Latest / Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery / The Five Points of Balance, Part One

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The Five Points of Balance, Part One · Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:07
  Speaker B: Welcome to emotional sobriety, the next step in Recovery, with Dr. Alan Berger and Tom Rutledge. What a joy to be back with you guys after a couple weeks off the grid. Glad that we were able to get something out, though, in the interim. Tom. I kind of liked our conversation before. We mostly stayed on message, Alan. So not too much to worry about.
• 0:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, but we're trying to. We're trying to stay with our brand, which would mean basically, I would not make that easy.
• 0:34
  Speaker B: We're all the guinea pigs of emotional sobriety. So really, as long as we're on camera, the show's on brand. I turned 40 on the road, and then I turned 8 in sobriety years, so it's been some milestones as well.
• 0:47
  Speaker C: Sobriety years. That's phenomenal.
• 0:49
  Speaker A: I didn't know you before, but I. But I heard your stories as you tell them, but it's. But even since we've met, I think that. I think we would probably say that for all three of us, but I can certainly say that I've watched you grow and love, love being a part of that.
• 1:03
  Speaker B: Thank you so much. Okay, so I post all kinds of crap on Facebook and then I posted my sobriety birthday, and basically it was like all of the writers of Rohan showed up. There was like. Like 100 people were just like, you know, I'm so happy for you, and, you know, encouraging. And then, you know, I just. It's a reminder. I just feel like addictions touched so many people, if not directly, then indirectly through, you know, family and friends. And it's just like, it's very life affirming to know that just like so many people wish you well, you know, like, and all I did was I had this horrible illness, you know, but, like, you know, but a lot of support. Right.
• 1:43
  Speaker A: Alan, you and I remember the days when, when this was still a taboo. You didn't. Most people were embarrassed. You didn't talk about it. A lot of people had no idea what recovery was it. It's like, I mean, the part of the reason you get to hear that stuff is we, we have. We have succeeded at educating the public so much since. Since you and I were beginning in the. In the business, since you were there before I was. But it's like, I know when I was. I was starting, it's like I. I remember when the first country music star, Larry Gatlin, came out and was honest about his cocaine addiction. It was huge news. So it's. We've. We've come so far, and I love the fact that. That you have that kind of connection with people and you've learned how to receive that love.
• 2:31
  Speaker B: I was trepidatious at first about observing the milestone, because at eight years, it's almost. I felt for a moment like, who gives a shit? It's, you know, kind of like one year is cool, two years, three years. But, like, I don't know, am I just. Am I just living this now and I feel good about it? What's the point in really, like, yapping too much about it? But then I reminded myself, well, look, it's like, I need it. It's so important. This was such a foundational aspect to my life, and I need to keep going with the project, and I need to keep growing. And I feel like you need to, like, be out about this stuff and wear it on your sleeve and honor it, because, you know, that's the best way. That's. That's a great way to keep. Make sure it keeps going.
• 3:13
  Speaker C: Right.
• 3:13
  Speaker A: Well, it's one of the coolest things about this whole process is this. This communal process is. Is that. That you're not just helping yourself when you say. When you announce your sobriety, you're helping so many other people. It means something to all of us. And, you know, and as we talk about in the program, it's like, you know, especially to the newcomer, you know, the idea. I remember looking at those people in the first AA meetings I was ever in, and they were saying stuff that was very familiar to me, but they were very different than me in that they were laughing. And I, you know, and I was thinking, she, you know, and, you know, and I didn't know. I didn't know. But I hope that I would be one of those people one day. And I am. And it's like. And it's not like we're laughing it off. It's just that we have changed our. And that's. And that's what we teach with emotional sobriety, too, I think, is. It's a. It's a changing perspective, broadening. Broadening our perspective, understanding what you know, really getting clear about what's important.
• 4:10
  Speaker C: I would love to hear what you are as you reflect on your eight years, what you've learned about emotional sobriety during this time.
