Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 783: Climbing Up The Waterfall with Dr. Glenn Doyle
Transcript
- 0:10Right. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
- 0:14My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
- 0:19to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
- 0:23who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
- 0:27authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
- 0:33about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
- 0:37That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
- 0:43So five or three to one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
- 0:49I am very excited to have as my guest today doctor Glenn Doyle.
- 0:53Glenn, welcome. It is a pleasure to be with you, doctor Guy.
- 0:58Appreciate that. So. Doctor Doyle has extensive a clinical experience in inpatient,
- 1:03outpatient and consultation settings. He's presented multiple times at the annual conference of
- 1:10the ISSTD International Society for the Study of Trauma and Association as well as the
- 1:15American Psychological Association. Doctor Doyle got into psychology because, as a teenager,
- 1:22he became deeply fascinated with the self help movement as well as literature and as
- 1:26a professional, has made it his mission to bring the techniques and research base
- 1:30of clinical psychology to the personal empowerment paradigm of self help. Glenn, welcome,
- 1:36Thank you so much. So before we go in here, share with
- 1:38our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. Where I'm from
- 1:45originally is I grew up in Iowa, here in the heartland, and went
- 1:52to graduate school in Washington, d C. And that's actually where I started
- 1:56my career as a trauma focused psych college just out in DC. And I'm
- 2:00still licensed in d C. And in twenty fifteen, I moved the whole
- 2:06operation or the heart of the operation anyway here to Chicago, Illinois. So
- 2:12I'm primarily based here in Chicago, but i also have a client base in
- 2:15DC. And you know, I also, like at this point, you
- 2:21know, I now do consultation work with folks nationally and recently internationally as well.
- 2:28So awesome, awesome, RK. Glenn, let's dive into here,
- 2:30how the heck did this start? For you? Share that story. It
- 2:37depends on what we're talking about when we say this, you know, if
- 2:42we're talking about psychology generally and getting into psychology, let alone trauma therapy,
- 2:50like I didn't actually know, but all of these things from very early in
- 2:53my life were kind of snowballing and conspiring to kind of move me towards this
- 2:58the work that I do now, working mostly with trauma and addictions. You
- 3:04know. So I grew up with a really intense, really intelligent, really
- 3:08brilliant father, and the expectations for me were super super high. My dad
- 3:15was this brilliant guy. He started businesses, and he was super super charismatic,
- 3:20and you know, like being his son came with its own set of
- 3:24expectations. Kind Of the dark side of that was that he also had a
- 3:30serious addiction problem. And so my life growing up was really kind of ducking
- 3:38and dodging and weaving between all of the life obstacles that you don't even know
- 3:43are obstacles at the time. For you, it's just life. I talked
- 3:46to a lot of my folks now and they say, man, I didn't
- 3:50realize that when I was growing up in these environments that we would now call
- 3:53traumagenic, I didn't realize there was anything weird about that. That was just
- 3:57life. And that was what it was like for me too. This was
- 3:59just like life. You know, growing up in a house where there was
- 4:01you know, serious addiction problems fed into like a school based experience where I
- 4:10was just getting bullied mercilessly, and again I didn't realize that was anything out
- 4:15of the ordinary, you know, I kind of thought that, man,
- 4:17this is just life. Sometimes it sucks. I can look back now and
- 4:23really see that, uh, you know, dealing with the uh you know,
- 4:28the behavior of my dad at home and trying to kind of live the
- 4:30life that was trying to live at school were really formative experiences for me.
