33:24
Speaker 2: was a month ough, maybe I was three months old.
33:26
Speaker 2: A year long before I can remember, I felt abandoned
33:29
Speaker 2: and alone. The kid version of me figured out a resilient,
33:34
Speaker 2: independent way to live. But here's the difference now, guy,
33:40
Speaker 2: I now look for and welcome the threadstle, these little
33:45
Speaker 2: nibbles of feelings that overcome me, and I go deep
33:48
Speaker 2: to explore them instead of escaping them. So I'll tell
33:51
Speaker 2: you an interesting story. I think we still have time.
33:56
Speaker 2: I was jogging in tiberan Sosolito area in near San Francisco.
34:03
Speaker 2: I was there for a podcast so I'm not alone
34:05
Speaker 2: a lot, right, three kids, wife, work, I'm not alone
34:07
Speaker 2: a lot. But I had this morning and I was
34:09
Speaker 2: going to go for a jog and I put on
34:12
Speaker 2: Israeli music, my favorite Israeli playlist, and I go for
34:16
Speaker 2: a jog and I'm running through the bay and it's
34:19
Speaker 2: beautiful and tears start forming in my eyes and just
34:23
Speaker 2: there's just a song playing. It's just it's not a
34:25
Speaker 2: song for my childhood or anything, just a song in
34:27
Speaker 2: Hebrew playing and tears start forming and I let them come,
34:32
Speaker 2: and they and there's more and more of them, and guy,
34:35
Speaker 2: within five minutes, I am ugly crying, like bawling, jogging
34:40
Speaker 2: by the bay in in you know, in San Francisco,
34:46
Speaker 2: and I just let it come. I just let it flow.
34:53
Speaker 2: And then I did two things. I texted my wife
34:56
Speaker 2: and I was like, shit, it's happening right now again.
34:59
Speaker 2: I don't really know what it is. I don't know
35:00
Speaker 2: if it's good. I don't know if it's bad. I
35:02
Speaker 2: don't know if it's because I miss where I grew
35:06
Speaker 2: up as a kid, right that place that was my home,
35:09
Speaker 2: or I miss my dad who's passed. I don't know
35:12
Speaker 2: if it's that I don't know if it's reminding me
35:15
Speaker 2: of something else that happened when I was in Israel
35:17
Speaker 2: and viscerally somatically is just connecting two deep, deep emotional wounds.
35:23
Speaker 2: But texted my wife and I had a little conversation
35:26
Speaker 2: with her about it, and then I texted my coach.
35:28
Speaker 2: I was like, Hey, this is probably something we should
35:31
Speaker 2: talk about in our next session because I'm literally jogging
35:34
Speaker 2: crying in San Francisco. And the reason I'm telling the stories,
35:41
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people look for change to
35:44
Speaker 2: happen in these beautiful, nice ribbons on top of a
35:49
Speaker 2: gift that just is packaged perfectly and happens in the
35:52
Speaker 2: right moments, And that's not been my experience. My experience
35:57
Speaker 2: is the your internal flame, your purpose, your joy, the pain,
36:06
Speaker 2: These experiences that make you who you are, the whole
36:09
Speaker 2: of who you are, not the part that you compartmentalize
36:11
Speaker 2: and show to the rest of the world. The real you.
36:15
Speaker 2: They peak out every once in a while, and if
36:19
Speaker 2: you're willing to listen, you start looking at that not
36:23
Speaker 2: as a problem. Right old version of me, Guy, I'm
36:27
Speaker 2: crying in public. I've got one job. Stop freaking crying.
36:33
Speaker 2: I don't care why it happened. Just shut it. The
36:37
Speaker 2: new version of me says, hold on, why am I
36:40
Speaker 2: crying while jogging in San Francisco. There's obviously something inside
36:44
Speaker 2: that's trying to get out. Yeah, so that's the new version,
36:48
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen years new. But the new version.
36:51
Speaker 1: Do we have to stop? I love talking to you, man.
36:56
Speaker 1: The book is called Unhooked for Yourself from Addiction Forever.
37:00
Speaker 1: Have to have you back. There's so much to talk about. Hey,
37:05
Speaker 1: how do people learn more about you and get the
37:07
Speaker 1: book and everything else?
37:09
Speaker 2: Yeah? So at djaffey dot com is my website. I
37:13
Speaker 2: do have a company called Ignited. You can find it
37:15
Speaker 2: on the djaffe dot com or I G N T
37:17
Speaker 2: D dot com and on all social media channels. I'm
37:20
Speaker 2: at doctor a D. Jaffe. So at d R A
37:24
Speaker 2: D I j A F f E. Come and find
37:26
Speaker 2: me have a conversation.
37:27
Speaker 1: We'll have all that linked up here at the show
37:29
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. A
37:33
Speaker 1: D freaking awesome. You are inspiring. Appreciate you man, loved it.
37:40
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, man, Thank you, I really really
37:42
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Really excited. We'll talk soon.