Justin Trosclair 0:06
Episode 136 sustainable recovery over addiction. I’m your host Dr. Justin Trosclair. Today, we are Timothy Harrington’s perspective.

Unknown Speaker 0:15
2017

Justin Trosclair 0:16
and 2018 podcast Awards Nominated host as we get a behind the curtain look at all types of doctors and guests specialties. Let’s hear a doctor’s perspective. Welcome back to the show everybody, I’m excited to announce that we are definitely gonna have a dentist series haven’t had one of those yet, we have three books, and I’m hoping to go up to about six, we cover all aspects for managers to buying and selling customer service experts, actual procedures, you know, all those types of things really excited about that. Again, the podiatry series was a couple months ago now, and you can get all the resources at a doctor’s perspective, net slash podiatry kinda was a similar situation, I’m enjoying the series, kind of going deep in the fun, I got a secret project planned it secret. So that’s all I’m gonna say for now. But today’s guest has a real passion for removing the stigma of addiction, because it’s a mental health issue. And a lot of times mental health. As he says, We don’t get to treatment, when two wheels are broken, all four wheels got to be off life’s a wreck before you can get help. That’s just messed up. We’re going to go over like what’s an addiction versus being dependent? One of those has to deal with negative effects and you just don’t care. Is it the moral decay of society? As we label it, we’ll get into the opioid addiction. What’s the cause of that is a doctors is it street drug style? And then we’re going to go into like teenagers, you know, they rebel? What’s the best way to handle when you know your kids doing drugs, hanging out with their own crowd? Those types of things. We punish we build trust? Do we reach out with personal stories, or we just roll with an iron fist? It’s kind of a delicate balance. But we’re going to take some time and walk through that. You know what, what is the relationship to that behavior and the rest of your responsibilities in life? That’s a key to think about. And then we’re going to go over what it’s called purpose anxiety, and how do you figure out your values and live to those values? And another fun question was, instead of why the addiction, we should start asking the question, why the pain? What is the protagonist, the pain that caused you to go and alcohol or drugs, etc. His company is wide wonder if this doesn’t intrigue you. They sold their house. They’re in a converted bus with his two kids and wife, and they are traveling the country teaming up with an eating disorder clinic in Denver. They’ve got 30 events that they’re going to raise awareness so that people are not struggling silently, potentially committing suicide, or just going down this addiction path and not ever getting help, when help is just around the corner if they reached out. So it’s gonna be a great episode. All the show notes can be found at a doctor’s perspective, net slash 136. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain.

Live from China and near the lake George, upstate New York area. Today on the show, we have an addiction recovery expert. He’s got multiple businesses, but they’re all sort of weaving together. I’ll just list them out for breakthrough interventions, family recovery, school, sustainable recovery, Launchpad, and now wide wonder. And all of this is like a digital format, which is really cool. I thought it was a brick and mortar, but it’s not. So I’m really excited to see this style of practice going on. And here’s here’s a quote, what I’ve discovered over the last 16 years, is that sustainable recovery or discovery is rooted in both recognizing and healing our wounds, followed by deliberately pursuing and living our dreams. Please welcome Timothy Harrington.

Unknown Speaker 3:53
Hey, hello, China. Hey,

Justin Trosclair 3:57
you ever get yourself quoted back to yourself very often? No.

Unknown Speaker 4:03
No,

Unknown Speaker 4:05
I was while you were reading that I was like I said that.

Unknown Speaker 4:10
Yeah. I love that. I love it actually. Because it really encapsulate I’m having the chills because it’s a cumulative experience of my own struggles with addiction, and then getting into this field. And, and the cumulative effect of all of that really gives me great pause, and also great gratefulness for everything I’ve been through and everything I’ve learned and all the teachers I’ve had.

Unknown Speaker 4:35
Very cool. And in our pre chat, we went through some of the topics that I’m hoping to cover today. Yeah, I’m just hoping that we can get it all in there. You just got so much to start with. It’s like someone’s trying to start out some Where’s is the hardest part of the interview,

Unknown Speaker 4:47
which is why we

Justin Trosclair 4:48
ask, Hey, why did you pursue your profession? Yeah. And so if you could give us a little bit of that the backstory, and then bridge it into all these businesses that are intertwined in digital for us?

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Yeah. So I had, as a kid, my dad sort of disappeared when I was around five or six years old. And I remember being a kid standing at the screen door, and each car that was coming was going to be my dad to come pick me up. And with each one that kept going, I felt this, as I’ve done a lot of work on myself. Subsequently, I felt this sense of loss, and this sense of despair, and this sense of sadness that carried on through my life. And that led to a susceptibility to some adaptive or maladaptive way of coping with that, what I would call it an original wound. And I ended up having a relationship is our family dynamic was very much about alcohol, it was a part of our lives, it was a part of our celebrations, it was a part of our drowning our sorrows. And so I developed a relationship with alcohol, one of the most destructive drugs on the planet, as well as cocaine for about 16 years. And it was my drug of solution, I never had a drug problem, I think that’s an important distinction, I did lead to negative consequences. But I always was able to sort of continue to show up, it was just that I was never able to get to my dreams, because that relationship always sort of blocked it. And so where that led me was to treatment center, and then it led me to opening a restaurant. And then that led me to more troubles with drugs and alcohol. And then that led me to working in a treatment center in Southern California in 2001. And since then, I just became very fascinated with not how to stop using drugs, but how to stay stopped. And that was my original business, weaving those in sustainable recovery. So what for any one person is the recipe or the prescription, sustainable recovery or staying broken up from drugs in your life, so that you can start to reach your goals and your dreams. And one thing led to another, I started doing interventions, I took trainings with people, and I am a very curious person by nature. And so I read, probably weekly, anywhere between 50 to 75 articles, on a range of things. And they all end up tying into how is it that I get to be in strong relationship with self and other people. So I can be the most effective interventionist, purpose coach, family advisor, all of those things. That has been my joy has been this process of discovery, as I call it now, not recovery of what is my purpose. And it is very clear to me that my purpose is to intervene on different systems so as to make them as healthy as they pop. And so that they may support each other in a way that’s based on based on love, basically. And that’s been the joy of my life. That’s been the thing that continues to sustain me, if you will. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:17
very good. So a follow up to this, is I want to talk to people about what you’re doing now. But I want to wait, you made a comment. You were like a functioning air coat addict? Yeah, you’re doing drugs, but you’re functioning. And I don’t think we think of that. Typically, I think when we think of this, we think you’re a bum you’re on the couch. You’re You’re stealing from your mom. That’s right picture

Justin Trosclair 8:38
we have in our head. Yeah. So what is that distinction between, you know, like, I guess the meth person who’s stealing from their mom versus someone who’s like, No, I’m a CEO, I make six figures. And I happen to like my cocaine. And that might tie into the addicted versus dependent conversation that I hope we have.

Unknown Speaker 8:57
Yeah, well, it’s an important distinction, because what we’re talking about is a, what’s called a media narrative, and then a scientific or evidence based narrative. Okay. So the evidence based narrative is that there are approximately a quarter of a billion people right now on the planet using illicit drugs. Okay. And what the numbers are saying is that about 89% of those people roughly use quote, unquote, non problematically In other words, they have a relationship that is not taking them to the point where they’ve lost jobs or relationships.

