Episode 19

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000; min-height: 14.0px}
hello and welcome to another episode of finding peeks i’m jason friesma this is chris burns president and founder of peak’s recovery hello hello and kate nelson uh what is your title i just teamly team lead of our women’s program at peaks sure yeah professional counselor so we are here today to talk about uh gender-based treatment and gender-specific treatment and um i thought it would be a really interesting discussion to kind of talk about chris the the origins of peak’s recovery and and starting this off as a men’s program and and just yeah just walk us through that process and then incorporating women into it absolutely thank you jason yeah thank you kate for being here it’s nice to have a female on i’m going to point that out right now


finally so i’m really excited to have that in there and it really matters and kate’s someone who guides and directs our our newer women’s program doing a phenomenal job over there building a great culture so grateful to have her on thank you for being here um when i opened up peaks recovery you know i was i was a very new professional yeah i was very new compared comparatively to the people that we were bringing in to hire but i can remember um i can remember sitting in treatment in 2008 and i remember going to present my timeline and i remember there was a a female in the group and i was 22 years old and i had consequently fallen in love in six days as you do as i do yeah that’s all right yeah and i’m going through my timeline and this is very vulnerable information this is like the deepest this is my story and i’m going through and i get to a year where there’s a little pain and shame and i skip it and i move on to current time and i let that thing unfold um and naturally i didn’t get what i should have got out of that programming in that curriculum and so right why did you let it skip why did you let it get because of shame and embarrassment because there was a female that i was attracted to in the group who i wasn’t willing to express that type of vulnerability with yeah and that was very clear to me um that gender specific treatment at that time for me would have been the best option because i would have been able to be more vulnerable and i think oftentimes we talk about counterbalancing adversity and that connection that has to be there in order to counterbalance it and i just think that’s difficult sometimes when you start mixing genders i think it’s kind of inappropriate in a way in the clinical setting at least yeah so when i open up triple peaks recovery i was like i know one thing it’s got to be gender specific yeah it’s because we have to have a natural kind of ebb and flow to the clinical process and so when we open up triple peaks it was just that specific to men and even bigger than that specific to young adult men um and very quickly we learned um in the community that the the females were under resourced there wasn’t a lot of programs that they could plug into and so a referral source at the time was like you gotta open up a women’s program and i said absolutely so we opened up with serenity peaks recovery in 2015. and it was gender specific a 10 bed program and we were able to build those cultures separately with women and men over here and just to kind of hit on the gender thing that’s however you identify and i think that’s really important to mention in today’s day and age however you identify we treat that specifically yeah um and that’s important to anchor into and and to align with in 2021 and when we were able to open up serenity peaks recovery center i think it even spoke more highly to me because it was a specific women’s environment and the stuff that they were unpacking in a group process they would have never unpacked if there were other men involved or people that they had attraction to or stuff that they were going to withhold and so i think of much more functional group process certainly the most efficacious is when it’s gender specific when chris i remember when we when we opened serenity peaks we had it we had two different suites in the same office building on different floors of the building and um upstairs was the men’s program and downstairs was the women’s program and i remember


very immediately we started to see the differences between the two programs almost immediately and pretty quickly we figured out to put it in a nutshell we figured out that a lot of the men’s work is about helping them open up and kind of helping them excavate some of their feelings and identify what is going on for them and for the women it was all about containment because they had a ton of access to how they were doing what they were feeling and they needed a way to help kind of wrap their arms around it and settle down and i just remember chris you had your you had an office on both levels that were that was like one was literally above the other we joked about putting a staircase up to it but i know i remember you being like this is different down here yeah i’ve never seen anything like this before um so kate i i did want to go over to you as well um with pique specifically just due to the business culture that we walked through during covet we unfortunately had to shut our women’s program down for a few months because um well we had to spread our clients out obviously and and really consolidate what we were doing but uh i’m really proud that we were able to relaunch it again here a couple months ago um and what what has been your process yourself kind of transitioning professionally from the men’s program and kind of helping us start the women’s program again that’s a good question um you’re right about the different skills with men it is so much more about you know trying to get them to finally lean into feelings they’ve been avoiding for so long and then to transition back over to women um it was a change for me for sure um and i was also my heart was broken when it was first closed so to go back and be back in that environment was just really exciting that we were able to do that something that is really close to my heart and why i love working so much with men and women but specifically women is finding safety in their bodies and yoga mindfulness breathing all that is just my passion because it has worked so well in my life to manage things i’ve