• 4:18
  Speaker B: Yes, this is a way of me directly answering that, but it also dovetails with some of the work you've been doing on the emotional sobriety workshop. Physical sobriety, while it's a. It's a tough mountain to climb and kind of that initial period of constantly reaching for some Chemical, outside yourself to be okay with the world. While that's, you know, crucial, then there's this ocean of progress that needs to take place. And, you know, some people don't make that progress. You know, some people just, they get clean and, or I like that expression, they put the plug in the jug and then that's kind of it. And they just white knuckle it, you know, with whatever their addictive condition is the rest of their lives. But what I, what emotional sobriety's been for me is just that, that process of being okay, even if, rather than okay only if. And every day, gotta do it all over again. And a lot of days I don't wanna do it, and a lot of, a lot of days I can't do it.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: When you say some days I can't, I mean, see, I don't think that's true. I think that, I think that we don't do it to our satisfaction on lots of days. All of us, we need to be able to be dissatisfied with something because that's part of motivation and that's how we keep growing. But it's like, like, I mean, like I've said, I've said more and more lately, if you're, if you learn something that day, then that's a successful day in recovery, you know, and if, and if you, and if you learn something and you are going to, you apply it, that's even. But no, I think, But I also want us to get out of that, that black or white, you know, I can or I can't or it was a good day or not a good day. It's like, because it's just, it's just a mess. It's just, it's just hard. And we're, you know, and some days are, you know, anybody can have a good day on a good day, but we, you know, where we really learn where our integrity grows is when we're struggling.
• 6:17
  Speaker B: I want to keep working, man. I want to keep working. I, I, you know, I, okay, so I was in France with my, my buddy who I love very much, who, you know, is a daily weed smoker. And he's, you know, rolling up a joint in front of me and he's, you know, so how's the sobriety going? And, and I'm just, I don't want to be judgmental towards him and, but I'm just trying to find, figure out both, interrogate my own thoughts and then kind of like answer him, you know, as honestly as I can. And I'm just like, well, I owe my entire life to it. You know, it's like everything that. Everything that I value in my life currently, including my ability to travel all the way to France and sit here with you and to be present, you know, I owe to my decision to get clean. And then I did talk. I did talk a little bit about emotional sobriety, and I talked about how I had a lot to clean up even, and maybe especially after I decided to, you know, not put those chemicals in my body.
• 7:17
  Speaker A: And.
• 7:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, so anyway, so that's.
• 7:19
  Speaker C: That.
• 7:20
  Speaker B: The five points of balance. Oh, and by the way, Alan, could you give us just like a little bit of primer on, like, you know, where. Where we are sourcing these from and kind of like how we brought. How you brought them or we brought them into the emotional sobriety conversation?
• 7:35
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, as. As you know, Patrick, I. I really tried to apply the ideas of differentiation to emotional sobriety, you know, as one way of looking at, you know, the experience we have. And what, what is lying, you know, what is underlying our emotional dependency. Right. Is this lack of differentiation. And, you know, the people that I. I turn to, to understand that are really the person who really was the. The person who brought the whole discussion, differentiation in the psychiatry and psychology was Dr. Murray Bowen. And so I take a lot from his writings, but also two other people. Dr. Michael Kerr was a very close disciple of Murray Bowen, and they wrote his book Family Evaluation together, which is, for many people feels like the textbook of differentiation and, and the Bowenian approach to. To family therapy. So that's one thing, one source. The other source is Dr. David Snarch's books on intimacy and desire and his book on passionate marriage. Now it's. It's. Those two books are related more to people that are looking at sexual dysfunction. But I've taken the concepts he had in terms of helping people with their sexual dysfunction, and I've modified them a bit and, you know, edited them somewhat and brought them into our. Our discussion of emotional sobriety. He talks about four points, balance. I've added one. I'll probably be adding one or two more to the whole discussion. But he really. I think that his application of his understanding of differentiation is quite refreshing and unique.