- 4:36And by the time I was an adolescent, I had a developed a real
- 4:43serious depression problem, you know, up to and including suicide, suicidal ideation
- 4:48and kind of half asked suicide attempts. I had also really developed a a
- 4:55personality style that lent itself to addiction. Again, at the time, I
- 4:58didn't really know what that was, because gosh, I wasn't cool enough to
- 5:02be to be using any of the substances that they that you think of as
- 5:05as substances of addiction. I was never invited a party, so I never
- 5:10got the chance to drink. That said, I uh was behaving in these
- 5:15these very what I now know are addict ways with with other substances and other
- 5:20behaviors. So anyway, I wind up at this as an adolescent just miserable,
- 5:26miserable, So me, any did you receive any help up to this
- 5:31point? Did anyone an adult jump in and say, Glenn, you know,
- 5:36maybe you should talk to some anything like that. So it's funny you
- 5:42should ask, because so part of my experience in grade school was I was
- 5:50sexually abused by a male babysitter, and a few years after it happened,
- 5:58I told about it, and by this time that the guy had moved away
- 6:00and there's really no accountability that could happen for the guy. But sure my
- 6:05parents actually got me in to see a counselor, and I remember being there
- 6:11thinking, you know, gosh, this thing that had happened with the babysitter.
- 6:15Like I knew it was supposed to have been traumatic for me, but
- 6:19I remember thinking, gosh, of the things that are making me unhappy.
- 6:24That's like, that's that's not even high on the list, guy, And
- 6:28yet that's what the guy was asking about. That's what the counselor was asking
- 6:30about. So I do remember having a few sessions with this guy and to
- 6:34my recollection. And I was pretty young, like at this point, I
- 6:36was probably in about fourth grade or so, and I remember having the experience
- 6:41of like, well, gosh, I think those sessions ended because there really
- 6:45wasn't anywhere to go with it. You know, I don't think he quite
- 6:48knew what to do with me. Nor did I really have to my recollection.
- 6:51Again this is a long time ago, Nor did I really have any
- 6:56No one had really sat me down and said this is what we're doing,
- 6:58like, this is what therapy is, like, this is you know,
- 7:00this is how it works, this is how you can this is what you
- 7:02can bring to it, et cetera, et cetera. Fast forward to when
- 7:09I was a teenager and I started to get interested in self help. You
- 7:15know, like, so I started to, uh, you know, I
- 7:16kind of wandered into the self help aisle of Barnes and Noble. You know
- 7:20how how you kind of wander into the self help isle and you hope nobody
- 7:23sees you to kind of you look around furtively, Right, So I started
- 7:28reading self help books, and so I got the idea in my head that
- 7:31well, maybe there was something here, like like maybe you know this wasn't
- 7:34just all me sucking. You know, maybe I'd had some experiences and maybe
- 7:39I had some challenges, you know, some obstacles, right, And yet
- 7:44at the time, so I remember I asked for my birthday, for my
- 7:46sixteenth birthday, I asked my parents for a self help book, as I
- 7:49want as a president, I wanted to It was a it was a Tony
- 7:53Robbins book. It was interested as a yeah, okay, they had the
- 7:57self help book my birthday, and I remember my parents just got it for
- 8:01me and didn't ask any questions. And I remember thinking at that point,
- 8:05at least in retrospect, I remember thinking, gosh, if you're, you
- 8:09know, for his sixteenth birthday, if your kid asks for a self help
- 8:11book, maybe you'd get curious, right, like like like maybe you just
- 8:16ask some questions, like so, kid, yeah right. I think that
- 8:20kind of sent the message to me that, well, wow, I really
- 8:22am on my own here, you know, I really am, you know,
- 8:26kind of in a position of having to put together any kind of recovery
- 8:28I'm going to have on my own. I do remember when I was a