Justin Trosclair 9:38
It’s Friday night at the club, and I want to have fun.

Unknown Speaker 9:40
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s in I think that’s the narrative that gets suppressed because of years and years of stigma of drugs being, you know, drug use being immoral, or bad or wrong, or any number of ways of sort of separating out that activity. as something that is, we just can’t support because it what the narrative is, is it deteriorates the moral fabric of society. Right, right. And if that was true, a quarter of a billion people would be doing a whole lot more damage than then currently is happening, we do tend to focus on the want to say negative, but that’s not even the right word. We focus on the dramatic or the extremes, as you mentioned, like that,

Unknown Speaker 10:30
you don’t know who you’re going to be like, you might be the person that just way off the cliff. And if you just never charted because you got scared, for some, some reason, some outside force told you to be scared of it, you would have never tried it. But now you did not realize a wreck. So I can see that I can see definitely that argument as well.

Unknown Speaker 10:47
Oh, yeah, for sure. And And the thing about it is, is that the narrative of the focus on the extreme examples, or the acute examples, direct the policy for the majority? And that’s not, that’s not, that doesn’t help, right? Because, right, we need a policy we treatment approach that is in alignment with the facts. And the reason why that’s important is because the dramatic version of the bomb, or the lazy person, or the self centered person, or the person who’s not trying hard enough, or the one with moral decay, or any number of ways, and sort of the overarching definition of somebody who’s addicted, doesn’t help at all. And then where everyone else gets lost, there’s no program for somebody who, who’s all for who still has two tires, there’s only a program for somebody who’s lost all four tires. And that’s, that’s why we continue to not get in front of addiction, right? Because 70% of people who have a substance abuse issue, we don’t use that word substance use disorder, situation are working, they have jobs. And that’s, that doesn’t get a lot of press. In fact, it doesn’t get hardly any press, there may be some business articles in Forbes, or ink or fortune or something where they talk about how drugs are affecting the bottom line, right, because they do. But there’s no mention of the the idea that 70% of people who are struggling with some sort of drug, and it’s having an effect on different dimensions of health, all have jobs, 70% of it,

Justin Trosclair 12:26
I think of most musicians, Charlie Sheen comes to mind. The whole nouns out there playing music, you wouldn’t know they’re high as a kite. And then I read

Unknown Speaker 12:37
some of them, right. And it’s it’s unfair to even use the word functioning, because it’s really about dimensions of health. Because a relation again, if you have a relationship with a drug, and there are, believe it or not, there are casual heroin users, including injectors. So this idea that if you inject drugs, you’re automatically done is just not true, because most people can do drugs, and not have get addicted if there are extenuating circumstances or exacerbating certain circumstances in a person’s life, which we’ve mentioned earlier about person’s life experience, including trauma, sexual abuse, any of any of the things that fit into adverse childhood experiences, neglect, abandonment, physical abuse, verbal abuse, any kind of abuse, all of those things have a correlation to developing a dependency or an addiction on drugs rather, as there is a correlation between diabetes and obesity. So those kinds of conversations, the context of the conversation are is really what’s going to help us get out in front of this, Justin,

Justin Trosclair 13:45
what’s a dependent versus an addicted person? Because I think that you know, you like that district, let’s give a good difference on those.

Unknown Speaker 13:51
Yeah. So independence would be somebody who, if they’re dependent on saying opioid for chronic pain, if they were to try to stop, they would have withdrawals, and that’s dependency. And an addiction would be somebody who is having the same situation or relationship with it with an opioid or, or alcohol or whatever. And when they would try to stop, they would have withdrawal. So there is a similarity between those two, however, addiction goes to the next level, which is persistent use of said drug, despite negative consequences. So the dependent person who’s a chronic pain patient, or a casual user, or somebody who has, you know, a relationship long term with any kind of drug, and they’re still able to have their relationships are intact there, they still have a job, they, there’s the dimensions of health are not completely eroded. That would be dependency. The other is the persistent, US cravings. Also the withdrawal potential if they stop, but they’re doing it, despite negative consequences, like loss and job relationships, some aspect of health, maybe liver disease, you know, any anything like that, in this country. And in fact, we mentioned earlier in the pre in the pre interview about how the DSM five in order to deal with this confusion between dependence and addiction has dropped dependence, Romans definition of addiction,

Justin Trosclair 15:13
where they replace it with

Unknown Speaker 15:14
nothing they didn’t, they just took it out. And it’s just focusing on the idea that the differences persistent use, despite negative consequences. Wow.

Justin Trosclair 15:23
Alright, so you don’t want that label? You didn’t actually have to have it.

Unknown Speaker 15:26
Right. And nobody does. I mean, I think that’s an important distinction to you may choose the drug, but you don’t choose the addiction. Nobody does. Nobody at five years old goes, I hope I grew up to become addicted to fill in the blank. That’s not the point. The point is, is that, again, a life of experience adverse childhood experiences, some kind of trauma, and then early onset of use, if you The earlier you use them, the more likely you’ll develop some sort of addiction, or no brains aren’t even as normal. Yeah, that’s right. Somebody like MB, adolescent brain to have a really, really fine tuning car with no brakes. Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 16:04
It’s amazing that we’re expected to do so much at a time when our brains are so fragile. Pick your career. Don’t get pregnant. I’ll do drugs, drink alcohol, you like Wait, wait. All these things sound great.

Unknown Speaker 16:18
Absolutely. In fact, there’s a doctor, Dr. Dan Siegel, who’s written a lot of books about the teenage brain. He says, adolescence is the most important part of our lives. It’s where we are figuring out our autonomy. We’re figuring out what who we want to be, we’re experimenting with all these things. We’re figuring out our boundaries, our moral compass, our worldviews, all that stuff. While at the same time, we have all these outside forces, the people who used to be teenagers, given us all kinds of Heck, like, why are you so stupid? And you’re making all these dumb decisions? And why are you acting this way? I get families calling me all the time saying, you know, my 16 year old son, he’s almost isolated in his room, and he doesn’t seem to want to spend very much time with me. I’m like, Yeah, he’s 16 year old boy, that’s developmentally appropriate. But somehow, it’s affecting them in a negative way. So can you help me fix this? And we’re like, no, we’re not gonna fix that. That’s where you supposed to be right now, too, because he’s maybe smoking a little pot, and they get freaked out. And they get very nervous, because, again, the media is telling them that the gateway to heroin and he’s going to die of a fentanyl overdose. They literally get there and like a split second, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, my little angel. Yeah, we have to Yeah, exactly. That’s where all the sudden the ideal is about to blow up. And they’ll do just about anything to prevent that, including getting hysterical and making some really bad decisions in terms of labeling him or putting in some kind of long term treatment program, where he gets labeled as an addict or an alcoholic, or any number of things that when you’re an adolescent, is not a helpful term in terms of a long term prognosis for you know, healthy awareness of who you are, and what you’re capable of that can really, really hurt you.

Justin Trosclair 18:00
It’s a new thing, a gaming addiction, and this might be completely off topic for what we’re doing. But like gaming, you have people playing video games all day long, they get addicted like China. Actually, they stopped some one game was so popular. A couple games, I think, where doesn’t matter what they’re called, but, uh, yeah, they blocked they made the company say, hey, they have to sign in to something, they only get one or two hours a day. Right? They can’t play there in this timeframe, because it was just wrecking these kids. They just played so much.