• 9:28
  Speaker B: Five points of balance. Number one, staying clear about our values and worth in the face of criticism, not letting others edit your sense of self. I kind of thought about this through Tom's lens a little bit. There's the committee, right. Of voices within ourselves. And point one for me is about keeping yourself at the head of the committee. You Know, on our thing, you know, when confronted by criticism, not giving the critic a privileged position at the head of the table, you know, letting you know, considering all criticism, but not giving it privilege. And instead. Yeah, letting your values. Giving your values.
• 10:08
  Speaker A: Let me just, Let me just toss in here, because I've learned. Put this together with some of my stuff and Alan's is. That's where the difference is. Differentiation is between constructive self criticism and self condemnation. Because the self condemnation part is what I, you know, what I always teach is that basically we have the same work to do with that. That inner condemner or that should. Monster that we do. Codependent relationship. You just described it. We give our power away. We're not, you know, because when you say you need to stay at the head of the table, I always want to make it clear that means to be in charge, not to be in control. We don't control much. We don't control things. But. But we. We are in charge of making the decisions on what we do next and what we do with whatever is now. Alan, you talk about this a lot about what's next. It's like that. That moment in time is decision. And that's, that's. And that's. You know, I think long before, at least for me, long before I was using language of codependent, of. Of emotional sobriety. I mean, that's what, that's what. If I look back, what I was doing, right, in my early recovery, that's what I was doing, right? I just didn't had this. This gives me a better language for it. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to make that point clear.
• 11:22
  Speaker B: No, you weren't interrupting. What does that bring to your mind, Alan?
• 11:26
  Speaker C: Well, you know, it. It's. It's a couple different things. It brings to my mind what you're talking about. And this is a very important part of understanding this first point of balance, right? You're talking about it in relationship to yourself. Because remember, Bill Wilson defined, emotional sobriety is real maturity and balance, which is to say humility in relationship with ourselves. So how to apply these things to ourselves is important. Just like not letting other people's limited perceptions of us define us and at the same time not letting the critic inside of us define us. Yes, see, so if there's a parallel process here, isn't there, in terms of the way that I need to deal with life and other people in terms of not taking on their criticism and defining myself by it, I need to do the same thing with my internal Critic.
• 12:25
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 12:27
  Speaker C: And you really captured that well in what you were saying, Patrick. And so it's very important to note that what we're learning here applies to every relationship we have with ourselves, with others and with life. Even our relationship with our higher power, God as you understand them. All of this stuff really has so much application across the board. And so you're talking about how do we deal with that internal, you know, I like Tom calls it the should monster. And he brings out that little thing that, that he shakes with us and stuff like that. And, and I love it because it, you know, he's embodied it. And, and we all have that, every one of us have that should monster, that top dog, whatever you want to call it, the critic inside, you know, the critical parent is what they call it in aca. There's a lot of different ways to refer it, but our relationship with that part of us becomes very important for, for our wellbeing, for our emotional sobriety. Because when, you know, when we look back at, and self acceptance, and let's tie it to that for a minute, the first, you know, principle of self acceptance is to have an utter refusal to have an adversarial relationship with yourself is to be your own friend. So it ties in beautifully with self acceptance. And you know, we saw that when we started to explore self acceptance and stuff like that with Roger and when he came in and we were talking a lot about, about Nathaniel Brandon's work and relating it to self esteem. We see it's a glove in a hand kind of a deal. It's so relevant to our well being to be able to have a healthier relationship with our committee. And that's what Tom has been advocating in his intrapsychic work for a long time.