been struggling with anxiety and such health issues and so to be able to give them a space where they can get connected and feel safe in their body and regulate it and realize i can’t have these big emotions but also i can move through them and find skills and tools is what is really exciting for me about the women’s program so can you talk specifically about what that looks like like when you when you run a yoga um class at peaks how are you how are you incorporating that and how are you incorporating how are you connecting their body and their mind and their emotions how are you doing that so i usually try to stick with the theme you know we have different themes throughout the week for our curriculum and if it is around shame or something like that usually i will do a meditation in line with that like maybe having them visualize their shame or something like that and give them some different visualization exercises to try to sit with it and kind of allow the emotions to come in like waves and i’ll talk them through that like this emotion that’s coming up notice it explore it observe it as if you’re observing a human experience and then i integrate maybe readings about shame or peaceful music that will help to sort of regulate that parasympathetic nervous system and stuff like that so yeah it’s my faith yeah it was a great description it was a great description like waves yeah it’s been described to me in therapy too just let those thoughts kind of pass like waves yes don’t hold on to them let’s just let them go let’s not judge them i think that’s really really cool way to kind of do yoga and connect that mind body and spirit and i think you know chris what i was thinking when you talked about your experience in treatment too the safety of the communities both the men’s and the women’s program when they when they aren’t necessarily distracted by the by the tension that i think comes when when the men and women are on the same campus um just yesterday uh i’d had a i’d had a pretty intense session with one of our uh women clients and um and the women’s group was letting out right as i was wrapping up with this client and the entire group just went outside and sat in the shade on the lawn there uh all of them yeah and uh and kate sat there and i sat there and morgan was there and we just sat and hung up clients for like half an hour before we went to our clinical meeting and um and that’s just that stuff doesn’t necessarily happen i think if when we begin to blend uh blend the genders truthfully and the other thing i was thinking too is nobody has a cell phone out of course right and uh that matters as well but chris i wanted you to talk about your experience today with with the men at the mma yeah that’s really cool um so each thursday and i mentioned in here before but we’ve been doing uh an hour of crossfit followed by an hour of cert we call it circle accountability group um with me and it’s really really connecting so we get in there and we get a good sweat and we get vulnerable and we go talk about it and it’s just this really cool connecting environment for example i’m thinking of a of a mature adult that it’s his last week here at peaks and all he’s done each week he’s probably closer to 60 years old and all he’s done each week and gone into crossfit is he’s gone on the assault bike and he’s just sat there in his first week it was like


in today the whole hour he moved and he grooved and i’m telling you i come out of that mma gym and we’re walking around and punching and he’s got a smile on his face ear to ear and behind his eyes says i have hope and that’s what it’s about it’s so much bigger than a workout i could care less about a workout but seeing these young adults and these mature adults speak lives and speak life into themselves through overcoming something that they didn’t think was possible and i think crossfit similar to recovery gives us tangible opportunities for growth and to experience what i think is really important i think the big book hits on is that spiritual experience this idea that i can have fun and these lights can turn on and i can be connected and i can be fulfilled and resourced i have hope and so that’s what i see a lot of times in that crossfit gym just as much as on campus as week one they come in there they’re a fish out of water they don’t want to touch a weight maybe they have some shame around the gym and i’m running around just gassing them up let’s go and get everybody really really excited we’re all ending with gratitude a tremendous amount of gratitude and hope and that’s the coolest thing is just watching someone from week one to week six because they didn’t come to peaks to be a better athlete but they’re leaving a better athlete because it’s it’s physical it’s emotional it’s mental and it’s spiritual yeah and it has to hit all of those and i think a good recovering individual is okay at each one of them um we’re not trying to be the best at anything and we’re not trying to be the best crossfitters the best mma guys we’re just looking to get in there and see if we can be the best versions of ourself through coming together as we instead of me myself and i and so it’s been a really cool process to be a part of the last couple of months since the pandemic has loosened up a bit i’m hopeful to get another day scheduled as well because it’s just so functional and so spiritual for those people for myself included so well what is it what does that group look like though if the genders were mixed in there oh man that’d be horrible yeah because they’re great people but it’s it’s distraction right it takes me off of my primary purpose which is right here right now it’s really difficult to be present in a group process in a workout when i have a different gender sitting across me that i may or may not be attracted to and i grew up right i showed up in treatment because i can’t be the authentic version of myself right that’s why i’m here because it wasn’t safe enough and then that puts me right back in that position it’s not trauma informed right it’s not trauma-informed care because i go right back into the position to try and save face and tell this story that’s not actually the true version of myself and so it would be very difficult we’d be having to pull people from this wing and this wing and we would never get an authentic process as a result so i’m grateful