Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 717: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction with Mary Beth O’Connor

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Episode 717: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction with Mary Beth O’Connor · The Trauma Therapist

0:10
Or welcome back to the Trauma divers Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
0:27
authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist Project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
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So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
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to the Trauma Divers Podcast. Very excited to have us MICUs today. Marybeth
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O'Connor or Marybeth Welcome, Thank you, good to be here to Marybeth has
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been sober since nineteen ninety four. She's also been in recovery from abuse,
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trauma, and anxiety. Six years into recovery, Marybeth attended Berkley Law.
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She worked at a large firm litigated class actions for the federal government. In
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twenty fourteen, she was appointed a federal administrative law judge, which position she
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held until twenty twenty. Marybeth is now a director of secretary and founding,
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an investor for She Recovers Foundation, and a director for Life Secular Recovery.
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She regularly speaks about multiple paths to recovery to groups such as Women for Sobriety.
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In her op ed titled ibat Addiction Without God, she described combining areas
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from several secular programs to create a robust recovery foundation. Peered in The Wall
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Street Journal, her new book From Junkie to Judge, One Woman's Triumph Over
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Trauma an Addiction is out well that certainly has a ring to it. Junkie
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to Judge, Marybeth, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you pretty crazy,
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I mean inspiring. We're going to get into this, but all right,
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before we go in here, share with the listeners where you're from originally and
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where you are now. I'm originally from Central New Jersey and I came out
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to the Bay Area Sam Fradisca Bay Area to go to Berkeley, and I
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just never left. So I'm still here. Okay, okay, So what
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the heck happened? You know? I say things really started bad from the
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beginning. My mother was an Unwin mother. In nineteen sixty one, Irish
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Catholic, this was a big deal, and so when she had me,
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she actually couldn't bring me home. I was left with the nuns for six
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months, and then she and she visited. I'm sure, but she asued
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me that much. And when she married who became my sister's father, I
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moved in with her, but she separated from him when I was six,
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my great grandmother for three years, and then she married my stepfather when I
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was nine, who was really violent to both of us. So it was
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sort of a lack of connection with my mom, no real sense that she
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was sort of paying any attention to me or connected to me, And so
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when things got even worse, I was really on my own to handle it.
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What age are we talking about at this point. She married my stepfather
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when I was nine, and so that's when things really escalated. She my
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mother could be violent, but you never fear through your life, you know.
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With my stepfather, you really never knew how far things might go.
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And he was also sexually violent with me, and just it was a situation
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where you never knew what might happen. It wasn't like it was every day,
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It was that it was unpredictable, and I developed techniques to try to
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reduce the frequency, and like if he was sleeping, I would put one
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dish away at a time out of the dishwasher when I was doing my toures,
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a lot of things like that to try to control the situation the best
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I could. But ultimately it was out of my control because it was really
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about him and not about me. So there was just a lot of stress
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and strain. That's at nine years of age. Yes, so how did
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things unfold? So I pick up drugs at twelve, you know, that
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seemed like a good idea at the time. I started using alcohol. When
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I was twelve, I moved on the plot pills. I did a lot
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of acid, and when I was sixteen, I found what became my drug
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of choice, which was met the amphetamine, and I started cheating up at
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seventeen and I was in full more addiction when I graduated high school. So
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but you know, it's in my book. I include what led up to
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that, the trauma sign and the lack of bonding with my mother, because
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it wasn't out of the blue, so of course it's positive. In the
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beginning, it seemed to provide relief and happiness and connection to my friends and
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just a more lighthearted Mary Beth than I had experienced. It's just that it
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turned on me, you know, very quickly, So there was a reason.
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But in the long run, my substance uses sort of became my number
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one problem for a very long time. Well, let me just say I
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appreciate you coming on here and sharing this. I mean, I mean,
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you know it's crazy. I mean, to go through that is freaking horrific.
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And we'll get to how the heck you turn all this around? But
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at what point did you say I need some help? You know, when
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I was in college and I did better, and I would say better with
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my drugs. The first several years of college, I did at times try
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to go to like the where the students were being trained to be therapists.