- 8:31junior in high school having an anxiety attack at school, and I was,
- 8:39you know, I was. I was hyperventilating, you know. I know
- 8:41now that I'd been triggered and and I was having a bit of a trauma
- 8:46response, but at the time no idea what was going on, Like I'm
- 8:48gasping like a fish out of water. And they holed me down to the
- 8:52to the nurse's office, and eventually they got an ambulance. They put me
- 8:54to the hospital, and my parents did show up. My recollects. They
- 9:01were furious because they had come from work, like what is this drama queen
- 9:03doing now? Right? Like what is this kid, this dramatic kid,
- 9:07you know what we have to interrupt our day, right, and kind of
- 9:11arguing with themselves about like kind of who is to blame for this? You
- 9:13know? And and here I just wanted to shrink. And I remember being
- 9:16in the hospital but just wanting to shrink, like, oh my god,
- 9:18what have I done. They did get me into into therapy, but the
- 9:24but the therapy was again it was focused on, well, Glenn is the
- 9:28problem in the family. And I remember that vividly, like I was kind
- 9:33of you know, we know this term identified patient, right, like I
- 9:37was the identified patient and so I wasn't in treatment for my recollection is a
- 9:43few months because it wasn't a year, because I remember, I remember what
- 9:48classes I was taking when it started. I remember what classes I was taking
- 9:50when it stopped. So again, off and on. It's not it's not
- 9:56the case that there was no help. It is the case that there was
- 10:00help that I didn't know how to really utilize. It's also the case,
- 10:07I will tell you this that whenever help was was offered, like whenever,
- 10:13like at school, they would do awareness exercises, right, and they'd say,
- 10:16well, man, if you ever have thoughts of hurting yourself, you
- 10:18know, you know, come to us and then talk to us and whatever.
- 10:22I remember having thought, there is no way, there is no way
- 10:24I would do that. Are you kidding? I'll be in trouble. I
- 10:28vividly remember my parents arguing when I had the panic at actual cosmall like that,
- 10:31you get in trouble, we could tell anybody, right. So,
- 10:35in response to your question, this is a long answer to a short question.
- 10:39But in response to your question, sure there was help, but man,
- 10:41was it really complicated to access or to utilize it? Anyway? I
- 10:46really appreciate you sharing all that, and it just sounds like you were put
- 10:54into this drama maze where there really was Noah's keep. You know, even
- 11:01the help wasn't really sufficient and in fact kind of turned on you even more
- 11:09so, how do things unfold such that you said yourself, all right,
- 11:15I want to start pursuing this so well, it's it's really relevant to to
- 11:20how you just framed that guy. The you know, the fact that even
- 11:24when help was available, it even it felt more dangerous to access it.
- 11:31I actually talked to a lot of people now who feel that way about engaging
- 11:35the mental health system. Is that they you know, like a lot of
- 11:37people have the experience of man, you get just a little too honest with
- 11:41a therapist and you find yourself in the hospital or you know. It very
- 11:46much felt that way for me. And and ironically, where I actually found
- 11:52some semblance of connection and some semblance of understanding. Wasn't those self help books
- 11:58that I was reading. I mean, I think there's a number of reasons
- 12:01for that. You know, One, I was accessing them on my terms,
- 12:05and I was accessing them at my pace, and many of the better
- 12:09self help books, and at this point, I've you know, like,
- 12:13at this point, I'm I'm I'm board president of an organization that is,
- 12:16you know, that that works with you know, accountability and transparency the self
- 12:20help industry. So, like, I've read a lot of self help books
- 12:22at this point, but the better self help books very often included stories,
- 12:30you know, from the author's life, and I really connected with that.