• 14:16
  Speaker A: Well, it's where you put your identity too. I mean, I like to explain to people, sure, all of these are parts of ourselves. And I also like to remind people all the time, don't get too carried away. This is all metaphor. They're not, there are not little people running around inside of you. Don't get too concrete. But, but the idea here is, is that it's that short shortcut that you and I came up with a long time ago, I think Alan, which is the differentiation, the shortcut to differentiation is me, not me. And so, so when, when the shed monster, when, when there's a voice, basically I call, nowadays I just call them saboteurs. Then the saboteur is talking and telling you something they tend to have. When we first get into this work they tend to have more credibility than, than others. Like, you know, I'm going to get carried away with it, but, but the idea is they are always unsolicited, just like, just like rude people, they're unsolicited. The truth is, the wiser people in your life, you. They will, they're there for you and they will talk to you. But you need to ask, you need to, you need to invite them in. We have to do the same thing with our intrapersonal work. It's like that people think because the wisdom doesn't. Is not as verbose, it's not as. It's not disrespectful. And it usually does scream at us. So, you know, but we have these other guys, it feels like screaming at us all the time. So they really, if we're not, if we don't do the work of doing that differentiation on a very regular basis, but constant basis in the beginning, it's not just consistent, it's constant because basically you can get the concept and you can come over here in one of our offices and sit in the chair and understand the different chairs and that kind of stuff. It's not gonna, the concept will be good, but it's not going to work for you unless you actually learn to practice it. And that's what we do with initial sobriety, but also emotional sobriety is so much about understanding who you are and who you want to be.
• 16:15
  Speaker B: Right on, Tom. So the point, the second point of the five points of balance is calming our anxiety and comforting our emotional bruises or trauma, which to me now, and I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but it's about self care. And I have a friend in recovery who, he talks a lot about slowing things down when you're overwhelmed. Slow it down. The story of the last year, six months to a year for me, has been overwhelming. So I've had to figure out a lot of little tricks that aren't pounding a handle of vodka to calm my anxiety. On this particular trip, even though I'm out of town, I'm on vacation, you know, I'm not immune from anxiety or, you know, different stress. So I've been watching a lot of films on my laptop when I have some downtime and then writing about them. And that is a very soothing activity for me. I've got the time to do it. So I've been indulging in it and it's, it feels really good. And you know, back at home I've got a lot more work swirling around So I tend to be guilty sometimes about taking those two hours out to just like watch a movie. But now that I can, I'm indulging and I think it's been really good for me. It's as like a, just a head clearing exercise.
• 17:26
  Speaker C: So what this, this second principle, and you know, this will be good, we can do this over the next few weeks if we don't get to all five today. But calming ourselves, right, and being able to quiet our mind and calm our heart becomes such an important part of being able to regulate our experience in life. And you know, we can talk about that. There's, there's a lot of different ways to change what you're experiencing right in this moment, you know we've talked about, is how when you change your language and your perception of something, how powerful that can be, right? So that's one thing, is to change how we're looking at an experience can change the feeling dramatically. I think I've talked about when I was in line at the bank of America and this woman is this, you know, 85 year old woman was up at the counter with this young man and the teller and he was having this wonderful conversation with her. And I was impatient because I wanted to deposit my check and go have lunch with Dan Griffin right over at the salon shop. And I'm standing there getting anxious and getting angry about, right, because they're taking so long. And then all of a sudden I looked at the situation from a different perspective and I saw the kindness that was going on. And all of that tension inside of me about having to get this to happen right now was gone. And I could have stood there for an hour and enjoyed what I was watching because I shifted my perception, I shifted the meaning that that was happening to me. And that's powerful. You know, people say another way you can change it is by deep breathing. And we see that all the time. People that are anxious, if they start to take breath, they call it that square breathing where you take, you know, you breathe, you inhale to a count of 4,000, you hold it for 4,000 and then you exhale for 4,000. Some people say 7,000, it doesn't matter. But they call it the square. It's kind of a circular breathing that can also bring our heart rate down, getting up and taking a walk. You know, people exercise it sometimes to do that. Look, people regulate themselves by going to a meeting, calling up a friend, talking to somebody, you know, getting a massage, having somebody massage. They found in with all of the trauma that took place in 9 11. What's his name? Basil Van der Koop, who's a, you know, a big trauma expert now and talks about, you know, your body keeps score. He found one of the most successful interventions that was helping people deal with the anxiety that they were left over with was to get a physical massage. It was incredible. So there are so many ways that are healthy ways of us dealing with it. Obviously the unhealthy ways are take a Xanax, take a drink. That's the thing about alcohol. It's an anxiolytic. I mean it will remove your anxiety and it works too darn good. And that's one of the things that happens with a lot of people who start medicating with alcohol. So there's a lot of different ways that we can learn to calm ourselves. People take yoga classes and meditation. Another great, great way of dealing with.