Unknown Speaker 18:28
Yeah. And again, I think that’s a really good point to bring up to the audience is that addiction is not about drugs, right? Because you can become addicted or dependent or, or dependent on a lot of different things, right? It always is, what’s after that? Is it creating trouble in your life? Or in your relationships? Are you not able to take care of yourself? Are you seeing, you know, very clear health markers going the wrong direction, all of those things, and then and then there’s the majority of those kids were doing just fine. You know, and, and doing this same thing and playing maybe the same amount of time, but they’re not having those other things, we need that distinction below, we don’t lump everybody together, because it is ultimately about your relationship to these things. So when we raise our kids, we know we don’t we’re not into restriction, you can’t you must, you have to use all these very hard line black and white approaches. What we want them to do is recognize the relationship to whatever it is to technology, to food to us, to other people, to their peers, to school, whatever that might be. So that they can discover their own agency, or their own insight, rather than me having to direct or choose that insight for them based on my own fears. That makes sense.

Justin Trosclair 19:43
If How do you determine because you know, your parents, so yep. How do you determine like, what you doing right now is a healthy relationship to video games, versus you’re turning the corner, you’re on the cusp. And I can either guide you

Unknown Speaker 19:54
Yeah, how do you figure that out? Well, because there’ll be certain things they start to neglect food, other activities, so there’s no balance, there’s no, there’s no hope. There’s no integration, right? It’s just focus in one area. And that can be fought, that can be what they talk about all the time. So the idea is, yeah, I respect that that is a compelling thing for you. However, in order for this, to not go in a direction where you could be working, potentially affect other areas of your life in a negative way, we need to look at the whole, we need to step back and look at the big picture of what it is to be a human on this earth. And we get to engage in lots of different activities, we get to be inside, we get to be outside, we get to be up, we get to be down, we get to be sick, we get to be healthy, we get to be positive, we get to be negative. So we really teach them about the wholeness of life and the experience being both and not just either, or, we tend to very much focused on a black and white way, especially when things scare us. As parents, right, we really get black and white real quick. And we want revolution in a way it’s not genuine to one development to one own development of agency. So in other words, when I would coach a parent around somebody who’s struggling with some kind of addiction, I would say, don’t give advice. Tell this person that you want to help them help themselves, tell them that you’re very interested in developing and evolving from an adult child relationship into an adult adult relationship. Because I know that whatever you’re being challenged with something that you can handle, it’s just that you need a little bit of guidance and support and love to get there. And that’s different than go to your room stop that restriction, restriction, restriction, all extreme. I don’t care about your agency, I don’t care that you have insight. I don’t I don’t care about that. Because I’m driven by fear. I’m afraid this is going to all go in a really bad direction. Otherwise, I have this outlook, this future outlook that is all negative. And so I’ll do whatever I have to in the moment. Rest the situation, including damaging the relationship, and maybe even causing long term damage in terms of that person’s own ability to make decisions on their own. And their babe,

Unknown Speaker 22:00
is there a solid tip or two? I guess we kind of went into the children, because that’s sort of that a role?

Unknown Speaker 22:07
Yeah, it could also be a spouse or a brother or whatever. That’s what

Justin Trosclair 22:10
something that you’re dependent. You’re not addicted, you’re dependent. You enjoy it. Yeah. But your family finds out, somebody finds out that you’re doing it. They’re like, No, you should not be doing heroin ever.

Unknown Speaker 22:21
Right? Okay. Yeah. So,

Justin Trosclair 22:23
yeah. So that I want you to change, I want you to quit this. And other guys like for white? Because my Friday nights are like, legit, awesome. And I’m not hurting anybody. That’s right. You know, like, yeah, how do you get, you know, they don’t want to change? I guess that’s the point. They don’t want to change. You want them to change? Is there any help for that? Is there anything you can do about that?

Unknown Speaker 22:42
If you’re the parent, and you’re the one that wants to tell the person to change, I always tell parents, I’m like recognizing your own history, because this is where we’re alike not different. Where there was something in your life that somebody didn’t approve of, that wanted you to be different, acted different ways, stop doing that, do this, any sort of outside, influenced by somebody who has an obviously vested interest in you and love for you and concern? That’s all great. But this is about how you love and care for somebody that’s respectful of freewill and self determination. That makes sense. Yeah. So and so what we can do in this power struggle, when we’re, when we think we’re in a hierarchical relationship, because we’re the parent near the child, we tend to inject our value system into them. And that we think that that’s kind of what we’re supposed to do. However, it is my belief that we’re not the heroes and our kids journey they are. And so we get to be more of a steward or more of a shepherd or more of a custodian of that process, as opposed to somebody who controls it. Because what I can tell you is that probably the most prevalent addiction in society is our addiction to control, particularly around emotion, and relationships. And that is where we force our will, or our opinion, or our value system, in the direction of people that were concerned about in terms of their future. And what I can tell about that, from a personal standpoint, around my own struggles with addiction is that we focus around symptoms and behavior and not what’s driving the behavior. And so the person the family, like I mentioned earlier that called and said, My 16 year old doesn’t like me, I say, well, there’s a particular reason for that there’s a, there’s a process that we go through as human beings. In fact, you went through the same process how soon we forget, right? So the idea is, we will find ourselves what it is like to be an adolescent and to make the dumb choices that we’re supposed to do, because that’s what directs us towards our worldview, and helps us to develop our own moral compass and to make decisions better at some point based on making bad ones. And we need to respect that even if it’s at the choice that we so disagree with, to your point about heroin, we get to give that up as something that we impress upon them is a long thing to do. And just let them know that if anything ever goes sideways with that relationship, that you can count on that from will be there for you what that does, that’s what I do with my kids. I want them as hard. It’s totally hard. There’s no question. But the hard thing and the right thing are often the same thing, right? So the idea, right, the idea is that I get to as the leader of the family, or the person who is stewarding this process of family growth. And I get to be the one to expand my emotional bandwidth to become the kind of support for my kid that allows them to trust me. So if they do get in hot water, and they do get in trouble, that there’s a, there’s a straight line to me, because they trust me. Okay,

Justin Trosclair 25:34
so that’s obviously a controversial answer. I’m sure people will be listening to this be like, totally disagree. Yeah. But that’s okay. We’re not worried about that opinion. We’re getting your opinion today. And that’s what we’re interviewing.

Unknown Speaker 25:44
Yeah. And tough love is really one of those things that again, is has been anecdotal and cliche around these issues that you know, tough love, tough love. And there’s just no science, there’s no evidence that that is the most effective way to get through we I understand and you understand from from a, from a human level why we go there? Because it’s fear. Yeah, it’s just you’re in in straight up, that makes perfect sense. We be totally honor that.