- 12:33That turned into a real source of strength. And I say without exaggeration that,
- 12:39you know, those books probably saved my life at some point because it
- 12:43did give me this this It planted the seed of an idea that Okay,
- 12:48if he figured it out, you know, if this guy was in this
- 12:52position, he figured it out, well, then maybe I can figure it
- 12:56out to don't know how, right, but if this situation exis existed,
- 13:01you know, maybe I can figure that out too. It's one of the
- 13:05reasons why now as a therapist, you know, I'm very big on bringing
- 13:09our own personal experience to the table and how we work, you know,
- 13:15because I think part of what was happening was anytime a therapist did work with
- 13:20me, they were hitting technique really hard. Right, Maybe they were doing
- 13:26you know, good therapy, but what I needed was that idea that that
- 13:31this is possible for real people to do this and a get through, and
- 13:33that's what I got from the self help books. So so I was always
- 13:39very into the self help books, even as I kind of careened into what
- 13:43turned out to be an initially disastrous attempt at college. Right, so,
- 13:48I'm a kid who grew up with real self esteem wounds, and I think
- 13:52that, you know, gosh, how am I going to solve the self
- 13:56esteem problem? My first college major, I was a music major, was
- 14:00going to be a rock and roll star. I'm going to get myself a
- 14:01job guy. Right at the end of my job, people stand up and
- 14:05say yay, and then they buy your CD. That was how I was
- 14:09going to fix myself esteem problem. And this made perfect sense to me at
- 14:13the time. I was still terribly depressed. And what ended up happening was
- 14:18I got a few months into my college career where I just collapsed and I
- 14:22went into a major depressive episode. I stopped going to school essentially and went
- 14:28into a really, really dark place. I dropped out of school, wound
- 14:33up doing things like playing piano in places for money, Like I was the
- 14:37piano man with the with the glass on the piano and I played dinner theater
- 14:43for a while. You know, to make ends meet. But the point
- 14:46is I was in this really really dark place, finally got to a place
- 14:50where I remembered the self of how books that had really got me through as
- 14:56a teenager. So at this point in in my early twenties and I thought
- 15:00to myself, you know, gosh, maybe I can revisit those I was
- 15:01lucky enough to stumble upon. I still remember the day I stumbled upon an
- 15:05old, dog eared copy of Feeling Good by by David Burns, like the
- 15:11old book about CBT. It's like CBT for the mass is Feeling Good by
- 15:15David Burns. Like, Okay, I guess, I guess, I guess
- 15:18I'll try it. Not only did that kind of mark the beginning of my
- 15:22turnaround, but that also planted the idea in my head of you know how
- 15:26back in the day, the idea I've been planted in my head that maybe
- 15:28you can survive this. Well, this planted the idea in my head is
- 15:31like, well, maybe you can do something like these people did in helping
- 15:35other people. You know, maybe you can make the focus of your career,
- 15:41your life being there for people in ways that you needed someone to be
- 15:45there by, Like like like you need it right. So in short order,
- 15:52I kind of right in the ship. I went right back to school.
- 15:54I burned through an undergraduate psychology degree in about two and a half years.
- 15:58Like that's how motivated. I was. Summers and stuff, went to
- 16:03graduate school in Washington, d C. And when I was in d C,
- 16:06I was lucky enough, like I already had this idea of, man,
- 16:10the kind of work that I wanted to do, and the kind of
- 16:11patients I wanted to work with. I was lucky enough to get a job
- 16:17at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, which happened to have an inpatient unit devoted
- 16:23to the treatment of complex trauma and associative disorders. Right. So I was
- 16:30very lucky to get exposed to the fact that, man, not only can
- 16:33you do this kind of work, but here's how you do it. There
- 16:37are people who are actually doing it, and here are people who are doing
- 16:40it with some of the patients who are in the you know, the worst
- 16:44possible space, like like if you're being admitted to an inpatient unit, man,
- 16:48you're you're having rough times. So again, I was lucky enough to
- 16:52after you know, getting into this groove of this is what I want to
- 16:56do having some really great modeling. So again, it's I often say that,
- 17:03you know, man, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now
- 17:07without having been just stupidly lucky, you know, and and and and not
- 17:11just lucky the things that have happened to me, which I am, but
- 17:15also stupidly lucky to have had the the role models that I've had. Someone
- 17:19don't even know that they're role models. Well again, I mean, I
- 17:25I think you you're articulating your whole process beautifully and in a really inspiring way.
- 17:33And you know, I want to second your sentiment about the importance of
- 17:40bringing your own story, of one's own story to this whole uh process and
- 17:45platform, because that's what I hope my podcast is about. So already as
- 17:52you're talking, Glen, I'm thinking, all right, I've got to have
- 17:56this guy back on again. Sincerely. I mean, this is what it's
- 17:59about out But how talk a little bit more if you could, how you
- 18:07made that jump to say, you know what, I want to help others.