it’s gender specific outside of our female staff that’s there which i think is great i also think of avoidance like if they had a male in there what a great opportunity to focus on his stuff and worry about him and you know fall into patterns of codependency and my focus becomes this person and now i don’t have to look at myself i think those are the two biggest things distraction and avoidance which would just sabotage their whole experience absolutely and i do think there’s some efficacy to having mixed genders but i tend to believe that best case scenario is outpatient level of care yeah you know that’s when we’re going to kind of we’re going to live into our recovery and not define it we’re going to live into it and that’s a different step and i think you really have um both genders in that because that’s kind of how it works certainly in primary care uh gender specific is the way to go right in my experience yeah i i think that makes a ton of sense and then um professionally for you kay what what is it like to be uh to work in the men’s program as a woman i’m curious about dude that too because you’re talking about that yeah um yeah you know it’s different i am more conscious of my words and my actions and body language and just all of the things because it is a different dynamic for them and i and i recognize that and i appreciate that um and then at the same rate i think because they’ve struggled with women in their life in various avenues i get to provide maybe a healthy sounding board that they haven’t experienced which is a really great feeling to have boundaries and also see i can helpfully connect with a female so that’s that’s probably the coolest part about it um but you do have to engage in a different way to be mindful yeah you know yeah for you chris that’s huge i actually had an experience in the women’s program and just being really boundaried yeah and how like affirming that feels too you know it’s important anymore i’ve been in the women’s program been in group and be like nice legs chris i’m like inappropriate just absolutely we’re not doing that and you have to do it right away and that’s something as a young professional that was difficult so i’m great that we i’m grateful we started with men and then kind of leaned into the women because they they have a tendency to catch you off guard yeah and you need to make sure that you’re professional in all accounts and so being diverse and working with both programs can be huge the last thing i wanted to to talk about is um running a gender specific program and having both genders that’s been hard for us to be honest with you we have very separate campuses they’re like six miles apart or something like that like and it and it puts this stretch on our in our on our team right um but but we found that it’s really worth that stretch and worth um having two different campuses even though it does put that that strain on us and and like from a business perspective chris what’s that been like to have two different campuses in two different yeah i think to your point it it’s for safety yeah it’s for it’s it’s client-centered and it puts the client first yeah because on the business side quite frankly we’ve crunched the numbers and it would be much more beneficial from a business perspective to have everybody on one campus look at all the treatment centers around the country yeah everybody’s got everybody in one hub yeah it is not cost effective first to have another two acre campus with a full team but it’s beneficial for the client and the clients families that we serve and we think that it’s the best opportunity for recovery and so as long as i’m here in front of peak’s recovery we’re going to choose what’s best for recovery for the client and let the chips fall where they might and that’s kind of the way that i see it is there’s no amount of money that can make sense of mixed genders and primary care treatment it’s just not efficacious we can’t get people into aftercare i mean the whole process blows up so as much as it’s not financially great um it’s recovery oriented yeah i’m grateful for that it really trauma informed and that was a lot to overcome i think especially in this last year but it’s been amazing to kind of have it all uh as it was yeah even better than ever better than ever i would actually say i think that’s exactly right yeah because the other thing is too i know i just said the other thing was the last thing this might be the last thing but we have been able to really customize our curriculum um for the genders as well because people well we started this whole thing with that people have different needs yeah um and what can you just speak maybe to what modifications you made because because we we had our men’s program and wrote up a curriculum about it and then we added the women’s program and what what changes did you make on that so i think kind of what you said before where women have kind of word vomited for lack of a better term a lot of this stuff in therapeutic settings so long and it’s almost like they need a different way to um explore it and so i think we give them a lot more experiential and art and activities and movement to try to have them see it from a different lens um so that’s different and some you know we try it with the men but because of that resistance and like it’s so new and uncomfortable it doesn’t always land well um another thing is really diving into like uh domestic violence and unhealthy relationships because that seems to be something that a lot of our clients come in with but that’s something that a lot of the women continue to find themselves back with because when you don’t feel good about yourself we accept the love we believe we deserve right and so they end up with these really toxic relationships and that becomes this cycle of the person and the feelings and the addiction and so we really dive into a lot of that unhealthy toxic relationship stuff with them awesome i think you summarized that uh brilliantly um and so we we are at a time for this episode i really appreciate this uh discussion i think it really um illustrates why we do and how we do what we do really well and so with that uh that does wrap up this episode of finding peeks follow us on instagram facebook and apple podcast youtube all of it snapchat i don’t know if we’re on snapchat but anyway that’s it peace thanks awesome