• 20:51
  Speaker A: One of the things, Alan, I want to say about listening to what you're saying is, and this is a big piece of, I think emotional sobriety is, is we do learn, as you said, we had to learn new tricks, Patrick. We do learn new ways to get through things. We get to survive things, to be okay. But what we're really talking about is another shift in perspective which, which is we're using these, these situations. This is that positive opportunism. We're using these situations to learn something. It's like when you describe that about being as the teller. I've done this several times with people where, who I'm working with people who are impatient and they call me because they're caugh traffic and they can't get to the appointment on time. And what I always say to them, I say, it's okay, I've already started your appointment. It's like, and you're doing fine so far. It's like, you know, and I also suggest that maybe if they show up, they're going to screw it up. It's like, but basically I'm make, make, take, put it to a humor. But when I, when they get here, what I, what I, I've learned, they tell them, look, we can do this. You're in charge. You can do. We can sit here and talk about all the, the in traffic. We can talk about your frustration at traffic and stuff like that. But next time just realize your session starts when it starts. And if you're in traffic, you're an experiential therapy. You know, breathe, be okay in traffic. You know, come, come in. Tell me the first 10 minutes of the session, how How. How you've changed. It's like, rather than just go experience what you've always experienced and see that's what you're talking about. How can I do this? Not only different, but how can I do this to help me be better?
• 22:32
  Speaker B: Tell me what you think about this. Guys, Part of my emotional sobriety journey is to be more present, is recognizing how not present I am. Like, constantly.
• 22:43
  Speaker A: Like.
• 22:44
  Speaker B: Like. Like I'll be having. Like, I'm so not present. Like, I'll be having fun. I'll be in a fun moment. I'll be in a romantic moment. I'll be in the very, like, creatively engaged moment. And I'm already thinking about, how do I get out of this moment? And. But I. But I know that the key to my salvation is being able to really, like, inhabit. Fully inhabit these moments. And so I guess an awareness is
• 23:09
  Speaker A: always the first step of that. So that's beautiful.
• 23:13
  Speaker B: The third one is grounded responding and not overreacting or underreacting when there's tension or anxiety. That's a big one.
• 23:22
  Speaker C: That's such an important one. Is that, remember, we've defined emotional sobriety as having an appropriate and honest relationship with reality. Another way to say it is that our response is aligned with reality. Congruent. What does that mean?
• 23:42
  Speaker A: You've used the word congruent, Alan. I love that that's what we're doing, right?
• 23:46
  Speaker C: That we're congruent with reality. That means I don't overreact to it or I don't underreact to it. You know, let's say, what was it the other day? I was working with a couple last night, and they're. They're wonderful couples. They're. They're. They're later in life, you know, he's struggling with probably a diagnosis of Parkinson's. She's a psychoanalyst. It's such a trip to watch them interact. It's. It's so. It's a lot. It's a lot of. I mean, I love them. They're. They're wonderful people. Both of them are good people. And. And so they were at a funeral the other day, and they were driving to. To afterwards that they were going to the cemetery for the burial, and a couple cars were caravanning, and she assumed she was a passenger, that he was following the caravan and he had his GPS on and he was following this Wave program. So he got to this intersection and everybody else was turning right and he was going straight. She says, wait a minute. Wait. They're turning right. They're not going straight. And. And. And he says, I'm following my gps. And they got in this big fight over which way they should have gone. Now they got to the hotel. They got. No, they got to the cemetery, I should say. Oh, no, it was a hotel. They came in. They were going from the, from the cemetery to the hotel for a kind of a Shiva. And they were going over to the hotel for people to share. Right. And to talk about the experience they had with this woman. And they got there. Right. They didn't get there the way she wanted them to. They got there. The way that his waves took us. They had such a big fight over how they were going to get there. And to me, it was an overreaction to the whole deal, because the bottom line is they got there. It's just that how they got there was so he debated with a lot of heat, with a lot of energy, and she was right, and she was going to prove to him that he was wrong. He should have listened to her, and he was going to prove that she was wrong. He was going to listen to her. And they were both off into power struggle, and they were both right. It's. Who's gonna. Whose way is it gonna be? And unfortunately, a lot of our relationships after someone for a period of time devolve into that.