- 18:11Sure, So again, I talked so much about the importance of modeling,
- 18:18and one of my earliest models was, as I noted, that self
- 18:25help kind of pioneer superstar Anthony Robbins. I know that he's kind of a
- 18:29controversial figure, but believe me, being involved in the nonprofit work I am
- 18:33now, I know he's a very controversial figure. But something that really struck
- 18:37me about Tony Robbins's story was that he didn't really crawl out of a hole
- 18:44that he was in until he was able to envision a life of meaning.
- 18:51And for him it happened to be able. Man, I know the resources
- 18:56that I might have needed, the resources that might have been help to me
- 19:00once upon time that just weren't there. You know, maybe I can be
- 19:04that person for somebody else. It really goes back to if you're familiar with
- 19:08a Victor Frankel man search for meaning. So Victor Frankel is in this unbelievably
- 19:15unfortunate position of being in a concentration camp, and Victor Frankel psychiatrist, like
- 19:21he gets really interested in the question of, like, well, what makes
- 19:23the difference between the prisoners who survive and the prisoners who don't. He comes
- 19:29up with this really interesting observation, says, man, it seems to be
- 19:33those prisoners who have who can conjure some sense of meaning, who can assign
- 19:37some sense of meaning to what otherwise might just be this this awful, nonsensical
- 19:42experience, that there is something too that that has survival value. And Frankel
- 19:48and Man Search for Meaning talks about this about how very often the meaning that
- 19:55prisoners assigned to this awful experience they we're having. It's like, well,
- 19:57Man, the meaning I'm going to assigned to this is I need to get
- 20:00through this so I can so I can tell the world about it, so
- 20:03it will never happen again. Likewise, Tony Robbins meaning was that, you
- 20:10know, I need to learn everything I can about human behavior so I can
- 20:15go on and help other people. Right, that's going to be my meaning
- 20:18when I take a look at what gets me out of bed in the morning
- 20:22and what really motivates me. And you know, motivation has has always been
- 20:26a problem for me. So in addition to these other things I was struggling
- 20:30with. You know, for years I had no idea I had a bad
- 20:33case of ADHD. Part of what ADHD entails is what we call executive dysfunction
- 20:41and behavior initiation. Motivation right, terribly hard time just getting motivated. That's
- 20:48why it's one of the reasons why I need these really vivid models in front
- 20:52of my eyes of like, well, man, this is what this could
- 20:53be, you know, this is what this could possibly be. Right,
- 20:59So having again these these really vivid examples of like man Victor Franko found meaning
- 21:06and telling the world about it. Antoni Robbins found meaning and being there in
- 21:11ways that that other people, that that that he needed people to being or
- 21:15other people. And I think what gets me out of bed in the morning,
- 21:18and what's what motivates me to do the things that I do, to
- 21:21to to write the tweets and write the blogs, and I mean, let
- 21:23alone work with the patients, et cetera. I think, you know,
- 21:26man, if all that was available, if all that is available is the
- 21:30kind of help that I got, we're perfectly well intended people, right,
- 21:36Like I totally believe a counselor who I saw when I was a kid,
- 21:38like God bless it, he was probably doing his best. Then then people
- 21:42are again they're not going to get the help they need. So that's again,
- 21:48that's that's what gets me out of out of bed in the morning when
- 21:51I write my tweets, you know, so so most of the material I
- 21:53do in terms of you know, writing blogs, writing other things, and
- 21:59and and doing your parents and stuff. Most of them start like, I
- 22:00kind of work out my ideas as tweets first, So if you follow my
- 22:04Twitter, you're getting the rough drash of this idea that I have. Right.