Justin Trosclair 26:12
Now, peers, peer pressure is a big deal. Yeah. They say people who come out of prison, what are they going to go back to? Well, probably where they came from. And if they came from an area that had a lot of those issues, they’re gonna go right back into it. So what, what’s the chance that they’re going to get out of it? And then the same thing, you have school, you know, parents typically want to prove your friends. And at some point that probably goes haywire. Yeah, but I remember, I was hanging out with kids. And, you know, they were my friends for like, ever. And they started getting into more drugs. And I was like, you know, what, I’m on the College Track, guys. I just sort of stopped hanging out with them as much and started hanging out with this other crowd, the smarter crowd, the people that had those kind of same ambitions as I did, and didn’t really look back. But it was a weird thing. Like, you know, there are where they are now. And we’re where we are. And I don’t think a lot of I don’t know, I don’t know how often that is it, somebody in high school would do something like that, like, it’s hard to break away?

Unknown Speaker 27:03
Yeah, peer pressure is, it’s real peer pressure is real. It’s a part of this adolescent piece, right? Where, where you’re stuck, where you are susceptible to great influence, right? And in all different kinds of ways in the positive way, you know, in a challenge way, in a successful way to where it goes both ways when I tell parents about this whole idea, because inevitably, in most conversations over the last 17 years I’ve had with parents inevitably say something like and then he got involved with the wrong crowd. Yeah, right. And I’m like,

Justin Trosclair 27:38
this other crowd I used to hang out with don’t do drugs, and now he’s doing drugs, right?

Unknown Speaker 27:43
So it’s the wrong crowd. And I say, Okay, well, that’s one way to look at it. But here, let me give you another empowering way to look at it. In the home front. There’s a lot of blame, shame, judgment, there’s a lot of control, there’s a lot of things that are going on that are the antithesis of what’s going on, and they appear good. They’re not getting judged. They’re not getting blame, they’re not getting shame, they’re not getting controlled, they’re actually being respected. They’re being loved. They’re being, you know, people are holding the space. They don’t nobody’s getting chastised or getting, you know, you know, lectured, you know what I mean. So you have a lot of me, right, you have the place, that’s your home space, and then you have the pure space. And those are always going to be different. But the chance for dealing with somebody who may be going in the wrong direction is not to continue to tell them they’re with the wrong people. But to be to develop the same characteristics of the peer group, the basic values of the peer group, which is non judgmental, non shaming and non blaming. And you see a home there.

Unknown Speaker 28:46
Yeah, they accepted me for who I am, I’m a

Unknown Speaker 28:50
at the time, that’s what they want, while the family is doing the opposite. Right? Yeah. That’s their role. Well, I’m here to tell you the new narrative is to learn the skill of how to love and care for somebody who’s going through adolescence, because that particular challenge, and then if you throw on top of that, mental illness or addiction, now you really have to be specialized in how you communicate, love and care for somebody because you can end up because you’re so influential, and will remain the most influential person in that kid’s life. You can send them in the wrong direction, unintentional,

Justin Trosclair 29:24
you know, I guess my parents did something, right.

Unknown Speaker 29:27
I great parents. And again, a lot of people don’t, don’t do necessarily the wrong thing they learn as they go along, and they adapt. But when you’re confronted with something that’s very foreign, and very scary, like addiction, or mental illness, you end up grasping at straws, you freak out, you freak out, and a lot of what I say to parents, when I first start working with them, it’s very important. And this is what I hope, if anybody takes anything away, if you’re a family member who’s got somebody struggling, is that the only perfect parents are the ones who don’t have kids yet. Yeah. So let’s, let’s start at the base of like, you have the most important job with the least amount of training, okay, that’s, that’s important to know. And it’s important to know that there’s also a lot of help out there to help you get on track, in a way where you can remind your child of how you’re the same and not continue to drive a wedge. And so when I coach families, mothers, mostly, it’s about building bridges, and connecting around what we’re very similar, which is those core emotional things, fear, anger, you know, any of those things we can get down to that are based where we can say, I know what it feels like to be scared, I know what it feels like to be bullied. I know whatever it is that the kid is going through. But we build a bridge across where all of a sudden, we’re humanizing ourselves. And we’re making it easy for that person to trust us. Because this is the time when that is the most important element. Not that they do the right thing, but that they trust you when the things are going on wrong direction well making know that there’s a clear, unencumbered, non friction, walk to you. That’s what we want to try to do as parents

Justin Trosclair 31:10
that make sense? It does. Because I’m thinking teenagers, do you think your pants are dumb or that do they’re so old? And then in reality, you’re like, no, I still remember being 16 or 18, or whatever. And so if you can relate, they may not want to hear it was like no, we were the same thing. And like even in the Bible, they talk about different stories. And they’re a little bit different. But you like know, the core underlining concern, the issue that these people were having. We still have that today. It’s just little differently. in it.

Unknown Speaker 31:37
Yeah. That’s right.

Justin Trosclair 31:39
It’s just right. Yeah. You made a comment or not? You did make comment, but on your your website and different things. Yeah. A goal is replacing anxiety, fear, with purpose. Yeah. and discovering how this pain is masking the emotions or whatever that we’re running from. elaborate a little bit on those two things.

Unknown Speaker 32:00
Yeah. So there’s a real study out there of a thing called purpose anxiety. And we tend to live in a society where there’s a lot of pressure on being, quote unquote, successful, you know, going to college getting a job getting a good job, you know, the sort of the standard way of going through life? Well, there’s a lot of kids out there who confronted with conflict in value systems in their family systems, where you have a family whose highest value is college. And this kid is like, No, I don’t want to go to college. I don’t like school, not my thing. And so we’ve started this power struggle. So what, when I mentioned to you earlier, I think in the pre interview was about everything that underlies what I do is, is values and the values of socially acceptable ways of behaving like integrity, and honesty. Because those are things that we fall in and out of doing perfectly or right. You know, that’s just previous experience. So I’m not talking about those things. And, and most of those things aren’t your ideas anyway they come from, it’s about, you know, how what our norms are. So what I’m talking about when I’m talking about values, is what I love to do choose to do and desire to do very clearly. And that’s an action, that’s things that I actually do what I think about what I spend time doing what I spend my money on, very tangible things that I’m doing in my life become what my values are, okay? And so what that can do, when you develop an intimate relationship with those things, it lowers your anxiety. So as you go closer to the truth of who you are, and what you spend time doing, thinking about spending your money on, that’s when you’re out of the dissonance, or the misalignment between what you think society wants you to do, or what your parents wants you to do, or what your peers want you to do. And what you want to do. And you mentioned that earlier, you left a peer group and went to another one. The reason you did that is because you recognize a very distinct conflict in your values is that value system you would outgrow with that other peer group and you went to another one that was more in alignment with your values. And you thrive,

Unknown Speaker 34:05
right? Are people scared to do that?