• 26:07
  Speaker A: Well, and you also. This is. I mean, there's so much in this. I do think we need to stay with the five points for. For a while. But it's like. Because the one. The one thing is that what you're. What you have to ask if you're paying attention. Emotion with emotional sobriety, what you ask there is the reaction. It's not. The reaction is wrong. It's. The reaction is what am I reacting to? Because I think I'm.
• 26:31
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 26:31
  Speaker A: I call it the illusion of overreaction. I think I'm reacting to the fact that we disagree about these directions. But clearly, looking at my reaction, it's bigger than that. So I need to go inside and ask that question as many times as I need to ask it to get. To get information, you know, because I'm responding to some other, you know, and I think it's always fair to say we're responding to some fear inside. And so, you know, what, what, what. What are you afraid of? It's like, it's so powerful just to not judge these. And that's. That's what you're talking about, where you have a couple too, that can. That can get caught in it, but they can talk about it ultimately. And you. And you get out of the judgment and you just learn.
• 27:13
  Speaker C: Right on, Tom.
• 27:14
  Speaker B: The trick, the real trick with relationships and with loved ones is there are. There are going to be instances of like, emotional combat. Like, you have to, like you are in combat with this person that you love. Like, on a fundamental level, let. Let your wisdom self do the driving, you know, no matter how angry you get or flustered in the moment. And, and you know, it's really tough. And I, I think, like, just not for. For me, whether it's delaying reaction or just not reacting, you know, I don't think that's the same as passivity. I just think it's not like jumping at every fish, I guess. And let go.
• 27:51
  Speaker A: You let go. Like, let go, let go, let go.
• 27:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. That'll help me to avoid, I don't know, saying something that I regret because I remember a time in relationships where I was just pure reactivity and I almost always regretted, you know, where I took things because I was just, you know, jumping at the stimuli.
• 28:11
  Speaker A: That's. That's my story in relationship is of my. One of the points of my contribution to success in my marriage is just learning when I don't need to say a damn thing. Not, you know, not. Not in the yes, dear sort of way, but the idea. I finally got to the place where I would be up. I would be upset about whatever is upset for usually it was in the kitchen because that's where I get all nervous. It's like, like in the morning. And I, and I met with the help of a therapist. I said, okay, well, I, I want to. I want to tell Dede when she comes downstairs before we leave that this bothered me and. But I'm going to wait until the end of the day and if it's still bothering me, I will talk to her about it. Never, I can honestly say, zero times has it ever been an issue at the end of the day, you know, and that's not because I stuffed the issue. It's because it wasn't an issue between me and Dee. It was just between me and me.
• 29:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, I just. I love, I love. I mean, I'll use my self talking that way. It's just that, like, your, your fury right now is just a specter and if it's not, then it'll still be there later. That's when you return to it, you know, so just, you know, take a walk around the block, see if it's still there when you get back. Probably it won't be.
• 29:25
  Speaker C: It's great to have you back.
• 29:26
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 29:27
  Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Yeah. It's a beautiful community you've cultivated,
• 29:37
  Speaker A: Sam.