- 22:08But most of the ideas that start out with tweets like huh, I
- 22:11envision the person who was me, Like I envision the person who is struggling
- 22:17with their trauma recovery, right, And I have this whole thing that I
- 22:21feel so strong about is that you know, in the trauma treatment world,
- 22:26I feel that we tend to get really enamored of trauma therapy, Like we
- 22:30get really interested in the therapy because we're a therapist. We get really interested
- 22:33in what we do. Right, I get really interested Since I come from
- 22:37the experience that I come from, I get really experience it, and I
- 22:40get really interested in the experience of recovering. Like therapy happens an hour a
- 22:44week. Recovery is twenty four seven, three sixty five. So I think
- 22:48about that person who is struggling with recovery, and they are struggling with are
- 22:52they going to self harm today? Right? Like, like, are they
- 22:55going to get out of bed today? Are they going to go to work?
- 22:57I don't know why? And they open up there, you know their
- 23:03social media app. You know, is there a nugget of an idea that
- 23:07I can plant there? That idea is is really interesting and cool to me
- 23:11that I can plant that idea, much like ideas are planted in my head.
- 23:15And I know it's possible because I had that experience. That's a really
- 23:21interesting reversal in a sense. Uh, you know, therapy has taking place
- 23:26an hour a week, recovery is taking place, uh, filling, filling
- 23:30the gaps and all that other time. My gosh, you know you're clearly
- 23:37on a mission. Right let me just remind everyone of them speaking with doctor
- 23:41Glenn Doyle. All right, let's just pause here for a second to thank
- 23:45our sponsors. All Right, we are back. You're you're you're on a
- 23:52mission to what I'm on a mission to save the me who once was?
- 24:03Is what first occurs to me when when when you say that I'm on a
- 24:07mission to be there. So I have a whole shtick that I do about
- 24:10how you know, Look, I mean it's nothing new. It's if you've
- 24:14done any kind of inner child work, you know, you know that that
- 24:17that we carry with us, the the the the us that we once were,
- 24:22right, the kid we once were. We carry that kid with us
- 24:25inside our head and inside our heart, and a big task of trauma recovery
- 24:29is to make the inside of our head and the inside of our heart a
- 24:32safe place for that kid. And I'm still doing that work now, right,
- 24:37So part of rescuing the me who once was part of taking care of
- 24:44him, you know, part of the care and maintenance of that that kid
- 24:47I once was, who I still carry around with me is to help other
- 24:52people, right, Because I think part of what that kid inside needs,
- 24:56at least speaking from my own kid inside, I think part of what that
- 24:57kid inside needs is to know that there are people who see them, who
- 25:03see that man, the resources that are available are problematic, and again it's
- 25:10it's not even necessarily anybody's fault that the just are the complicated reach out for
- 25:14help. So again I think of it like in terms of a mission,
- 25:19Mike. Still, I'm helping other people, and I'm blessed to be able
- 25:22to do that, But really, what am I doing, really, what
- 25:26I'm taking care of that kid who I once was, Like like you know
- 25:30the fact that I make these resources available. Another thing that I do is,
- 25:34like so hear, in my practice in Chicago, I make lots and
- 25:38lots of therapy opportunities available at that either low or no cost and whatnot.
- 25:44That's another piece of it, right, But really, what are we always
- 25:48trying to do. We're always trying to save and nurture and and keep safe.
- 25:53You know that that kid inside, I mean, we're all we're all
- 25:56really working her own recovering, like everything you see of me, like I
- 26:00work in my own recovery. Of course I am. What do you feel
- 26:06that kid needed? You know, if you could turn back the clock in
- 26:11the sense, what would you have had that initial therapist do or say that
- 26:18would have allowed you, as a young kid to be seen and were heard.