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You know, they had like a free counseling center. I tried a couple
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of times, but I just I wasn't really able to connect with what was
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going on, and so instead I developed self harm behaviors like I would cut
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would I would find beer in bottles on purpose so that when I got drunk
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I could break the glass and cut I also had I know, this sounds
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like a litany of horrors. But I had a really bad multi assilent rape
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in college, which made me revisit an earlier event, And then I moved
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in with a violent boyfriend, and so it just escalated and I started using
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meth again in January my senior year, and I used for another ten years.
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I didn't go to rehab until I was thirty two years old. Oh
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my god. Now, when you sought out help, it was under the
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auspices of what it was about. It was related to the rapes. I
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think that was part of it. That I knew that that had had an
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impact on me. I didn't really I knew I had been abused as a
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child, and I would talk about that. I didn't see the part related
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to my mother. I just saw the part related to my stepfather and that
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violence. So I would talk about those things a bit. But I really
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wasn't able to connect to my feelings, so I wasn't making real progress even
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when I was using for those ten years from senior year of college to thirty
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two. I tried therapy several times, but the reality was I just couldn't
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connect to what was going on, and I didn't have clarity about my own
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thoughts because I was using drugs and there was like a wall between me and
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the ability to heal. Were the therapists you had? Were there any therapists
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who were able to be insightful enough to see what was going on or what
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had transpired? I usually didn't. I would say maybe that I was using
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drugs, but not the extent of it. So there was that sort of
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false covering and you know, sort of their ability to really address the real
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problem until the end. My husband and I were in couples counseling. He
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told the therapist how bad my drug use was. And I actually went to
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a psychiatrist at that time to trying to see what could happen. He said
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he was an addiction specialist, but he really wasn't. And he told me
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I was depressed and if I took the proper dose of antidepressants, I would
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just naturally stop using speed, which isn't what happened at all. And so
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those were some of my initial efforts. Point did you quote unquote get a
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get a foothold and become quote unquote successful in the begin the healing process.
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So I when I wanted to rehab, and this is in ninety three,
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ninety four, and I did get sober when I used three times in the
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first five months, and then that was it. I didn't use again.
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And so now I'm thirty two years old, it's January of ninety four,
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and so I made a lot of serious, robust efforts around my sobriety.
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But I didn't also start as soon as I got home from me have go
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into individual therapy, was somebody who had addiction and trauma expertise, and I
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went to couple's counseling with my husband, and so that was really the beginning
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of starting to understand the severity what had happened to me to even kind that
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though I had PTSD, which I didn't know, that I had to understand
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that my my catastrophic thinking, constantly waiting for something to go wrong, and
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my world to explode, my spinning brain about every little mistake I thought I
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made, that that was all anxiety and PTSD related, was news to me,
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and so it was really that was the beginning of the process. When
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I really got someone who had expert when I was sober and I had someone
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who had expertise in trauma, is when I really started to make forward progress
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and start to heal. But it was a long process I did. Yeah,
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it sounds incredibly long. And I'm sitting here looking at you thinking,
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seriously, how do you survive decades of drug use? Oh my god,
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I custament to your your guts and your heart. Um, how do you
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get to the point where I want to go to law school? Well,
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you know that's all my stories tend to be complicated. So I actually went
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to law school right out of college, but in Berkeley Law. But remember
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I started using meth again in January, my senior year, and so I
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was unable to do it. I just my addiction was full bor again and
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I was missing weeks of class at a time, so I knew I was
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going to fail. So I withdrew. So that was this real sort of
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agony underneath that I had been accepted to a top ten law school, and
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I knew I lost it because of my substance use disorder. I mean,
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driving by that building was just pain, you know, it was horrible.
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And so when I got sober, I first of all, I was thirty
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two, and I had a really bad work history because of my addiction.
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I couldn't hold a job and I was as I said, working my way
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down the corporate ladder, and every job was less moody and less responsibility.
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I held it for less time. So when I got sober, I really
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had to be realistic about what job I was ready for. I've not had
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a Burkeley degree, good grades, but I was not ready for the job
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that on paper that would have qualified me for. So I started realistic.