Unknown Speaker 34:07
Yes, absolutely. Jet. Absolutely, I would suggest that 80% of people right now are going to jobs are in relationships are doing things that are not in total alignment with what they love to do choose to do and desire to do. And that in and of itself causes dis ease or some idea of being not quite right, or being out of alignment, right. It’s like driving a car that’s out of alignment. At some point, you can’t stand it, you got to get it fixed. You can’t that wheel moving back and forth and going pulling to the left, you’re like, I’m going to fix this, I’m finally I’m going to take it get an alignment. Well, similar things happen with people, hopefully at some point where they’re like, I’m out of alignment. I don’t want to be a lawyer, you know what I mean? I just met a guy who had been a, who’d been a lawyer in finance, he was 54 years old, and he quit his job to become a yoga teacher at 54. So that’s an extreme example. But there are a lot of people who are grappling with this idea of living their high values, or just talking about their high values, which would make them fantasy high values. And I’ll give you an example of that. When I was working with a father was a high powered executive struggling with the son of addiction. When I was talking to him I was talking about, he was telling the story about his frustration with his son and missed out on the other thing. And I said, Well, what I eventually get to in a lot of times later is the value system. I just wanted to ask you based on your story, what do you think, is your highest value? And he said, Well, the definitely family? And I said, Well, yeah, that makes sense to an extent because you’re on the phone with me. But you also said to me in your in your story that you work about 90 hours a week, sometimes more than that. And I Yeah. Is that not in conflict with your high value of family? How much time can you really spend? And is it is the kind of quality time you want? And he got really angry with me

Justin Trosclair 35:59
to talk about me?

Unknown Speaker 36:01
That’s exactly right. And I say, well, it’s important. And I think you realize that he was totally smart enough to realize it was just tough for it to become a reality for him that he was out of alignment with his value system. He was he had a fantasy high value of family, but a real high value of work. And that conflict caused him great frustration and great providing financially for his family, for some reason was how he’s like, this is how I show

Unknown Speaker 36:27
up, blah, blah, right? His kids like, no, I need time, kids all the time. They don’t want your money, per se.

Unknown Speaker 36:32
Right. And ultimately, we have done those values. That’s part of the idea of how generationally, we continue to do the same things over again, in our family systems, we talked the same way it was passed down the same cliches we we passed down, you know the same stuff. That’s part of what’s great about family. But the other part of the other side of that is that what’s working, what’s not working. And then and and that’s an important thing. What’s important about that is that when I work with families just and I tell them that what they’re confronted with is not all of this negativity, although that’s part of it or this fear. But it’s also being able to look at this in a way that says this is an opportunity of a lifetime for us to reimagine and repurpose our family system in a way that is healthy as it’s ever been going forward. We have an opportunity collectively to come back together because the addiction blew everything apart. And so to really put it back together in a way that is more healthy than it was before the addiction came along, is really a big part of the opportunity that I try to help people realize when I’m dealing with addiction or mental illness in the family, I had heard of this thing. And not everybody can agree with this, but they call it generational sin. And it’s not like you, your father did this. And now you’re cursed or anything like that. It’s just more of the idea of

Justin Trosclair 37:49
if you’re be or if your grandfather beat your dad, your dad might beat you. And you might be the one that finally changes it. But they said it takes around three generations to like make a make a change, like you’re still going to feel your grandfather’s potential, your great grandfather’s physical

Unknown Speaker 38:04
abuse, you’re probably still going to feel that if your parents didn’t do a drastic change, so that it doesn’t happen. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not. That’s just kind of something I’d heard. Yeah, that’s true. In fact, the study of intergenerational trauma is one of the big advances that is happening in terms of how we see a person, right, so a person comes to me and presents with addiction. And so the behavior and symptoms of that are this, what we can, what we can surmise is that we could say, instead of why the addiction, we could say, so tell me about the pain. Let me give me an example of that. When I talked to a family, now that I know what I know about what you just talked about intergenerational trauma, as well as trauma that’s happened to this person in the recent past is that the tie into addiction is, like I said earlier, obesity is the diabetes. And so what I’ll say to a family or mother, I’ll say Just tell me, can you just tell me about his pain? And they’ll be like, what do you mean pain? I’m like, Well, you know, what, has there been a death in the family? Has he lost a grandparent? Somebody close to him as there been a divorce? Did you move a lot? Does he have a traumatic brain injury, this is really tied into the lack of emotional regulation, which can lead to got bullied got bullied? Absolutely. Are they having challenges with sexual identity, any number of things can create a very powerful foundation that can lead somebody to using drugs as a way to cope. Right as a as a coping mechanism. So that’s something that is always surprising to me that they haven’t tied that in, even if they’ve been through 10 treatments already. I’m always shocked about that. And and that’s, it seems pretty basic. But unfortunately, in the behavioral health space, it’s still there’s we’re still lacking in leading with the question of why the pain instead of why the addiction and getting to the causes and conditions. And what I call the protagonist in any individual story that leads them to this very intense relationship with some kind of drug or some kind of behavior can be sex, gambling, drugs, there’s any number of ways that people can engage in a relationship that can lead to negative consequences to persistent use. And that’s really important for the bigger picture in terms of how we go forward to treat,

Justin Trosclair 40:34
you know, I don’t know enough about this part of it. But when you’re trained, do their psychology people always expect this is gonna take a while, like, Is there ever like, you know, like, Oh, yes, you’re probably going to be at least 15 months situation once a week. You know, it’s not like that, you know, that’s just kind of a horrible way to talk about it. But are they ever like, Nah, man, I want you for a month is me intense, and we should really have made some progress. It shouldn’t take six months or eight months? I mean, how does that play into some of this? I didn’t get to the deeper level quick enough.

Unknown Speaker 41:07
Yeah. And I think that goes down to sort of individual personality, as well as experienced that a therapist brings to the relationship, because that’s all okay. I would suggest that people get into psychotherapy and therapy and becoming members of the profession, a lot of times, because of their own experience with mental illness, and things in their family, going back generations, oftentimes, there is a catastrophe that leads a person to some sort of relationship with a vocation or lead them down the path of having a unhealthy relationship, if you will, with drugs or alcohol, is often exacerbated by some sort of catastrophe in the family some sort of event. That’s the reason why I asked Give me the precipitating event, what was the big upheaval what was Tell me about the history of we’re family in terms of how it dealt with trauma? Let’s talk about that. Because the expectation has to be in congruence with the long term of what that person went through and what experiences they had that led them to this acute situation around some addiction. And if we don’t do that, then we’re going to focus on the smaller picture rather than big picture. And if we do that, more than likely, we won’t have the sustainable change that we’re looking for. So when somebody relapses, as we call it, I call it just recurring or resumption of use or resumption of activity. But for these purposes, relapses, what people understand is when that happens, it’s normally because we haven’t dealt with that protagonist in a way where they actually can avoid that sort of relationship, they don’t go back to that relationship. You know, when you haven’t dealt with it more than likely, in order to deal with the pain, with the frustration with the sadness within despair, you go back to what you know, that works very efficiently. And yeah, it just, it just makes sense. to that person. It doesn’t make sense if you’re the outside looking in, but if you’re that person, it makes perfect sense.

Justin Trosclair 43:11
Nobody’s judging you because you ate two pints of ice cream and a Big Mac. When you know, yeah, yeah, it was really bad. I you just had 5000 calories in one night. I mean, there’s just not as bad of a stigma as Oh, you

Unknown Speaker 43:24
you shot up with heroin today? That’s right. Yeah, the stigma is, is so huge. And I’m glad you said that, because drug use is the most stigma stigmatize activity on planet Earth. Doesn’t matter what culture you’re from, what part of the world you’re fun. In fact, it’s worse in some places where they’ll kill you for it. Yep. Yep.

Justin Trosclair 43:43
Some countries. I think it was Singapore. You know, the airplanes are like, Look, man, you better do something with it. Because capital punishment and a prison.