- 26:23So that's an interesting question because what first leaps to my mind was that
- 26:32I wish that I'd had how to put this. I wish that I'd had
- 26:37someone frame the problem to me or the situation to me in such a way
- 26:41that you know, Look, this project of finding what we'll call it happiness
- 26:48because that's how kids think, right, this project of finding happiness and of
- 26:52not being miserable. Let alone, healing from from the experience that you might
- 26:57have had. This is a large project. This is a project that begins
- 27:02when you get up in the morning, right, and it extends far beyond
- 27:07this hour. I wish that i'd had that that that therapist. I'm kind
- 27:14of glad I don't remember his name because I feel that, like in all
- 27:15these interviews I toss him under the bus and it's really not his vault.
- 27:18But I wish I'd had somebody sit me down and say, you know,
- 27:25look, you know, I get a limited amount of time with you,
- 27:29but you're with you twenty four to seven. So that relationship with you,
- 27:33your relationship with you, that's the one you got to work on. That's
- 27:37the one that needs to be made safe. That's the one that needs to
- 27:40be you know, productive. Right. I think that we do our best
- 27:47work as a therapist. It might either are all sorts of different types of
- 27:51therapists and all sorts of different types of therapy. I'm not a snob and
- 27:52says, you know, like it has to be done this way. I
- 27:56do think that as a general principle, though, like we as therapists are
- 28:00the most effective when we are acknowledging straight up the limitations of any possible work
- 28:07that we can do. Right, So I wish i'd had that that that
- 28:11therapist say, Now, look, kid, you're you're up against it.
- 28:17You don't know it, but you're up against it. Genetically, you're up
- 28:19against it. Environmentally, you're up against it with this abusive experience that you
- 28:25had, right, and you're going to be up against it every minute that
- 28:27you're awake. So this is a large project. I am here to help
- 28:33you, and I'm not the only one here to help you. You're going
- 28:36to find God, if I'd only die, if I'd only had somebody frame
- 28:40it to me, like, you know, look, I as a therapist
- 28:45and not the only resource you're ever going to have. You know, you're
- 28:48going to find characters and books and characters and movies and musicians and poetry and
- 28:56various things out there in the world that are going to help you that are
- 29:00going to be your secret weapons. Right. It's kind of an abstract answer
- 29:06to it. To it's a very concrete question, like what should he have
- 29:08said? But man, like I really think of you know, a model,
- 29:11I really admire, you know, again, having dealt also with you
- 29:17know, some of my own addiction issues. Right. A model I really
- 29:22admire or is the twelve step model, even though I know that you know
- 29:27what, the twelve step model has, its has its advantages, it's disadvantages,
- 29:30it's not for everybody. But something I really like about it is the
- 29:34sponsorship model. This idea that Okay, you're going to have a sponsor.
- 29:40Your sponsor, Yeah, you can call them when you're in a jam.
- 29:41They're they're they're kind of part mentor, they're kind of part coach. They
- 29:45recognize the limitations. They're not a therapist, right, but they're kind of
- 29:49but they've been there. Most importantly, they've been there. They have some
- 29:52sober time, right, so they know how you're going to get through this.
- 29:57They know how they got through this, and then know they it's possible
- 30:00to get through it. You bet, you bet. Let me. I
- 30:04can tell you a story just real quick. Of course. I remember once
- 30:08my family was vacationing in Hawaii, and I was probably it was probably in
- 30:17my twenties, and and and we were in Hawaii and we were doing this.
- 30:21Among the activities that we were doing, we were doing these these dune
- 30:23buggies driving through this this jungle in Hawaii it was very beautiful. And we
- 30:29stopped at one point at a it was this beautiful lagoon with a with a
- 30:34waterfall, and we were swimming in the water and stuff, and our our
- 30:37tour guide as we were swimming in the water, our tour guide says,
- 30:41you know, look, I tell this to all the tourists, and he
- 30:45points to the waterfall and he says, you know, look, if you
- 30:48can if you can swim up to the waterfall, like the current is really
- 30:52strong as the closer you get to the waterfall. But if you can swim
- 30:55up to the waterfall and touch the rock, then that's that's that's the challenge.