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I started part time, temporary, low level admin job when I got home
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for rehab, and I worked my way up into more more professional, higher
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level professional jobs. And my last job before law school, I was a
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customer service manager at a at a mid sized company. But law school,
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which I had lost, was always kind of you know, in the back
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of my mind. But I was really afraid to try again. I was
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afraid of the rejection. I was afraid of trying to have to explain myself,
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you know, what had happened, and so it was. It took
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me a while to get the courage up and also to really have enough clarity
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to know that that's what I wanted, you know that I really did.
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And by now I'm thirty nine, and I sort of felt like, why
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either try now or I just admit I'm never going to do it, you
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know though, And so that's why I ended up applying again and Berthley didn't
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take me back. At first they didn't, and I ended up at a
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school in San Francisco, Hastings, which is good but not top ten.
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But then I was third in my class out of four hundred, and Berkeley
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took me back and I did end up graduating from there. So that was
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but you know, trying to give us something so important that I had lost.
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How did the book come about? So when I was appointed a judge,
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and that was in twenty fourteen, it was really a time of reflection,
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you know, as you say, how did I How did I do
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this? How did I go from that teenage I be methodic, abused child
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abuse, that went on into my twenties and worked my way to this position.
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And so I really started reflecting on my history again, on my history
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and on what it was really like and what it really happened, but also
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looking at it sort of with more adult eyes again about you know, some
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of the positive things I had done, and about how I had taken a
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lot of steps to recover you know, all the efforts and all the work
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that I had put in and sometimes I was giving wrong advice and I was
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strong enough to reject that wrong advice and do what I knew was right for
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me. And so it's really just looking at that whole art and then thinking
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that my story is unusual enough that maybe I can get it to capture attention
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and then talk about multiple pass to recovery, because my recovery is not a
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twelve step recovery. It's secular, and I don't feel that enough people know
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that that's an option for them, And so I thought my story could capture
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opportunities to speak about multiple pass and other and also the trauma substance used to
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sort of connection, which I think people underappreciate. Just retred kind of paper
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here. So first off, you mentioned your husband, So at what point
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did you get married? So my husband and I got together when I was
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in college and I lived like an hour away and he didn't. He thought
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I was like a weekend drug user, and believe me, I encouraged that
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police system in him. But we moved in together and he realized how bad
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it was. And so when I went into rehab, one of the factors,
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and I emphasized just one, was that he was really sort of done
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with me. He was ready to throw me out. Um, but when
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I got home, he he but he decided to give me a chance,
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and so you know, he watched me stay sober, do my therapy and
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we did a lot of couples counseling as well, and then we got married
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when I had three years sober kids No, okay, um, So paths,
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multiple paths recovery. Obviously, the twelve step paradigm is pretty well known.
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Why didn't you choose that? I mean, aside from the fact that
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you know you're not religious, do you have to does one have to believe
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in God to go down that path? You have to have a high power
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and I even a higher power. Yeah, and I didn't believe in any
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higher power, but many people. First of all, I want to say
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I support twelve steps when it's the right fit for people. It's just not
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the right fit for everyone, and many people do not believe in the higher
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power. But it's also there's an emphasis on that you're powerless, whereas the
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secular options, the options I use to focus on self empowerments, and so
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even people that have faith sometimes choose the other options for other reasons. Some
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people aren't comfortable with a sponsor relationship. Some people like sort of the rigidity
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of the step process. So there's multiple reasons someone might choose the other options.
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But for me, the two biggest were the higher power and the mandate
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that I man I'm powerless and turn over my will in my life. Those
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were things I wasn't going to do. I wasn't really able to do.
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Interesting, I want to kind of look at that a little more. What
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do you see as the benefits or what could you potentially see the benefits of
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someone saying, yes, I'm powerless, I'm giving this over to someone or
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something else. Well, if you believe in a higher power, I think
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for some people there's a reassurance, right this something is on your side and
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taking care of you. And so for some people that's a that gives them
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comfort and sort of releases stress or strain, And so for some it's a
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beneficial, but for others, I mean, there's benefits to the self empowerment
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approach. And what I really did was I took control of my recovery and
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I looked at I found the options, and I went to the meetings.