Unknown Speaker 43:50
Yeah. And that’s, and that’s actually changing. Actually, it’s kind of interesting. There was a global Commission on, on drugs, the put out, it’s regularly put out. And recently, we’ve seen some advances in cultures that have been very archaic, including what you were talking about, they’re starting to change their perspective, in terms of how they’re going from criminalizing to dream decriminalization to a health care model. And like, like that, like they’ve literally changed it overnight. And I think the first place, if I’m, if I’m correct, people can look this up. I think it was Miramar has completely changed. And that was a culture that was the extreme. I mean, totally, like you said, like, we don’t mess around, you’re done by by, you know, and now, they’re literally saying, that’s not been working, we’re going to stop doing that. And we’re going to treat it as a health issue across the board. Impressive. And it’s like that can do that. We can do that. And that’s my hope, my hope long term is that we can stop punishing people where we can stop exacerbate or or increasing suffering for somebody who’s already suffering as a way to fix it. Yeah, completely illogical. But that’s, you know, that’s how we’re doing it. We’re, we’re, we’re punishing somebody for, for doing something that, you know, they haven’t chosen. They don’t want to be addicted. They don’t want to live on the streets. They don’t want to live in a in a drug camp. They want to be seen and they want to be heard. They want to be respected. They want to be loved.

Justin Trosclair 45:23
You know, that bridges quite well, to the opioid epidemic. Yeah, 131 people are dying a day. I just did a mini sewed Well, I just recorded it. That’s going to be episode I think 41. So anyway, I don’t think it’s a weird thing. You go in, you had a tummy ache, or you had a tooth that bothers you, they give you something that’s only supposed to be in flight three or four days, maybe you had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol a little bit. You found this opioid Whoa, this is amazing. And you just, you don’t stop other people, I think maybe they have some suppressed stuff that they didn’t deal with the got on it. And they’re like, wow, of burden has been lifted off to the races on opioids. And I’m guessing there’s still people who are like, never had an issue. Never thought I had an issue. But I got on it. And I like it. And I just didn’t get off of it. And then other people again, the category four or five here, if I’m not on it, my back pain is unbearable. And I wish I can get off of it. But I can’t get off of it. But if it affects me negatively, and I might die in the next three years, but this back pain isn’t going to get any better either. Maybe they haven’t gone through the process. That’s part of the episode as well. So so many angles that you could tackle their give us your thoughts.

Unknown Speaker 46:36
So my thoughts are again, looking at the big picture, and pulling back from the painting to get the full view of the artists work. And the artist work would be a person’s life experience. And you mentioned some things that definitely play into a reason why somebody would continue or why somebody would not continue. The truth of it is and the facts and the evidence of this epidemic, that the majority of people are acquiring opioids in a non pharmacological way or relationship with a doctor who go on to be addicted

Unknown Speaker 47:09
to start with.

Unknown Speaker 47:11
Yes. Oh, okay. That’s that’s the confusion because the narrative, yeah, they make it sound like it’s the doctors fault. Exactly. And that’s, again, our tendency to look for a villain without looking at. Right, we need longitude here, we need to back up, we need to look at the big picture. If we don’t, then we’ll continue to focus on areas that take us away from the multifactorial reasons why anyone develops some sort of addiction. And if we don’t do that, then we’re going to continue to miss the point. And so what we need to recognize is that if you take a hospital, which is treating pain, right, a lot of pain, you go to a hospital, there’s a lot of people in there got pain, you have surgery, you’re gonna come out with pain. That’s right, every one of them those people, hundred percent of them got addicted because they were getting pain meds, I would be the first one to recognize that it’s the drug. That’s the problem. But it’s simply not the case. The addiction rate for somebody who has a legitimate prescription is so low, that is almost inconsequential. And that’s that’s the confusion. The confusion is we throw on words or phrases like 76 billion pills. Well, yeah, that’s what was put into circulation. But we didn’t take 76 billion pill

Justin Trosclair 48:33
does not like a chicken or an egg. It’s not like they had it had a street party versus Well, no, they got a legitimately and it turned into a problem they wouldn’t get as a script filled. So now they’re going to a street party to get it.

Unknown Speaker 48:44
Right. And that’s a problem. Because there should be it should be as easy to get the treatment for some addiction as it is to get the actual pill itself. You know what I mean? It should be easy. Yeah, we don’t pay for maintenance.

Justin Trosclair 48:57
No, no maintenance and mental health, no prevention, mental health. Oh, you’re schizophrenia. Can you going crazy? Yeah. And now we’ll do something for you.

Unknown Speaker 49:04
Exactly. That’s the whole point earlier about all four wheels have to fall off before we can help you. Yeah, we don’t help you. If you’re riding on three wheels were like, come back to us when they are all off. It’s just

Justin Trosclair 49:14
Yeah, get a job. And then you can buy your meds.

Unknown Speaker 49:16
Yeah, it’s backwards. It’s not looking again, at the whole picture. It’s looking at various small little slivers of it and making grand conclusions based on those narrow investigations. And so again, that would be focusing on the behavior and symptoms instead of the longitudinal existence of a human being and how they came to this position of being in a very negative, challenging relationship with a drug. It’s just disingenuous for us to say that it’s any one person’s fault or anyone instances fault. It’s a, it’s a combination lock, not a skeleton key issue. And so we need to not blame doctors, we don’t need to blame Purdue as the one the villain, we all get to take some sort of responsibility and look at it from a multifactorial point of view, so that we can make sure that we address everything, instead of just one thing. And then it becomes a game of whack a mole, where we focus on this, this is the problem, then why are we here? Again, if that was the problem? How can we haven’t fixed it? If you’re onto the problem? How come a trillion dollars in the war on drugs? How come we’re still where we are? Why do we keep doing the same thing over again expecting a different result? Why do we do that?

Justin Trosclair 50:29
Yeah. And that gets super political to I mean, I could think of different political, super political there. And I can see the same scenario play out in like, the border, and, you know, abortion clinics, and you know, all these things. It’s not as it’s not as easy as we try to make it out to be,

Unknown Speaker 50:46
right. Well, if you’re controlling the narrative, it makes sense that they’re motivated to make it so cut and dry. Because that kind of tension, yeah, polarization is going to drive more people, more views, more eyeballs, you know, more drama, right. And that’s really hot. To me, that’s an economy. And that’s really sad, when the stakes are high, they are around these issues, we need more responsibility in journalism. And in fact, there’s a whole there’s a whole cottage industry that teaches media how to report on these things. But they don’t use it, because it because it probably wouldn’t be as quote unquote, successful, you know,

Justin Trosclair 51:27
kind of bills to pay.

Unknown Speaker 51:29
I get that. But there is another way. And I think the other way would be to be committed to, from a media standpoint, to to tie it into not the idea of right and wrong, the idea of where we are, from a values point of view. That’s the reason why I so love the idea of the values approach, because underneath all of the polarization is so much commonality.