- 30:59Can you do that? That's all. Like my brother and I are
- 31:00trying to do it. We're swimming and we're trying to touch it. Eventually,
- 31:03eventually we do it. It's okay. So that's one challenge, he
- 31:07says. The other challenge is if you can climb the waterfall, like through
- 31:12the through the spray, right. He says, I've been doing I've been
- 31:18a tour guide here for twelve years and and you know, hundreds of tourists,
- 31:22only seven have done that. And I got it in my head and
- 31:26at the end and you know, we try it, we get knocked off
- 31:30the thing. I get it in my head. I'm like, seven have
- 31:33done it. Seven have done it. That means it's doable. That means
- 31:37there's some way. You know that they're they're the footholds and the handholds there,
- 31:42there's some way to do this. Flash forward to for the next several
- 31:48hours, I held it. I held everybody up. For the next several
- 31:52hours I spent trying to climb this damn waterfall. Oh my god, after
- 31:56everyone else gave up, and I'm getting and I'm getting my butt kicked,
- 31:59I'm getting tossed back into the lagoon again and again again. One of the
- 32:04other people on the tour, you know it says to uh, my girlfriend
- 32:08at the time was along with instead of my girl, he's got to give
- 32:13up, and she goes, oh no, oh no, he doesn't do
- 32:15that because he knows there's a way up now. And eventually you get a
- 32:20little, little higher, little high events. I made it to the top
- 32:22of the waterfall, and I remember exhausted and you knowing, wow, looking
- 32:30looking at everybody down on the shore. Who do you think I looked at
- 32:34the one person I looked at of course I look at my dad. My
- 32:37dad has the sunglasses on, he's looking the other way, and I'm like,
- 32:42man, what a what a perfect metaphor for so many things. But
- 32:46my point is what made the difference. It made the difference that I knew
- 32:52it could be done, Like once you know it could be done. That's
- 32:55one of the reasons why I used to have with my my my form mentor
- 32:58and I used to go back and forth all the time about the value of
- 33:02of being open about our lived experiences as survivor. And she was a very
- 33:07traditional traditional therapist with like, well, you know, look that that's that's
- 33:13not our role, Like it's going to contaminate the transference, and and and
- 33:16it opens that us up for counter transference and and and and we can't.
- 33:22And we never did agree on that because I really feel that one of the
- 33:24things. Now, of course, you need to be very clear about why
- 33:28you're doing it, you need to be really clear about your boundaries with it,
- 33:30and then you know, it always needs to be guided by a clinical
- 33:32rationale. But one of the reasons why I always speak in terms of we,
- 33:37Like if you look at anything I write, I write in terms of
- 33:39we. I never say no, this is what you will experience that,
- 33:42this is what we experience as survivors is because that that flips that switch of
- 33:47it's possible. Yeah, amazing, awesome story. My god, Look,
- 33:57Glenn, got to have you back. Just super super excited I met you
- 34:05and we we connected. But very very powerful, I mean really powerful when
- 34:13or rather how can people get in contact with you? So my my blog
- 34:20is at use your Damn Skills dot com. My my website, my practice
- 34:25website is at Realistic Life Change dot com. But I am I'm most visible
- 34:32out there on on Twitter and Instagram, and we have a really great community
- 34:37on Facebook. So if you look up doctor Glenn Patrick Doyle, is I
- 34:42just I used to say just doctor Glenn Doyle, but then I always got
- 34:45confused with the self help person glennon Doyle. There's a self help writer named
- 34:49Glenn and Dole, Like, what are the odds? What are the odds?
- 34:51Not only would there be a writer, but a self help writer named
- 34:53Glennan Doyle. But if you look up Glenn Patrick Doyle, my my screen
- 34:58name is doctor Doyle, says on all of the things you'll find me.
- 35:01I'm around awesome, awesome, appreciate it well look again. Great meeting you,
- 35:07thank you so much for taking the time and we'll be in touch.
- 35:09It is my pleasure guy, Thank you so much. All right, take care,