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I did a lot of twelve step meetings, too, But I read all
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the materials of the primary options and today like Life and Secular Recovery, which
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I'm on the board for, is the good options she recovers and there are
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others, And I went to all their meetings and I just pulled the ideas
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from all of them that I thought would benefit me, that I thought would
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help me build a strong recovery foundation. And that it was a little scary
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because I'm looking at twenty years behind me a bad decisions. But on the
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other hand, I really felt like what they were offering me in the twelve
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steps it wasn't going to work, and so I decided to make the efforts
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to try to find a path I thought would be better. And in the
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long run, it really it built up my competence and my competence right that
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I could really guide myself for not that I made perfect decisions, because no
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matter what program you think, you're not going to do that. The overall
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I was looking, I was doing the analysis about what the different ideas were
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or what the choices were, and then deciding what was for me and implementing
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it. And then it's sort of like in the other areas of life,
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right, you do you do the research, you set a goal, you
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figure out a plan how to attain that goal. I mean that that trained
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me to really tackle every other area of my life. So in a longer,
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I think it was beneficial. I know, it's incredible, Maribeth,
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to look at you and hear your story and you know you described years of
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abuse and drug use and choices that I mean, how could they be beneficial?
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But how do you go through all of that or how did you go
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through all of that and begin to build up that confidence because we're not just
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talking about last week, I made a bad choice. I gotta get over
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it, right, I mean, this is the years, yes, But
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it was really about the step by step. I mean it's for me.
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It was really about focusing on the right next choice, right, what the
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next thing I need to do? Like professionally, what's the first job,
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what's the right job for me? And then what should my recovery program look
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like? That's an important initial choice. And I decided individual therapy with this
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trauma expert couples, and then I did a meeting every day. The other
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five days I did one of my different programs meetings, So sevent days a
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week I had something going on in the evening, So it was really thinking
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about what sort of plan should I have And then professionally, similarly, in
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my relationship with my husband, I mean, you know, it's not a
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light switch. It was years of trying to learn how to listen to each
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other and for both of us to release our frustration and anger. The other
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factor for me was that because of the PTSD and anxiety, even when I
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was doing the right next thing, I wasn't really able to enjoy it or
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feel as crap as I should have, because I was always paper worried about
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tomorrow and what might go wrong tomorrow and what mistake I'm made tomorrows. So
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even when I was doing the right thing, it took me a long time
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to really be able to emotionally experience the sort of the prime of accomplishment that
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I really deserve for my efforts. The other elements you talked about was the
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connection between trauma, abuse and addiction. Speak to that. I mean,
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if you have a trauma history, or you know a high adverse childhood experiences
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score, and my score is eight, that's sort of a shorthand way to
20:29
figure out your risk, but your risk of developing a substance use disorder is
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much higher. I think it's sweet of four times higher. And certainly the
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data shows that at least seventy five to eighty percent of people with the substance
20:41
used to disorder have trauma histories of one kind or another. And the more
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you have multiple events like I did, the higher your risk. And so
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you know, there's one event that's not good, but there's also the in
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a house of where there's constant stress, but then I also I had that,
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but then I also had multiple discrete events even separate from the household,
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and so all of those things increase my risk. And also not not having
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anyone on my side, no adult I can turn to you, no adult
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I felt connected to, no real supportive relationship. I always knew that I
21:18
was on my own, and that creates an additional vulnerability to see something out
21:25
that's going to help reliev alve that pressure. So let me just remind everyone.
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Speaking with Marybeth O'Connor, the book is called from Junkie to Judge,
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One Woman's Triumph over Trauma an addiction. When was the point where you said,
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I'm going to write this book and for whom is this book? You
21:45
know. I mean, I will say, for one thing, thirty percent
21:48
of my book is recovery. And part of that is because I feel like
21:52
a lot of memoirs go well. I went to a couple of meetings and
21:53
everything was great, and that's not how recovery works. And so I go
21:57
through the first three years of recovery, which I think was particularly important because
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I was doing the trauma recovery as well as the subsccovery, but also because
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I did it the secular way, a way that's not as common. But
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I really thought with the book about the people that are struggling, but also
22:17
the families. I mean, in a way the jumpany judge. I chose
22:19
on purpose to sort of show the art that it matters how deep in your
22:25
pain your living, no matter how bad your life is, with recovery,
22:30
your future could be pretty much anything. And I do try to reassure those
22:34
who don't have hope that they can recover, that they can because I did,
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and you know, I don't think I'm that special in a lot of
22:44
ways, but also to the families that if their family member is struggling,
22:48
don't give up hope. You know, let's keep trying to help them find
22:52
a path forward. Let's keep trying to reach out. Don't write someone off
22:56
because they're shooting up ned. You know, they still have the possibility of
23:00
developing a productive and happy life, and we should do what we can to
23:04
help them reach that. When people come up to you and say, you
23:12
know, how the heck did you do this? I mean, were there
23:18
before I go here? I want to ask you a question, was there?
23:21
Can you can you recall a particular time with a particular therapist that resonated
23:26
with you? So I did the individual and the film first like three years,
23:32
and that was helpful, but I'd say one of the most helpful things.
23:34
And also I did METS for three years. But one of the most
23:37
helpful things was I went into group therapy for a group of women with trauma
23:41
histories, and that was a whole other level of understanding for me. When
23:47
these women would talk there, I mean, I knew about the high level
23:51
events, the high level trauma is the high level reactions, but they would
23:55
talk about sort of what I mean is just very personality trade for Mary,
24:00
but behaviors, and they were tying it back to their trauma. And it
24:03
made me realize that a lot of what I was doing, like the hyper
24:07
vigilance and the anxiety about tomorrow. Um that it was all a trauma reaction.
24:12
It wasn't who I was inherently, it wasn't, you know, Mary
24:15
back at her core, which sort of made me able to view it as
24:19
something that could be fixed, you know, that it wasn't possible to fix
24:23
it, and the other the other incident. I really, if I may
24:27
interject, that's major. That's a major realization. And to be able to
24:34
act on that, of course is something else. But I just appreciate you
24:38
you pointing that out. Yeah, it was a big deal for me.
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I just I hadn't realized it. I just thought it was me, you
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know, and that's who I was because it was so old. I mean,
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the truth is that the trauma recovery took many more years than my substance
24:52
recovery. Many points. It was deeper, it was older, and it
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was more complicated in a I mean, within two and a half three years,
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I've never struggled my substances after that, but trauma therapy, it's really
25:06
took it took much longer. And even now I say I'm mostly recovered,
25:10
because I still do struggle a bit with anxiety, but it's much less often,
25:15
much less intense, and it doesn't last as long, so it's still
25:18
there, but it's much much much better. So yeah, but it was
25:22
a process, and I say it took a long time. But it's again,
25:26
not a light switch. It's gradual improvement, right, gradual improvement month
25:30
by month, year by year, until you get to a place like you
25:33
feel. I've, you know, probably as recovered as I'm going to get
25:37
at this point. Maybe I think I can do a little bit of improvement,
25:41
but this is probably about where I'm going to stick at this point.
25:44
Well, it sounds amazing. I want to thank you so much for being
25:48
here. You are so freaking inspiring. It's ridiculous. I mean, and
25:52
I don't say that lightly. Really come on, really, it's amazing,
26:00
and I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your personal story. It
26:04
takes it's not easy to do. So what are you doing now with your
26:12
life? So the book is is out, and so I do a lot
26:17
of speaking around that. I'm on the board for Life and Second Recovery.
26:19
I'm on the board for She Recovers Foundation, and for your listeners. She
26:23
recovers isn't just for recovery from substance use disorder. It's also trauma recovery,
26:30
mental health, other behavioral disorders all in one place, because most of us
26:33
are the substance used to sort of have these other things at the same time.
26:37
Right. But also I do a lot of speaking. I do conferences
26:41
and podcasts and things like that to just try to increase awareness, particularly around
26:47
multiple pastor recovery. Okay, and what is the best place for people to
26:52
get in contact with you, Marybeth? So my Twitter is at marybeth oh
26:56
Underscore, and my website it's junkata judge dot com. And then my book
27:03
was available on Amazon and all the usual sites, and you can message me
27:06
through my website and I will answer every message. I do answer every message
27:08
I get. Okay, I appreciate it. Wow. I love to have
27:12
you back at a later date to uh continue on with this conversation. You're
27:19
incredible. Really appreciate you coming on here. We'll be in touch. Thank
27:23
you, Thanks for having me. All right, take care all right,
27:26
bye bye.