Justin Trosclair 51:53
Well, Tim, we have got to switch gears. I think this is an amazing like, interview, in my opinion, lots of great knowledge. That’s the way that makes you think about addiction and recovery and what’s going on and going behind the scenes. So loving it. But let’s switch gears a little bit, because you actually have this thing called White wonder you’re sitting in an old bus has been converted, I see some beautiful trees outside. The light is changing all the time on you. So people, people really great. What are you talking about? Justin? you’re traveling the nation? That’s right. What’s that about? And your website’s? Great. So this is the bridge to what are you doing in general, and as far as marketing, so you don’t have a brick and mortar, you’re having to support yourself. We’re all business people, we need to survive. Let’s make money we want to thrive. So what’s going on? What’s your mission, and maybe some marketing tips that you’re doing that’s helping?

Unknown Speaker 52:44
Yeah, so we, we did this company called QB called wide wonder which is about zero stigma. That’s our goal. We wanted a moonshot. We took that from the UK, they have an initiative called Zero Suicide. And I thought that’s what we need to get people fired up not just reduction or curbing or slowing down, I was like, that’s not my personality. I’m going for zero stigma, because the stakes are high. So I love that approach. So that’s our goal. We sold her house, we downsize, we put our kids in homeschool. And we are 100% committed to the goal is zero stigma or raising awareness around how stigma is still the number one block for people to reach out for help. And to get help, to admit to themselves to admit to their closest relatives and friends and about what they’re going through to take the silence and to make it create a voice around this so that we can normalize what it is to have a an issue of mental illness, mental injury, emotional illness, whatever you want to call it. Something that is how having somebody struggle in silence, not get help. We want to change that narrative, to where we equate physical challenge with mental challenge, same thing, we don’t need to separate, they’re the same. We all have mental health, we all have physical health, which make it the same. If somebody has a broken arm, you go get it fixed. If somebody has a broken brain, you go get it fixed. That’s the legacy for our children’s generation. That’s we don’t want them to struggle in silence. That’s part of this legacy. Wide wonder is to have generations our kids included, to look at this in a way that is positive and empowering, not stigmatizing not marginalizing, not to really go into isolation and suffer in silence. No more of that, where we’re calling it out. That’s, that’s why I’d wonder why wonder is compassion, empathy. It’s the criminalization of all drugs. It is leading with curiosity, not judgment, asking questions, not giving direction, not giving advice, connecting with people wonder is, connection is the currency of wellness, that’s sort of become our theme. People will heal when they feel compassion, people will stop isolating when they feel safe. So in any system, that’s what we’re trying to remind people stop punishing, and start leading with compassion. And so we’ve been able to do this, sell our house, travel the country, we’re in Lake George, as you mentioned earlier, a beautiful area in upstate New York. And we’ve been able to do this trip. Because we sponsored, we co sponsored with a company called eating Recovery Center, out of Denver, Colorado, they believed in our mission, they know how important the reduction or elimination of stigma is to not only somebody seeking help, but staying in sustaining that help. And so we partner with them, we were doing 30 events around this country, or we’re speaking to different organizations about stigma. And it’s just been phenomenal, both on a personal and professional. The amount of change that has happened to us as a family has been phenomenal. We are closer than we’ve ever been. We are communicating in a way we’d never have before because of this close proximity. And this, this journey of travel. And we are also meeting people who are doing incredible work out there. We’re obviously not the only ones who are, we have the goal of reducing or eliminating stigma, and we’ve met these people and they have inspired us, we have met people who are at Ground Zero as far as overdose. And they are the ones who are leading us in a progressive way, in order to for the deaths of people who have died for people who have died of overdose and the grief left in its wake. So their lives were not lived in vain. And they weren’t they didn’t die in vain. And so every day, Justin, I am motivated by the people who have already lost and the grief and its way to never ever stop from now on even when when the bus, you know, docs later on this year, to continue with this mission of zero stigma, because it is a killer. And that’s why we’re talking today. We’re, we’re on our way.

Unknown Speaker 57:02
Now I’m going to ask this question. And it’s a serious question. But it’s probably something that people like, how can you ask that? And this is, why do we care? If somebody commits suicide? You can do anything you want? Yeah, you can be the most drug addicted guy on the street in California living in a tent? Why can’t we just let somebody kill themselves if they want to? Like why is that a crime? Why can’t we just let them go? What’s the problem?

Unknown Speaker 57:24
Yeah, no, and that’s real question. Yeah, it is a real question. And that really goes to sort of an emotional maturity that goes for from a social maturity, where we understand again, the bigger picture, we talked a lot about this. And so when I coach people, I am the first person to talk about how we get to recognize what we have control over what we don’t, this is a really important part of emotional growth as an individual and as a system. And so what I tell them is that we’re here to express our love, people, places and things. Without control, we give it freely. It’s unconditional. There’s no conditions on my love to my kids, to my wife to this, to this community, to this world that I live in. And that was a real long journey for me, because I have certain ideas of the way things should be different. Right? getting over that, so that I can be an agent of compassion and empathy and love, because that ultimately, is what is going to enrich my relationship regardless of the outcome of what the other person does. What I tell families when I tell them others is right now, when we get off this phone, go and love your loved one up, love them like you’ve never love them. Love them so they feel free. Don’t love them. So they feel constrained don’t love them till they feel like they’ve done the wrong thing. Don’t love them with a little hint of judgment. Love them. So they feel

Justin Trosclair 58:50
free. Love them the way that like the five love languages. Yes, find out what that is love them that would they would actually feel loved. That’s right.

Unknown Speaker 58:57
We that’s interesting. You mentioned that because we just did that as a couple, my wife and I.

Unknown Speaker 59:03
Yeah, where are

Unknown Speaker 59:04
you? I am, do I appreciate. I’m losing the language, the love language implicit or explicitly, but I like to be recognized for my what I do. Like I like appreciation, right? And so we’re trying to literally on the bus, it’s been part of our mental fitness or emotional fitness is to love each other in that way.

Justin Trosclair 59:28
It’s so hard if the other person is like, I want to get you a gift. Like I don’t want your gift. Just tell me you appreciate me.

Unknown Speaker 59:34
That’s right. That’s exactly right

Unknown Speaker 59:36
for pumping the gas.

Unknown Speaker 59:38
Thanks for checking their pressure. Exactly. And boy, what a revelation that was to have those data points, or recognize those languages. Because that really, really helped us to build connection. Because that’s what all that’s what we want. I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to be loved in a way that makes me feel free. Not like there’s some caveat like I’m going to meet you where you are Justin as long as you do Bubble bubble. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re trying to get away with from that from a parent’s perspective, from a spouse perspective and relationship perspective. And then carrying that narrative in the way that we treat mental illness and addiction.

Justin Trosclair 1:00:15
I’m trying to semi convince my my wife when they when we settle down, because my next stage, China, I think is about done. We’ve been here almost five years. Well, into the year we’re checking out. It’s all about just changing our life again and with the new kid, but I’m the tiny home revolution. Yeah, I love it. When I see shipping containers ride by or something. Okay, baby shipping containers. She’s like, that’s

Unknown Speaker 1:00:40
our future house. She’s like, please just Can you like

Justin Trosclair 1:00:43
I didn’t say one. We can have four full size house made of shipping containers. Yeah, yeah. But uh, but I love it. I just love that. Yeah, I don’t need tiny. But I mean, I’m a big I’m a frugal person. I’m living in China. You learn like what you need and what you don’t need a really cool way to downsize. Obviously, you did it. You’re living in a converted bus? Yep. And you have at least one kid? How many kids? do you

Unknown Speaker 1:01:05
have? Two daughters? 11 and 13?

Justin Trosclair 1:01:07
Wow. So you got two preteens in a bus? Yep. Driving around the country for this year? What is? How are y’all doing it? What’s the survival mechanism here.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:16
So the survival mechanism is the recognition of how important it is to attune to other people’s emotions. And atonement means this, it means I see you’re struggling. And I’m going to hold the space for you to go through that. And I honor the struggle you’re going through. And that’s just part of life, and your emotions are valuable. And it all really the opposite of the way that I was raised. We were very much about control, control of emotions, control of everything, and any way that we could control the destiny, our success, very, very specific about what it was to be, you know, in my family was very much around, not being attuned to emotions, but to get through them as quickly as possible and move on. In our family, we made a very conscious choice to be emotionally intelligent, and recognizing that emotions are only visitors, they have expiration dates, but they’re very, they’re very important messenger. And that we get to experience in the because that’s the human experience, and to deny that causes suffering. And so we’re very much about attuning to our own emotions and others, and that’s made all the difference in the world. And when you live in close proximity, you’re talking about emotions bouncing off of each other very quickly, very efficient. So there’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to hide very, it required us to raise our game to a level we had never done before. And we’re like I said earlier, we’re as close as we’ve ever been. And we couldn’t be happier with our own emotional fitness, we’re still going to have challenges we’re in this. We’re in what we call Hump Day right now, Justin, which means we’re halfway through the trip. And so okay, we’re trying to get over the hump. And so we’re recognizing our struggle, we’re telling each other you know, we’re struggling, this is Hump Day, and we need each other to get through that so that we get to the other side of the middle of this trip, and start on the downside. Not the downside, but the the the end of the trip as we make our way back to California,

Justin Trosclair 1:03:23
or being in the lake probably doesn’t hurt.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:24
No, nature is a real healer. It really helps.

Justin Trosclair 1:03:29
What is one thing that you can do that you’re doing to keep the love alive and feel connected?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:33
Yeah, well, again, it goes back to emotional attachment. It goes back to the recognition how important interdependence is versus codependence meaning that there’s something that I think that Robin needs to give me that I can’t give myself that would be codependent. And so what we’re recognizing and how important our inner interdependence means, which is where the what I call, we each have a hula hoop around us inside the hula hoop and what we can control and what how inside is what we can control. And I use that with families where the hula hoop of Robin and I come together and overlap. That’s our intro dependence, or interdependence, how we come together and work really well together, bring our differences together to support each other in the process. We were just talking about this last night, how important differences are all across the board. Our differences are remarkable and should be celebrated. Not not a reason for us to get more polarized. But to help us realize that that diversity is what makes us so strong.

Justin Trosclair 1:04:35
Agree, pretty much last question here. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:38
favorite book, podcast, phone apps, it could be fun, or they could be serious. What do you got for us? So it’s, it’s, it’s to this trip, we, we use Yelp a lot, because we’re looking for like the eat, we’re looking for places to shop, and all that because so Yelp is huge. And it’s really accurate. So that’s a big one. Another one is mindfulness app, headspace. Any kind of app it deals with meditation is really important to get your private space, when you don’t have a lot of space to escape. You put headphones on, and you can get your space that way. Because space is important. autonomy is important. So that’s a big one. Books. There’s a great book called Beyond addiction, where science and kindness help people change. really powerful book, it brings together a lot of the stuff that we’ve been talking about how we can develop compassion, along with evidence based treatments to help people move towards change, really grateful. What was the other question?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:37
That is

Justin Trosclair 1:05:38
pretty much Yeah, like podcasts, or blogs or websites, all that stuff.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:43
I have a great podcast. It’s called The Good Life Project. And it’s introducing disruptors, people who are very much about transformation moving from a place of being sort of unstable or stuck to expressing themselves at a, at a very high level at a macro level, by by dealing with themselves at a micro level and changing and transforming. They were able to express it in a way that was really life changing, not just for them. But for lots of people. It’s an amazing podcast, I love that podcasts and tells me a lot.

Justin Trosclair 1:06:18
And how can people get in touch with you contact you support your cause

Unknown Speaker 1:06:22
our recruit your services. So we’re we’re everywhere on social media wide wonder is a Facebook page. All of my other businesses are a Facebook page. But I think the most important one that can that I’d like to express is wide wonder. And that’s why wonder dot life. We’re on Instagram, we’re on the web where we have YouTube. And the reason why it’s so important is that I’m recruiting zero stigma heroes were for their own reason we’re willing to commit to changing the way they talk about the way that they express themselves around their own mental illness or addiction, or they have a lovely born to struggle, how they can disrupt by coming out and being no longer silent, sharing their story, either at a private or public level. Social media can be a great agent for change around stigma,

Justin Trosclair 1:07:13
Tim Harrington, anything that we didn’t cover that you like, man, I want this out there.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:17
You know, I think we covered just about everything. I’m, I’m talking about this every day, obviously, it’s my life. It’s my purpose. So I really feel like you did a great job. And we covered what we needed to cover. And I want to just give you a shout out and appreciate you for reaching out to me, I really appreciate everything that you’re doing. I’m looking at your books back here, and I’ve looked into your stuff at a deeper level. And I gotta tell you, there’s a lot of you know, there’s a lot of overlap between us and in terms of, you know, our commitment to change in our commitment to helping people. So thank you for that. Absolutely.

Justin Trosclair 1:07:53
Everybody, check out his websites, like I’m on social media. Tim, thank you so much for being on the show, and the kind words and many blessings and everything else for the next six months or less. That was a powerful interview. Like I always say, Please listen, critically, think about it, and then implement. I know a lot of people don’t always make it to the end of the episodes. But I encourage you, if you made it here, and you, you talk to your friends about it, encourage them to do it. I think the family and vacation and the home life balance part of the end is important. It’s something that I didn’t get a lot of those other podcasts that I was listening to. So check them out Minnesota Thursdays and Saturdays, those come out, let me know what you think about that. If you have an episode that you want me to do for the audience, just send me a message on Facebook, Justin Trosclair. MCC is the official page of everything about me. You can find the books, the acupuncture needle book, The today’s choices, tomorrow’s health book that talks about weight loss, exercise, dieting and financial health, you can get free chapters at.net slash chapters or slash in a protocol. So that way you can experience the book before you buy. And you said it in the interviews that I’ve been a part of where the roles have been reversed. It’s dot net slash, as heard on the resources page on the website has all the products that I recommend, and there’s some deals for some of those. So check that out. And as always, if you click any of the hot links in the show notes page for books, we get a piece of that, and we appreciate that as well. the.net slash support is the web page if you want to buy the host a cup of coffee. And lastly, reviews are always always appreciated and so grateful when you get them. So that’s a doctor’s perspective. NET slash reviews. You’ll have a great week. We just went hashtag behind the curtain. I hope you will listen and integrate what some of these guests have said by all means please share across our social media, rather review and to go to the show notes page. Find all the references for today’s guests. You’ve been listening to Dr. Justin Trosclair giving you a doctor’s perspective.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai